What to do........

First of all, do we sell the cows, or not? 

- Do we convert back to having goats as the provider of our milk, or not?

Shall we keep the sheep? Yes, definitely. We have managed to get the flock numbers down to a manageable size, so no probs there.

- The chickens...... definitely keep them, and increase their numbers, probably using the old pig pens.

- What about the Market Garden Project? Haven't a clue what to do about that so waiting for Divine Intervention to show me the way. 

- All in all, everything has got pushed up into the air, and this is because Lester is now having to go back to the UK several times a year, leaving me Home Alone.

Now it is a good thing that he is able to work from home, not so good that he is going to have to make that long twelve hour trip back to London. We know it takes that long because he has just got back from such a trip. I, meanwhile, did Home Alone with the farm, and I managed quite well, in fact better than I thought I would.

- I enticed the sheep to and fro the Side Field each day by bribing them with armfuls of hay. 

Fortunately the lambs are only a few days old so stayed close to their mums. In a few days time they will be confident enough to get up to all sorts of shenanigans, which will include having gang romps anywhere else but where they should be going. 

- The Chicken Gang and myself got used to being in close proximity to each other, and I learnt not to get impatient when waiting for them to go to bed at night, most of the hens preferring to climb through small holes in the fencing wire rather than come through the open gate, and them getting in to a fluster because they did not have the sense to understand that the reason that the hole in the wire was getting to be such a tight fit was because they were getting bigger as they headed towards maturity. 

- Fortunately we do not have any pigs to look after at the moment, so just the cows. 

Oh they are such big animals, with occasional attitude, and horns.

But I did manage to get ten big bags of hay brought from off the hay bales out on the Front Drive, which needed to be done daily. Day One of Home Alone saw me not being able lift one bag very well, but my Day Three I could manage three at once. 

The cleaning of the pen, though, was not done with any efficiently. Lester uses a long shovel and a scoop to pick the poo up, but both were too heavy for me to lift at the same time, particularly if loaded with manure. So I 'borrowed' my washing up gloves and a bucket from the kitchen, and got the bigger clods up by hand, but only the piles of poo which were not anywhere near the feet of the cows. Those were left for Lester to sort out when he came home again.
But we have come to realise that looking after the cows is going to be too big a job for me when left Home Alone again, especially in the warmer weather when they will have to be got out on to the fields to graze, then brought in twice a day to be milked.

So we are now thinking that we might have to sell them, and buy goats. 

This topic is an ongoing one with us, the solution not yet settled upon. 

So, onwards we gallop towards the Spring.
I can feel the need to sort out seeds starting to whisper inside me.
Meanwhile I shall continue to enjoy the endless hours of doing crochet, knitting, and all the other things that there is no time to do once the warmer weather arrives.

Off to do something, not sure what, but it will probably be creative!

Bye for now,

Vx