It all worked beautifully this morning. I opened doors, patted slightly surprised horses gently in passing and walked behind them as they mooched quietly out together.

 

During the late morning the sunny warm weather turned colder, squally and started throwing hail stones. I called the horses back in and then the fun started.

Everyone came in. They all went everywhere – some in, some out. The other some back in while the first some went back out! Everyone in the wrong stable. Everyone in the barn – briefly!

 

Poppy’s not quite up for this yet so then she chased the boys out again and stood in the barn with Dancer, looking smug. After a bit they all went out because the hail had passed over, and we had several ‘we came back!’ moments in the yard again before they settled out in the field for a while.

There was another hail squall later in the afternoon and they came in without being called, milled in and out and all about like a highly unco-ordinated conga party before settling, more or less, in the two barns, with Poppy holding firm on the barn while both boys stood in Abe’s stable.

Poppy went off to eat hay at that point so Abe pushed his luck and sneaked in.

Thinking Poppy wasn’t aware of him, he made himself right at home!

He followed this piece of cheek up by wandering over and helping himself to Poppy’s hay, so she cornered him, kicked him soundly several times and chased him out of the door again, very firmly!

In the meantime, George, having better horse manners than Abe, saved himself the kicking.

The answer was, apparently, ‘no’, but it’s fascinating that George, who’s by far the biggest and heaviest of the herd, is so very carefully deferent to Poppy! His mother must have been firm on boundaries with her foal. Abe, I suspect, was weaned very much younger and didn’t get the parental boundary-setting so deeply inculcated, since he will cheerfully push his luck at any opportunity.

During their various wanderings in and out again on their way back out after the weather dried off for the second time, I got this one of George  by the gate, looking large and windswept.

They came in finally about half past five, allowed me to sort them into the right stables all round, accepted their dinners and I shut them in for the night.

I’m delighted with them coming and going by themselves but I do have this small problem with that flimsy fence – I don’t like leaving them to wander without supervision in case they decide to break out! It’ll be fantastic once the proper permanent fence goes up, but I’ve spent quite a lot of today in the yard and barn, getting the weather on my head and watching the horses’ various antics!

Apart from the weather, it’s been fun!

George again! He really is larger than life.

I decided this morning to feed them, then run a triple line of electric fence wire on small plastic posts to steer the horses in the right direction. While I was doing this, I had the shed doors open so the horses were interestedly watching – particularly, of course, That George!

I was just blocking the gate open when the pad pad of unshod hooves on concrete made me look up… and there he was, ambling towards me looking pleased with himself! I had heard him kicking his door a bit while he was watching, but I hadn’t realised he’d kicked it open! (Technically, I suppose, kneeing his door since it doesn’t involve hooves, more a sort of pawing action that brings the knee into contact with the door on the upswing)

No point trying to turn him back and it was turn-out time anyway, so I gave him a pat in passing and went to let Abe out, then the girls. They all ambled quietly out to the field in their own time, which was exactly what I wanted from the design of the walkway, so I shut the gate behind them and left them grazing in the sunshine.

I ushered the geese out to the garden, collected today’s egg (she’s a clever goose!) and mucked out, then dropped the dogs off at Mum’s and went back to start fixing George’s door. I hammered the metal back into acceptable shape and found a new screw for it, then discovered the door didn’t quite fit the doorway properly any more. He must have shifted the hinges or something! Some rooting around in the shed at Mum’s uneathed the plane and between a bit of elbow grease with that and a rubber mallet, the door now fits again and is securely bolted.

During the day I got all the various trailers lined up backing onto the horse corral, as additional backup for the little fence. It’s a puny little fence, it needs all the backup it can get!

That helps cut the incentive to challenge the fence.

I took my time getting the geese in this evening – it’s so quiet here, I can stand and listen to them wash! Last night I was listening to the amazing sound of Hannibal ripping his feathers through his beak to get them preened into perfection but tonight I remembered the phone in my pocket and took some video of them having their evening spruce-up session. The wind sounds worse on the phone that it does in real life, but even so the noises are there. They sort of chatter their beaks through the water, and Lucy likes to spend a while picking up grit to refill her gizzard, as well as them both flapping wings and shuffling feathers around. Tonight the sun was just the right angle to sparkle in the drops of water on their heads after they’d washed – though by then I’d turned the phone off, unfortunately!

After the geese were in bed (including Hannibal taking exception to me approaching to shut the door, when progressed through him trying to eat my welly when I held him off with a foot to me grabbing him by the neck just behind the head as he attempted to beat my ankle to death with his wings, after which I steered him headlong into the shed before shutting the door) I brought the horses in. I opened the yard gate, then went round quietly and opened the field gate without the horses spotting me. I went back to the yard and called them then, which got me some very puzzled looks before George ambled hesitantly towards the gate, so I walked round the house just far enough for him to see me and called again. That got him moving with more confidence, and I went back to stand by the stable doors, ready to steer horses into the appropriate places. A minute later George came into view by the woodshed with an odd sort of expression, half-hesitant and half-curious, as if he was wondering if he was really supposed to be there, but when I praised him he lost the hesitancy and came over to say hi. Poppy was a little behind him, with Dancer on her heels and Abe turned up at a trot, playing tail-end Charlie.

At this point George decided to inspect the various vehicles carefully over the fence, so Poppy was first in. I followed Dancer after her with Abe on my heels and shut the inner door, then followed Abe back out again (silly boy!) and went to shut the gate. Abe allowed me to shoo him into his own stable, and a shake of the feed bucket recalled George’s attention, as he was by then inspecting the workshop door with interest to see if his nose would fit through the letterbox (not a hope!) He came in looking a bit uncertain again, but walked into his stable and I bolted the door behind him, fed everyone and shut the doors.

Perfect!

Tomorrow morning I’m not going to feed them – I’ll just let them out the moment I’m up and they can make up the difference in grass. It’s not as if they’re getting much food anyway – a half-scoop of soaked beet pulp in a bucket with a handful of chaff for George and the girls, and just a handful of hay nuggets for Abe (he tends to be a little tubby!) so I don’t think they’ll miss it. It might save me a lot of time and effort fixing George’s doors, though….

Roll on the day they have a proper solid fence around their corral and can just stay out 24/7!

 

I’ll get to them in a minute.

The geese decided to take liberties, or at least their liberty, this afternoon. I stepped out of the house after a tea break to find Hannibal almost on the doorstep. I jumped, he jumped, Lucy jumped, then Hannibal hissed at me. He can be quite eloquent in Hiss, though we all just stood our  grounds for a minute before I detoured around him to continue moving wood into a nice tidy stack in the woodshed, rather than a disorganised heap in the workshop. I don’t really mind if they want to be in the yard rather than the garden – provided they don’t go towards the road – so I just kept an eye on them while working and headed them back the one time they set off up the drive. I gently chivvied them back into their shed for the night before I went to bring the horses in, and that’s all fine.

I must remember to shut the gap in the wire if I’m away for any length of time, though, in case they amble up to the road.

Putting the horses out was fairly ok this morning. The boys were halfway down the track and loitering while grazing when I took the girls out, and Poppy just pushed them out into the field ahead of herself with a few laid-back ears and head-waves. I went sedately along after and shut the gate behind them, and there we were. They were perfectly happy out in the sunshine all day, and then I organised everything ready for them to come in.

I’ve moved the piece of electric fence wire that I used to have running from the corner of the shed to the old field gate, so now it runs from the stable shed door to the gate by the goose shed. I reparked the caravan this morning so that’s now parallel to the shed wall, which helps to add some solid backing to the length of wire, but there’s quite a bit of open space a milling horse might make for still. Tomorrow I think I’ll add the horse trailer and the small trailer and possibly the car as well, for the sake of my nerves!

What happened was perfectly simple and normal for any herd of horses. I opened the gate and George spotted me. He started walking towards me in a cheerful manner, then Dancer saw him moving and trotted after him. Poppy and Abe saw her moving and cantered to catch up. George broke into a trot to stay ahead, Dancer broke into a canter….

You can see where this is going. I slammed the gate shut and jumped back in case the thundering mass couldn’t stop in time, though in fact they did – and promptly turned into an expert milling mob instead. I managed to get George and Abe through and shut Poppy and Dancer out, and it looked like everything was going fine as Abe came along to the yard gate nicely to have his head collar on, with George just behind. I put Abe’s head collar on and turned to pick George’s up…. and Abe turned round and trotted back to the Poppy and Dancer, who were running up and down the fence whinnying. George, of course, followed.

I retrieved Abe and took him back to the gate, so George followed him. I got George’s head collar on and began to open the gate, and George decided not to wait until it was open. I had to drop Abe’s rope and get out of George’s way before he walked over me, but I steered him into his stable and bolted the door hurriedly. Abe, meanwhile, had gone into his stable and through into the barn behind, so I pushed his door shut and went back for a frantic mare and foal. Poppy was so het-up she trotted to the yard gate the moment I opened the field gate, then turned round and went back into the field, then came back again! I caught up with her as she was turning round to leave for the second time and there was Abe, coming towards us across the yard!

I gave up any hope of order at that point, threw the gate wide open and grabbed Abe, turned him round and marched him smartly to the stables, where George was looking quite worried about being abandoned. Poppy and Dancer followed, thankfully, and I manoeuvred Abe sidewise, opened the stable door again and Poppy recognised the way to her dinner and went in, Dancer following (after a glance under the wire, which worried me considerably!). I took Abe in after them, hung onto him with one hand while I bolted the girls’ door, then bolted his door and heaved a big sigh of relief before feeding them all!

Maybe tomorrow, if I can line up enough vehicles to make the yard look fairly secure, I’ll just let them all in together and sort them out once they’re in. It’ll probably mean Poppy throwing Abe and George out of her barn, but then again, maybe not….

It’ll be much easier and safer once that fence is up! I shall have to hassle Colin for his quote and a date to start work….

 

Since the geese came out of their shed this morning and I was standing ready to gently urge them to the right instead of the left, I saw into the shed at a different angle than usual.

Lucy has a lovely nest in the right rear corner.

Something pale was in the straw. I went and investigated once the geese had set off in search of grass. One egg! No…. Two eggs! I kept digging. Three! Four! Finally, the tally stood at five beautiful white eggs!

Goose egg omelette for dinner tonight. Normally we make a two-person omelette with a dozen quail eggs…. it’ll probably only take one goose egg between us!

I gave Lucy an extra handful of layers pellets along with their normal ration of corn today, in thanks for the eggs she’s provided for us. If she’s laying one a day, which geese normally do, then she probably has a maximum of 35 days still to lay this year. I’ll make sure I stop collecting eggs in 25 days, so she can sit on a few and hopefully hatch out some goslings to cherish.

Hannibal will undoubtedly be unbearably smug if he has goslings to look after.

Edward came by this morning with his tractor-mounted wood-splitting gizmo – one he designed and built himself, apparently – and we put in two solid hours of work together, with me trying to barrow the wood away and build up the woodpile as fast as he was splitting it. I didn’t quite manage, but I got the last half-dozen loads tucked away after he’d finished, sacked up five bags of shavings and small bits for fire-lighting purposes and I reckon we now have a woodpile that’ll cope with the first half of a Scottish winter.

I also now have a beautiful clear yard for the horses!

The new walkway is an amusing success, though slow going. I fastened the field gate open this morning and took George out to it first and he spent a long time standing at the first gate studying the various views, snorting and sniffing the top bar thoughtfully. I managed to get him out through it after a few minutes, bolted it behind him as he wandered slowly over to the nearest willow tree and nipped a twig off experimentally, and then I brought Abe out to join George. They made off together to explore and eat grass, so I went back and brought Poppy and Dancer out.

Dancer couldn’t bring herself to walk past a spade I’d carelessly left nearby, while Poppy had spotted the tail-end of George and was tugging hopefully on the rope, in a polite sort of fashion. I opened the gate again and Poppy went through, but Dancer really couldn’t deal with the spade, so now I had Poppy making off after the boys while Dancer was fussing in the yard! I let Poppy go and went back to collect Dancer, and just got her to the gate when George arrived back there, with Poppy behind him!

That was a slightly tricky moment. George was cornered and between Poppy and Dancer,  unable to go backwards or forwards, but after an indecisive dither for a minute while he danced from hoof to hoof nervously, Poppy made space and he bolted past her gratefully while mother and daughter staged a little reunion scene. Finally, I got everyone out into the walkway, with only Poppy still wearing a head collar, and I bolted the gate and left them to it.

About thirty seconds later the whole herd streamed out into the field and discovered the lovely fresh ground at the far side, so I went along and shut the field gate behind them.

This evening they were all waiting at the new field gate so I let Poppy and Dancer in first, shutting George and Abe out in the field, and led Poppy along to the yard gate.

Dancer dawdled behind and then turned round and went back! Poppy and I went back for her, I collected Dancer and called to Poppy to come, and we got to the holly tree… then Poppy went back! Dancer and I went back and collected her, and I finally got both of them to the yard and across to their stable, leaving the lads prancing anxiously up and down the fence. When I went back and opened the gate, they both hurtled past me and trotted to the edge of the paving slabs, then stopped and turned back again.

I went and leaned on the gate until they’d finally had enough and came for their head collars, then led them both across to their stables and shut them in safely.

Andrew the fencer turned up bang on time this morning and got straight to work, which led to an outbreak of spectating from the horses until they got bored and wandered off again. I had to retrieve the geese from the field at one point when they popped out through the new gateway, but they herded placidly back to the garden again and settled after that, apparently unconcerned by post-thumping tractors close at hand!

The fencing is now done, and it’s lovely!

This is the view from the yard towards the goose shed and one of the new gates (on the right – the other is the gate to the North Paddock). The horses have flagstones to walk on next to the house, moving on to grass after that.

This is the reverse view, back to the stables. Even George won’t have much excuse to ramble here!

There’s a little willow just along from the house, putting out catkins nicely.

The big holly and the silver birch make up the corner of the walkway, then the horses will swing right and see the field gate ahead of themselves.

I suspect they’ll either have their heads down munching at this point or possibly be streaking into the distance!

Almost as soon as Andrew had gone, I took a barrowload of hardcore from the yard along to the gate – and the horses decided to run races around the field. That’s all well and good for speedy lightweight Arabs and Dancer seems able to stop and turn on the proverbial dime, but poor George was really working hard to keep up and make the twists and turns with everyone else! After watching them for ten minutes or so, I decided enough was enough and rescued him by bringing everyone in. They all needed to cool before they could have their dinners, anyway – in George’s case, he was still blowing a bit after ten minutes in his box! – so while they were chilling a little, I went out to move the electric fence around to match the new gate.

I was, of course, right at the far end of the fencing when Edward the chainsaw expert turned up to finish slicing up the tree trunk, ready for tomorrow’s splitting activities!

I did spend some time this afternoon, between mucking out and goose herding, in barrowing away the mix of mud from under the tree trunk and shavings that had been left after the last saw episode, having rescued all the clean dry shavings I could for future firelighting duty, but I’ll have to do it again tomorrow morning. It’ll be worth it – Edward reckons the wood he’s cut up would probably be worth a couple of hundred if I was buying it, while I’m only paying him about £70!

I want a few more barrows of hardcore down in the new gateway before I take the horses out that way, so tomorrow’s work will probably start about dawn…

It’s fine. There will be larks. I also have woodpeckers within earshot – which is not surprising, given Cairnorchies sits between three large and heavily-wooded areas! – but I don’t know which species are around locally yet. I might take the dogs for a walk in the woods and see if I can spot any, if I get any time free from work on the croft! This afternoon there was a buzzard calling overhead somewhere, and I have magpies prancing about the field cheerfully most of the time, plus last night I heard a tawny owl pair calling to each other.

Andrew the fencer is turning up tomorrow morning to get the horse walkway sorted,  so today was final preparation for that. I’ve towed the horse trailer round the corner and up to stand outside the horse barn, towed the caravan across the yard to front the garden wall (it took some chocking on that slope, too – bricks behind both wheels, handbrake on and legs down at the corners, especially the downhill end!) and pushed the small trailer back into the North Paddock, then shut the gate on it (in case George Rambles). The smell of hot clutch is lingering embarrassingly around the car – reversing braked trailers at slow speed does seem to lead to excessive clutch use and I hate it.

After that Michelle (my daughter, home for a brief respite from dissertation stress) and I tore down the strange piece of woodwork that used to hold up the back wall of a dog run, I gather, and tossed it over the fence into the North Paddock too. I haven’t managed to shift the piece of wood it was attached to which is screwed firmly into the corner of the shed wall, but I daresay if I ask nicely Andrew will contrive to scrape it off somehow. I just need to dismantle the goose fence in the morning, which will only take a couple of minutes, and shift the electric fence in the field so he has room to work on that side of the gateway without curious George ‘helping’, which again will only take a few minutes, and then we’re entirely ready with tons of room for manouvering tractors around.

I still haven’t really figured out what to do about the geese.

I need to run Michelle back to Aberdeen train station first thing, but I’ll be back before Andrew arrives and then I can be around and about all day thereafter.

The car has been slightly worrying me for a couple of days by producing a clunking noise on rough ground and right hand turns, so I stopped in at the garage this afternoon. It was a broken anti-roll bar linkage, so they’ve cut the broken piece off (so it doesn’t turn and rip up the wheel) and booked me in for a replacement on Monday. In the meantime, they’ve assured me the car is entirely roadworthy, so no need to steal Mum’s car! At least it wasn’t the suspension….

I took some pix of the progress on the tree monster this morning, then spent twenty minutes scraping up all the woodshavings and bagging them. Once dry they’ll make excellent tinder for the fire! This morning the scene produced a lot of snorts from all the horses – Dancer has a surprisingly deep, resonant snort, considering how little she is!

 

While I was there with phone in hand, I captured George practising ‘bashful’ again.

Why he has this response to any camera I have no idea! Two minutes before this he was  guzzling his breakfast and a minute later he tried to steal Abe’s bucket off Abe’s door, but in between we had this butter-wouldn’t-melt moment. I have to say it’s quite fascinating watching George stretch across and just manage to hook the corner of Abe’s bucket with his top lip, then wiggle said lip to start the bucket moving towards himself until he can get his teeth onto it! I wish I’d had the phone on video but I forgot and rescued the bucket instead.

I’d barely turned the horses out this morning when Colin the handyman, who’s done excellent work for us in previous years by way of clearing gutters, re-roofing sheds and putting up fences and gates, turned up to measure up for the fence between the yard and the road, and for the fence across the yard from the stable shed to the horse walkway.

Now, I’ve already accepted the quote for the walkway from the agricultural fencing contractor, Andrew, but there’s a good reason for preferring Colin for the other fences, and that’s because although Andrew does excellent work, he uses tractor-driven equipment and there are drains and water-mains and who knows what else under the yard and across the driveway. Colin will be digging post holes by hand and he’s very careful about pipes and drains. He also has a Highland pony with attitude so he was bang on side about making sure George doesn’t just scratch his bum on a fence to make it fall down!

Since Andrew’s coming to do the walkway fence behind the house midweek, Mum and I spent some time this afternoon clearing away a curious construction. I thought it was just some old wood with chicken wire attached, with a few flagstones.

It turned out to be much more complicated!

First we pulled out the wood and chicken wire, which took a bit of heaving and muttering of rude words. Having achieved this, we started excavating…. some very large concrete slabs, some breeze blocks, some bricks and half-bricks, some small concrete slabs…. and then, underneath all this, something that turned out to be a roadsign for the Coastal Trail! Under that was a hole, which appeared to be the result of a fox or something tunnelling in search of the rats who’d also tunnelled underneath…

We filled in the hole and piled up all the detritus out of the way.

After this I did some investigating in the yard. For some days I’ve been wondering where the eastern edge of the concrete slab from the sheds is – there’s the typical farmyard-type slab that comes out from the stable shed, and then there’s a ramp built on top at a later date to get into the big dairy shed, but on the eastern side that seems to just plunge under the hardcore and vanish. Access to the workshop is along a pavement-type concrete slab on a brick base that ends up a good two feet higher that the ground level at the North Paddock gate.

I’ve had my suspicions about the hardcore that sort of ramps up to the top of the walkway, so today I took a spade to it at the corner of the workshop and confirmed my hunch. There’s a fine level concrete slab sitting under all that hardcore, some two feet of it! It won’t be hard to shift but I’ll leave it alone until the walkway for the horses is done, then barrow it to the gateway at the field end and use it to avoid any mud build up there and give the horses a different surface to walk on.

Finally, this evening Edward from the local saw shop turned up to start dismantling the tree monster. I’d just got the horses in, though Abe was a little devil about his head collar tonight and ended up trotting loose to his stable ahead of me as I wrestled George off the fresh grass! They then had to put up with a chainsaw right outside their stables, which led to George getting 20 minutes of neck-scratching and wither-rubbing to soothe him, because he didn’t like it at all! After that he suddenly decided it wasn’t scary and big horses don’t need cuddles, so he waved me off with laid-back ears and tucked into his hay instead. I was quite disappointed by that – I was enjoying the bonding time!

The light faded out just about the time Edward hit a nail and two screws in the same cut so he went off to sharpen his chainsaw blade and will be back, hopefully, on Thursday morning to finish the job. He’s done more than half, I’d say! I’ll take some pix in daylight tomorrow.

I still have to decide what to do about the geese. The horse walkway will cut their shed off from their grass, so I’ll have to figure out either a new house for them or a different lot of grass…

With an apologetic hat-tip to the Lyke Wake Dirge.

We haven’t been reduced to candle light – the electricity supply seems very stable, in fact, nary a flicker in sight – but we’ve had both the hail and the sleet today! Yet again, the poor horses had to sidle in from their field trying to keep their bums to the wind while lumps of ice pelted us all. I except George from that – when I went out and called them in, as hail slammed violently in all around us (it came on very suddenly, too!) the three lightweights had their tails to the wind, heads to the ground and ignored me – George whinnied and hurled himself at the gate eagerly. I let him through (imagine trying to stop him!!) and called the others again – no response, so I took a quick-stepping George into his stable, where he suddenly realised he was the only one in and started whinnying again.

He has a ridiculous soprano whinny, all the more unexpected given his size!

It had the desired effect, though; when I went back out to the field, the other three were trying to half-pass across the field to the gate, moving laterally to avoid the hail hitting them in the face. I grabbed Abe and Poppy, trusted Dancer would follow and we hurtled across the yard to the barn, where I let Poppy and Dancer go through first and then put Abe into his stable behind them.

This was about lunchtime. By mid afternoon when I went out to check hay and water, the three hot bloods had all turned sawdust-coloured where they’d rolled to dry off, so everyone got a good groom, which they thoroughly enjoyed.

The geese, being waterfowl, just tucked their beaks under their wings and slept through the squalls of vicious weather, coming back out to graze when the sun reappeared.

And not a drop to give the horses to drink!

For quite some time the cold water tank has been gently burbling through its overflow and keeping the water butt by the house door filled up. Admittedly this has had a downside, in that anyone going through the door gets a mild cold shower and the flooring panels outside the door (used to be inside a porch) are as slippy as banana skins in the wet, but it’s also been keeping me supplied with water to dip out – enough to fill the horses’ buckets as well as the goose buckets and baths.

Yesterday afternoon I filled the bath with cold water and popped a reindeer hide in to soak, ready to make a drum today. It made a few glugging noises along the way, but I ignored those as just air working its way through the system.

Except that shortly after this, the overflow stopped dribbling into the butt.

That made me a little nervous but I searched all over and couldn’t find anywhere else the water was going instead, nor was there even a drip to be heard from the tank in the loft. A little more nervousness in a different direction ensued but the taps still worked fine and the loo flushed normally, so I still had water where it was supposed to be.

Just not where it’s not supposed to be.

This morning the water butt was mostly empty, since I’d mostly emptied it yesterday for the animals and it hadn’t rained overnight.

Now, each of the stables has a 6-gallon bucket. There’s also two gallons for soaking the sugar beet for their feeds (it comes as dried pieces and needs soaking before it’s fed or it’ll swell up inside the horse and give them severe colic), another 2 gallons for Hannibal’s bath by the shed, 2 gallons for their bath in the garden and a further 6 gallons for the bucket in the horse field. That normally pretty much takes care of the contents of the water butt from full to too low to dip a bucket!

Since the weather forecast was for sleet and snow after 11am, I hustled on with getting the stables mucked out, sorted out the goose baths and then made off in search of hosepipe and adaptors to fit a house tap, rather than trying to fill that many buckets in the bath (which was still full of reindeer hide, anyway). I got back with a suitable adaptor as the snow started falling, so as soon as I’d filled the buckets in the stables, the horses came in out of the weather.

It’s been sleet and snow all day since then, and the horses are still in their stables! It means they’re making inroads into the expensive hay, but then again they’re warm and dry so financial teeth just need to be gritted.

Having sorted all this out, I drained the bath and got on with the reindeer hide.

A nice little 16″ drum, though at this point resembling a porcupine on the back because I use clothes pegs to keep the edges down tidily until they dry in place.

Three weeks or so to dry properly (slowly) and she’ll be ready to show me her voice.

I thought when I got up this morning that the horses would be standing in all day, the rain was so hard and heavy, but in fact within half an hour it all cleared, the sun was beaming, the skies were cloudless blue and the horses went out cheerfully! They’ve had blue skies all day until 3.30, when suddenly there was hail and all the horses calling for me as I hurried out to bring them in! They were all delighted to be brought inside and handed buckets of feed instead of having to shiver in gale-driven hailstones.

I noticed as I was watching George go into his stable this evening that he’s substantially bigger than a 16.2 heavyweight cob I saw last night when I was delivering Ceilidh to her new home – both taller and much more massive, though in fact he’s still quite narrow for his height (though normal for his age). I just get these little reminders from time to time both of how big Suffolks are and how much growing George still has to do!

I got my hopes up a little this morning – Hannibal was honking his beak off by the goose house and when I went to see what his problem was (he’s quite a needy beast, vocal about perceived shortcomings in depth of water for his bath or lack of food on the ground) Lucy had built herself a neat little platform of straw in the shed and was sitting on it, looking quietly thoughtful and meditative.

Maybe she  was laying an egg? Certainly I’d much rather she laid in her shed than under the holly tree!

As it turns out she didn’t lay an egg, but I’m still hopeful she’ll choose to put it in the shed rather than somewhere inaccessible. Hannibal was shouting about her sitting, I gather – he hissed at me quite ferociously when I came into view and then produced a noise remarkably similar to a braying donkey in triumph at driving me off when I stopped approaching, having seen what was going on…. he has quite a high self-opinion and takes any co-incidental retreat on my part as evidence of his own warrior prowess!

I tested the bath plug today and since it seems to work very well, there’s a reindeer hide soaking in the bath now. I spent a few minutes this afternoon getting a drum hoop ready, so tomorrow morning will be a drum-birthing day.