Land of confusion

Smallholding throws up many puzzles and wonders. It crossed my mind as I tried to shoot a fox out of the bedroom window (as in gun bang bang, out of window, not actually shoot a fox out of the window, you see, or not) that strange sights and events become common place. Gunshots from boudoirs now seems perfectly natural, once we got over the who shot the bedroom cupboard fiasco and the resulting ban on firearms in bedrooms a couple of years back. Sleep did not return quickly as now the ranch was awake and began the long Walton like ritual of saying goodnight to each other, lambs, sheep, horses, geese, hens, cockerels, cats, dogs all took turns to make night night noises, each determined to be the last thing I heard before my encounter with the Sandman. Peace descended. The puppies decided to start choir practice at this point and a further half hour was spent sorting out what they wanted apart from a good telling off, pups sorted I got back to bed at 3.15 when the cacophony of good nights resumed. As all insomniacs know I then lay awake until 5.57, which is just a bit before I normally fall out of my pit, thought about getting up a I might as well, next thing it was 7.15 and our exciting day was starting late.

Sheep bothering was the order of the day. I pondered who was most confused out of a duck and a cockerel having improper relations in the yard, what would result, a huck or a den, they both went their separate ways as the sheep arrived en masse expecting food. Crispen brought his own container. The element of surprise was ours for a while as one by one they succumbed to our tag team wrestling tactics. As I grappled the beast and cleaned the messy end, shaved its bum and sprayed it with fly repellent Tracey took its number and administered wormer. The sheep called in reinforcements and at one stage it looked like Tracey and I were going to lose the fight as Geisha and Apollo joined the fray. Apollo got a stern talking to for trying to intervene in a particularly tough bout taking place between yours truly, Ebony and Roxy. Literally having both my hands full I was unable to fend off a curious pony who shoved me over into the dirt. Tracey tagged me and took over leading the bolshy horse into the stable whilst I distracted the goat with a fresh volley of abusive language. Order was restored and human dominance won the day. I did have to suffer the indignity of being carried backwards up Oak Bank by Springtime who, having seen the look on Easters face when given the wormer, put in the extra effort to escape and carried me away.
Visitors arrived and for a few moments mayhem reigned as the Berners felt they all should bark a welcome/warning/feed me at the same time. For some reason they didn't object to Steve going up stairs to the toilet but felt the need to alert the next village that he was trying to get back down the stairs. His wife decided that the dogs were really trying to tell us something so opted to use the downstairs wet room that has a toilet when nature inevitably called after two pints of weak lemon tea. Unlike most houses who have nothing more exciting than a wet sock in their shower ours was covered in the consequences of bottle feeding an orphan lamb with a separation anxiety and very little toilet training. Luckily we were able to interpret the confused look on our guests face just before she left otherwise she may have thought the ornate fecal patterns on the tiles and porcelain were due to me.

However the prize for the most confused goes to these two. Fern and Auntie Montana. Here she is trying to feed while Auntie Montana cleans her bum. Fern has demonstrated some other confusing behaviour this evening, obviously desperate to be dinner she jumped into my plate of Chile con Carne. No damage was done and I was able to pull the worst of the wool off the red beans before eating them. As I type both Auntie Montana and Fern are side by muzzle asleep in front of the fire. Which isn't lit but the ideas there.