Today has been manic and so it seems fitting to post a calm, peaceful photograph as a reminder that no matter how busy our smallholding life gets, there is always a bit of tranquility to be found somewhere. This shot was taken at around 10am this morning as the dawn frost had all but vanished and the alpacas were enjoying some particularly tasty grass by the hedgerows! For some reason that cannot be explained, today was a mass delivery day! And so it was that by the time we ‘stopped’ the smallholding part of our day (at around 6pm), we had moved and put away/stacked: 60 bales of straw (and some of them were seriously heavy) and 26 bags of feed (with a combined total of 550kg). We also cleared away NINE truggs of cow poo and spent straw (the cows obviously had a rave last night), three of goat and three of chicken; carried endless buckets of water (due to frozen pipes); topped up hay racks, raked spent hay and ‘freshened’ up both the goat and sheep field shelters.
AND, most crucially Jack had a ’coat pocket’ emptying session and found hundreds(!!) of metres of bailer twine, lots of bits of straw, an old knife and several pieces of broken plastic...
We VERY much deserved our hot brownie and ice cream when we finally got back to the house!!