Morning duties start first light. We are at the stage when we make the most of every hour.

And, although I am not responsible for feeding the Old Fogeys (Haakon, Bibble and Kolka – I delegated this to OH), I go and see them once I have finished feeding my lot.  I like to check everyone can walk, talk and eat with no problems.

I had in my pocketses three Pasture Cookies – always guaranteed to be a success but first, I had to play “spot the horse”.

Some were easier than others to find.

The cookies went down well.

It was a fair distribution.

And everyone is looking very well.  They’re all beginning to slim down a bit, which is the intention and no bad thing. This is what winter is for and let’s be honest, everyone has some to lose.

There will be no calorific food until I can feel ribs but there is still plenty of grass around so I think that might be a while, if ever.

Anyway, the Old Farts are all fine.

This morning (and possibly every morning) the Minions all came rushing over for their breakfast.

Vitamin at the lead and Fivla at the back – she has been slow her entire life.

Heads down and eat!

Silver finished first – he always does – and therefore exerted his rights to “clean the bowl” (well, that’s what we say when anyone is making a cake in this family).

Vitamin and Fivla have their own versions of breakfast and Pepper, who has to come too, supervises everyone, clearing up as she goes along.

I love how Vitamin doesn’t mind in the slightest.  Trust is a two-way thing.

The Minons swap around once they’ve mostly finished and it is pretty much without argument.

Though, sometimes Newt (all 26″) has a rather bouncy bottom.

Albie, who is always bullied off his bowl first, comes to me for a chat and a complain.  I give him a hug and tell him that he’s probably had enough anyway.

Pepper adds her sympathies.

Everyone gets a visit from Pepper except for Silver, if he is in one of his stamping-dog moods.

And then on the neighbouring croft, someone was backing their trailer into the yard, and everyone had to rush off to watch and give their opinion.  I picked up the empty buckets, tipped the bowls and Pepper and I went home.

Firstly, apologies for the poor quality of photos – it was nearly dark at 4 o’clock – the nights are drawing in fast.

The duckies have me well trained in their routine.  They come looking for me when I leave my shed having made a sheeple all afternoon.

All 12 of them. A dozen ducky-wuckies!

Once I am located, we all walk ceremoniously back to the feed shed.  They can all mostly fly too. Girls are better than boys, obviously!

And then they all stuff their faces for as long as they like.

I put down two bowls, so they can all have a good eat.

The enthusiasm for food is huge and are now all getting along well.  No more rows and posturing.

We recently were given four more hens and they are just beginning, two weeks on, to become a little flock themselves.  Our lot are very old so it is nice to get new ones to teach them the routine.

I thought I was the Ducky-Wucky leader, but I think I may have been replaced!

And then, suddenly, after stuffing their beaks, they all to a duck start walking to the hen-house for bed.

A quick pit-stop to just see if the chickens got anything better.

Eight DW’s go into the hen-house with all the hens and four (Huey, Louie, Dewey and Mum) peel off to live in the shed behind, which is where they’ve lived since they hatched.

It is snug in the hen-house and everyone has their chosen space.

I kiss them all good-night (well, I say out loud “night-night”) and shut the door so they are all safe for the night.

Twelve duckies is quite a lot.  I am not sure what to do but as long as we are all friends, then they can probably stay.

As you may, or may not, be aware, our broadband is pretty poor at best and, at worst, non-existent which is recently becoming more and more often.

The constant promises of better faster broadband by BT is not coming to us.  Not never, apparently.

If we (I mean my local area of the West Mainland – Walls and Sandness) want to have full-fibre connection, we have to ask the Scottish Government for the project to go ahead. It will not happen automatically.  This has to be a community project for it to go ahead because the Government funding is linked to individual households and not to the general area.  Folk have to come together to get this to work.

So OH and I were driving around in our given area distributing leaflets about this to every householder asking them to fill out an “expression of interest form”.

At this stage, there would be absolutely no financial interest and no commitment either.  If enough folk said yes, (100+ houses) then Digital Scotland would find a solution to the obstacles with the approved supplier of their choice.

There will be a meeting later on in November (16th – 7pm at the Walls Regatta Club) which the Stakeholder Director, Broadband Delivery, Digital Directorate, Scottish Government will be attending to answer questions from us.

I cannot tell you just how much I want this to go ahead.  It could make such a huge change to the infrastructure.  Satellite and Mobile broadband are all well and good, but the more folk sign up to them (if nothing happens), then in turn the signals will become weaker (ie slower) as they become more diluted with users and everyone will be back to square one again.

So, we spent the afternoon with me driving and OH nipping out to talk to residents and/or drop leaflets through their doors.  And while he did the work, I took photos of my beautiful surroundings.

This morning’s breakfast photos.

The ponies seem to be making in-roads into the field – I know this when I had to climb up to the top of the hill to retrieve Pepper who had gone off hunting while I was waiting for everyone to finish up their bowls and buckets

Vitamin now approaches me at a stonking trot, shouting for her bucket NOW!  Based on this, I diagnose that she does not have laminitis anymore and is feeling a whole lot better now.

Everyone, these days, is arguing about food.

I roasted some old lamb flanks that were no longer for human consumption for the birds and the starling fell on them.

And then, of course, a fight broke out.

On my way to see the Waxwings yesterday, I stopped to take a few photos of the mist that was sporadically lying low on the ground.

And then of course, when the sun is starting to set, it is always beautiful and you can see just how close my nearest neighbour is.

They are kind neighbours who look after Pepper, often returning her too, when she goes a-visiting.

So that’s us, really. The weather has deteriorated, two ducks are missing (I am praying they’ve put themselves to bed somewhere safe and will appear tomorrow morning for breakfast) and it is raining hard.