Daily Archives: 2012-07-16

SwimGym. It’s the middle of winter and today was warm and overcast with very occasional showers.

There’s activity in the orchard; looks like they’re finishing the apple tree pruning and doing some mulching.

Am gearing up to give the ewes some fresh grass. Firstly I’ve tidied up the electric fence from the pump shed round the cottage railings to the post from which I think Karola intends there be a fence up to the big shed. Also, because I’m surrounded by temporary gates held up with binder twine and I’m bored with undoing and redoing the twine, I’ve hung the small old temporary gate directly opposite the cottage front door. So at least there’s a way for Bramble and me to go out on our daily walks without involving string. Getting the electric fence past the gate means either going overhead or underground and I’ve settled on a short run of alkathene pipe just underground as the easiest, simplest answer – I’ll run the ordinary electric wire inside that pipe.

The ewes are shut in the Island paddock while I’m doing this – I hope the rain currently falling clears tomorrow so I can continue with my plan. I expect to create a corridor across the Totara paddock and One Acre paddock and give the ewes sections of the Orchard paddock for the next few weeks.

Shopping in the afternoon – nothing is straight forward so it took about two hours instead of the one hour I was expecting. Have got the ingredients for another big batch of Bramble’s food.

I did an experiment for three days by putting Bramble’s food in three different containers: one with the special food cooked to Karola’s recipe; one of beef and rice dog sausage; and one of Nutrients dry dog food. Hands down winner every time was Karola’s delux beef, liver, and rice. Maybe that’s because Bramble has been having this since a few weeks old and maybe she’d get used to the lower quality but still nourishing dog sausage. Anyway, I’ve deferred any firm decision and made up another batch of the ‘haut cusine’.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—20℃ 0.2mm rain [81.2]