Longhope Diary August 2015

3/8/2015

I really love summer; in fact I am solar powered. It is as simple as this…Sunny = happy. Raining = miserable.

Every year I forget just how hard it is to balance the school holiday and farm work. The farm is at its busiest with frantic haymaking/harvest, but ironically lowest income, hence the holiday cottage to fill the reduced income gap.

The older ‘children’ are pretty much self-sufficient but my youngest at 12 declares he is the only child in the whole of Longhope not to have gone on holiday. Correction: only child in Gloucestershire/western world not to have gone on holiday.

Most of our day trips occur when rain stops farm work. We have a collection of photographs of our trips out, complete with waterproofs, umbrellas, wellies and having a ‘lovely time’. I remember going to ‘pedal a bike away’ with Mike (in the rain). The sun came out and all Mike could think about was haymaking. He peddled off as if competing in the last leg of ‘Tour de France’; I saw his arse disappearing into the distance, all he needed was a yellow jersey.

We have taken on some more land/work bordering ours which is now being cut for hay. It felt strange going through the hedge to make a new gateway. Normally new gateways only occur when somebody (usually youthful somebodies) crash the tractor through a hedge. They then get named e.g.: ‘Fred’s gateway, Bert’s gateway etc….names changed to protect the guilty.

We have got the most adorable little ducklings on the pond, six of them. So glad we have the little island to ensure their safety from Mr Fox.

The holiday cottage is very busy, we are virtually booked up solidly until November, then there are a few gaps which I hope will soon be filled. The dogs love our dedicated dog room. We are underway with ‘guns on pegs’. In fact we were in the middle of a photo-shoot when our holiday guests appeared (early, but not their fault) so we quickly had to ‘scramble to action’ and put everything back (guns away/ cream tea out!) Amazing what you can do when you have to. Thank you to Shep for giving us the idea, Maddie & Whisper who were the lovely models.

Now it is rare that I discuss my children’s achievements in public as we are, after all, British and think it may ‘go to their heads’. However, I am so proud of Rufus and Poppy. We had 472 bales on the deck and rain forecast, all our usual helpers were on holiday, at shows or ill. They both ‘stepped up to the mark’ and by midnight the trailers were full and backed into the barn ahead of the rain. Poppy took to the ‘flat eight grab’ on the load-all like an old hand and has now declared it to be her favourite job.

It’s great to follow some of our old livery clients. Alex Holman-Marshall in particular who left us to do an apprenticeship in Devon on an eventing yard seems to be getting on really well.

We have had a clear TB test which is a massive relief. I mainly dread the bull failing but any fail is awful. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife on TB test day, we all have to apologise to each other at tea time as sometimes we (ok, me mostly!) have been known to use bad language. I am not proud of this but the lovely vet understands and said she had seen/heard worse…..God knows where she has been, I dread to think?!

Thank you to Anne, one of our guests in Oakbank who sent some great photographs.

It’s sad to say goodbye to our lovely tenants Lindsay & Alan but looking forward to Ray, Natasha and family moving in soon.

Talk about multitasking! In the time it has taken me to write this diary page I have had to help make a bird nest box, sort tea, sort two livery ladies, write an invoice for contract work, pay two helpers before they disappeared and make two phone calls. This is exactly why I get up at 5.00am to do the office jobs, nobody is about and I can get three times the work done. The only issue with that is I tend to be "at home to Mrs Grumpy’ by the end of the day.

These twin calves were born in the pouring rain. Jacob, our Saturday boy, helped us get them in, tie up the cow, milk her and get colostrum (first milk rich in antibodies) to the calves. They are doing really well now. Both males.