School holidays and Gin
This week has been the first week of half term and I feel like a shell shocked casualty of war already... How can one child who is beautifully behaved, have so much energy and stamina? I have always prided myself on being tough and able to cope with pretty much anything but I find myself counting the hours until I can have a gin without guilt (Saturday night, or possibly Friday this week!).
Bucket, the new pony has been amazing and we are trying to do different things with him every day, to grow Ella's confidence and ability. However that is only a small part of the day and being short staffed for a week and Greg working such long hours, I am very conscious of not wanting to palm her off on different people, so we have been riding out very early and then finding lots of jobs for Ella to do in the yard. To be fair she is amazing and loves spending time with the girls, always wanting to help and have something to do.
As we speak two of Greg's lads are gutting our hay barn, ready to disinfect it. It seems that there has been some bad hay in there and we are not taking any chances, luckily the chap that was supplying us was amazing and took away 68 bales yesterday, which means we can now get everything clean and scrubbed. I have bought 120 huge bales of hay that has been double wrapped by the farmer and it is beautiful, the horses love it and it has made me realise how bad the other stuff was.
We have been using Paul Cole's poly track gallop for the last couple of weeks, I find the woodchip that we normally use is riding a little quick without the rain for the bigger horses, so getting to the other one involves 20 mins trotting in each direction, plus having to go up it at least twice with each horse. It's ensuring that we (horses and ourselves) are getting fitter and fitter - my legs feel like I have been doing squats everyday...
Finally I have been interviewing all week for someone to fill Liddy's job and for another yard person, I am amazed how many people are looking to do yard work and have met some great people, I have a few of them doing a morning's trial over the next week and hopefully will find the right person very soon. I am still looking for a rider so if any of you know of anyone maybe you could spread the word please?
The horses are all coming along nicely and we should be running Willy, Star and Marmite within the next couple of weeks.
All I can hear at this moment in time is "Mummy, look at this", Ella has her etcha sketch and as I have been writing this I have had to look at 25 different pictures she has done - within the last 5 minuets. Bucket its your turn this morning...
Is it time for Gin yet?