All together now

Angie, Sultan and the dogs out for an early morning ride before it got hot (extra photo)

As we have up until now only made haylage, we tend to have a problem in summer (or at least in hot periods) with feeding the horses some "roughage". Haylage needs to be consumed within a relatively short time, in cold periods this can be one to two weeks but in summer, one to two days before it starts re-fermenting. Grass is good but actually not all that good if short and young and fresh - lots of sugar.

Farmer Franz didn't have any but he knew Farmer Blank did. So a month or two back, Angie bought a few bales and Farmer Blank delivers them individually as we need them. Today was just such a day. I heard Angie talking to Farmer Blanks wife on the phone requesting a delivery and I told her he was not 100m away, showing his son how to mow the grass on the meadow next to the horse field. (see extra photo).

As it happened, the hay arrived as Farmer Franz happened to be making one of his Sunday checkups - he likes to make sure we are coping and looks around for more problems that he can solve for us. So while son Blank drove the tractor, Flash made sure security was OK, I photographed the others at work.

I Bliped Famer Blank's 60th birthday display last weekend and forgot to mention he was one of the people who starred on the recent TV documentary about our parish which can still be seen in the video library.. He appears towards the end with his milk filling station where he also sells any spare eggs from his few free walking chickens. As he says in the film, there are days when there aren't any eggs, that's fine, that's the way it is.

As can also be seen on the Blip, a gorgeous day. In the evening I did a 70km round trip with the trailer to pick up a largish pet animal (rabbit/guinea pig) house for the chicks. Loads of hot air balloons about. On the way home had to stop as a calf not yet 24 hours old was taking it's time to cross the road. The herd was being driven from one field to another. A second calf refused to join the herd and I got involved in helping. Shame Flash wasn't with me, he would have loved the job. Farmer ended up having to drive the herd back on to the old field (you can imagine how pleased they were to have to leave the fresh grass) while I stopped the calf getting too far away. Once reunited, the herd then was sent back to the new pasture.