Feeding time

The apprentice is making a great pig keeper, here he is with Ginge giving her some tasty apple slices from an apple bough especially for her and prepared in an area where human beans don't prepare food, ie a kitchen, cheers Defra, better guidance than Matt Hancock. Anyhoo pigs love the fruit salad he made, kiwi fruits seem a favourite. 

His prowess at feeding he pigs did not extend to feeding the fish. This was discovered late evening after an "accident" with the fish food. The good thing about the apprentice is he is always truthful so owned his misdemeanour straight away. Unlike some people. Tories included. 

 

The end is nigh....

RRMK2 has been training harder than ever, his times on the rower for 1000mtrs are so impressive that we are considering taking him to the rowing club. Since the arrival if the smart bike trainer both of them have been busy getting nowhere, here is RRMK2 smashing a 2.5 mile time trial in 14 mins 58 seconds.

The apprentice was watching closely instead of warning up, there is some healthy competition going on,

Against advice the apprentice decided that he would do his time trial in jeans which added seconds to his time making it a dead heat. Yours truly has managed to blag enough time to do 410 miles so far this month so only 90 left to complete the June 500 challenge raising money for blood cancer charity.
 

New pigs at the Rock

Our rescue Kune Kune pigs, Carole and Amanda have been here a while now. Carole the big fat one with no personality other than wanting stuff that belongs to others died suddenly on the weekend, old age and over indulgence got to her in the end. In the morning she was being hand fed apples, in the afternoon blocking the gateway having shuffled off her mortal coil. 

So Amanda was without a friend, and we needed to remedy this.

A charity farm was closing down due to covid making it totally unviable and they gave us these two lovely 8 month old gilt Kune Kunes. 

She looks pretty happy to be here so you can expect to see a lot of them on these pages in the future. 
 

Behind you..

So a cheeky lets welcome the weekend oh my days what a week beer

which as ever is observed by a K9

Mrs Bear looking very happy 

being top dog.
 

Special delivery

The huge stock of just in case brexit messes up the supply chain (it has but not for dog food) pet treats has been reduced to 6 cans so tonight we had a special delivery

which put paid to any idea that I was going for a bike ride. Getting a bit behind on the lets do 500 miles before the end of June total. 300 done as of 20 June. 
 

Clan gathering

For the first time since Lockdown 1 we were able to assemble the clan. 

We can probably count on the fingers of one hand 

the number of times we have all been in the same place in the last 5 years due to he who cannot be named being out of the country 

and as we have a better grip on the covid rules than tory ministers when he got sent back to the UK the country pretty much shut down

and so here we all are

but soon to be separated again due to more overseas stuff so the rug rats and grand rug rats all got super hero teds to assemble later in 2022, somewhere hot hopefully.
 

Ghost sheep

Oddly enough, the reason for setting fire to the bonsai mountain is to increase the grazing area for the sheep. 

But as the gorse bushes have not been replaced by luscious grass, just acres of soot, the militias sheep have taken to scavenging spilt horse food on our yard.

And the sheep have changed colour due to the ash from the fire

They are now a ghostly grey . 

 

Extreme gardening

There has been a lack of maintenance in the garden and as a consequence it has reached the stage of something must be done. This particular section was a rockery and flower bed but attention of horse and K9 has blended the two into a mess. The something that must be done is to clear the area, make steps out of railway sleepers to hold the bank back, move the tree and rocks to allow this and then remove mud and gravel replacing with nice new gravel.

Some of the rocks turned out to be on the massive side.

But after a fairly good impression of worlds strongest man atlas stones challenge 

the offending rocks were piled artistically and the tree uprooted

while the apprentice and RRMK2 watched in awe at the amazing gun show

Ace was first to christen the newly located tree

while RRMK2 was first to take advantage of the shade and order drinks. 
 

Trying his best to be a dog fish here is Benson helping clean out the pond, in fact given any opportunity this K( will submerge himself which is a bit of an issue 

when there are new inhabitants.

Speaking of new inhabitants

the old stable new gym has a new bike that slots into the trainer for smaller humans to use 

and as can be seen they seem to 

be enjoying themselves. 
 

WIP round up

There are a number of projects on the go at Rock HQ, some involve nerdness like these 

WW1 troops, a speed paint job and 

part of a bigger project 

that involves building these from the film 1917

and then there are these, British light tanks from the cold war period, these destined for a falklands based game 

while out in the real world the goat houses have been dismantled leaving the old kennels barely standing 

which are just about standing in as a horse shelter but will soon (ahem define soon that man) be taken down completely and a custom build full size stable block bale store and tractor shed will take up most of the flat ground, the stables will be a bit more sturdy than the one we have which has served its purpose but was done on the cheap so is gradually being replaced and reinforced section by section by someone who knows what he is doing  

back indoors more gluing and the WW1 horse teams are ready for the next stage

and the period german train has arrived courtesy of ebay

the paint boards are a bit cluttered with WIP

which also has Top Malo house as was before the Royal Marines wrecked it with rockets in the Falkland war 

back outside the extension for the Kat has been finished 

finished means needs door but its now keeping motorbike safe and the reason for no door is that it seemes a good idea to make it even bigger and have a 10 station bike rack along the wall, 

Talking of perfect weather for the bank holiday, someone forgot to tell us!