I am embarrassed but very honoured that we have a small but loyal fanbase of Lincolnshire farmers who read our little blog. They are very experienced, knowledgeable, "proper" farmers who have asked "...are you still there?" and demanded I keep writing! I am mortified as we know nothing compared to these guys and we should be clamouring to read their blog, not vise versa!
But yes, we are still here. Our little patch of green has found it's equilibrium, a balance and a sense of peace has settled. Grass had stopped disappearing quicker than we could regrow it after we halved our horse numbers, the internal tape fencing although a temporary fix, works, and there is shelter, water and space to rotate. It functions as we hoped.
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| The meadow - looking towards the pony paddocks |
You are told you need "an acre per horse" and it was tempting to try and test the theory and do grass livery and get more horses in, but even if you double it to two acres per horse you will always create work and have space and fodder dramas if you can't get them off the land for portions of the year. The current 1:4 ratio works just fine...until we get stables, ho ho ho....
Woody has been home most weekends but we are always battling against time; for ourselves and each other let alone the few little projects we have on. Oh and the ever present excitements with animals; a lame horse and a dog getting hit by a car all in one bank holiday weekend. Yes it was Tizer....and somehow... he survived.
We have been busy with the new house; still slowly unpacking, sorting, binning, finding and customising furniture to fit. The garden storage has been sorted and we now have a shiney new shed...and aviary.... we are planning the loft conversion/extension and we had the most beautiful woodburner installed on Monday, post to follow, I am just waiting for Woody to come home this weekend to light it.
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| £20 bargain before... |
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| ...and after. |
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| getting to know the neighbours :) |
Anyway nevermind the home decor! Our favourite time of year is here! Surprisingly I have rather enjoying not throwing myself into riding over the last 6 weeks (due to the horse being a bit wonky) and instead I spend most evenings walking the dogs, making the most of the incredible weather we have had and exploring our home turf.
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| Top of the Sugar Loaf Mountain |
We have several blog posts teed up on various subjects but I need the chief technical directors input with his engineering and tech expertise (he's now a Chartered Engineer don't you know!). Sadly Woody is busy with work until December but I'll try to feed in what I can from him.
The next few weeks will be spent getting ready for winter, getting the haylage order in, organising winter paddocks, making sure the electric fence batteries are fully charged and worming the horses after the first frost for Bots, red worm and tapeworms. We have also got a planning consultant on the case to look into getting a replacement barn up so we have somewhere secure, dry and out of the wind to work and house the horses if needed, I can also order in hay rather than wrapped bales.
There were also talks of getting some sheep next year to help tidy up the land, it's years since since I worked with sheep so we have offered our rookie services to our Lincolnshire friends for a couple of weeks during lambing next year, another crazy project to look forwards to.
It's been a long time since I've had anything to do with livestock! Better get learning!
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| 2007 My goats; Gemma Lily & Lola |
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2008 Just a handful of the hundreds of Leghorns
and bantams I bred |
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| Never really trusted the pigs! |
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| 2009 The lovely girls at Gibbons Mill |
