After yesterday’s rain, I woke up to yet more rain this morning. I turfed the horses out briskly, mucked out and then let them back in, where they stood around eating hay until lunchtime when the weather suddenly cleared. I let them out, although after a while they reappeared by the house because Poppy wanted to have a snooze with her back to the holly tree and the two boys were stuck, not wanting to push past her. They ate some willow to pass the time, allowed me to groom them, ate some more willow and I noticed they’ve managed to create lots of mud in the walkway gateways.

I have to say that George’s overgrown puppydog helpfulness is actually not all that helpful. My intent was to shovel up hardcore from the yard and move it into the muddy bits. He stood in the muddy bits. After that he decided to investigate the shovel, beginning by whiffling the contents out with his muscular nose, then he tested the edge of it with his teeth. By then most of the contents of the shovel were on the floor, so he sniffed them thoroughly before digging them into a heap…. which neatly created, of course, more mud.

After all this he went back to standing carefully in the muddy bits for me. I scooped up more hardcore and gently tossed it near his feet. He looked at me. I tried the next shovelful closer to his feet, and he looked at me while chewing a willow twig. After that I was pretty sure he didn’t mind getting a shovelful of hardcore tossed onto his fetlocks so I just warned him with a cheerful ‘incoming, George!’ before each shovelful was slung his way. He didn’t appear to mind at all!

I reckon I’m about halfway on shifting the hardcore out of the yard. It goes quicker with a barrow but the thought of George ‘helping’ with the barrow was enough to put me off. I need to shift quite a lot more of it out to the field, though, so once they’re all out tomorrow (weather permitting) I’ll buckle down to it and see how much I can shift.

Tiger rabbit has now chewed her way out of her cage, so we’ve ordered some big rabbit runs from Amazon. As I assemble each run I’ll move bunnies up to the croft to fill it, and then we’ll be able to catch and incarcerate all of them again, rat-free and ready to start breeding for the year. At least, that’s the plan…

A wet day today –  steady but heavy drizzle with interludes of downpour. I put the horses out first thing and mucked out quickly, then opened the gate up again when the herd started looking miserable in the field three hours later. After a couple of hours to dry off and eat hay, which Abe spent in George’s stable while George was in Abe’s stable (for reasons they didn’t choose to share with me) the drizzle was extremely light so I let them out again. They milled about in the yard for a while, played musical stables briefly – then Poppy came out and chased the boys ahead of her into the field again.

By four they’d got wet and wanted to come back in, so I let them in. They’re all now in their own stables and have had their dinners. I may need to give each of them another bale of hay for the night, but for now they’re fine.

The geese, being waterfowl, really don’t care whether it’s raining or not. They were both sitting in their tub of cold water in the rain at times during the day – the mere thought of it makes me feel chilled! – and seemed perfectly happy with the day.

I’ve spent most of the day feeding the fire, sorting through boxes of stuff and, of course, running back and for letting horses in and out….

Colin the handyman called today with the quote for the two fences he’s going to build for us – the one between the road and the yard and the horse corral fence – and, better yet, he can start work later this week or early next!

At that point I can rip out the stable walls before George and Abe succeed in pushing them over, get my block wall up in the stable shed and get on with setting up that space as tack room and feed room, which will organise a heap of stuff out of the workshop and the big dairy shed!

I’ve finished moving all the wood collected from Lindsey’s place (so far – there’s still several loads to come!) into the woodshed, which is looking comfortingly well-stacked now.

That being done, I decided to indulge myself so I stacked up the spare straw bales conveniently in the big diary shed and got my recurve bow out for some archery practice. It’s been far too long!

The horses are staying out late tonight – the evenings are drawing out nicely so there’s plenty of light to bring them in around 7pm or thereabouts rather than hurrying them in at 5pm, so I’m giving that a try today. It should be better for them, though they may disagree… they’ll have to start getting used to it anyway, given that I hope to have them out round the clock in a couple of weeks’ time!

The clocks changed overnight, so my alarm went off, as far as George’s hoof was concerned, an hour late. He was tapping said hoof on his door impatiently from the moment the house door opened until after I’d sprinted the dogs out and back in and then opened his stable door!

Once I had let them all out they ambled off together to the far side of the field without hesitation, so I shut the gate and got on with things briskly.  Lucy laid this morning so I had to wait for the geese to organise themselves out of their shed in their own time, so they ended up getting herded towards their paddock by me pushing the first wheelbarrow from the stables!

When I came back after dropping the dogs off at Mum’s, I had a visitor on the garden fence. It’s not easy to see in the photo, but through binoculars and a telescope this little raptor had vivid yellow eyes, so I think he’s a sparrowhawk.

Having crept up to the lounge window on my knees to avoid scaring him so I could take the photo, I then crawled off for a wildlife telescope and had a really good look at him through that, which allowed me to see the yellow eyes (apparently peregrines have dark eyes).

After the hawk had flown off, I set to work on today’s big job – moving the ferrets out to the small dairy shed. They’ll see more of me there, since I go back and forwards around that end of the sheds quite a lot every day, and they’ll also have a much better airflow in the shed than stuck in a small double-glazed room in a house. It took some manouvering around doors and in the process the manky piece of vinyl flooring in the hall at that end got ripped so has now been thrown out, but the ferret cages were dragged over to the shed and their occupants re-inserted safely.

When I was bringing the horses in tonight I noticed a chunk of white tail hair caught on the fence (I hate barbed wire!) and walked along to investigate.

This is actually quite a significant chunk of Abe’s tail, which is always a bit on the thin side and is now positively wispy!

The horses came in alright, then went out. And in. And out. And in… and out…. then I shut the yard gate so they stayed in. I think part of the problem was that they still think it’s only four o’clock when my clock claims it’s five, so they weren’t ready to be inside mentally. It took a while to get everyone sorted into a stable and fed, particularly as Abe pushed his luck with Poppy again and got himself kicked into his water bucket, which startled George back into the yard, but eventually we got there. Poppy is a bit worried about the ferrets so her bucket is down the far end of her stable, but she’ll get used to them soon enough.

From what was said the other night about Delyth Gamlin-Brown’s Arabs (Abe’s breeder) her youngstock tend to have this attitude of ‘I’ll just stick my nose in, it’ll be ok…. ouch!’ Certainly Abe has no idea when to stop being an absolute pest to other horses and will deliberately torment both Dancer and George in the hope of provoking a rumble. Poppy’s tolerance is considerably less and her personal space much more important to her than Abe seems to realise. Poor George, who is actually remarkably tolerant, is covered in nips and nicks and bits of missing fur from Abe’s pernicious teeth! This photo’s a freeze-frame from a video of some months ago (George is a lot bigger and heavier now!) but it gives the idea of Abe’s total lack of sense in his constant picking and nipping!

Not that there’s anything wrong with the ferrets (at least, nothing a hormone jab won’t sort out for Ivy, who’s in season) but I would like to get them out of the house. They’re charming and delightful house pets – but they do get everywhere, and I feel they do better out in natural light and getting natural temperatures, not the artificial versions, so I’ve been wondering where to move them to.

I’ve decided to put them in the small dairy shed. There’s tons of light and enough dry floor space for them, so I spent a bit of time carrying the stacks of bricks out of there and putting them in a damp corner of the big dairy shed. I’ll move the cages out from the spare bedroom in the house and over to the shed in the next day or two, then see if I can find some good playpens online for them to spend their days in.

I go through there frequently with hay bales, feeds and so on, so they’ll get plenty of human time and attention.

The hosepipe stayed on the tap today so I was able to fill up all the water buckets easily and without carrying buckets anywhere!

That mysterious pipe I found last night turned out to be the stopcock for the outside tap, so I now have masses of water handily placed outside the house. In fact, a little too much – I may have to turn the stopcock back a bit! I put a nice new hose on the outside tap, planning on filling up the water tub in the field,  and it promptly blew off from the water pressure.

Attempt two takes place tomorrow when the hose has definitely had plenty of time to cool and set again, having been dipped in hot water to get it over the connector for the tap.

Mum and I moved the fence a bit further tonight so the horses will have some nice fresh grass tomorrow morning.

It’s been warm up here today and when I came back after dropping the dogs off for the day, this is what I saw in the field! Everyone was down and out and remained down for a good half an hour, variously flat and dreaming or sunbathing or just dozing on their chests like this.

I fetched another load of wood back from Lindsey’s today, so that’s more in the woodshed.

I was a little concerned when I let the horses in tonight – George started off walking but then Dancer spotted him on the move and came cantering, so he trotted ahead and both Poppy and Abe cantered past me in the walkway as I walked back to the yard. When I got there, George was occupying Abe’s stable and all three of the others were in George’s stable.

Eventually I managed to get everyone outside and steered Poppy into Abe’s stable, but while I was trying to convince Dancer to follow her mum, George suddenly walked into his stable so I nipped over and bolted his door, then Dancer was in with Poppy and I went in to steer Poppy into the barn, with Abe coming up behind me to chase Dancer into the barn briskly with a prod of his nose (teeth, for once, not in view! He’s a wicked little critter when it comes to biting the others’ butts).

I turned over a flat stone at the corner of the house while I was waiting for the geese to go to bed and discovered a vertical pipe, at the bottom of which is a blue tap. I haven’t tried turning it yet… I might not like what happens when I do, so I’ll wait for a day when I have someone else around to help trace the effects!

I’ve had many different sorts of poultry in the past, as well as budgies once, so I’m not totally unlearned in Bird. Goose, however, has its own nuances and I’m beginning to learn them.

It’s exceedingly obvious when a gander gives an alarm – Hannibal’s quite capable of waking me at oh-dark-hundred when he goes off because a mouse intruded in their shed, for instance! They also have some gentle communication honks and chucks and Hannibal produces a wheezy huffing that seems to be honking that doesn’t quite have enough force behind it; I think it’s a reassuring-my-flock noise. Lucy chuckles more than she honks and I haven’t heard her hiss, while Hannibal is expert in Hiss.

I’m starting to distinguish levels of threat and display in Hiss now. Putting the head down near the floor with a quiet hiss is the first stage, then that escalates to head and neck out straight with loud prolonged hiss. The next stage is to ruffle and shuffle the feathers of wings and back while hissing, head and neck still level. Stage four, spread wings halfway and advance on the enemy, hissing loudly and beak half-open ready to bite. If anything is in the way, bite it, grip on hard and whack it with flapping wings.

I don’t know if there’s anything above that yet.

This evening they didn’t want to go to bed so I pushed them by standing as close as I could with Hannibal at Hiss Level 3. I tried upping the ante on my side by flapping my arms while hissing back, but apparently I wasn’t very convincing. Eventually I took my coat off and flapped that, which got them moving with a lot of honking and hissing.

Eventually we’ll have that fence up to prevent them going on the road and then I won’t have to worry about pushing them into their shed before they’re ready – they can stay out until twilight if they want.

The horses have been good, though most of this afternoon they decided being inside with hay beat being outside with grass, so they came in and occupied the stables firmly, though mostly politely. I don’t know what Abe’s crime was but Poppy deliberately followed him into George’s stable so she could kick him – much to George’s consternation, since he was in there first! Dancer, meanwhile, was trying to make friends with George over his stable wall with much snapping of infant jaws – horse-speak for ‘only a baby, please be kind’ – which he was.

The herd marching order still seems to be Poppy, Dancer, George, Abe. Interesting!

I shifted another couple of barrowloads of hardcore off the yard this afternoon and swept up, including doing the flagstones at the side of the house. That led to Poppy having a Moment on her way in, but they all filed gravely and quietly in from the field this evening, having padded quietly and calmly out this morning too. I think they’ve got it sussed out now, which is brilliant.

Poppy and Dancer went straight into the barn and I shut their doors behind them, but George was thinking of going in after them and it took a few minutes to persuade him to let me out of Abe’s stable, for both he and Abe to insert themselves, then for George to come out and me to sneakily shut the door behind him, and a little longer before he ended up in his own stable with the door shut and his bucket handed over properly. He’s getting there, though, and because there’s no rush and no pressure, he’s staying perfectly calm and good-natured about it all.

I’ve had an offer for the horse trailer, so hopefully next weekend I’ll have the money to get enough electric fence posts to go right round the field twice plus a few more, which will mean I can finally get the trackway set up and rotation paddocks set up in the centre. The caravan, meanwhile, is on eBay and hopefully will be gone in another week for more than the reserve price.

Fingers crossed.

Hannibal and Lucy suddenly became fascinated with windows, or possibly mirrors, this afternoon.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a quiet day when you don’t do much.

The horses took themselves out very cheerfully, though George tried to make it back into the walkway before I could shut the field gate. I just beat him to it! I wanted them out because I needed to get the car to the garage early – it broke an anti-roll bar linkage in its near hind quarter last week and while the garage removed the broken link on the spot for me (and promised it was quite roadworthy without the thing) today was the day to get a new one fitted. That meant loading the dogs into the car and zooming off by quarter past seven, so the horses needed to be safely confined out in the field.

Dogs dropped at my mothers and car dropped round the corner at the local garage, Mum then ran me back up to the croft and I got on with mucking out and so forth. Lucy was still sitting on her nest first thing but by the time I checked again just after 8am, she was ready to go out, so I let them both head off in their own time. They know their way perfectly well and waddle along quietly, talking to each other, so I just follow at a non-chivvying distance and then pull the fence into place behind them to keep them in the garden. Lucy had indeed laid another beautiful big white egg when I checked after they were safely out, which makes 7 so far; she’s laying every other day.

Once all the mucking out and feed prep had been done, I went inside, sat down with a cup of coffee and enjoyed some actual leisure, reading a book for a while. It’s been a while since I had the pleasure of leisure!

This afternoon I finished shifting all the split wood from the other day into the wood shed, then someone came round to have a look at the horse trailer. Her’s is in the process of giving up the ghost and she wanted to see what a Cheval Liberte is like, and as she also once had an Arab from the same breeder as Abe, we enjoyed a natter about Arabs and their ways into the bargain. Abe and George play-fought the whole time in front of us, the clowns!

After that I went down and opened up the field gate and all the horses came in, led by George. I walked back into the yard and shut that gate behind me; Poppy, Dancer and Abe were all milling around in the yard because George was standing half-in Abe’s doorway looking smug! After I patted his backend lightly, he walked into the horse barn and started playing Goldilocks – he tried out Poppy’s water, then tested her hay, then came and occupied Abe’s stable to eat his hay for a bit, then sipped from his bucket. In the meantime, I caught Poppy before she kicked Abe, then led her out of George’s stable, where all three of them were crammed in! The others followed, including George, and I turned Poppy round in the yard and led her into Abe’s stable, let Dancer in and shut the door before Abe came in. Poppy and Dancer then went through to their barn and I shut their door, then opened Abe’s stable door.

George immediately came through it! He and Abe stood in Abe’s stable with Abe looking disgruntled and occasionally biting George’s bum, and eventually George came out and I shut Abe’s door. It took a few more minutes before George accepted that leaning over the barrier wouldn’t get me to give him his dinner but going in his stable would, so I promptly gave him oodles of praise and, of course, his dinner! Finally, everyone in the right stables and all doors shut….

Still, they’re happy and for all there’s lots of milling around, it all happens at walking pace so it’s more amusing than concerning.