A.N.D.Q

Should you need further proof, despite her traumatic incarceration in her dinner yesterday Geisha is straight back at the hayface.

A.N.D.Q!

Oooops I did it again!

Geisha was missing this morning, we could hear her bleating but couldn't see her. She sounded like she was in the field opposite. Eventually she was found, having eaten a tunnel into the haystack it collapsed on her trapping her until we removed part of the tarpaulin. This goats lust for calories will be the death of it, only two weeks ago she was caught by the leg and hanging off the fence for around 8 hours.

At least her leg is getting better.

Let me in!

This is Cosmo interrupting me getting on with feeding the dogs by asking for the door to be opened. He is a very persuasive and vocal cat.

Big girls don't cry

Before we took over the smallholding I used to work over 60 miles away from home, this meant hours in the car, tedious journeys, backache, bad temper and a huge fuel bill. I would be sat in my car watching the seasons change and somehow feel very disconnected from the world.

As luck would have it, just after we signed for the monster mortgage and moved my job disappeared and very fortunately I got a better job some twenty minutes from Rock HQ. There are times however where work calls me away and I have to go to London or some other large city in order to fulfil my paid work role.

Today was such a day and so it was important to get a good nights sleep as I had four hours of driving and the nightmare of Birmingham's rush hour to negotiate. My escape to the land of nod didn't get off to an auspicious start when the bedside light decided to play up. A sudden flash of light as Tracey and I lay in the dark alerted us to the fact that something was wrong. As we lay wondering if there was an electrical storm the lamp buzzed on and off again, something was up with the dimmer switch. I listened patiently as Tracey fiddled with the switch before she announced it was not fixable so she would unplug it. To a pulsating lightshow that would have been the envy of many a nightclub she valiantly tried to unplug the lamp. No, we would have to get out of bed and move it so she could reach the plug. I duly obeyed and soon we were spared the fit inducing strobes and replaced the bed against the wall in the dark.

We settled down to sleep, Tracey commented that it would be funny if the light flashed now it was unplugged, agreeing that would be a good trick I turned over and was immediately confronted by a flashing light. For a split second my fuddled brain tried to work out why the unplugged lamp was still flashing but it was my phone, Beth just letting us know she wasn't coming home, cheers. Finally sleep beckoned.

A noise.

A weird unearthly noise from outside. Both of us held our breath as we tried to hear it again. There it was, a horrible screeching sound like a werewolf being castrated with a blunt pair of scissors. Louder this time.

Tracey opened the window.

Foxes?

No.

Shhhh.

Its the goats, screaming. They were safe in the goat houses, they had food, water, shelter, no natural predator apart from me if they carried on making such a row and making that much noise they were not ill. Ignore it. They will soon be quiet.

They were quiet.

The beagles started to howl. Thoughts of dog and goat curry came and went.

Midnight already.

The goats started again.

2am already.

4am they are still calling. Tracey volunteers to check on them, both are fine but she lets them out of the goat houses as its the only way to keep them quiet.

4.30 am we settle down to sleep. Bleating outside the bedroom window, at least one of the goats want us to come out to play. I decide against throwing things at them and stuff the pillows in my ears.

6am alarm goes off and despite it hitting the wall it still rings forcing me into action. I shower, dress, grab a coffee and go. The goats, perhaps sensing my bad temper are nowhere to be seen.

Tracey text me later on, she has found out why they were making such an ungodly racket. Wolves? Hungry? Wet? Cold?

No none of these, they want a Billy goat, both have come into season and were calling for a Billy to come and ease their feelings of frustration.

We don't have one so they have settled for Crispy the Ram and are currently bothering him, at least they are quiet now, he's taking one for the team.

Poor lad.

Stablemates

The evening winter routine has been adopted at Rock HQ. Venturing outside the protective glare of the sodium anti aircraft light installed on the end of the stable involves me wandering around falling over obstacles and animals in the dark or struggling to stay upright because of the mud. So my world is limited to the safe yellow circle of light that strategically covers the kennels, goat houses and duck house. It still requires negotiating Somme like mudbaths but at least you can see where you are going to fall. There is no point attempting any outside jobs in the evening other than checking all animals are still alive, fed and watered. The only exception to the no jobs rule are the horses.

The horses need to be mucked out twice a day, its amazing how they can convert so much quality fruit and fibre into such copious amounts of pooh. We are often asked by keen amateur gardeners if we have any to spare, well considering each horse can produce a small lorry load daily we can spare a bit. Each horse has its own way of "going", William makes nice neat piles always in the same place and is a pleasure to muck out, he takes less than a minute and he watches with interest as you carry out his number twos forkful by forkful.

Apollo spreads his around with his nose so that the whole floor is covered, as is his face, this needs brushing up, or off depending on which messy bit you are addressing. He tries to help by knocking over the wheelbarrow. The dogs also try to help while you muck out, for some reason they view horse doings as I would Beluga Caviar, a delicacy not to be missed. The wheelbarrow suspiciously empties each time you go and collect a new scoopful.

Trevor the shitland, well it looks like he makes models out of his and then he stamps all over them, he probably makes effigies of me, those he doesn't stamp on he kicks over the walls. Never before in the history of horse ownership has so much mess been made in such a small space by such a tiny horse.

Good news

Here you can see Apollo being mugged for his dinner by the three Ryelands he is having to share his stable with. Sandy the one closest seems to be making a full recovery.

Geisha, judging by the noise she is currently making is over her accident where she caught herself on the fence and hurt her leg, she seems keen to escape the confines of the goat house and get back to bothering us as we try to feed the rest of the clan.

The final piece of good news is that Tracey's Dad is now out of hospital.

We didn't win the lottery whilst on holiday last week so returned to work today, and after a week like the last one it was good to be back!

Revenge of the white van man

Its rare for Tracey and I to have a breakdown in communication but today provided one of those occasions. The arrival in the yard of one of the local militia squeaking that the white, not quite, rotten algae white van was impeding his progress around the hill to round up the woolly pie fillings grazing their hearts out prompted us to take action and move it from its resting place under the trees and place it in a rather more accessible parking space to await the scrap man.

The militia man was an extraordinarily bad quad rider as the gap between the mucky panels of the van and the fence was big enough for any of Eddie Stobart's trucks to handbrake turn into, but for the sake of inter community spirits we would move the stricken van before the locals turned up with pitchforks, clubs and burning torches to deal with it themselves.

Having tried to push it all on my lonesome I conceded defeat and reversed Rene up to the dead Toyota. Tow bar to tow bar I attached what I considered a suitable tow rope between the two, they looked like competitors in a mechanical tug of war. Tracey came to inspect my handy work and opted to drive Rene which meant I was lumbered with being towed backwards in a van full of spiders. The tow rope I had chosen for the task was a horse leading rope, which at best is five foot long, with the knots to link the two vehicles it was shortened somewhat but I was sure we could manage.

What I hadn't counted on was Tracey not having towed before, but as my parting words before sealing myself into the white container full of arachnids was "No faster than four miles an hour" I thought I had made myself quite clear. The distance to be covered was some three hundred metres of dirt track, mainly downhill, a slight right hand curve if travelling forward and a huge ditch on one side and a large stone wall the other. The scene was set for a smooth transition from one end of the smallholding to the other.

The slack was taken up, the van jolted, metal groaned and the Toyota started to move backwards as planned. My world suddenly transformed, much like Han Solo's when he hit "The Button" in the Millennium Falcon and jumped to hyperspace except mine didn't dissolve into a blur of stars as I travelled forward at light speed, no mine jostled and blurred into a rush of green and brown autumn leaves as the sides of the lane rushed by.

I'm not proud, I screamed in panic, we were travelling considerably faster than four miles an hour, this felt like forty and as I fought the G forces and struggled to turn and yell out of the window whilst simultaneously standing on the brakes, pulling the handbrake, putting the van in a forward gear and most importantly of all steering the unguided missile I was sitting in. All the while Rene with its four wheel drive pulled resolutely and my universe continued to accelerate away from me backwards.

Finally the combined effect of brakes and gears dug the wheels of the van deep enough to persuade Rene to stop. I fell out onto the safety of the dirt track, my world suddenly moving the way I wanted it to. Tracey was crying in the four by four Renault. Tears of laughter were falling down her face. Between bouts of hysterical laughing she managed to explain that she had never towed before so when she looked in the mirror and saw how close the back of the Toyota was to the back of Rene she had tried to accelerate out of danger but it didn't work, the Toyota followed her. When I asked if she heard me screaming this prompted fresh roars of laughter as she agreed she had heard me but mistakenly took my cries of terror as shouts of encouragement. Having realised that she was driving the automobile equivalent of conjoined twins and no matter how fast she tried to get away the Toyota would follow she slowed down and friction eventually prompted a safe stop.

My ruffled feathers were soothed with a cup of coffee but my day has been punctuated with bouts of unexplained laughing from Tracey. Its almost as if she remembers something funny!

Autumn Colours

We took the boys for a walk today, determined to shake the melancholy mood that has been hanging over Rock HQ, so set off down the track to Worzel Wood and along to the river. Apollo seems to have got over his fear of puddles and happily waded across the ford to the lush grass the other side. The horses spent a few minutes munching before we turned them back towards Rock HQ. We stopped every now and then as the colours of the woodland were quite simply amazing.

William doing what he does best, eating.

Apollo is a close runner up in the speed grazing competition.

Back at Rock HQ we set about the jobs list, wood got sawn, chopped and put away, the Focus was started and driven up and down the track (we still haven't been able to sell this car!)Animals were cleaned, cleaned out, fed and watered. Sandy has, we think made a full recovery but for the time being he is confined to barracks with Daffodil and Bonny as stablemates. Apollo has taken the woolly invasion of his stable very well and last night was curled up asleep with the three Ryelands curled up around him, they looked like a Nativity playset. Oh the times I wish I had the camera with me!

While Tracey and I worked the dogs sloshed up and down the lane and shared their mud enthusiastically with walkers. One of the local militia turned up and got a bit waspy as he couldn't get his quad bike along the lane as our Toyota van has died and partially blocks the track, we managed to translate his squeaking, he wanted us to move the van as he was in a hurry to get around the hill as they were rounding up the sheep, hopefully not for pie fillings. The van hasn't moved for months but with a team effort and more squeaking from the militiaman we managed to shift it, he still managed to get stuck so we had to pick the quad up and carry it the final two feet.

All in all its has been a very good and very productive day, one that has lifted our spirits.

I did at one time get a strange feeling like I was being watched.

Funny what you find lurking in the trees here!

You have been warned!