Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Free manure is definitely me trying to be positive Mr Cheery is never impressed by a giant dollop of runny cow sh*t, especially not on a main thoroughfare £750 will definitely be worth it to get rid of that garage! There's nothing to be said for it (except as a mini warehouse for rubbish). It's right next to the footpath too so it'll be nicer for walkers not to have to go past it, and the concrete base will still be there so I might stick a bench on it that I can eat my lunch on occasionally. 

Nowt to report today, just popping in while I'm eating lunch. We did have a sneaky cafe trip this morning - took my laptop and hoped to use their wifi but it wouldn't work for what I was trying to do so ended up toggling from my phone. I've got a more expensive plan for a couple of months as the house wifi is a little bit temperamental at times, and I keep having to toggle to the mobile for video calls, so it made sense to up the data allowance (from £12 to £20 a month). So far so good - and it's a rolling one month contract so I can come back down once the start of teaching is sorted. 

Cafe cost £6.25 for a drink for each of us and toast for Mr Cheery which isn't too bad. 

Right, got a meeting in 10 minutes and apparently I'm chairing so I'd best check I haven't got my lunch in my teeth  

Pyxis

Hi folks! It's Caramac and doughnut day tomorrow! 
I cancelled my previous order about 3 weeks ago, as I wasn't well and couldn't cope with a big delivery, but I've got one coming from Sainsbury tomorrow! So it will be treat day, assuming that they have them, of course! 

By the way, I was pleased to see that they've stopped using plastic bags now, again, for home deliveries, so it will be interesting seeing how it works as I never used to have home deliveries from supermarkets.

I've got a huge pile of plastic carriers of all thicknesses from when they were obligatory during Covid for deliveries, so they will be my bin bags for the next year or so!

Also some cream tubs have stopped doing the plastic lids over the foil top, which is also good. I've kept 3 or 4 lids from large yogurt pots to re-use as cream tub tops once the foil comes off. They seem to be lasting quite a good while!

Plus the veg box people are sending my coriander leaves in 'plastic' pouches which say that they are fully compostable in the home compost bin, so that's where they'll go. The soft fruit and tomatoes are mostly coming in cardboard punnets without lids now, so that's more stuff for the compost bin, or they will take them back if they're clean! All good stuff! 

Cheery_Daff

Ooh,I never thought about bags Pyxis! Will report back...

Exciting evening here! A cow gave birth this morning, then got herself stuck down a hill and couldn't stand up. Farmer had been round several times with extra calcium, energy drink (!) etc to no avail, and as she'd slipped even further down he came back with the digger to pull her out.

We went to 'help' well, Mr Cheery did actually help, attaching ropes to digger et . I stood well back not very dignified for the poor cow, being dragged up by her back legs, then having some kind of special lifting device attached her to her hips, but eventually she did manage to stand on her own and ambled off like nothing had happened. Hooray!

Went back up to the house to find the garden full of cows... farmer had left the gate open when he brought the digger fortunately they were pretty easy to get back in - except the calf that was born this morning was missing. I found it behind the house and shouted to the others, but the farmer left, thinking it was in the field, when actually it was on the HOUSE side of the electric fence... Mr and Mr Cheery spent another 20 minutes trying to persuade the stupid creature to stand up and walk round the fields to the other cows - and miraculously we did finally succeed. Second cow rescue success!! 

Of course by that point it was nearly dark. I'd gone out at 6.30 to help clear the final bits out of the garage that's being dismantled tomorrow, but obviously cow rescues took precedence so we'll have to get up early to sort that out. 

Anyway, some progress...

HOME
Er, actually no progress on this today

GARDEN AND LAND
* got a phone number from farmer for a guy who might be able to replace the roof on the stable block. It's full of holes, and if we don't do it in the next few months too much weather will get in and we'll likely lose the building
* garage nearly cleared ready for tomorrow

MONEY
* farmer was talking about what to give us in return for fields. We have this rigmarole every year. I think he's doing us a favour, he thinks we're doing him a favour, and so far no money has changed hands at all, although he did remove our chimney for us last year. We'll see. I hate these bloody negotiations! our fields are so crap and soggy they're worth a max of £500 a year, probably not even that, so I'd happily let it go as the neighbours are so cheery and helpful! And are basically giving me one long lesson in cow husbandry  

Anyway, that's probably quite enough on top of a full day of work... wonder what excitement tomorrow will bring? First off, will we make it to the top of the drive with the recycling we forgot to put out before the recycling van turns up?? Can't bear the suspense!

South_coast

Surely protecting the house from being invaded by the marauding cows filling the garden can count as today's house job???

Just spotted I have a 🐄 emoji, how exciting 😀!

Fortune_Smiles

Morning Cheery.  We let our local, friendly farmer use our fields for sillage or sheep grazing.  In return he cuts our hedge rows, puts fertilizer down, tops when required.  We worked out that the cost of this work would be covered by how much we could charge for the use of the field so - quid pro quo 😀  Maybe there's some work your farmer can do for you in return.

Fortune x

Cheery_Daff

As far as I'm concerned they do more than enough keeping the grass down with the cows! And they run the topper over now and then (mostly to stimulate grass growth though). They've put a bit of fencing up (to stop next door's sheep getting in) and various other things. I don't need anything else, but I think farmer would feel happier doing something else. I expect it'll go on in this slightly awkward way for years  

No cow drama this morning, but much excitement as the geezers are here taking the garage down. We finished emptying it about 5 minutes before they arrived They're all dressed with white suits and big gas masks so it looks very dramatic! I keep peering over the top of the computer to watch them out of the window (I love watching other people work )

Karmacat

Cow adventures are amazing!  It's a real insight to what its really like to live in the countryside. 

I'm glad to hear your asbestos removers are suited up properly - the bad builders I had who put my garden gate up, the one that got stuck after 6 months, removed the asbestosy roof to my garden shed, and never wore any protective clothing.  They also tried to put it on my soil, and once I saw what they were playing at, I insisted that at least they took it outside.  Which they were reluctant to do - I'm sure they knew they were breaking the law, and just didn't care about putting me and themselves at risk.

Cheery_Daff

That's rubbish KC! These guys are a professional asbestos removal company so I would have been extremely worried if they weren't doing it properly! There are just a few bits of the frame left now. I can't see properly from where I'm sitting at my desk, so I'm quite excited about popping outside and seeing the view once it's finished! 

Anyway - BIG exciting things here - I think I might have made my internet connection about 50 times better! Overall the wifi is better than we had in Sheffield, but the house is quite long and in a kind of horseshoe shape, and some rooms are better than others. We got a booster thing for the living room, and Mr Cheery's laptop is plugged into that with an ethernet cable, but mine in the study does rather waft in and out, especially in bad weather. Recently I've taken to toggling off my mobile for video calls etc, but obviously that's not a long term solution (and the last couple of days the signal has been dropping on that too). 

Anyway. FINALLY decided to see if there was anything I could do - so far I've been hampered by the voice in my head that says 'but I don't know anything about internet connections!' Gave myself a good talking to - I'm an intelligent woman, and not knowing anything doesn't stop me from  even LOOKING at it. 

So I've been in the loft - why is the router in the loft? I have no idea. I think it went up there when we had the building work done last year, and never came down. Followed all the cables (through all the mouse droppings and dust - urgh), and realised that, other than a couple of plugs in a normal socket, there was only one cable connected in the loft itself - and that had a really long wire. 

Fortunately, the builders left a hole in the floor where the skirting board will go... which I managed to get the little box through - and have now got the router in the study about 2 foot from my laptop and GOODNESS ME THE DIFFERENCE IS AMAZING!! Can't believe I didn't do this months ago. Idiot I've just stuck the cables up with sellotape for now so I'll have to sort them out properly, but I can't tell you how happy this is making me!  

(and it *is* moneysaving, because I'll be able to knock my mobile back down to £12 a month (or even £10) from £20 now, hooray! 

Baileys_Babe

Our router is in the middle tiny loft along with the aerial. We connect our desktop computers with ethernet cables, to get wifi around our house we need to use 3 mesh routers. The main problem we have is our house is constructed out of stone most of the walls are at least 75 cm thick and some are as much as 1.5 metres deep.

When we rewired the house about a decade ago we added a huge amount of sockets and put ethernet points in most rooms, now I wish we had done every room. 

Such an improvement from when ds was little we lived part-time for a couple of years in a tiny cottage the only way to get the internet there was to hang the dongle on a cable out of the window 

Cheery_Daff

Ha, yes that does sound like an improvement BB!!  

Speaking of improvements... this is the view from the garden gate last night and now. Spot the difference! (Aside from the weather being better yesterday...)