Too close for comfort

I understand there are now countless Blipers wanting to know the latest from my morning lurid adventures. -15°C, adjusted to -21°C with windchill factored in. The girls remain unimpressed by my semi-clad appearance.

At least the henhouse door worked but I still had to go out before midday and redo the whole thing so that the evening closing routine works again. It does.

Have to feel sorry for those who keep lots of animals in unheated sheds and barns. The animals are generally robust enough although we have now switched on an infrared lamp in the henhouse. Problem is generally water and for our 30 girls, it's not a great effort to go around with a watering can every few hours. But for larger animals such as sheep, pigs, cows and horses it can be an awful lot of work. Luckily we have heated waterpipe cables in the stables. Costs a fortune but saves a lot of effort and you often find that horses have a knack for knocking over large buckets of water and drenching the floor which turns in to an ice rink in minutes.

I hate to think what a cow drinks per day. A horse can consume 50 litres and in the days when we had four horses, that was lots of water carrying.

This evening as Angie was about to set off for the sauna, she announced I should have got out and photographed the fox she just saw checking out the henhouse, the horse stables, the muck heap and other outbuildings. All about 10 metres from the house!

She left, I put on my polar outfit, loaded the dogs in the car but only got as far as the gate. There was Angie's car abandoned, lights and motor on, but facing as if she was driving back in. Got out and saw her wandering back from across the fields.

"What were you doing?"
"Felt sorry for the fox and have put out some bones for him"

I got my Blip sorted but fear the worst.