Wet!

Urrgh! everything this week has been totally unglam. It's rained - monsooned, lashed, chucked, pis....whatever term you favour it's done it. Freezing and grey - so grey the Downs have been obscured for most of this week. I feel for all people concerned who have come to visit the new National Park and South Downs Way - it's not like this normally, honest! Most of the time we sit smugly in our protected area looking at the rest of the country suffering the worst of the general weather. Not so at the moment. Mind you, it is Wimbledon week...


The ground has turned to the clay consistency I am used to in winter - clay on boots is NOT easy to remove. The barn has a film of moss over it so that it resembles more of an ice rink and subsequently is a death trap requiring the fleet of foot of someone more used to walking over hot coals than slimy concreted pebbles. This also means the ground is diggable - as evidenced by Foxy Loxy. I am not sure why this fox is trying to now tunnel under duck land - perhaps he is applying for planning permission so that when my new inhabitants arrive he can claim full access.... However, on the plus side, diggable land also mean stakes can be malletted in (well, not by moi personally of course!) so phase 2 of the rebuilding of duck land can ensue. This means relocating the house and building a roofed pen around it. Theorectically it means no new ducks can fly out of it, the fox (should he get into the area) will face another challenge to get through the pen, the carrion can't spread disease around too easily and also steal eggs and kill any ill birds or ducklings. Photos will follow once built. Every time we have had a bright idea however nature has so far found a way to mock us so we will see!


So I am snuffling in the pouring rain (summer colds are so yuk!) wondering if I'll ever feel warm again and thinking about the challenges this year has already produced. Animals aside, we have lost our strawberry crops, our rhubarb hasn't been brilliant - too wet then too dry at crucial times, our raspberries are way behind and our new orchard (3 young trees!) eaten by god knows what. Trouble with living here is you also get these random foreign invaders that are swept in from the sea. Nowhere else will suffer with anything then all of a sudden Isfield is amass of black teeny bugs - everywhere. Next day, all gone!


Dors and Dolly aren't best pleased at being shawn either. Poor things are always by the hedge under one of the oaks at the moment, shivering away. Always the same, you head to a summer event with a carefully planned outfit then the occasion rules your head and you find yourself shivering on a Monday evening at Windsor instead of being sensible and investing in a light boucle jacket or equivalent realising that summer is just not balmy evenings, Pimms and strawberries in this country! Not that my sheep have been racing at Windsor but...you get the picture!


When the weather dries up I will produce some more photographs on here. Until then I have sheep to manage, pigs to consider, ducks to prepare for and then the small matter of eliminating the squirrels, rats and everything else eating my barn contents to bits. When they get through the metal food freezers I'm off outta here!


Mx

Weather: Wet! Cold 15 degrees!