Tight grip

Farmer Blank around early and very quickly to deliver a round bale of hay. He had to dash off as the rain clouds were getting darker and very close and still much for him to do. Luckily he had the bale grabber arms fitted on his front loader and could easily place it directly on a pallet.

We could store all the hay we need for a year in our stables but for the fact that the roof is made of non-insulated metal which "sweats" very badly in spring, autumn and winter when we have cold nights and then sunny or frost free mornings. The moisture that comes down can quickly ruin any hay not protected by a plastic covering which in itself does nothing to improve the quality and simply aids mould.

This year we have decided not to make any hay or haylage ourselves but rely on Andreas who is particularly proud of the quality of his hay - I Bliped him earlier this year walking his fields looking for weeds. We do have some haylage left over from 2016 and as soon as we get in to continuous cold weather we will start to open these. Now with only two horses, it's even more important to have cold to stop an opened bale of haylage from re-fermenting and going off.

The rain wasn't too bad, managed a short dog walk before it turned from drizzle to rain and then started on a repair job on the jeep which I am dreading - another of those situations when I'm messing about with things I don't fully understand. The heating system on the passenger side doesn't work any more. The official repair method is to strip the entire interior fittings from the middle arm console to the windscreen - steering wheel the lot. Cost around 1500-2000€! The alternative is to get behind the glove box, cut out a small section of hidden plastic walling and replace the paddle that goes up and down as you move the temperature controls. All for the sake of a $1 plastic pin mounting that breaks, seemingly on every such Jeep. There are a multitude of YouTube videos to help and the 80€ replacement set has arrived - might as well replace both sides as the other one will go sooner or later.

It doesn't look that difficult but the odd slip with a cutter could damage the heating radiator pipes. Just need to hope my diagnosis really, really is correct and then the confidence to start cutting! Well I am going the melting route using a soldering iron - don't trust myself with saw blades and drills.