Woo hoo ! Sunny day. Hit the ground running.
Four loads of washing out. Weeded and mulched another section of the side garden. Cleared out two of the four raised beds down at the cottage and planted potatoes and jerusalem artichokes. Washed down another ceiling panel in the dairy. Put an estrotect on Belle.
Calab, the tenant of the cottage, mentioned he has some seed potatoes, so next sunny day I'll clear out another one of the raised beds for him to plant in. I identified a nasty cotoneaster shrub to remove from the cottage back yard too. In an area that used to be a lovely stand of raspberry canes, but was sprayed for some reason by the terrible last tenant. I was delighted to find three raspberry canes still feebly holding on, hopefully once the overwhelming cotoneaster is removed they will come back.
The dairy clean has slowed, mainly because slogging around in the windy dairy with water in the weather we've been having is unpleasant. If I do one thing every sunny day sooner or later I will get there.
The rain last night filled the sheep foot bath to three times the optimum level and the sheep have flatly refused to walk through the deeper water. This weather is wearing thin, the relentless wet. Do I bale out the diluted water and start again or wait for it to evaporate a bit ? I imagine that with the current humidity the evaporation rate is close to nil.
Just when I find a solution to a problem caused by the weather, the weather ruins the solution. I'll think on it. In the meantime I opened the gate in the last of the afternoon sun, the sheep having won that standoff. I guess I can't blame them, the water is icy.
The estrotect is an effort to figure out whether the young bull got Belle pregnant or she still needs to be AI'd. It's a sticker that goes on above the tail, so when she's in heat and is being mounted by other cattle the grey surface will rub off and the fluorescent colour underneath will show. It's used to show both that the cows is cycling and that it's time to do something about it.
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