Newt and Albie are such dudes.  Always.

Even if you are far away, and Newt spies you, he will make the effort to come over for a wee chat.

It just takes a while.

But he gets there….. eventually.

Albie was, for a change, with Waffle at the far corner of the field, with some wild mallard ducks for extra company.  The ducks flew away when they saw me coming but Albie wandered up.

Albie has changed so much this past year and grown into an almost normal (whatever that is) Shetland pony.  He is definitely one of the Minions.  Remember all that horrible aggro and angst when they joined the herd last year (thank you, Vitamin for that appalling behaviour)? Happily that has vanished now and the ponies are one big happy family, which is something I wished from the beginning.  It just took a while, that was all.

Albie is fairly large for a minature Shetland pony.

I need to measure Newt again.  Last done he came in at 26″ and that’s yer lot.  He is not growing upwards anymore.  Been there, done that. It was overrated.

Sometimes, said Pooh, the smallest things take up the most room in your heart

  Winnie the Pooh

I ❤️ my littlest boys.

BeAnne loves water.  Any time of year and she’s diving in needing no excuse.

Water turns Her Maj into a puppy again.

And it also cleans parts where small dogs refuse to reach!

BeAnne lovingly brought me a present.  One of the many polecat skulls that are lying around from the corpses we leave in the hill.  To date we have trapped seven trying to murder our chickens.

After the Gift of Skull, BeAnne had her mad half hour.

We all just stood and watched as she ran around with her watery whiskers enjoying the brief warm Autumn sunshine.

It made my heart smile.  To think, this time just over two years ago (September 2016), BeAnne was just learning to walk again after her God-awful paralysis that came out of nowhere.  We were so scared for her.

Seeing my little girl like this make me realise we were very, very lucky.  The Gods smiled and I thank them daily.

These past few days I have been designing a “MyShetland Advent Calendar” but there is one huge hitch, (well two actually).  It is proving impossible to be ordered directly, let alone purchased outside the UK.

The calendar is 42 x 29 cm so nice and big and it comes with its own envelope for a cost of nearly £16.00 but only in the UK.  Can I get it printed and delivered outside the UK?  Nope. I don’t know how to do this.  I can’t even give you a link for you to buy it directly.  This appears impossible.

So, if anyone wants this Advent Calendar, and believe me there are some divine surprises of the photo variety inside, then please let me know how we can do this.  I would love to be able to send my calendar around the world but I cannot find anywhere that will do this.  I don’t believe this is not possible.  So far, I have tried Pixum and CEWE who offered the photo Advent Calendar printing/design service.  I had been looking for ages for this service as I think it is such a brilliant idea.

I guess the worst case scenario is that I order a few, have them sent to me and I send one, two or three on to you.  Hopeless in my opinion.  Not what I envisaged but I am happy to do that for you.

Why is this so difficult?  You would think it would be the easiest thing.  Help and ideas, please.

If you want to know what is inside before you buy, let me know and I will email you the inside but it will ruin the surprise.

Every so often the Boyzenberries decide they want to mingle with the hill sheep and I duly let them out (or they escape when the gate is open for a car to be driven out) for some freedom.  On fine days I encourage their sojourns to the scattald.

Today the Boyz left home to see their friends.  I then went out to do stuff and left them to their play date. Upon my return home in the afternoon, I found my sheep sitting on a hill bored of watching and waiting for me to come home.

“Muzzah, you are late and vee vant to come home.”

Between the hill and our gate is a large (ish) ditch that has to be crossed one way or another.

“Sheep rampant” – a heraldry attitude, I think.

I love the way Lambie jumps so neatly with his little ears forward.

Then it was ‘Ster’s turn.  Now that is a look of determination.

It was a good landing – a nice clean jump over the ditch.

And lastly ‘Bert who refused to jump and grimly walked through the ditch. There is not telling some sheep.

Well done ‘Bert.  At least you are coming home which is good.

With the sun setting an hour earlier now, I always feel relieved to have my Boyzenberries home for the night.

We are trying to preserve our fields for winter.  It is a bit of a juggling game but, every year, we do our best.

There are various other factors to take into account.

The field we have just moved the boys back to is Clothie.  A five acre field with good shelter and its own stream but it does tend to dry up if it possibly can.  The downside to Clothie is that it is an unhelpful field to use in winter when we are feeding silage (from January onwards) as we have to lug every bale over, plus water if it runs out.  Back-breaking work.

Temperatures are going up this week, albeit briefly, so we will let the big field rest as we will definitely need that later.

Daisy, Flossie and I moved the eight lads over.

First the youngsters – we took one each.

Then the older, more sensible ones.  Daisy led Kappi and Taktur while I led Klaengur.  Floss brought up the rear with her herding skills.  Iacs and Haakon were loose and following, sort of.  Iacs had an independent thought which is never to be encouraged.  At one stage, we turned round and watched him set off down the track by himself in a happy bimbly trot!

Anyway, once safely in their field, we decided it was obviously an aberration.  Not like Iacs at all.

I am not sure how long the boys will stay here.  It may just be a week or so.  We’ll see how long the grass lasts.

With me, nothing is ever written in stone – I tend to change my mind frequently.

By the way, in my head the field swapping makes perfect sense.  Just writing it down makes me sound like a deranged idiot.