It was supposed to be a fairly laid back weekend

Something went wrong with that plan.

Firstly husband had a mission. He was going to paint the woodwork in the dining room or bust. And he did it. Looks quite good too - shame about the paint smell and having to keep the windows open most of the day.

And I took the clippers to little Gemma who was supposed to go back to her owner this weekend. Except under all that fluff I found some lice. Ick ick ick. So I deloused her and said I would keep her a bit longer to make sure I have seen them all off.

Nothing for it when one horse has lice - bring them all in and delouse them all. But while doing that might as well get some wormer down their throats, and some feet could do with a trim.

So Sunday lunch looking for a new Sunday lunch place went by the bye as we hauled in horse after horse, applied lice treatment, wormer and farrier equipment to their hooves. We actually did all eight geegees in the end, which was a fairly good effort I thought. Especially as it was blowing a gale and most of the equines figured playing up was the order of the day. Even Ears who is usually a model of decorum stamped her feet and said she couldn't be bothered picking them up. The best behaved was little Eby who has been difficult with her feet since she arrived and required considerable persistance. This time for the first time ever she was perfectly behaved.

Along the way I had put the makings of a loaf of bread in the breadmaker. There was a ten second powercut at the point of about horse number 5 which didn't mean much until we took a break to improve our caffeine levels and found the breadmaker had turned off with the loaf well into its second rising. Consulting the manual and pressing all the buttons indicated that I couldn't instruct it to carry on from that point, that just isn't one of the options. So it became a quick batch of bread rolls - which stuck to the oven tray as I forgot to flour it. Reasonably edible so not all is lost. (though when keeping hens all baking failures get recycled very fast so nothing is ever wasted)

Then there was the tale of two washing machines. In the house we have one for normal things and out in the shed we have another one for farm things like horse covers, mud encrusted jackets after tackling calves in the mud, dirty rags that have served all sorts of dubious purposes, and the hair encrusted clothes I wore to clip Gemma. These clothes (the ones I wore to clip Gemma) I had dropped into a pile by the door ready to take out to the shed. Except husband dropped them in the inside washing machine. Three loads of washing later it is still spitting out clothes adorned with horse hair. Hopefully it will come off when they dry...

Now next week the cattle are due for a going over