Blissful country life

I can't believe we are here nearly 10 months now! Absolutely no regret moving to this beautiful country side, although we started with a lot of stress but hey, didn't life full of stress, up and down? I am Bless with what I have now, my lovely husband Colin, my wonderful pack of shelties, each and everyone of them have their own unique personality; and some most amazing friends that stand by me when I need you. 

photo courtesy of KK

You probably have noticed that I am blogging more often these days :) Well, the weather is too hot for me to go out and do jobs around the farm. I try to keep the dogs in as well to stop them from over heating. Poor Sonic just don't understand why he is not allow out. He is a farm dog, he loves the outdoor space wehave. He normally sit on The Ridge and watching the world goes by ... the Farm is rather secure with good fencing and hedges, honestly, the boys will not escape. If they take themselves out (normally to chase rabbit), they quite happily return when called. I am more worry about the girls, especially Sipzie and Seren. These two are just pure hooligan. Once they are off, THEY ARE OFF! You won't believe that until this point, I still need to keep them on the lead most of the time. They have the instinct to CHASE! Sigh ~ my girls are keeping very busy LOL. Thank God Spie has been really good, most of the time! 

Sonic the watched dog

We are taking this year to improve all our grassland. We have a lot of thistle growing in some of the fields, especially one of them is full of it! We have been spraying them and hopefully, they will die off soon and would not return for the next few years. This farm has not been work or properly look after for a long period of time before we bought it, so there's a lot to do to maintain the farm to good level. 

A lot of farmers are cutting hays at the moment. It's a dusty, dirty, messy job. It's not bad if you have a new tractor with air-conditioning. You will be dust free and cool inside while working. Don't think we can afford one! These tractors are so expensive!

All our land are out for sheep and horse grazing at the moment. They are good eater but they are fussy eater too. There are some (a lot acturally!) very annoying grass that is so tall and sticky, whenever I took the dogs out to our fields, they all came back with sticky fur and lots of grass seed on them. Yuk! I don't know how to get rid of them apart from brushing off. I have to sprinkle some talcum powder, not so bad on sable dogs but the black ones turn white! I managed to get the sticky bit off on their body but I can't get the sticky bit off their feet and underneath their stomach. It's such a messy job everyday! Brushing 8 shelties everytime we came back from a walk :(

Lately, me and Maureen (our lovely horse lady) been taking the dogs out for country walks or canal walk every evening. It's lovely to give the dogs a new scenery and they love to be OUT again! Sometimes, we walk miles and miles and miles ... we forgot poor Sing was struggling and we ended up carrying him home :)

Oh, my new adventure ... eggs hatching! I fancy some Indian Runner Ducks to practice some domestic herding with the shelties. I know it's easier to go and buy already sexed ducklings but Colin thought it will be more fun if we can hatch our own :) He bought me this incubator for my birthday. I bought some hatching eggs from eBay. 

I have 18 Indian Runner Duck eggs from 2 different people and so far, 4 eggs are not fertile. They still have another 10-15 days before hatching. I've also got some chicken as well. I don't really know much about chicken as I am far more interested in duck :) While browsing through eBay, I chose Brahma and Silkie. I bought 6 Lemon Pye Brahma and 6 White Silkie and it turn out to be that they are the best mothers :) Again, not all eggs are fertile. I've picked up the non-fertile eggs and fed them to the foxes :( So far, we hope 2 silkies and 4 Brahma will be peeking soon. 

As you can see my incubator indicate we are in Day 19 today, so anytime from now that the chicken will be hatching soon ...

Come'on little chick, brooder is ready!