A day of shite today – ok, it is warm, but the battering wind (F9) and persisting rain makes work so much harder, especially outside.  It can stop now, thank you very much.   We’re all bored of it.

So, in between endless mucking out and feeding and more mucking out, I made another sheep and then brought them all inside to photograph on the piano.

Ignore the sizes – that is more perspective than anything else. They are all pretty much the same size.

Let me know if you are interested in any.  They are easy enough to post anywhere in the world and obviously the prices don’t include postage, which is charged at cost.  If you want better photos of a particular sheep or sheep group, let me know and I will try and take them photos in daylight.  They are all made of 100% Shetland wool and nothing else ….. except for my possible tears as I continue to sob my way through Grey’s Anatomy (Series 18 now).

Please don’t use the Comments section here to order – just email me on frances@fstaylor.co.uk

It is first come, first served so when it’s gone, it’s gone, though I can probably make another not dissimilar.

My morning was spent watching my little car (Mum’s originally) pass it’s MOT.  Huzzah!  Great relief.  I do worry every time. It’s worse than a piano exam.

But I had a whole hour to myself and I was offered a wonderful cup of tea, free wifi and peace.

You have no idea what total bliss that was.  I almost didn’t go home.  I could’ve easily spent the day there watching random strangers cars go through their MOT drinking cups of tea.

But I did go home and straight out with carrots to check the Ancients.

This photo made me hum Colonel Hathi’s song from The Jungle Book.

Wee dug came too, of course, if I could see her.

Later I was in my shed making the sheep in the middle.  The perfect Christmas present – just sayin’.  I have lots.

Afterwards, it was into the shed to muck out, dish out buckets and get the next lot of haynets ready.  One look at the old ladies in their pen made me decide to move them as it was getting grubby and smelly – they seem to be peeing for the Olympics.

So we closed off the adjoining pen to Waffle, Silver and Newt.  Yes, they get less room, but they get neighbours.

It will give the smelly pen a rest and I can cover it with fresh sand which will help.

Anyway no one seemed to mind losing a bit of their space if it meant they got to see their friends.  Fivla looked a bit unimpressed, though.

Everyone is bored.

Bored of being indoors.

Bored of being on a soaked-hay, soaked fibre block diet.

Bored of each other.

Even Newt who now has many of his cell-mates in his “Little Book of Everyone I Hate”.

There is bickering, often.

Fivla’s squits have returned.  A new treatment started – please pray for her.  I hate squits.

I’m not going to lie – I am exhausted and possibly bored of poo-picking, feeding, soaking hay, worrying, etc at least five times a day.

My whole life revolves around this lot.

Nothing is sacred.  If you leave anything around, it is immediately taken.

And it can be a fight to get it back.

One thing, Skippy is a ruddy godsend.  I love that machine possibly more than I should.  It is an answer to one of my many prayers and my back thanks it too daily.

As nothing is safe and, yes, everything is removed out of the way when I am not there.  No one can be trusted.

So I guess we are all fed up.  This is not what I wanted for any of us but here we are.  And why?  Because eight small ponies broke through a perfectly good fence to get grass and refused to be caught for two whole days.

PLEASE SEND CHOCOLATE (or gin)! 

As you know, Lambie has to eat his breakfast in his own “private diningroom”. He doesn’t do sharing and he hates being hassled.  The others eat in a merry-go-round fashion, pushing each other off their bowls to see if there is anything better.  Lambie won’t go in the stable because he likes peace and quiet to eat.  I understand this.

But once out of his private dining area, Lambie then becomes a nightmare because he wants the ducks and chickens’ food too which I leave out in the morning so everyone can get a fair shot at it, except for Lambie.

So I shut Lambie in the big shed with the ponies and the hay bale for company.

And everyone else got on with eating.

Lambie knew there was chicken food to be had – his favourite and tried to work out how to get outside again but luckily multi-tasking (eating and planning) is not his skill.

Once everyone has finished, I put the tempting poultry food away and let the sheep out into a field full of grass for the day.

I went to see them at the end of the dogwalk.

On the walk, Dahlia and Gussie had followed me home so I asked them if they wanted to join the flock.  They didn’t and quickly followed me out.  They’re not scared anymore.  Just not interested.

So that’s Lambie’s day.  Eating, resting and more eating with very little actual thinking.  Lucky chap.  In the evening, I leave the gates open and they can come home and go to bed if they want.  Lambie’s bedtime is 10pm.  He has a special spot in his shed too.

Some might say Lambie is spoilt.  I prefer to think that I just know him very well.

Vitamin and Fivla make me laugh. They can’t manage soaked hay as they don’t have the teeth for it anymore but they must have something. I was told to just give them a big bucket of Fast Fibre (Allen & Page) every morning and they could graze their way through it slowly.

Fat chance. It was gone in ten minutes! I tried again and gone just as quickly.  Food is food.

So, rather than leave the old ladies to digest all morning, I now feed them little and often – about every 2-3 hours with a smaller bucket of Fast Fibre.

I don’t want Vitamin to lose weight.

Meanwhile, everyone else wants a bucket of grub every 2-3 hours through the day.  Again, fat chance.  They get soaked hay and I have decided to reduce rations as it is not being finished.

Meanwhile, out in the fields there are three lurking Icelandic horses.  I go out daily with carrots to check no one has colic or laminitis.  Iacs farts his way towards me and everyone else moves well and looks good.

Haakon heard a motorbike in the far distance and did his best to look like a Przewalski’s horse ….

….. or a cave painting.

Iacs just did his best.  This winter he is favouring the woolly mammoth look.

And, well, Kolka was busy trying to hoover up all the small carrot bits everyone else had dropped. We can’t all look beautiful all of the time.

And tonight, after making a sheep.  My fan club awaited me.

I was followed to the Feed Shed.  Cupboard love.