Food

We were running out of grass pellets for horse Rosie last week and Angie suggested at lunchtime on Friday that I should go over to the animal feed drying unit and buy a trailer full. She's the German and should know better - you don't go anywhere after 12:00, well 11:30 to be exact, on a Friday to a normal German business and try to find anyone still there or even the door open. Feierabend (knocking-off time), see you on Monday. I insisted she called them first and at 11:29 she heard with her own ears and not just from her always wrong husband that nobody would be about even if she came straight away. She was also told to not wait too long next week as there had been several large orders placed.

So this morning had to wheel out the trailer on the 3 or 4cm of overnight snow and head off the 3 or km to the factory. Being the type of old fashioned, country, agricultural, co-operative, semi-professional, semi-amateur business, everything takes ages. On weighbridge and wait while Angie tries to find someone who admits to being able to help. Drag them to weighbridge. Find PC on/off switch. Password? Password? Hhmmh. Asks Angie if she happens to know it. No. Shuffle over to Doris in office. Shuffle back. Should have known - "Passwort" . Car registration number? Put slip in printer, hit return .... nothing. Angie asks if printer switched on. "It worked last Thursday". Switch on printer.......

Shuffle out to yard and swings himself on to loader with a bucket the size of a semi-detached house and loads it full. Then decides he wants the trailer moved. Gets down and helps to detach trailer from car and push in to the hall. Then very adeptly unloads 1/20th of the bucket in to the trailer. And then shuffle back over the yard to weighbridge while I drive over and the whole PC/printer episode starts again.

Eventually leave with 560kg of pellets enough for probably two years as only one horse (Rosie) gets it as a supplement morning and evenings. Sultan gets colic from the things. Throw Angie and the dogs out half way and return home to unload by hand the 560kg in to large plastic drums.

Trailer back under cover but next time it rains will have to put it out to wash off the salt from the de-icing lorries. Trailer hardly ever gets used and the moisture/salt combination is evil.

Sundry other small jobs outdoors but eventually gave up when the bobble hat got too wet from the snow flurries. Tonight should be the last snow for a few days and in fact Thursday is sun lotion day: +7°C dry and sunny,  Friday increasing risk of snow and on Saturday very likely.  Fits perfectly with my diary.

Evening dog walk in the dark at -2°C with an ever increasing wind which is presumably bringing the warmer air. As always had to step to the side as Bello (see yesterday) swept by on his nightly inspection. We had seen him in the morning too! We weren't on his hunting patch but he has "other" interests there.

Blip is of the inside of the "animal feed drying plant" which is, depending on the weather (grass growth), in operation from May to end October. There follows weeks of cleaning and maintenance work before it runs down to a simple one person office business until spring. My description of the working methods is very tongue in cheek. They are all farming types who are at home on, in and around machines and the paperwork is not their forte and especially not for a troublesome car and trailer loaded with 560kg. Couldn't get the guy to talk much but he said they had done about 20,000 tons of pellets this year (I guess grass and maize) plus the drying of grass and straw bales.  Apparently the mechanical drying process retains much more of the vitamins and minerals. We took "cow pellets" this time but should have really got "horse pellets" which should have less protein. We don't need "Turbo Mules".