Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

Er, we did a bit of shopping...





For those of you going 'What on EARTH...??' (or similar!), the top one is a hay baler and the bottom one is a haybob (it spreads the hay and turns it for drying, then gathers it into neat rows for the baler). And for those of you who know what you're looking at and are still going 'What on EARTH....??', yes, I know the PTO drive shaft is missing off the haybob, but it is included in the purchase!

Anyway, I've transferred £350 to the guy tonight, with the other £350 to follow when they're delivered, so I need to get a couple of tarps to keep them under for the rest of the winter, until the agricultural shed goes up on the new croft, then they'll get cleaned up, greased, oiled, any rust spots treated and sent to Charlie or Dave for a once-over if we find anything we can't fix - hopefully I can get John to bring his tractor over in the spring and we'll fork a couple of bales through the baler to make sure it's all working well before we actually have to use it on a field. Worst comes to the worst, I can put them through the local mart machinery sale for parts only and probably make back nearly what I've paid for them.

cazmanian_minx

Oh, and one thing I meant to add yesterday - it seems that Quidco will now give you a bonus 2% if you take your payment as Amazon vouchers instead of cash, so I shall be doing that from now on and trying to pay for as many birthday and Christmas presents as possible throughout the year that way.

cazmanian_minx

Busy day. Started off badly when a hungry Merlin snatched at an armful of hay I was about to put in his slow feeder and accidentally chomped more arm than hay - I have a lump the size of a goose egg and the bruising is going to be spectacular, thank goodness for padded jackets, it meant he didn't break the skin!

The weather has been utterly vile and yesterday morning sheep number 2 went lame. After trying every agricultural merchant in Caithness on the way to see the baler (all shut thanks to Hogmanay), I pinged my lovely local farmer who came up last week and sorted out sheep number 1 for me and asked if I could borrow her foot shears and crook, since it was the non-tame one that was limping. Bless her, she asked if I'd like help and turned up late morning to supervise me doing my first foot trimming. We had a look at sheep number 3 as well and found the beginnings of the same thing (they have shelly hoof, which any horse owners reading will know better as white line disease), so all of them have been treated now, the pockets under the hoof wall carefully snipped out, the dirt cleaned away and given a good squirt of blue spray. Fingers crossed that's it for limping sheep now...really need the ground to dry up though, warm, wet fields are not helpful

The rest of the day has been spent cleaning the house, catching up on the laundry and generally getting ready for work again tomorrow. Mr Minx doesn't have to go back until Tuesday, as Monday is a bank holiday in Scotland (we have January 2nd instead of Boxing Day), but all my clients are in England and will expect me to be at my desk as normal, so it's nose back to grindstone.

DebtFree2012

Welcome back to the office I hope the sheep pick up and return to normal. The ground has nowhere left to drain to, I hope we get no more rain. The floods local ish to me are horrendous as you may have seen on the news.

Happy New Year

EssexHebridean

Nice shopping, lady! And of course once up and running those will give you some great bartering power locally, won't they! :T

Loving the other pics too - that's a lovely one of the two of you, and I particularly like Merlin and Finn both looking affronted at having their pics taken! :rotfl:

cazmanian_minx

Limpy Sheep is a lot happier today, thank you The bad news is I think Merlin may be brewing an abscess now, he's distinctly footy on the hardstanding, though fine on the field shelter mats and grass. Hopefully it'll track through and burst fast.

First day back at work today, although it was a late start because there was no alarm clock. I had a respectable 11 orders to go, so packed those, did all my December invoicing, spent 90 minutes trying to straighten out Mr RPC's accounts (his office sent me a big parcel of receipts and invoices over Christmas, some of them dating back to July) and accepted 15-ish hours of vet/farming-related transcription from small agency client, which will dribble in over the next month.

Also got a message from the bloke who's going to be delivering my machinery to say he'd got it loaded up, it would be £100 and he'd be here at 9.30 tomorrow morning. Bit more than the '£50-ish' the seller told me he thought it would be, but it's coming from near enough John o'Groats and because I don't have anything capable of lifting it off this end, he's bringing a mate to help us roll the baler off the low-loader, so that's fair enough. Just hoping the guy remembered to re-attach the PTO drive shaft to the haybob, otherwise Mr Minx may have a slight fit of pique!

hiddenshadow

Hope the machinery delivery goes smoothly tomorrow.

cazmanian_minx

hiddenshadow wrote: »

Hope the machinery delivery goes smoothly tomorrow.

Well, nobody ended up flattened under a runaway baler, which looked like a distinct possibility at one point, but that £100 was worth every penny - it took the three of us over an hour to unload. The haybob was fairly easy, we just lifted it off, but the baler was a slightly different story! I've no idea how much it weighs, but I'm guessing around half a tonne. It had been lifted onto the trailer by a tractor, so our first step was to go and see if my neighbour across the road was in (delivery guy knew him quite well) to come and help us out. He wasn't, so it was Plan B, which was get the ratchet and steel cable out of the shed, attach one end to a strap anchored on the trailer hitch and the other to the baler, and very, very carefully winch it down the ramps. Which would have been fine if the baler tow bar hadn't wedged on the knobbly bits on the ramp.

All's well that ends well, anyway. Even better, the guy who delivered it, who used to be a scrap merchant, quietly asked me how much I paid and nodded in that 'yeah, about right' manner when I told him. The PTO drive did get reattached to the haybob, so I've paid the rest of the money over and Mr Minx has a nice big project to keep him occupied for the next few months :rotfl:

The rest of the day has been two hours for Mr RPC (and more to come because he's just sent me an email asking me if I'd mind working this evening), eBay orders, laundry and I've got another section of stock listed at closing down prices - this time it's all the 7" Czech glass strings down to 99p each. Really sad they didn't sell better at £1.40; Hobbycraft manages to get away with selling inferior-quality mixes of Czech, Indian and Chinese glass beads for £5 each, but they market them as 'inspiration strands'. Not sure how many they sell at that price, to be fair Fingers crossed these will shift now.

brizzledfw

Wow! Thats some work you've put in today so well done on all your bargains and getting them safely under cover

x

cazmanian_minx

Mr Minx has finally come up with what may be the killer blow in the long-running 'should we install a hot tub at the holiday cottage?' argument. I've been against it on the grounds that it won't get used much because the weather is likely to be one or more of (a) raining, (b) snowing, (c) windy, (d) freezing, (e) midge-ridden. However, Mr Minx came home from work today with the news that an acquaintance has been looking at buying a holiday cottage to let out a little further south of here and has discovered that places with a hot tub command a £200-250 a week premium over places that don't have one, which is not to be sniffed at. So I've been doing a bit of research online and it does seem to be the case that a hot tub gets a reasonably chunky extra bit of cash per week without any dip in occupation - next time I'm down in Inverness I'll try and take a detour through Nairn to have a chat with our local (ha!) dealer and installer.

It's been another somewhat spendy day - I picked up a crook and some foot shears from the agricultural stores and took the dog for her annual booster, although that went on the account at the vet and I won't have to pay for it until next month. Tomorrow should be a no spend day and then on Friday I have to get £90 out to pay for 30 bales of hay on Saturday.

First job coming in from big agency for the year tomorrow. I've not been doing much typing for the past few days and I'm getting itchy fingers!