A Better View 🌄

Fortune_Smiles

Seasidegal58 said:

Love the cheese chat!🧀

My DD arranged for me to receive a cheese advent calendar last month from a well-known London cheese company. I received a box of eight small pieces of different cheese over three weeks. It was a smashing present but even me, Cheese Lover Extraordinaire, couldn't get through it all!  In the end I took quite a few of the cheeses in date up to DD's when I stayed with them at Christmas. At least I had some help with them there!😁

The Brunost sounds very interesting- I never received any of that!

What a great gift Seasidegal.  I'll definitely bear those in mind next Christmas.

Fortune x

Fortune_Smiles

redofromstart said:

We got caught up in sympathetic to previous colleagues in a system that couldn't pay some years back. It ended up with us being required to show we complied with a purchase order description we had never had. Needless to say we did not, and eventually (very eventually!) got it paid but it taught us both not to carry on working on month three on mates rates based on trust sadly. 

savingholmes said:

If they end up being repeated slow payers - you could amend their contract to be say 50% upfront.

It's easily done Redo.  And some people just take advantage.  Mr F helps out our local landlord with his mole problem from time to time as a favour.  On several occasions the landlord has asked if Mr F will do the same for a member of their staff.  Mr F has refused - we don't know this person, this is not Mr F's day job, he's not insured to do this work and, although he's thrown a few beers or a bottle of wine occasionally, is not paid for this work.  Apparently the landlord asked again on Thursday and publically which made it very difficult for Mr F to say no.  So he said yes.  It's a 22 mile round trip, two times and during our precious weekend 😲  Mr F is not happy and neither am I - so when he goes back today he'll be letting her know this is a one off and leaving her some information about a local mole catcher 😉

I'm afraid they use a standard contract for all their external resource SH so it's not up for negotiation.  However, we don't have to agree to any new work and I think that's our bargaining chip going forward.

Fortune x

Fortune_Smiles

Watchful

Not bad but could do better on the diet front yesterday 😆  On the up side:

• no caffeine (gives me migraine when I stop drinking it)
• no hot chocolate (a prevously much enjoyed bedtime treat for Mr F and I but very calorific and makes us sleep badly)
• boiled egg with marmite toast for breakfast
• Cabbage Soup with buttered sour dough baguette for lunch (minus the bacon and felt very virtuous)
• Root Vegetable & Borlotti Cobbler  with green beans for supper (used up half of the remaining gruyere)
• a handful of cashews (healthy snack 👍)
• a couple of cereal type clusters bought by a friend for me to try (mistake as I'd assumed they weren't UPF but discovered afterwards that they were 😲)
• the chunk of gruyere that didn't get used in supper 😲 (why do I do this).

Anyhoo we're travelling in the right direction at least.  There's soup and cobbler left over for meals today and we've had porridge with fruit, nuts and seeds for breakfast.  A little ice cream might be involved but that's homemade and it's UPF that I'm avoiding not sugar.

It was a relaxed day yesterday.  I got some chores and paperwork done.  Mr F did some gardening but had to interrupt his day to help someone out with their moles 😠  He's got to go back tomorrow but will be making it clear he is not the local, free mole catcher for all and sundry.  Particularly as he doesn't like doing it when it's necessary let alone when it's for aesthetic reasons!

When we were closing the blinds last night we noticed a hopeful sparrowhawk sitting on the roof of the Annexe.  He was watching the bird feeder.  Sadly for him, all the small birds had taken to their roosts by then.  If only he'd known about the charm of goldfinches roosting in the laurel in our courtyard just a few metres from his perch.  I had some sympathy with him - I've been hopefully and fruitlessly watching our business bank account for weeks 😆

Enjoy your Sunday peeps.

Fortune x

Cheery_Daff

Grrr to people taking advantage, and I hope Mr F can stay strong next time! I never really thought about moles much, but we have SUCH a proliferation here. Mr Cheery was at one point really worried about them undermining the chicken run enough to destabilise a wall of it, so we did end up catching one (just one!) Obviously that made no real difference, and now the chickens are gone, it doesn't matter so much. Although I often fear I am in danger of breaking an ankle when I take the compost out. Can't bring myself to catch them just for that though, even if Mr Cheery does moan about it every time he goes outside 🙄😂

Fortune_Smiles

Cheery_Daff said:

Grrr to people taking advantage, and I hope Mr F can stay strong next time! I never really thought about moles much, but we have SUCH a proliferation here. Mr Cheery was at one point really worried about them undermining the chicken run enough to destabilise a wall of it, so we did end up catching one (just one!) Obviously that made no real difference, and now the chickens are gone, it doesn't matter so much. Although I often fear I am in danger of breaking an ankle when I take the compost out. Can't bring myself to catch them just for that though, even if Mr Cheery does moan about it every time he goes outside 🙄😂

You have to trap them if you want to use farm machinery or have cattle/sheep/horses on the land.  The holes and subsequent collapse of the land can cause damage to machinery or lead to livestock spraining or breaking their legs.  They can also spread diseases in livestock by distributing Clostridium and Listeria from the underground soil.  We try to live and let live otherwise.  We have very few moles here to be fair as Mr F traps any that appear quickly, before they have time to breed.

Employing a mole catcher can be a very expensive business which is why people are asking Mr F.  We don't mind doing the odd favour for a friend but we don't even know some of the people that ask 🙄

Fortune x

Cheery_Daff

Well, that is cheeky indeed. We just bought a couple of traps and did it ourselves. We caught one quickly, but I wasn't convinced they were going to undermine the chicken run myself, and Mr Cheery seemingly wasn't convinced enough to actually do anything about it other than complain, so now they run amok. Oddly enough, mostly confining themselves to the garden rather than the fields 😂

beanielou

I cannot believe the sheer cheek of some people. 

Fortune_Smiles

Cheery_Daff said:

Well, that is cheeky indeed. We just bought a couple of traps and did it ourselves. We caught one quickly, but I wasn't convinced they were going to undermine the chicken run myself, and Mr Cheery seemingly wasn't convinced enough to actually do anything about it other than complain, so now they run amok. Oddly enough, mostly confining themselves to the garden rather than the fields 😂

They like cool, moist soil so maybe that's why they prefer your garden.  Plus the mole hills are easier to see in a lawn - they may be silently mining away through the fields with no visible evidence .😆  They don't like each other so an acre of land would support maybe 3 to 5 moles.  It might look like a whole army of moles is digging up the lawn but, in an average garden, it's likely to be just one, or two if it's breeding season.

Did you know the collective name for moles is a 'labour'?  Very apt as they can tunnel 5 metres in an hour 😲  Your chicken run could definitely have been undermined.  In shallow soil the burrows are largely on one level, but elsewhere, the tunnel system may be elaborate, multi-tiered, running from just below the surface to about a metre down, and covering up to half an acre.

Fortune x

greenbee

I think Mr F should issue an invoice, and if they person objects, explain that he has recently been made redundant so can't afford the fuel/time away from job hunting unpaid. And then contact the commercial mole catcher, explain that he'll be sending people his way, and to confirm his prices so that if anyone asks in future he can quote something outrageous (and also only have availability so far in the future that people will eagerly accept the details of the other person). 

So far I haven't seen any signs of moles here and I'm hoping I don't as I find trapping them tedious. 

Fortune_Smiles

greenbee said:

I think Mr F should issue an invoice, and if they person objects, explain that he has recently been made redundant so can't afford the fuel/time away from job hunting unpaid. And then contact the commercial mole catcher, explain that he'll be sending people his way, and to confirm his prices so that if anyone asks in future he can quote something outrageous (and also only have availability so far in the future that people will eagerly accept the details of the other person). 

So far I haven't seen any signs of moles here and I'm hoping I don't as I find trapping them tedious. 

😂😂😂 I think if Mr F charged it would be a great disincentive to them 😂😂😂

Ultimately, neither of us like killing creatures - everything has it place and purpose and who are we to be judge and executioner.  We do it reluctantly, only when necessary and when other more humane means have been exhausted.  So it's wrong on many levels to ask someone else to come and sort out your creature issues when they have not chosen to do that as a job.

Not to mention the liability issues if someone's pup was to dig a trap up 😲

Mr F is going back to mole lady in a minute to check and remove the traps and will be armed with a copy of a local mole catcher's contact details 😉

Fortune x