This morning I was pleasantly pleased when I got up to do
the animals as the ponies were still in the paddock I had left them in. Sounds normal right? Well one of the ponies jumped out of the paddock
the other week and I worried he would get caught up in the stock fencing, so it’s
on my mind every time they use the small paddock. I set about letting the ducks, geese and hens out. Everything was fine so I headed
in the house and got on with my morning jobs.
At 7:25 just before we were due to leave for work, I dashed out to put
a pile of hay in the paddock so they had something to keep them occupied
whilst I was at work. The field is
sparse. Anyway, I noticed a pony poo in
a place where ponies shouldn’t be. Turns
out Jake had snapped the electric fence (this one isn’t on and they’ve never
been interested before, plus we don’t have another battery for it) and gone for
a wander round before retuning himself 'present and correct' in the paddock! Dashing around I brought the 2 ponies in so
they are now sulking in the stables until I get chance to fix it. They won’t be going out any more in that
paddock when I am not there. We have
plans to put a new fence up but finances and timing is against us. Steven is working double shifts effectively
for the next 2 weeks and being a butcher, this is physically draining, so he
has nothing left in his when he gets home and it’s not fair to ask him to start
putting fences up when he’s in pain after work.
He’s taking a few days off at the end of July so hopefully it’ll get
done then. I’m going to use the time in
between now and then to overseed the paddock and get the grass up so I don’t
have to supplement it with hay. We
managed to leave the house at 7:40, which given what happened, wasn’t bad
going!
I’ve still been working on my grocery / menu plans. Steven’s asked if we can put a loaf of bread
on every night, or every other night, as what we don’t eat, the hens will. So last night I put a wholemeal loaf on and
we had fresh bread toasted this morning with the strawberry jam that I
made. It was lovely. I made a couple of mistakes with the jam
which I will remember for next time and avoid.
It only made 2 family size jars though and that was 1kg of
strawberries. I will pick more this
weekend and see what else I can make. We have family over on Saturday night so I plan on making strawberry shortbread
with extra thick cream – a recipe from Caroline on The House Hoarder. It went down well with her builders so I
think it’ll go down well here too!
Tonight I am making rhubarb and gooseberry jam, something
we haven’t tried before. I also desperately
need to harvest the cauliflowers and turn some into cauliflower and cheese soup
and blanch the rest and freeze.
We are due our first veg box delivery today which I am ridiculously excited over, so I will
take some photos and let you know how impressed I was (or wasn’t) with it in
tomorrow’s post and will also update more on the grocery shopping thoughts I
have been having.
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| Finished product - strawberry jam, only gets 8/10 from me though! |
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| The toad that pops out to see me when I am locking up on a night. |
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| My 2 Lakendvelder's and Jake, looking innocent! |
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| Geese playing follow the leader when I let them out this morning. |
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| Last night's small loaf from the breadmaker. I don't make by hand as can't find the time so this is the next best thing. |
livestock have a habit of going walk about I am often finding myself glancing over paddocks several times a day and doing head counts including the chickens, it always a relief that the numbers tally :-)
ReplyDeleteI constantly head count chickens since Edith's escapes. Today I forgot to count and stood around in the enclosure waiting for one to exit so I could clean them out!
ReplyDeleteIf I am there then I am ok with it, but lord knows where he'd end up if he got out whilst I was at work!
ReplyDelete