Red Kites and missing sheep

Good news as it seems that even a Luddite like me can operate this web page. This is the second post as I was thinking it wasn't working so would have to wait for Sarah to return from Kilimanjaro to show me how to work it all.

Since last time a lot of progress has been made, mainly with the help of Karl and a Bobcat digger. The 40 tons of gravel is now something resembling a level surface to walk on. Key point here is remember that a level surface on a Welsh hill is an extraordinary achievement. The concrete for the stables is down and it wouldn't be a tale from the Rock if we hadn't have had problems there too.

In desperation to finish the shuttering and leveling job before the concrete arrived I phoned Mike to come and help. Given that Karl was leveling the site with no scientific aids, such as a spirit level or string, and I can only use on arm at the moment so my assistance was minimal, we didn't think we had done too bad a job of clearing the site.

Tracey my wonderful and ever so patient wife watched with amused interest as we struggled to assemble the shuttering into a box shape to accommodate the ready mix arriving in less than 14 hours. It was obvious we were not going to get it done hence the distress call to Mike. He duly arrived and happily told us that there was probably another two days work to do before the concrete could be laid, and anyway why didn't we put the stables in line with the rest of the house and have we ordered fibre in the concrete and had we got wintermix. Tracey mediated and prevented a piece of 2 by 4 being inserted into Mike where a surgeon would have had difficulty removing it. I told Mike that I thought we were ordering concrete not bloody breakfast cereals and why hadn't he said at the outset get all the added bits. Mike looked at me the way you would at a naughty child whilst Tracey took notes on exactly what was needed.

I managed to sulk for the rest of the evening and my demeanour was not helped by having to have a dodgy curry from the takeaway as we had been too busy to cook the Ryeland Lamb joint we had set aside for lunch. This curry gave all three of us the trots and confirmed our view that food produced by the outside world is indeed poisonous.

The next morning I managed to cancel the delivery of concrete and Mike turned up with Johnathan to assist in the final site layout. As I met Johnathan I got his name wrong and shook his hand and said, "Pleased to meet you Justin"

He looked at me and his eyes rolled skywards and it was at that point I remembered Mike saying that the thing about Johnathan was that he had the most extraordinary stutter. Johnathan now demonstrated this by stamping his foot, dancing round in a circle before finally falling to his knees and blurting out his name. In asking him if he wanted a tea or coffee you could make both before he finally picked himself off the floor spluttering tea milk one!

Finally the concrete was down and we put a six strand horse strength electric fence around it to keep our seven dogs and four cats off it. This worked very well, until it was dark.

I went out just before midnight to find to my horror that several cats had decided to walk the length of the concrete pad. Even worse, it seems the whole area which now resembled a floodlight boxing ring had been used by two sparring badgers who had decided to settle their differences by wrestling in the newly laid grey stuff. It was no longer the lovely smooth surface that Mike had spent ages achieving, it was more like a scale model of the moons surface, complete with craters and mountains. As I leaned over in the using torch light to establish exactly what type of animal had desecrated the sacred concrete I momentarily forgot about the fence and as I prodded the wet concrete I earthed and received a shock designed to stun a shire horse and added to the animal artwork by dropping the torch and fell forward sinking to my wrist the ice cold grey mush.

I hastily covered my any trace of my involvement and retired to the cottage cursing badgers, cats and fences and thinking that perhaps it was sometimes easier to be living in the cosy three bed modern terrace we left just over a year ago to live the self sufficiency dream on the Rock.

This morning I am happier, the concrete is set, we can take the fence down and set it up around the site for the pad for the kennels which should be complete tomorrow, and providing the badgers don't return for round two this one should be smoother.

Why Red Kites and missing sheep? Well as I type this I can see two Red Kites through the window circling just in front of the house, probably checking out our chickens to see if any are worth taking for lunch. Somehow losing a bird to a bird of prey is more acceptable than losing one to a fox. Missing sheep, well our surprise Suffolks ( a long story) have jumped the three fences designed to keep them from bothering the rest of the world and are out on the common, somewhere, and this morning we all set out to find them. We failed, so somewhere on the 200 plus acres of the ridge are our four errant sheep. Finding them is my next challenge. Anyone got a gun?