Chicken take away

The day started down in the pig pen, the cute little mangalitza piglets have given up grazing and have started ploughing the resulting massive holes dug with their cute little noses are on the one hand unsightly, on the other dangerous and even worse mean that the rarest of commodities here at Rock HQ, grass, is even rarer. So time was spent filling in the tunnels they had dug under the wire, this proved very successful and kept them quarantined until around lunchtime when an undiscovered tunnel was commissioned and they were up their dirty work again.

I on the other hand was now otherwise engaged with Operation Greystuff and was in the process of turning mud into concrete. The apprentice smallholder took his supervision role seriously but soon fell asleep.

Slowly slowly the pace, but the jobs a good one and going to plan. The second goat house now has concrete floor and the path from the kennel/cowshed/pig med bay was laid, well partly. It was at around this point above when my beautiful and oh so patient wife declared that she had just seen Cosmo, one of our cats, running across the lane with something grey in his mouth. As I uttered the syllables its probably a squirrel we both remembered our friends the microholders who had called earlier for a cuppa but ostensibly to drop off two Lavender Pekin Bantams that they flogged me in an unguarded moment. These very pretty little birds, about the size of a blackbird and costing ounce for ounce the same as gold were bought as a gift for the love of my life who was now, like me, trying to cover the 50 metres between us and murderous cat as fast as physics and biology would allow in the vain hope that Cosmo had not killed his take away.

Unbelievably Cosmo dropped his lunch, presumably seeing yours truly lumbering towards him wielding a shovel and shouting "Geroffoutofityoubloodycat!" caused a momentary loss of appetite. The poor little hen, equally shaken by shovel wielding vision, managed to keep body and soul together, sensed rescue and allowed itself to be dragged through the hedge backwards and placed in the safe embrace of a very upset wife. Thankfully tiny bird has huge constitutional reserves and within half an hour was eating and wondering what the fuss was all about.

The concreting went well, despite interruptions as above, three little pigs deciding to investigate, Montana walking its length and Rocky choosing it as the best place to have a kip. So far in two afternoons an area of sixteen feet by fourteen feet has been covered. Only another two miles or so to go. All be over by Christmas!