The weather was not as bad as was promised last night and this morning. We were woken in the night with the wind, definitely not the 70 to 80 miles gusts that was forecast. The forecasters managed to get it wrong again. The better way this time. With it being wrong the right way still gives us problems. High wind forecasts make us spend unnecessary time and work with making sure every thing is safe from being blown away. The Telescope Observatory is open to southwest winds, as forecast. If the high winds that were forecast came, it may have been damaged the Observatory, causing the Telescope to also be damaged. The Telescope is far to large to take in and out of the Observatory, so we needed to secure the Observatory with a rope. The rain has been constant for some days now. Today has been really miserable, just very dark and grey with driving rain. The Valley camera make the weather look quite good, but I am able to brighten the picture on my computer. The fields are quite sodden, much to wet to let the Horses out. The fields have been quite dry for a while, so with a dry spell they will soon recover.
I don’t really mind the rain. Horses droppings are not particularly good for grass leys, and we would by now have harrowed the Horse field to break up the droppings. The dry Autumn has allowed us to leave the Horses out for longer than normal, so we have left the harrowing. The rain being as heavy as it has been breaks up the droppings, so we will now probably harrow the field late winter, early springtime, before the grass starts to grow.
Arnie really dislikes being stable during the Winter. His stable has a large opening facing the Horse field, he spends a long time looking out of it towards the field. Last year his stable door got broken with his heavy weight leaning against it. We didn’t replace the door as in front of the main stables is a corralled area that so he is free to come and go into the stable as he wants. Breeze is stabled in the same area, so this year we have left her stable door open, so that she has a bit more freedom. We leave the turnout rugs on because if it rains you can be sure that they will be wet in the morning.
Lady and Willow are stabled in a different stable block that has not been corralled off, that is why you very often see Branston head peering in to Lady’s stable. With the way we have seen that Arnie and Breeze take advantage of the corral, we are going to start to corral in front of Lady’s stable block tomorrow. Lady being in Foal wont be able to go in and out of her stable as much as Arnie and Breeze, but it will give her a bit more freedom during the Winter, when the Horses cant go into the fields. At the moment Lady and Willow spend most of the day in the corral with Arnie and Breeze.
I have posted a new photograph of where the Sheep are now housed. It is the same place that we stabled Bliss and Misty last Winter. It is a gated area of about 30 x 15 feet. A good large area for the two fillies to have a buck and chase about, that they often did, and of course we were able to keep them together for company. I will try to get a camera installed showing the area on Monday or Tuesday.
Elsie, didn’t get your photograph