Despite 10ft of rain this month (this is ever since I told a friend ooop North that we were the driest County in Britain), we have at last finished the Summer Grazing. Lu and Charlie are particularly precious about curling their lips back too far to graze, so tend to leave lots of perfectly good grass behind. In Lu's case she starts to uproot fence posts. She just wants to protect her perfectly white teeth, that go with her perfect blonde elite Haflinger model girl image. To compliment her Scarlett O'Hara self image, Charlie has become her Rhett Butler, and refuses to eat anything shorter than his mustache. So bending to their every wish we chucked them into the Hill Field. Full of brand new green growth.
They immediately became fully independent!! As long as the maids pick up the poo and refill the water, they have NO interest in human contact....and don't care how the Herd is fairing without them!!
Meanwhile we moved the Little Uns in with Daisy to finish off the leftovers.They were thrilled to have lots of space and grass.
But this was never going to last very long. Daisy's pen has become flooded so she has spent the last couple of days out full time with the Minis and we have been feeding hay. Time to set up the Winter Grazing in the 4 Acre. The Landlord said we could use the 'Bowling Green' first. This is one half of the 4 Acre, set aside for a future Campsite.
So yesterday I went out into the Wilderness with the tractor, lots of fence posts and a bundle of Self Tangling Wire. You know the stuff? Looks like perfectly sane fence wire. If you leave it on the ground, and carefully wind it up, it may behave. However, we had hand wound it (despite knowing better). We had also carefully wound up earlier string onto a Hose-reel. Ha! That would be good to use right?
So I put the posts in, and set off with the Hose-reel. Stop. Start. Tangle. Swear. I was getting there......And then, out of no-where I had 2 loose ends WTF??
Pick one. It was 2in long. Picked the other. Also 2in long! No End in sight!!!
So it seems that the fence wire that will tangle itself into knots on its own, can also undo knots while neatly wound up!
Eventually i ran out of the properly wound up string that had made me slightly insane. So I moved on to using this...
Despite the spaghetti look, with a lot of shaking out, it kind of untangled, and I managed to build a three strand (necessary with a Shetland) fence from one end of the field to the other. Today Jo split the field in two, ready for the Outlaw Duo in the Hill Field to rejoin Civilization. Meanwhile Daisy (who had figured it out), took her little Herd on a mad gallop about. Nothing lame about that one!
Surprisingly they moved fields without any drama and happily settled into munching. Hopefully the weather is cool enough now, for Daisy to live full time with the Herd on old stalky grass.
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