There is plenty to update on the blog today. Firstly, riding - the kids have been riding lots and are really coming on. I have finally taken the plunge and let Luke ride off the lead rein. I have also taken him to two local shows where he and Quito have jumped in the clear round competition and Luke now has two rosettes. We have friends' children come to ride regularly at the weekend now and this is just great. It is great practise and experience for me and good for the ponies too.
We have a new horse, meet Rita ........
She is on loan from a lady over in Stocking Pelham. She is great to hack out on and time will tell if she will like going round in circles and so be good for the riding school. There is a bit of Educating Rita to do as she hasn't been ridden regularly or schooled for a number of years but she is very sweet. A tad on the bargey side - like cobs can be - but nice natured. She is also totally in love with Quito, he is such a pretty boy and is loving the attention.
I have also just had a Thoroughbred vet checked, which has passed and will be coming on Wednesday. She is called Springtime and is also very quiet and I'm hoping will be really good in the riding school. More on her next post.
I have sold all the turkeys for this Christmas. We are doing 16 this year and keeping the rest for breeding. I won't go on about this and will only say this once:
I have been worrying sick about the bloody turkeys.
Will they be big enough? will they be too big? will they have enough meat on them? what if they are too fatty? what if they don't taste very nice? etc etc and so on and so forth and on and on and on.
We have put down 200m of plastic on the field in order to kill off the grass so that we can plant our lovely new hedge. Very excited about the hedge. Very.
Greg is back on the farm with his tractor and digger, reinforcing the brook. The new chicks are all doing well and getting big.
The riding school: after many tedious e-mails in which I failed to communicate what exactly I wanted, the architect and planning consultant had to come back here for another meeting to go through the plans. The problemo here is I have a fixed idea in my mind as to what the stables and yard will look like (having my own yard having only been a dream, for like, my whole life and so have given it much thought) but the architect keeps coming up with his own ideas. Some of which are actually v good and are being incorporated, but it slows the whole process down. Anyway, we now have agreed layout for the yard and siting of the manege. We also had the Flood Risk Assessment back and that is also ok.
However, major stumbling block now is that the one place on the whole bloody field where the stables can go (that keeps the planners happy, us happy and the environmental agency happy) and would you Adam and Eve it it is right underneath the overhead power cables. Argghh.
After a million zillion telephone calls I now know who owns the cables and has responsibility for them. It is Power Networks UK and they are sending out an engineer type chappy to see how close to the telegraph pole and cables we can build and also give us a quote for moving the telegraph pole if need be.
Keep smiling :-)
xx
