Well, today is the end of my first week unemployed. And so far it has been sunny every day. Is there a messge there?
I am determined to make the most of this time, so I am becoming a cross between Doris Day, keeping house and cooking Ian delightful meals (although not sure that the nettle wine falls into this category) and John Harvey Jones businessman extraordinaire (a vision sure to give you nightmares). I am committed to do an hours house work a day, plus get a new venture up and running – more news to follow and of course to work where I can on the house. So far I have not found myself dusting skirting boards or ironing curtains, as scraping sheep deposits off the carpet, and trying to dispose of some of the mounds of scraps of paper that Ian preciously hords, and Screw Fix catalogues which he seems to have a complete back issue of seem to take up most of my allocated time.
One of the joys of being at home is that the coal man eventually managed to present us with out back bill. We had a rather strange conversation about ducks, he was talking about them ‘laying’ – I was talking about them being ‘lame’. It made sense for a while and then we both realised at about the same moment that the other was patently mad. For his part I could see he was wondering what relevance a hopping duck had on its laying pattern, and for my part, I could not see how his fondness for a nice duck egg had any baring on limping ducks.
The quails are showing us how they can jump around with one popping in to say hello to the buns. I have hung a net over the top bit of the stable door to stop them from jumping over this. Two of the ducks can go back outside now as they are much better. I tried to get them today, but they are back to running again at full pelt, and I feared for any other small quails that might have got trampled, so Ian and I will do this later. I have bought layers pellets to feed the ducks on as the vet wondered whether it was a lack of calcium which was making them go lame. The other thing it could have been is lead poisoning, and that is quite common on the Moor after a lot of rain, as the streams run through all the old lead works. Don’t think that they would suffer from lead poisoning from our little pond though.
The chickens are either not laying or are laying somewhere else. We have no eggs. Not one! I tried leaving them shut in this morning and letting them out mid morning, hoping that they would either have laid by then, or that they would have rushed straight off to their new spot and I could follow them (they have done this before) but to no avail. I also put down saw dust for them today instead of straw as they bedding, so they then spent all day fretting and scratching around with that. We need some more straw, but there isn’t much around as farmers are still getting theirs in.
Bandy Legs the chick managed to get his legs out from the tape. They are still bandy so I have retaped him. he seems quite happy doing a rather strange little waddle, balancing with his wings. The two new ones from the weekend are with him as we have a full house in the other box. We are going to have to sell some soon otherwise we are going to be over run!
Still no news from the tennants about the broken tap – so I may have been right in my assumption that outdoor instructors do no use hot water!
With regards to mouse catching – it might seem cruel to be catching them, but the trap that we have is an instant ‘dispatcher’ and more humane than poison – or infact Davey. Although one did make a bit of a statement, by nibbling the top off a bottle of oil that we had mistakenly left on the bottom of the shelf in our mouse corner, and having nibbled the top off, pooed into the bottle.