My chooks are free range so cope fine other than that their coop leaks down the centre of the roof so a couple go elsewhere rather than pack that central line and I don't enjoy mucking them out that's for sure!
Pony fields are dire around gates and feeding areas, some places it's welly deep slurry and I'm really struggling to get in and out with tonne bags of hay when they're pushing me up against the feeder in the rush so I'm bringing a couple in to the one open barn pen I have free, on a bale there and I put the hay out while there are only 3 at the ring!
30th the field above me flooded from a dip over the banking and ran like a sheet down the back field (5 ponies) and rose to near the neighbour's back door, up onto the 3rd step and a good 9" deep swirling around their new conservatory outer wall. We were all out with shovels and I had to pay £150 for a JCB to come and dig a huge foot deep trench across my field to take the water away from their house but it's left mine in a mess both where the water was ending up along my wall, the ditch itself, the JCB tracks all across the field, and the swamp left where the flood had been. I was bordering on suicidal and have a well advanced plan for looking at tenement flats in Edinburgh or Perth when I give up, tho I''d probably hate that too if I actually went through with it!
The silver lining if you like is that the JCB man is paid up and will come and reinforce the ditch with a pipe and some kind of stones when it dries out enough. He's also going to remove a heap of rubble, mud and tree roots to free up a space for a new gateway eventually, and says he has a wee bucket that will do the strainer holes easier than digging by hand, so tho I can't pay him for that yet, there is at least a plan and he'll scoop all the shifted soil and muck off the gates to wherever I want to have a new veg plot, perhaps I need some concrete blocks to build raised beds and fill them with it so it doesn't go to waste!
I had heard cold hard winter and honestly would like to see one like that over this - council cut all the roadside trees this spring to save their trimming budgets I suppose, which means my breeding field has virtually no windbreak now from the S/SW and I'd already lost a couple of hawthorns on the west fenceline in previous winters. It's hard to know what to do and what to let alone, let alone what order to try and get the tasks all done.
My pre-Christmas investment in flexothane overtrousers has, however been the best £20 spent in quite a while. I was washing filthy stinky clothes and legs every single day until I got them
