Sunday, July 09, 2006

All was safely gathered in eventually!

Well, no thanks to the Met Office, we have finally managed to get our hay in for this year. When we subscribed at no small cost to their "Talk to a Forecaster" service, he was invariably “away from his desk” or “otherwise engaged”. Great. Meanwhile we were desperate to have some guidance as to whether to cut our hay which would then require a 2-3 day period on the ground to be “fluffed up” by a tedder prior to bailing when the sun had dried it.

As Sebastian would continue to stress to them; making hay is rather like overtaking on a blind bend; when you have made your mind up, you have to put your foot down and go like hell !

So, the unexpected storms last week threw us completely. When the Met Office predicted a 24 hour window of dry weather we started to bale and it rained again in buckets and when they said it was going to pour down, we worked till 1.30am to get one field in only to find it hadn’t rained at all in the night.

Many friendly hands to the deck yesterday saw the balance of bales safely stowed in the barns just as the first drops of a very wet night fell.


Another two foals have been born in the last week.. I have decided that the theme for this year’s progeny will be with a sweet tooth in mind; Pudding, Crumble, Posset, Trifle, Biscuit, Merangue etc; any other suggestions gratefully received.

This week we took delivery of a dozen “Tumbler” Doves; beautiful white creatures that when they fly they suddenly and quite literally “tumble” down towards the ground before alighting and flying up again. They were bred originally to keep the horses interested that were in stable yards of days gone by. Bored horses can crib bite or worse, so it will be nice to see them eventually take up their new residence in the dove cote hanging on the side of the stable block.

We are now starting to get our first few guests booking to come down with their horses to enjoy the quite stunning riding from here.

Work on the new house; Holwell Barton is nearing completion and the kitchen will start to be installed this coming week. We have just completed putting circa 300 tons of topsoil around the house to bring the levels up and the wallers have now completed the retaining wall around the property which looks so natural.


At Holne Chase the other evening we hosted a “Hands on Hawking and Introduction to Fly Fishing” evening with George and Brian; our experts in their fields of Falconry and Fishing respectively. The event was a huge success and all those who participated ended up hooked on both pursuits, if you will excuse the pun.

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