That'll be another weekend gone then.

I thought I would have so much more time to myself but as is often the case, you are actually busier when you don't go out to work full time.

Saturday was the Llangadog Carnival; a local event that we attended to raise awareness of the Trust on a local level. Doesn't that sound like I have worked in the modern world?



We couldn't take any ponies off site due to our strangles so we "borrowed " Corky and Suzie, two magnificent animals we have locally at loan homes and headed the procession right behind the Carnival queen. In the photo you can see the two horses, Suzie is in front with Bethan on board, Corky (all 17.3 hh of him) just behind. We walked through the village to the Rugby Club and stayed the afternoon manning the Lluest stall. Despite earlier rain it stayed fine all through and though we made no money at our stall, at least we made some more contacts.


A lot of our job is all about contacts and networking. You meet 25 people and hope that one of those will make a donation or perhaps know meet someone who knows someone else, someone who could help with fund raising or can spread the word about what we do. It's very hard work I have to say. On Saturday I met a woman from Arizona who is into rescuing the mustangs of the Western United States. Now that would be an interesting link to have, her rescuing mustangs and the Trust involved in rescuing Welsh Mountain ponies. I gave her a leaflet and hope that she contacts us when she gets home. You never know what could come out of that sort of contact. They probably have the same problems rescuing mustangs as we do apart from perhaps laminitis due to rich grass. There isn't a whole lot of rich grass in Arizona I should imagine, not that I have ever been there. I lived in Upstate New York which is about 2,000 miles from Arizona. Be nice to go on a fact finding mission though just to see what they do there. At least we would be guaranteed sunshine and no rain.

Into July now aren't we?

Somebody tell the grass to stop growing please, it is all I seem to do at the moment. Where I come from in Upstate New York the grass has stopped growing by July. Here it just goes on and on. And the edges, God save me from edges. When I die my idea of heaven will be somewhere that the grass is always green and tidy but never requires any maintenance. Did you know that before the lawn mower was invented, men cut the grass on country estates using a scythe and were accurate to a quarter of an inch long? Isn't that something? Twenty first century man can't achieve that unless it is on a golf course.

The donkeys look a bit of a mess at the moment. Adrian is going to find out if this eye rubbing is a "donkey thing" or if it is just something that Millie has taught the rest of them to do. With that and conjunctivitis they all look pretty skanky today. We had to put stuff in Eeyor's eyes, he is a dead certainty for conjunctivitis but the other three donkeys are on hold although they all have raw patches running from their eyes down the nose from the rubbing. There are 5 others we treated for conjunctivitis today as well, looks like hay fever but it isn't. Trouble is that it is quite contagious so if we aren't careful, the whole lot will get it and we have been there before.

Also had a phone call to say another pony is coming back in from a loan home so that will be 37 and another one we can't shift for a while. Apparently it isn't getting on with some other horses that are on the site so he is coming in for his own safety. We will soon have to put them on coat hangers in the wardrobe to find room for them all if we can't lift our quarantine soon.

Hot, hot, hot

And so it is up here so I don't know how they cope in the cities. I managed to do some work outside this morning, my fruit garden looks 100% better but round about noon I had to give in.

More problems with the animals, this time the donkeys. They get really hot and uncomfortable in this weather and have been rubbing their faces on trees and posts etc. The all have bare patches on their faces and Millie our Poitou donkey has a big scratch down her face halfway to her nose. Looks very strange and very uncomfortable. Adrian and Tabby have bathed it in tea tree oil to soothe it and keep the flies off but she will still rub.

Adrian is in the barn now with the clippers; every summer we try and clip Millie off. The Poitou donkey is really hairy, it has a coat a bit like an afghan hound actually. As a result anything you put on her tack-wise slides round. Clipping her down as far as we dare-well, as far as Millie will let us- sort of gives us a fighting chance to stay on her back and not end up hanging underneath her belly or sliding over the top of her head like I did once. As I type Adrian is all in one piece and despite the odd rear hoof flicking up, Millie is being very cooperative about it all. Trouble is that she is easily bored and he may only get one side done before she decides she has had enough and won't stand still or wrenches the clippers out of his hand. She does that with a smile on her face as well, a huge joke to a donkey.

Also arrived today was the dvd of our television debut. We were one of four groups of people, oddly enough one other couple came from Ipswich, that's two of us from East Anglia looking for new homes. Interesting isn't it? I wonder why?

Just arrived is our first foray into on line grocery shopping from a well known supermarket. We worked out how much it would be to take our Ford Ranger into a large enough town to do a reasonably priced big shop and the amount that we were charged for them to come out and deliver it to my door was several pounds cheaper. We have to go at least 6 miles to get a decent shop and a really big shop would be 30 miles from here easily. That's one of the disadvantages of living up on a mountain. My dream is to grow enough of my own stuff and hopefully have a milking goat as well to stop me having to dispose of all those plastic milk bottles that you get. I fear that is some time in the future though. And if you look at it, the driver is delivering all round this area so that means there aren't an extra lot of cars polluting the atmoshpere. Rather him in a hot and stuffy vehicke today than me, he looked well broiled.

Well everybody I'm back again.

Sorry I wasn't around this weekend but I was in Northern Ireland to help with Alex's Silver Lining Appeal as you know and I am only just now getting myself back to sort of normal.

It was some weekend. The garden party was a huge success, so many people coming to support Alex through her chosen charity. Don't know what the total is yet so wouldn't presume but I know it will be a good one and I can only say a huge thank you to all the people there who were so kind to Tabby and myself, offering superb hospitality and great friendship. Most of all though I thank Alex who I think I will always see as a courageous and inspiring woman who puts all of the rest of us to shame.

We all have problems in our lives that niggle and seem huge but we can go to bed and most times wake up in the morning to find the solution. Alex and the millions of people like her wake up in the morning knowing there is no solution. There is always hope though. As Lluest's charity motto says, "In the face of uncertainty there is nothing wrong with hope."

I can honestly say that when I watched Alex move through the day on Saturday, I could understand that sentence.

I think she may still be incarcerated in the hospital today so don't know if she will read this till she gets out but I think I speak for all of us here when I say that we all hope for the best for her.

Oh heavens, I've gone all emotional.

Meant to be

It seems that it was indeed meant to be that we should come to Lluest.

This is a follow on from my previous post; the comment about Jeanine McMullen piqued my curiosity and I did google the good lady. According to a thread I found on another website she lives somewhere here in Llanddeusant. That is about the biggest coincidence that could have happened. Our postal address here is actually Llandduesant. How spooky is that?

I read her books and before that I listened to the Radio 4 programme "A Small Country Living." Jeanine McMullen was a big inspiration to me, removing to a smallholding and making a life for herself. I realised I wanted to do something like that. It made no difference to me that her books were all about the 70's and that things probably would have changed. And as Adrian was of the same mind we went for it.

When we acquired Merlin our greyhound, I recalled that she'd had a greyhound or perhaps Whippet that it was also called Merlin and when we agreed on the name, I remarked that Merlin was part and parcel of our hunt for a new life. By that time we were well and truly looking for something, we knew not what, but we both knew we would find some sort of place we could go and Merlin's very bizarre arrival was sort of an omen to me. Some time I will have to tell you about that, it was really very strange.

Anyway time went on and I forgot all about Jeanine McMullen and the books and then we found this place in Wales and I was again reminded about it all again when I noticed a big old ash tree near the side of the barn.

Just like in the book, "Wind in the Ash Tree." It all fell in place, we sold the house in Suffolk in 6 weeks to the very first people that looked at it, and exactly 6 weeks after the sale we moved here.

And now to find that the lady that inspired me so much actually lives in the same parish as the one we have found ourselves in seems to me to be the final piece of our puzzle if you like, we have come the full circle and ended up right where we belong.

If I can find out an address, I will write a letter to her and thank her for getting us to the right place. I wouldn't expect a reply, not my style but I feel tht I owe the lady a lot.

How many people can do this on a Sunday afternoon? I suppose the answer is how many people want to but I like it. I have always wanted to be able to take the goats for a walk and living here I can and I can take the dogs with me as well which is even nicer. It is something that strangely I have always fancied doing. Another dream realised.

The small goat in front is Kaiser (Bill) and the huge brown lump with the flappy ears that always manages to keep herself in front of me is Violet. She isn't a milker nor of course is Kaiser but I don't care, I like my goats. Yesterday I worked all day on making up two new information boards for someone to take to the Cwm Ddu fete on the 27th June, the same day we will be in Northern Ireland so afterwards to clear my head I took the dogs up the field and the goats joined me. Today I got Adrian to take a few photos just to prove I did it.


A few more photos that I took this morning then. I wanted to try and get the purple haze of grasses that you see in the field. I think I have captured it.

Isn't that just the biz? And one of the grasses themselves. It is nearly up to my knees in that field. Soon be time to try and get someone to cut it for hay. We have tried for the last 2 summers and failed. Most of the contractors are too busy to do small fields, they want to do hundereds of acres, not the 6 or 7 we have. As hay is one of our biggest expenses here, we would like to do our own and the grass contains a lot of herbage that our ponies thrive on. It is better for them than some of the posh hay we end up buying.


























And just a couple of the dogs this morning, can't resist it. If you recall I said they run hell for leather for no apparent reason. I think it is the noise of the grasses that fascinates them.

























So that's another day done and dusted. I really don't know where the time goes. I have been working all day apart for the these two sorties into the fields and I still haven't transplanted the cabbages. Did cut the back grass though. That takes an hour and a half on it's own. Hard work. I shall definitely transplant the cabbages tomorrow.


Off now to make spaghetti sauce and perhaps throw together a cake without using any eggs as our solitary hen has gone on strike.

shearings and meetings

Been a hectic couple of days up here one way and another. Also rather disappointing as our much awaited television debut didn't take place. Monday should have been the date and I checked my e-mail from the producer but we didn't appear so it must be next week. There was I clearing off the mantle shelf for my BAFTA and it didn't happen. Oh well, fame comes at a price I guess and I must be more patient.

Now then, the picture above is of two recent additions to my flock. The one with horns is Gregory and the other is named Timothy. Not sure what breed they are, Gregory is badger faced and Timothey has a bit so Suffolk in him but heaven knows about the rest, I don't think I have ever met such a large sheep, Timothy's feet are bigger than mine and I reckon he is a lot bigger than Cquirt, the Shetland pony. A couple more photographs of this pair are called for I think

Gregory is a very handsome sheep and knows it. I understand that castration came only after he did a runner from his previous home one spring time and was found several weeks later entertaining the ladies in another farmer's field. I believe that there were lots of Gregory look alikes in the field that year.

This is Timothy, a magnificent guy. But I am afraid it is Tim, Tim, nice but dim as there isn't a lot going of between the ears unless it is food related .

They are now living with my girls, 5 Balwen ewes we bought last year. They are probably less than half the size of Gregory let alone Timothy but after a day or two of not being sure, everybody gets on together very well.

Better than I had hoped actually as yesterday I had to to take them for shearing. The farmer at the bottom of the hill offered to do my sheep with his or at least let me shear them on the same day and he gave me a ring in the morning. First problem of course was to get them to his farm, he offered to bring some of his sheep along to coax the Balwens out of the field but I was pleased to find that as I rattled a bucket Timothy and Gregeory followed me so the girls followed them and we went out of the bottom gate, onto the road, across the bridge and down to the farm. How good was that? The farmer saw Timothy and blanched a bit I have to say. He has big sheep but not that big. Anyway bless him, the farmer did Gregory and Timothy and one of the girls and I did the other 4 girls. They are all bald now in a sheep sort of way. The girls had never been sheared before so weren't keen and being Balwens (semi-wild mountain sheep), tried their normal tricks of either trying to jump out of the pen or trying to thread themselves through the gate but all went well though I am afraid there was no point in keeping their fleeces as they were in so many bits that all they are fit for is chucking. I was shot to bits after only 4 small ones so how professional men do hundreds in a day is beyond me away. Took me several minutes to stand upright again.

But it's done for another year and they are wormed as well. Everybody looks several pounds lighter apart from Timothy who even without the wool still looks like he could lose a pound or two and not notice. In fact I am considering changing his name. I think we should call him Ty Bach as he is very much like the little brick building we have in the middle of our back garden. It's our icon, the outside toilet and Timothy is built like a brick....well perhaps I shall go no further.