Tag Archives: Long Grass

A Day of Two Halves

It was chucking it down this morning and so the sheep, after their breakfast in the shed, went on strike refusing to go into their field for the day. In return I refused to give them haynets because it was raining.  There’s plenty of grass outside if they want food.  There will be haynets when it snows (and they are all very fat).

My morning was spent researching for the Diaries – going through old family photos, correspondence, making discoveries and looking for anything relevant to include.

Meanwhile, the weather slowly cleared up ….

….. and soon the sun was shining

The Shetland ponies got their haynets for tea.

And I found all the sheep had in fact gone outside, crawled under a fence and were happily eating the long grass in an ungrazed field.

This is a winter field which will be for the old horses and ponies – it offers plenty of natural shelter, and has a forever-running stream.  The sheep also love it here and can let themselves in and out when they want (by crawling under the fence).

That is everyone except for Ster who has to walk through the garden to get out, though he can get back on his own (phew!)

Apparently it is a rather heavenly field, according to Madge.   Funny to think that all the grass will be eaten down in just a few months’ time.  Winter is looming now. I’m dreading it.

A Funny Old Day

Winter seems to have returned today and we are all grumbling.  It was 12°C with a mean F7 westerly so about 8°C.  Brrrr.

I spent my morning productively taking the internet to bits.  Our whole network had ground to a halt so I repositioned the router upstairs (for better signal), reset all the extenders and re-attached them to the network.  So far, I have tripled the signal strength around the house, and am praying it stays like this.  Our internet signal is my bête noire and in Shetland, without fibre, 22 Mbps is jolly well racing along.

In need of a break from argumentative, yet invisible, technology, I took to my shed after lunch to admire my one sweet pea flower that I have successfully grown from last year’s seeds.

I made another sheep – the white one on the right – to add to my latest bag of stock.

And then it was the turn of the real sheep.  They had spent their day in a field with deep thick grass – everyone’s winter grazing for when it snows.

The grass has really taken off this year.

I could barely find Lambie.

Rattling a packet of ginger biccies, they all agreed to come inside which means all my outside animal chores are done for the day and I need not go outside again.

Even Lambie cooperated.

This is always the tense bit as I can’t double back to close the field gate and the ponies are just around the corner eating their haynets.  They could so easily run into the field.

Once through the main gate, I ran back to shut the field gate so the ponies couldn’t go in.

And then there was my follower. Today it was Barrel doing his best for an extra biscuit but the packet was finished so I had nothing to give him.  Sorry Barrel.

Asleep in the Grass

I was in my shed this morning, when I looked outside only to find everyone happily resting.

The spot they had chosen utilised the shelter of the dry stone walls and the surrounding sheds.  There has been a coarse South East wind blowing all day.

It’s been enough wind to be annoying, if you have a beautiful mane like Haakon.

Anyway, Iacs was in charge of fending off the potential tigers (good luck with that).

And the others were flat out snoozing.

I wonder what Kolka was dreaming of.

This was the view from the upstairs bathroom window.  They all stayed there for quite a while, asleep out of the wind.

After lunch, when I went outside to go to my shed, I made a slight detour to see if Fivla and Vitamin had turned up and wanted to come out around the house too.  They hadn’t been around earlier.

They had come down and wanted out.

I opened the gate so they could come through and enjoy the lush green grass with the others.

Saturday afternoon is flute-duet- afternoon so Mandy and I played our flutes and quickly realised that our only audience was Vitamin who sensibly and understandably didn’t stay long.