Tuesday, 31 March 2020 08:25

31st March

Another week in these strange times we are living in. Happily so far the Hill Farm family are all well, although in danger of getting hypothermia before Covid 19! After a glorious week last week when the horses had a few days with rugs off and were basking in warm sunshine, its been frankly baltic up here and the heavyweight rugs back out again. 

The grass which was greening up nicely has ground to a halt, and its unbelievably dry now. After a long winter of incessant rain its hard to believe that we could now do with some! The who;e farm has been rolled and all the mess created by tractors and hooves in hock deep mud put back. The resurfacing of the round gallop is very nearly completed - that in itself has been a mission, and a big shout out to Dan Allbutt who has been doing the work under very difficult conditions. He has made a minimum of mess and we are well and truly into the final stretch now.

An equally big shout out to the team, who have had the onerous job of picking stones out of a couple of the bales of carpet that arrived contaminated (not a thing to be proud of from the supplier) with some stones, that were not visible until spread out. The hassle of taking it all off was just too much, so the team have been on their hands and knees picking the stones out before the top layer goes on. They frankly deserve a medal, as the bales of carpet stink when opened and I think cleaning the drains has risen above the least popular job to do! 

Frustrating really as once down the surface looks and feels amazing, but at least onto the final couple of yards today, so the end is nigh!

We have roughed off the pointers and some of the youngsters,as no where for them to go, but its too cold to just chuck them out, so in at nights for feeds and rugs very much still on. The rest of the string just ticking over currently and hope that we might start back on May 1st - although personally I have my doubts about that. I guess time will tell as the next couple of weeks statistics unfold.

All the store sales have been put back till late summer,and will be interesting to see what the lack of sales of the four year olds, will do to the store market.

All of ours string look really well, and are plenty fresh enough - neck straps in full use! 

Trying to wade through what help we can get in these difficult times is a tough chore too - lots of reading to do, but no real end goal at present. A massive task for the powers that be to sort out, but at least some decisions made which will hopefully enable us all to get through this unprecedented crisis.Its going to be very tough on many - including us - but we at least feel grateful to be living in such an amazing place and that largely our lives go on, at least in part, as normal.

 

We hope that you are all well, and managing to stay safe from this hideous disease, and that we will be opening the gates at Hill Farm before too long. Please do keep in touch & keep an eye on our facebook & Twitter pages for updates & pictures (I'm still rather struggling to get the pics on here!!)

 

Last modified on Tuesday, 14 April 2020 08:21
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