Midsummer's Day - Longest Day of The Year!

Beloved of Shakespeare and Druids, not to mention Skippy, who is down in Wiltshire at Stonehenge as we speak, today is, indeed Midsummer's day. This is the day that the longest hours of daylight happen and the shortest night. Think about this; it means the nights are now drawing in again! Oh, joy! And all we've had is rain - there's no justice.

In fact the last day or two have been lovely, although the nights have been wet and nasty, but it's nice to see the sunshine, and get the washing dry.

AAaaanyway, here are 2 pictures of the sharp end of Winston. It is with this weapon that he (and his sisters, similarly equipped) have destroyed a large portion of our pasture, and have had a whale of a time doing it.

These two beauties are Lilly and Violet; note how careful they are not to touch the wire? That's the electric fence. Oh, the squeals when one of them touches it - and the running about in panic and the flapping of ears! Funniest thing on the patch!

Quick picture of Fluffy, the Silkie Hen, who is, of course, broody again. Sun's out; Fluffy goes to the nestbox and sneakily steals other chicken's eggs and takes them for her own family. Fortunately, this time she IS in the nest box and so we won't have any little fluffy surprises like we had last year! She gets turfed out morning and evening, so that she remembers to have a drink and some food. It's a really strange thing, broodiness! They go into a kind of trance and have no idea of the passage of time - apparently they have been known to die of thirst!

Daisy.

This is the kind of damage they can do in your pasture when having a piggin' good time! Fortunately it won't take much time to recover once the porcine ploughs have gone to the Great Spirit In The Freezer - probably just in time to receive a lot of grazers!

Ah, well, if you're not offering food, we'll go back in the house out of this hot sun! Don't you just love those tails!??

Lilly, The Pink (and Black)!

Violet The Violent; loves nothing better than 'killing' a paper sack or a cardboard box! She shakes it like a dog with a rat - I wonder what she thinks when she's doing it??

Nice photo of Bluebell, which is not only her name, but her breed. She lays enormous eggs and gets really, really fierce when she is broody. I have to put a bucket over her head to collect the eggs from under her! Scary!

I think we may have a mouse problem in the feed shed. All I wanted to do was sweep out the old crumbs from the pig nuts - and this is what I found! We have taken all the food out and will set traps.

And, finally, This is a picture of The Bloke. It is a small figurine they have produced to publicise his new film "Shrek The Third" which is where he was when he didn't answer his phone a few months ago. Don't believe that his feet are this small in real life, the camera does, indeed, lie.