the daydream fund challenge thread

choille

Willow slips are nice & easy to get going & grow quick.

Just had a price for deer fencing along the bottom half - £2,000 a ball park figure - too much, well too much for me to thole. Although Harry owes us some favours I think we'll for go on the deer fencing just now. Just have to watch out & case any deer & goats out over the Winter.

lostinrates

A cross post from another thread but I though you guys might laugh - hopefully with me not at me....
Was just finishing off feeding horses nd wandering over to put chickens away when I heard a pitiful squawk, from...well ..nowhere, the nly thing thataway is the muck heap. Ours is a farm muckheap, a pit, sloping towards the back to a drain to drain the liquid from the slurry to elsewhere, but that drain has been sealed up, so our muck heap is currently sort of poop-soup getting more liquid everytime t rains and more solid every time we fill. Its not a thing of pleasant rural charm.

So, what on earth could be squawking from the poop-soup?

Strawberry, one of this years hatches. Strawberry is an individual. She likes to lay in the hay, not the nest boxes, and today it seems she wanted to explore the muck, only she got stuck in the sucky heaviness of it, like quick sand. A bird of not inconsiderable intelligence she had spread her wings and that was the only thing helping her keep her head above poop soup. The inevitable had to happen. I took of my boots and socks first, but decided to leave my trousers on. I thought if something happened and I couldn't get out the only thing worse than being found in poop soup would be being found without trousers in poopsoup. As I descended into the soup from the more solid deep end where we tip barrows, I went up to my crotch into the most foul smelling, decaying yuck imaginable...and realised I too was getting stuck. The only thing for it was to get onto my front, and try and slither to strawberry who was now yelling and flapping the tip of her unclipped wing. The poop was thinner near her, probably how she got that far, and I managed to reach her, and wade back, then slither back on my belly, hauling myself up the heap back onto the concrete....where the horses were looking on with bemused and frankly scandalised disbelief.


So here I stood in the middle of the yard, covered in poop, holding a cold, wet, poop covered chicken. Sighing I accepted there was no way about it, Strawberry couldn't stay out in such a state, she'd have no chance of survival. And the only way around this was taking her back to the house and trying to clean us both up as much as possible. So sloshing across the yard and garden, barefoot,brown, dripping and stinking, altogether like a swapmonster and his pet, I arrived at the back door. where I wrapped strawberry in my coat and stripped.

You know those 60 trees we cut down between me and the neighbour? At that point he drives his tractor past and all I have to preserve any modesty is a chicken covered in poop. *sigh*


Strawberryis clean and drying in a box in the sitting room and I got as clean as I could downstairs before walking over the carpets I spent a lot of the weekend cleaning and tiptoed up to have two quick and far from relaxing baths, although my skin feels amazingly soft!

choille

It being a full ish moon, your neighbour will possibly think it's a kinda ritual thing. Sounds sorta like you got a coven!

You write well - great description of you slithering on your belly. You should submit it to a a mag.

I did laugh & am still smiling - thanks.

RAS

choille wrote: »

Well Harry's here with his brother so up the scaffolding with them for quarter of an hours lift. - hurray!:j

Did you manage to get them up the scaffold?

choille wrote: »

Willow slips are nice & easy to get going & grow quick.

Just had a price for deer fencing along the bottom half - £2,000 a ball park figure - too much, well too much for me to thole. Although Harry owes us some favours I think we'll for go on the deer fencing just now. Just have to watch out & case any deer & goats out over the Winter.

I think that the moeny needs to go to the house before the deer fence; any luck getting OH a licence to shoot and a gun?

choille

Yes - indeedy, 2 panels lifted. We thought it would take 5 big blokes to lift these ones, but these guys, although in their 60's have been fencers all their days, very strong, used to chucking strainers uphill. Brilliant stuff.

We have to go back out tonight & nail things down as gales are forecast again. Lovely bright moon again out. The sky went white as it got dark - It's gonna be a cold one.

Yeh - the gun license, must fill in the form - if we can find it - that's a problem at the moment, finding things.
Had a good ole walk about down the bottom today with us all looking at best lie for a fence (but probably won't go for that - although I'd get a grant for 50%)- goodness there's more ground down there than up here. Forgot how big it is & it's a lot leveller once you get down there than I recall. However it's choked with brambles & deid bracken - it's also really wet, but that's understandable. I wish the camera hadn't been flat as I don't have any photos. Will have to remedy that.

Davesnave

Lir, I laughed out loud at your story. I thought it was only me who did things like that. It was very noble of you too, as I'm sure some of us would have baulked at the prospect, especially on a rawish day like today. :A

As you may have read elsewhere, I 'lost' the best part of two working days last week, having locked the only set of keys in the back of the van. I kept repeating the mantra I'm always quoting at DW: "We have to cope; we cannot just call an expert out!" but it was touch and go. There was a fine balance of judgement to be struck between doing some cosmetic damage and the cost of a locksmith in these far flung parts. In the end I got there, but it was poor observation that held me up. I spent a whole day devising a hook that would catch and pull the locking mechanism, which it certainly did, very effectively, but if I'd looked more carefully at it, any time in the past year, I'd have known that it needed pushing....:o

No work today of any consequence, but two more eggs. Also a trip to RHS Rosemoor, where I was disturbed to find many of the plants I might have taken a few seeds from, being hacked back and bundled into builders' bags. I'm always reading in 'The Garden' how eco-friendly it is to leave the old dead foliage, seeds etc on plants over the winter months, and wise, because removing them exposes the plant to the ravages of cold weather. Well, I suppose that's in real gardens; in fantasy gardens where money's no object and people pay to come in, everything must be pristine and/or buried in layers of tidy, but expensive mulch.

Fortunately, they hadn't finished them all!

Rummer

lostinrates wrote: »

You know those 60 trees we cut down between me and the neighbour? At that point he drives his tractor past and all I have to preserve any modesty is a chicken covered in poop. *sigh*

You have absolutely made my day :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I wonder what the poor man was thinking!

My first seed order, for the new season, arrived today and I am very excited as I have some black tuscany kale and blauhilde climbing beans. Going to try a few different things this year and to plant them throughout the garden.

RAS

Davesnave wrote: »

As you may have read elsewhere, I 'lost' the best part of two working days last week, having locked the only set of keys in the back of the van. I kept repeating the mantra I'm always quoting at DW: "We have to cope; we cannot just call an expert out!" but it was touch and go. There was a fine balance of judgement to be struck between doing some cosmetic damage and the cost of a locksmith in these far flung parts. In the end I got there, but it was poor observation that held me up. I spent a whole day devising a hook that would catch and pull the locking mechanism, which it certainly did, very effectively, but if I'd looked more carefully at it, any time in the past year, I'd have known that it needed pushing....:o

:rotfl::rotfl:Between you and LiR, I have been in stitches:rotfl::rotfl:

Glad it is not just me who does things like this sometimes.

LiR - I bet you will dine out on that a few times, if the whole neighbourhood does not already know?

Really impressed by the dedicated rescue activities. I am afraid my efforts would have been a bit more long distance!

RAS

choille wrote: »

Yes - indeedy, 2 panels lifted. We thought it would take 5 big blokes to lift these ones, but these guys, although in their 60's have been fencers all their days, very strong, used to chucking strainers uphill. Brilliant stuff.

We have to go back out tonight & nail things down as gales are forecast again. Lovely bright moon again out. The sky went white as it got dark - It's gonna be a cold one.

I know, I have a few mountaineering friends, used to carrying heavy weights, lifting their body weight and with grips like iron. They may be the wrong side of sixty but they are fit and can carry stuff that makes people half their age gawp.

Also, they know how to lift stuff effectively.

Get them panells nailed down pronto, to preserve your hard work and theirs.

Lotus-eater

lostinrates wrote: »

I spent a lot of the weekend cleaning and tiptoed up to have two quick and far from relaxing baths, although my skin feels amazingly soft!

Good story

I must admit, normally a story with a beautiful young woman who strips outside, then has two baths and amazingly soft skin, doesn't have me going "Ugh!" the whole way through

I mean, didn't you have a long handled net or something? :rotfl: