I write this feeling very upset.

Yesterday, Floss and I discovered someone had thrown garden rubbish – grass mowings and old daffodils – over the gate into the Minions’ field.

Words fail.  This is potentially lethal and I worried all night about how much my horses and ponies had possibly eaten and whether they would colic and die.  Grass-cuttings are poison to horses – they ferment in their hind-gut leading to laminitis, colic or worst, death.  It happens.  A kind neighbour kept me informed and this morning, they were all still here.

And, as my lot are professional beggars claiming starvation and lack of feed, I can see why anyone would believe them.  Fat little liars.

So we rushed home and asked OH to create two signs to put on the gate as soon as possible.

And yes, everyone looked a tad defeated from their begging – think Oliver and the Artful Dodger.

But it is essential no one feeds them, let alone their garden waste.

The Minions (and others) are all cosummate scroungers, hanging around to blag anything they can off passing strangers.

And now I have been told folk are letting their children go into their field to play with the ponies.  Jeesus-Christ-on-a-bike.  Why would you? This is too much. Another sign is being created to go on the gate.  And Sóley was a pig to work with today so this is all affecting them.

Edited to add: Because they are rescue ponies, some who have stared starvation in the face and near-death early on in their lives, they will eat anything just in case there is nothing in the future.  Dammit.

I am exhausted. We’ve done everything today – firstly this morning to the vet with BeAnne and Efstur.

BeAnne had blood taken for her liver enzyme levels (we await the results).  Efstur had an equine-influenza booster injection.  Kappi came along as equine companion or short straw, as it is known, and everyone behaved surprisingly very well.

BeAnne trotted off happily on her lead with the vet to be examined, weighed and have blood drawn.  She didn’t even look back for us *** sniff *** (little hussy!) Apparently she has maintained her weight, which is encouraging.

We came home, put Efstur and Kappi back into their field, loaded and drove Hetja and Brá to a new summer field, checked the Minions, had lunch, went for a ride on Klængur, met a silent cyclist (grrr….) and now I am sitting in the field, watching BeAnne go for a little paddle.

Today was for doing a lot of things.  Tomorrow hopefully less so. Still, nice day for it.

T’other day, I noticed Albie was deliberately eating earth. He wanted to.  Odd, I thought. So today we put out a salt/mineral lick.

Of course, Lilja was first up to investigate.

And then Vitamin spied it and made it Her Lick.

Storm got a look in when Vitamin posed for my camera.

She does love a camera.

But she also loves a salt lick. I had forgotten this.

I led Albie up to the lick and told him to go and help himself, if Vitamin would let him.

I hope the lick cures the problem.

It has lots of minerals in it.  I shall keep an eye. I haven’t seen a horse/pony deliberately eat soil before.

Anywho, the others formed an orderly queue and are probably still waiting if Vitamin has anything to do with it.

My house around 1920 “after the new felt roof was put on“.

And this photo was taken before 1970.  I was told that the extension was added in 1948 after the new byre was built in 1947 to replace one at the end of the house.  The porch was then altered later.  A superb dry-stone dyke around a kale yard and haystacks.

So today I tried to reproduce the photo.  I need to try again and get the angle right. I can see now where I went wrong.

But isn’t it fascinating?  Not much change really to the basic properties except for the addition of the “big shed”.

After I had been faffing about trying to find the right angle to take the photo, I sat in the field and enjoyed the wonderful sunshine.

This is to the right of the haystacks.

Bluebells in the old kale yard.

And then I went and had a chat with Missy.

She jumped all over me and was in a fine mood. Eventually, Edna called her away as she couldn’t keep an eye on her darling daughter.

Well, I will just put this out here first because I can – with my brave pants on, I rode (or ridded) my horse, Klængur, and it was lovely.   Daisy gave me a fantastic lesson in the school and we walked and tolted happily around together.  So that’s me back in the saddle hopefully with my confidence back.

In other news, Little Missy is now possibly known as Big Missy.

Still enchanting, obviously.

But an independent lamb, nonetheless. She has a huge crush on her Nuncles who are surprisingly very tolerant of her.  She uses them for her parkour workout every evening.

She is certainly a girl on a mission.

And she hassles Edna, her Mum, often.

Edna is the best Mum in the world and she puts up with a lot.

Once fed, off she goes again to look for a new adventure and/or sheep to hassle.

It was big sister’s turn next.  Missy worships her sister, Madge.

So they are a happy little sheepie flock now.