The title alone shows it’s been a busy day – I don’t normally write two posts in one day! Today has deserved it, though.

I got a good start to the day, with a decent exercise session after feeding the horses; the VR system I bought last week is well worth it as I was able to do a 5 minute tai chi tutorial session before spending 50 minutes getting my heart rate up playing Beat Saber, and then another short tai chi session to warm down again. I borrowed Mum’s little exercise bike, cranked up the resistance to the max and did 5 minutes pedalling with my feet, then 2 minutes cranking it with my hands – that worked my legs, arms and both ends of my back nicely! After that, I mucked out the barn, fed the chickens, filled all the hay nets, collected another duck egg and 13 hen eggs and traded a few last minute messages with my friend Lynsey about Mum’s pharmacy pickup and another 4 pints of milk.

After that, George turned up at the gate into the orchard so I let him into the yard and put the grooming gloves on. He enjoyed getting groomed, shed a good few handfuls of ginger fluff and was very well behaved – no teeth, lots of patient standing, a few nice walks with me and good, solid halts when I asked. He picked up both front hooves for me with only a small scowl each time, and then I invited him into the barn, gave him several handfuls of nuggets and shut the gate, leaving him enjoying a hay net peacefully.

Abe was next. He was thrilled! One to one with a human again at last! All his itches scratched, handfuls of grey fluff removed, treats all over the place! Ecstasy! I had to go and refill the treat pouch after that so Abe came along too – right into the feed room! There’s not a lot of room in there, with all the bins and buckets, and adding a human and a horse made it decidedly cramped. Abe was totally cool and unflappable about it, however, and manoeuvred himself expertly out again when I asked him to ‘go left’ to face the door and then ‘walk on’ to go outside again. After that I walked up the steps of the mounting block and waited, and Abe considered the situation, then positioned himself tidily right in mounting position next to me! Handfuls of treats, of course, for such a lovely response, and we did it again in the other direction with equal aplomb from a horse who wasn’t wearing so much as a stalk of hay, let alone a head collar!

Dancer was next, with much snorting about stepping through the little orchard gate – I don’t think I’ve ever asked her to come through it before. She came, however, and was lovely. She stood like a rock while I groomed down her legs, under her tum – the only place that made her move was between her back legs, and even then she just looked startled and stood on three legs with the other cocked up like a dog! She did some lovely walk-on and whoa work, and then I asked her to go back in the field and she was suddenly overcome by the need to sniff the muck heap.

I left her to it and went to join Poppy in the orchard. She enjoyed a quiet groom, walked down to pick up the breakfast buckets with me (I tossed them over the fence for later collection) and then back up to the gate. Dancer was now just the other side of it, examining my washing line with deep interest.

I fetched her head collar and she put it on without hesitation – one of the things I love about all my horses is their willingness to poke their heads into a head collar as soon as I hold it up for them! – and then I led her back into the field. It took a moment while she considered not going… but then decided she would after all.

I took 18 eggs up to the gate and when Lynsey and Craig came by, we did the careful dance of pick up and put down that always reminds me of Le Carre scenes at Checkpoint Charlie before pausing to shout comments to each other over the noise of the entire chicken flock, including all three cockerels all crowing for Scotland!

It was good to see them – Lynsey has a big, enthusiastic young horse as well, though her Neeske is Friesian so smaller and lighter than George – but with the tendency to turn into a fire breathing dragon when excited! Neeske should have been going over to Holland this year to finish breaking-in and go to stud – but of course that’s now on hold. Maybe next year – she’s only 7 now, so plenty of time.

This afternoon I got two parcels in the post – we may not be going to shops but I’m still doing my bit keeping the economy running, I think! One parcel was some hanging herb pocket planters I’d ordered, which I plan to hang on the south wall of the barn and fill with bee plants and kitchen herbs, safely out of hen-jumping height so any bees don’t get gobbled! The other was some beef fat I’d ordered.

I like to use beef dripping when I make pemmican – equal quantities of fat and dried lean meat, and in this case also plenty of dried ground blackcurrants! Morrisons have it in stock but don’t deliver my way, Tesco neither deliver to me nor have it, and Asda will deliver but don’t have it. I ordered 20kg off Ebay instead.

I just hadn’t thought through the difference between picking up 500g of beef dripping from a supermarket and getting 20kg from a trade supplier. I opened the box and discovered 4 huge blocks, 5kg of fat in each, wrapped in plastic but not sealed up…!

I made the pemmican – just under 1kg of it. That left me just under 19.7kg of beef fat to deal with! It really needs to be stored away from the air, since oxygen reacts with fat to make it go rancid. I’ve spent all afternoon melting down pan-fulls of beef dripping, pouring it into every small plastic food saver box I have, and now I’ve finished the first block. The fridge is full of fat, solidifying nicely. Tomorrow morning I’ll turn them out, vacuum-pack them, weigh and label them, and then store them in the freezer. Technically they could be stored on a shelf; I have some sturdy plastic boxes coming so I can store things outside and rat-proof, but until they arrive the freezer is safe.

While I’ve been in the kitchen all afternoon, I’ve been watching the jackdaws in the yard outside. They’ve been carrying away all the shed horse fluff – there will be some very snug nests this spring!

15 days without leaving the Croft… actually, not a hardship. I’ve walked down the road once late at night because I couldn’t see the horses with a torch from the yard and had the lovely experience of walking back with George paralleling me on the other side of the fence, so we had another little chat at the gate before I went to bed. I walked up to the other side of the barn next door last night because I was wondering what the ducks were doing (playing in a full water trough and sneaking into the barn under the wriggly tin sheeting wall, as it happened! Little beggars…)

Apart from that, it’s quiet and peaceful. Lynn drops off milk and bread a couple of times a week, one of my clicker-training friends has asked her husband to pick up meds for Mum tomorrow morning and bring them over, for which I’m again trading eggs (and rapidly running out of boxes!). Apart from that, I waved at the postie today and shouted thanks to a delivery driver from across the yard, and that’s about it!

I’ve been watching the ducks, or rather drakes, and it appears that there is indeed a hierarchy. To my surprise, top drake is Blondie! Handsome and gormless – but definitely the boss! Lavender and Patchy Boy, the other two drakes, are subtle but deferent, moving out of Blondie’s way but not looking scared and sometimes all of them browse together. Interesting! Blondie also gets on best with the geese, who seemed to adopt him when he was a duckling.

Despite the quarter inch of snow that unexpectedly appeared overnight, all the horses are now moulting. I spent ten minutes today with grooming gloves on, moving amongst the herd (warily) in the yard and grooming them all. Poppy seems to be getting fractionally more tolerant of George being in the vicinity and only made slight faces at him over Dancer’s back – Dancer herself produced some fearsome scowls when I started grooming George instead of herself, but George still appears unworried by Dancer’s expressions.

I ordered another coffee grinder for making chick food after the rats ate the power lead off the old one, and that arrived today, so I’m all ready for chicks now – they should hatch in another couple of weeks. We also received a little mini bicycle trainer; Mum is still wanting a pushbike but I reminded her that we’re not supposed to risk anything sending us to hospital at the moment, that the government have told everyone to stay home so we can’t go and buy a bike for her anyway, and how about the little stationary bike job as a means of getting fit ready for when she can have a bike. She’s not hugely enthused but she did pedal away for 20 minutes this afternoon and the exercise is undoubtedly good for her – even if I have no intention of running out of reasons why she can’t have a pushbike!

Today was supposed to be a day of trimming horse’s hooves, and Odette and I had made meticulous biosecurity plans for the event. Instead, it was so windy I called it off. Poppy hates the roof rattling in high wind and she was notably unwilling to stay inside today, to the point of running out to the field, rather than just walking, and taking shelter in the orchard. Just about the time I was thinking of bringing them in and tying up each horse in a different place with a supply of hay, it started hail stoning.

The herd came in. The roof rattled. Poppy took them all out again.

It hailstoned. She brought them all in. The roof rattled so out they all went. Snorts broke out all round – the Arabs have a fine line in resonant dragon-sized snorts, and when George gets going he produces incredibly prolonged, deep snorts. It was all beginning to resemble some sort of high-speed 16-legged conga line as they skidded in and out at a canter, complete with tossing manes and jostling around corners, and hardly a state of mind in which I could expect any of them to stand quietly tied up for Odette to trim their hooves!

Under the circumstances – given that the last place anyone wants to be right now is in hospital – I cancelled. We’ll just pick up on the schedule for next time, so fingers crossed the weather’s quiet and still in May!

The day hasn’t been wasted, however! The top barn has been completely cleaned, another 15 barrows of muck onto the heap, and I’m looking forward to all that compost turning into good, fertile soil in the near future.

The jerky has been dried and then split into 5 bundles of 21 strips and vac-packed. The bones of the carcasses have been stripped of all meat, then the bones dropped into the slow cooker and set going to make bone broth – a highly nutritious substance that’s a great tonic for the immune system. The meat is in a big pan, having been boiled up briskly, and will have some artichokes and parsnips added in the morning, then I’ll can it as a basic stew; it’ll keep safely for years once pressure-canned, and I can use it as is or add whatever other vegetables I want, season to taste and there you are! Cheap tasty meals safely stashed for the future.

The quail eggs are now in the incubator and will be left to do their thing for the next 17 days.

I’ve had confirmation that my new rabbit hutches are on their way – they should arrive mid-week and I’ll set them up under the lounge windows, make sure they’re secured against any wind (it’s exposed to the south, east and north) and then move Nightshade, Sage and Mistletoe into them. The roofs of the hutches will also provide some good growing space for a few containers of cheerful flowers and bee plants, which will brighten up our view considerably!

That frees up the small dairy to become a dedicated poultry area, where all the birds will be able to find food, water, nest boxes, safe sleeping places and also biosecurity in case I have to confine them due to bird flu outbreaks. In the meantime, they laid 13 hen eggs and 2 duck eggs today!

Tomorrow I need to find the canner – it’s somewhere in the workshop, boxed! – and get that stew sorted out, and I hope to clear the next chunk of the mucking out – Abe’s stable – as well as pick up anything they’ve left in the horse barn. Depending on the weather, I may be able to pick up some of the fencing in the field and make a start on fencing off the orchard and the strip from that to the road – I want to get the horses off it and do some hard work picking rocks off, moving a heap of flagstones away (I have plans for them!) and then mulching and pruning the fruit trees and reseeding the area around them.

I shall need to put some thought into keeping the poultry off the grass seed while it geminates and starts growing!

For now, though, it’s time to do last rounds of the critters and then go to bed.

Actually I think it’s now Day 8.

Yesterday turned into an extremely busy day. I butchered the defrosted carcasses in the barn (5 rabbits and a pheasant) and have been hard at work dealing with the various bits.

Pheasant breasts removed, sliced thinly, popped into the fridge in a marinade of blackberry wine and honey. The rest of the pheasant went to the ferrets.

Two rabbit front ends went straight to a pair of very happy whippets. The other three went to the ferrets, so that’s was a lump of meat in each cage. Very happy ferrets!

The back half of each rabbit went to the kitchen. I stripped the main meaty parts off quickly – leg meat was chunked and later minced and packed into the dehydrator, while the fillets were cut into thin strips and marinaded – half in a mix of soy sauce, garlic powder and black pepper, while the other half got balsamic vinegar and paprika. All the livers and kidneys were sliced thinly and dehydrated for dog treats in the future.

Today I removed the mince and organ meat from the dehydrator, nicely dried. The organ slices are in a box ready to be doled out to deserving hounds (take note, whippets, and Be Deserving!) while the mince is in a bowl. I’ll be squashing it down to a coarse powder in the mortar later, then I’ll vac-pack it and put it away until I have enough purified fat to make it up into pemmican. I’ll vac-pack the dried and ground blackcurrants at the same time. They’ll be fine at room temperature for years that way, so no problem just putting them aside until later in the year. This small box (my specs for scale) shows what 8 boxes of fruit turn into once dried and ground!

I’m about to go and reload the dehydrator with the marinaded jerky strips, which should be coming out and ready for storage Sunday morning. Again, I’ll vac-pack them in small quantities and put them aside until I want a treat.

The new power lead for the incubator arrived today, as did the quail eggs! I’ll get the incubator set up and running later tonight, while the eggs get 24 hours to settle after transit. We should be starting incubation tomorrow night – and 17 days later, hopefully, small quail will emerge.

Dancer has decided spring has sprung – she’s moulting handfuls! George is just starting, while Poppy and Abe are hanging onto their coats a little longer. That’s fine by me – one horse blowing its coat at a time is quite enough hair blowing into my face!

This morning I decided it was high time to start unpacking the car, still full of stuff rescued from Mum’s old house. Apart from anything else, I wanted the sugar so I could do something useful with the juice from those 4 cartons of blackcurrants before they went through the dehydrator!

I contrapted some shelves in the workshop to start getting things tidy in there, finally, and moved enough out of the car to find the sugar, then it was into the kitchen for the morning.

I put the currants into a pan and warmed them to start the juice flowing, then used the potato masher to squash the berries and get more juice out. The pulp was then rubbed in a sieve with the back of a spoon to get more juice out. Eventually I had a lot of pulp, skins and seeds that I can spread thinly in the dehydrator to make flavouring for pemmican, and a big pan full of juice.

I had to pause at this point. While lugging stuff in and out of the shed, I left the gate ajar. George had wandered in from the field for a drink and spotted that Out had become an option, so I retrieved the bucket of layer’s pellets from under his nose. I think he managed a couple of mouthfuls, no more, so he’ll be fine.

I then retrieved the nugget pouch from the hall and went out with head collar in hand to see if I could retrieve the entire horse.

He’d wandered over to investigate the hutch the quail are in. He was innocently sniffing the lid when he suddenly realised there were things fluttering around his ankles, so while the quail scampered around their cage, he hurriedly scampered a couple of strides away and went back to exploring.

The Arabs (including Dancer) lined up along the orchard fence. Ooh, look, there’s George, he’s Out. How did he do that? Go, George!

I asked George to put his head collar on. He declined, politely, so I waited a minute and tried again. He declined and walked up to the muck heap. I offered it again and he put his nose in and waited while I slid it over his ears, then I gave him several handfuls of nuggets – I always like to be generous in rewarding him when he obliges! – and we set off in the usual series of stop-start let-me-walk-round-you-and-away-again semi-circles, but I got him through the gate, along a bit and tied him up to a piece of string before he realised my cunning plan. Too late! I left him tied up and shut the gate, then went back and gave him lots of praise, nuggets and neck-scratches before taking the head collar off and returning to the kitchen.

I did a rough-and-ready job on the sugar and juice. I lobbed all the sugar (it was slightly under 2 bags) into the pan with the juice, stirred while warming until the sugar had all dissolved, then tasted it. Too sweet! I didn’t want it turning into jam in the bottles! I added some boiled water and stirred a bit more. Much more like it!

If I planned on keeping it for a long time I’d be more accurate about the sugar/juice ratio but I plan on starting to use it immediately, under the circumstances – all that vitamin C and antioxidants! – so I bottled it at that.

4 Kilner bottles, two mead bottles and a Scottish Dark Matter rum bottle. It’ll be delicious with a spot of warm water in the evenings!

I reorganised the ferrets last night. Fido and Rambo, the two entire males, have a cage each and are sitting about looking pathetic and lonely. Angus and the two girls are sharing a cage and looking indecently smug and snugglesome. I still need to put more shelves up and get the heap of stuff dumped in there up and sorted, then I’ll have room to put two big cages in for the expectant mums before they produce kits in 41 (and counting) days. This is, of course, assuming that the jills ‘take’ – otherwise they’ll either come back into season or they’ll have phantom pregnancies… and probably then come back into season.

If I possibly can, I’m getting at least one of the hobs vasectomised before winter!

I put a trail cam up to cover my gate the other night, just in case some nefarious scrote thinks they can nick my poultry without being recorded in the act.

I’m glad to report there have been no nefarious scrotes. The camera recorded the bin lorry, a couple of passing tractors, a few lone hikers, an immense number of poultry taking selfies and this little darling:

Yes, I know, I put the camera out upside down. I’ve fixed that now… I think…

We did our last dash to the house in the village this morning, as soon as I’d fed the horses. We saw nobody, spoke to no one but each other and touched nothing on the outside of the house with my hands (I managed to open the door using my elbow on the handle and the doorkey) so we should be ok.

We got a good haul of stuff – everything edible, which filled the boot and back seat, plus pans, utensils, the blender, hand whisk, the small-change collection, the contents of the kitchen medicine drawer, every plastic storage container that still had a lid and the microwave. the freezer and ice box at the croft are now rammed full – so full I had to take the little plastic tray thingy out because I needed the space it was taking up! – and I have the dehydrator full of frozen soft fruit, thawing out. Another 4 boxes of the stuff await the next load! It’ll have to be dried, I don’t have enough sugar to make jam, syrup or alcohol, but I can mix the dried fruit into pemmican to make a change in flavour.

Amongst the haul in the outside freezer were some whole carcasses – 5 rabbits and a pheasant – so they’re now strung up to defrost in the barn. I’ll see how much I can preserve either dried, canned or frozen and the rest will make soup and some nice fresh meals for the ferrets and dogs. Another star find was bread – 2 loaves of sliced 50/50, which takes a weight off my mind!

Speaking of the ferrets, they’ve taken control of their own personal lives, thank you very much – I walked into their area this morning and Holly was pinned down by the scruff by a very pleased and determined-looking Rambo! Oh well, it’ll be meepers in 42 days, then… time enough to sort out nursery quarters.

To my annoyance, I retrieved the incubation kit from the shed this morning only to find the rats have gnawed the plug off the incubator and stripped the wires on the coffee grinder I use to make chick food! I’ve ordered another power lead for the incubator from the makers, Brinsea, so now I have my fingers crossed it gets here before the eggs do – and they’re due on Friday or Saturday morning!

My friend Lynn came by this morning and dropped off some bread rolls and 4 pints of milk at the gate, so we conversed briefly in yells at twenty feet. She’ll pick up eggs at the end of the week in exchange, so I’ll be saving up my fresh eggs! I did find a nest one of the young ducks has been using, however, so I got three duck eggs this morning as well as 9 hen eggs.

Apart from all this, it’s been a chilly day so I’ve mostly tried to avoid being outside too much – Rocket ate something that disagreed with her yesterday and woke me up every 2 hours to go out all night, so I’m feeling the cold more than usual today. Hopefully she’ll get over it soon, because I really do want my uninterrupted sleep with everything else that’s going on!

I’ve worked out how to build a goose pen in the small dairy with the materials on hand, so I shall start that job soon. Maybe not tomorrow, because I need to do some mucking out first, but soon.

All is going fairly well. The washer is churning out clean clothes beautifully so the washing line has been in use every day. The wind is sometimes a little enthusiastic but so far I haven’t had to chase laundry across the yard, only pick it up occasionally and reattach with more pegs.

I’ve padlocked the barn door shut again – partly because of the wind, but also partly because I’ve been getting unsettling reports from friends online. People are calling animal rescues asking to buy *all* the rabbits they have, some friends have had people trying to buy their chickens over the gate and getting very shirty when told were to go, and a couple of cars have slowed right down by my gate while the drivers have stared lingeringly at the birds wandering the fields.

I need to build those pens in the small dairy and make sure all the birds are safely indoors every night. I’ve put up a trail cam covering the gate and there will be a tripwire placed across the top end of the yard every night before bed, but security for the poultry has just hit ‘urgent’ status.

I’m trying to decide what to do with the two ferret jills, Holly and Ivy. Ferrets are induced ovulaters and they won’t come out of season until they’ve mated If they stay in season they can suffer from various infections and even leukemia – but they’re also susceptible to covid-19 and if I take them to the vet for the usual hormone jab, there’s a risk they’ll be exposed and bring the infection back with them. That means I should put them in isolation on return, but then I still have to look after them, the other ferrets and Mum, so perhaps I shouldn’t take them off the croft until this is over.

In which case, how do I get them out of season? Well… there’s Fido and Rambo. They’re entire hobs and could easily (enthusiastically, probably!) get the girls out of season… but then I’ll have to prepare for two litters of baby ferrets 42 days later….

The technical term for baby ferrets is ‘kits’ but amongst the ferrant community we tend to call them ‘meepers’.

We’re down to the last half a loaf of bread and the penultimate carton of milk. I may have to call in a favour from a friend and see if someone can drop a loaf off for us tomorrow.

It’s been a lovely sunny day, quite warm but with a good drying breeze. That was useful, since I put a load of laundry through. The washer pumps all its water out the right way and the clothes came out clean, so all good there.

I put up a washing line (that long, heavy-weight baling twine from the bundles of bales came in handy! ) and pegged up as much as I could… then came back inside, draped the rest over radiators and ordered a lot more clothes pegs off Amazon!

In the course of all this, George was in eating hay while everyone else was out snoozing in the sun, so I took advantage and had a little training session with him. I started out without any food – which caused quite a miff, even a small snit, until he realised that having a human scritching under his mane was actually perfectly acceptable, even nice, without needing food. After that I dug out one of the pool noodles and the treats, and he got bumped repeatedly all over with the noodle – nose, neck, back, between the ears, down his shoulders, ribs, haunches, even right under his tum and down all four legs! We didn’t have any of the old ‘Touch ma hooves and die!!’ thing going on, he kept his ears pricked up hard and smiled the whole way through, and then went out and joined the others in the field for a good long nap. He has definitely grown again – he’s a full foot taller than Abe now, which puts him over 18 hands!

It’s been far too long since George and I had a lovely relaxed session like that – but now the weather’s improving and we don’t have to shiver at each other in the yard, hopefully we can do lots more.

This afternoon the vac-pack bags I ordered yesterday arrived. The plan worked perfectly – the parcel arrived in the green box and I got a message to say it was there, though quite why the driver signed for it as ‘DOA’ and my name I’m not sure! Very much alive and kicking, thank you!

The dehydrator is buzzing along again, full of mushooms and peppers, and when they’re done I’ll be able to bag them all up safely.

I got in touch with the local village deli last night and asked if they’re still doing their veg box scheme. They are, and they do deliver my way, so I’m hoping they’ll get back to me soon to tell me how much and how to pay, so they can deliver a box tomorrow. They’re very good and we’ve known them for years, but normally we go to their little shop and buy what we want there.

I’m finding it extremely heartening watching all the little community self-help and mutual support groups springing up on Facebook. People are looking out for each other (as well as a few undesirable pieces of scum scamming pensioners and mugging people for loo roll!) and the SNP have put out a call to all their party members to drop campaigning like last week’s dirty socks and get out to see who they can help and how in their local communities!

The other silver lining to this, of course, is that with the vast swathes of the planet getting locked down, Mother Nature is getting a breather. Air pollution is down, waters are clearing, fish and waterfowl and dolphins are moving into the heart of Venice. Skies are clear because the airlines are mostly grounded now, and when I went outside last thing last night…. it was so quiet and still! Not even the faint sound of traffic on the road a mile away…. and then a hedgepig blundered through the dead stems outside the gate sounding like a bulldozer, the dogs yelled their heads off, woke the geese up…

I fled to bed at that point!

Apologies to Kevin Costner and Michael Blake.

In the past three days we’ve got ourselves squared away for the lockdown. All critters now have about a month’s food here, bar hay, and the deliveries there are sorted until further notice, so we should get another 7 days’ hay every Monday. Asda have made a second delivery, which takes us to sufficiently full pantry (not as full as I’d like, but it’ll do). I’ve put a spare loaf of bread and two 4-pint cartons of milk in the freezer, so we have a buffer if we can’t get those locally.

This morning Mum had her podiatry appointment, and then we went over to the old house with the trailer. We loaded up the washer, printer and laminator, then emptied out a big green storage box from the back garden, piled all the tools and so on from it into the trailer with the washer and put the box in the back of the car. I went round and turned all the radiators to frost setting, turned off the hot water and set the boiler on timed for central heating (we’re a long way from last frost date yet!) and then we locked up and came home.

The tools are stashed in the shed, the washer is now plumbed in where the dishwasher came out and loaded up, ready to go, and I used the printer and laminator to make up a notice for the gate, asking people to put parcels in the green bin (put just inside the gate) and not to come to the house.

I got all the rest of the hay into the barn this morning while George was stuffing his nose in the shed, then unloaded the last few sacks from the car. As I was hefting a 20kg sack of fibre beet towards the feed room, Hannibal attached himself to my right leg.

Luckily my old camo trousers are baggy – he got a beakful of cloth and not flesh… but he had no intention of letting go!

I grabbed him round the back of the neck with my left hand, sack still balanced on right shoulder, and he tried to beat my left knee to death with a wing. Still holding his neck, I used my left foot to swivel his body away so he wasn’t hitting me any more.

I was, at this point, sort of in the ‘ready to launch!’ discus-throwing position. It must have looked hilarious to any audience!

I swung the sack down into both hands and used it to push him away, which finally got him to let go of me, but the moment I started to straighten up he was back, so I did half a dozen rapid bend-and-straighten exercises, still with sack in hands, while retreating backwards towards the feed room. Finally I managed to hop backwards up the step and hurriedly swivel out of sight behind the door.

Phew!

So, that’s my new name, I reckon!