Well I hope you had a great time over the festivities and are ready to get back to ‘real life’ lol, for us, an element of real life never goes away, animals need attention 365 days a year regardless of wether or not too many sherbets were had the previous night 😝Famous last words, more about that later!
Over the holidays we had two separate attempts to break for freedom from the horses, one went over the wall and off down the lane after getting a fright and the other went through the fence pulling it down and then the hedge to the horses next door as he didn’t want to spend the day alone, his companions were away for a day or two, on both occasions neighbours phoned to let me know and on both occasions my reaction was ‘for f**ks sake’! We now have a piece of fencing to repair and a fence to erect as the stone wall is clearly not high enough.
The birds are still on lockdown and some are looking decidedly fed up with the whole thing, we had intended to do some fencing but as Sod’s law often happens, the weather turned cold and the ground was frozen so the next best thing is to plan. We discussed the siting of the new duck shed and hubby went off to the merchant to price up roof sheets etc only to find them shut 😖 never mind because while he was away, in my head, I relocated the whole duck pen to a different area of the farm, luckily when I told him my idea he agreed it was a good one 😀 We will begin that as soon as a) the weather permits and b) we have the time.
We received some wonderful presents from everyone including three activity/break days so I have been trying to sort out on the calendar when the best time to book them is, we seem to have something each month so far, from a night away, to clay pigeon shooting, concerts, afternoon tea, a mini break in Scotland, willow weaving and cheese making, and a cruise, going to be a good year I reckon 😀
New Years Eve was a ‘tipple tour’ round the village, stopping at various ‘pre ordained’ addresses and then stopping off at the church to pop champagne while the church bells are ringing in the New Year, great fun, rather too many sherbets on my part and by the time I dragged myself outside John had done everything and one of the girls had done the horse, I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping 😝
The rat living in the wall is still there, I despair about how to get rid of it, honestly I have fed it that much poison, I guess I will just keep going until we don’t hear it anymore.
Back to normality today as everyone is back at the day job and I am here on my own again, I don’t mind as I feel an element of being in control and overseeing everything is the way I like it. Everything is frozen solid this morning including the tap inside the stable block, good job John filled up the water buckets yesterday afternoon, I will have to wait for the sun to warm everything up and do the same later on today, fingers crossed it does or I will be bucketing water from the house to every point of the paddocks.
I don’t make resolutions as such (slight interruption to typing as a Robin has just flown in through the back door and into the kitchen) but I do resolve to do things better than I did last year. I am determined to make use of everything, we have little waste but sometimes things get overlooked such as the sprouts sat out in the back, as I don’t really like them I would probably overlook them until they are only fit for the chooks but today I will make an effort to open freeze them for using in Johns dinners, oranges going wrinkly in the fruit basket will be used in cake making etc. The hardest part is that John is quite a fussy eater but I have warned him of my intention so best not to ask what is in stuff I have made 😀
Back to the Robin, ever since Johns dad died and one landed on his head at 10pm at night we have joked that it is his dad keeping an eye on us, he obviously just popped in for a New Year visit. Since the chickens and ducks have been forcibly housed, I have noticed the wild birds scratching around for food and judging by the amount of feed we are saving, we were feeding half the countryside population of wild birds, so I have been putting grain out for them now and again, not too much but just enough to keep them going, one even followed Sam into the feed room the other day and was eating the cat biscuits.
Over the holidays I have had the chance to read other blogs with a similar theme to mine and I look forward to reading them throughout the year, I hope you continue to enjoy mine and that we have many adventures together over 2017.
frieslandfarm (flowers) 