I'm glad he is in hospital as he has had pains a few times while being there and if he was here he would be worrying that he wasn't able to help me. I'm fine here on my own and can manage most things that need doing, at least with this weather I don't need to worry about running out of wood for the woodburner as wielding a chainsaw is something I can't do! It has always been me left at home to look after stuff as I was the goat milker so needed to stay and to do that everyday.
This morning two ladies nearly came to blows over the raspberries that I had just put out for sale. I was unloading them from a tray onto the stall when a lady from up the road stopped and said she might take all 7 punnets. Another car pulled up behind and the lady in that car said she had been past 2 minutes earlier to see if we had raspberries out, seen me walking from the house, turned round in the next gateway and came back to buy some. Meanwhile lady 1 was merrily loading all 7 punnets into her car and lady 2 was a bit put out that she wasn't going to get even 1 punnet. There was nothing I could do except apologise and say there were no more to go out for sale today. Lady 2 went off in a huff! Lady 1 didn't even seem to notice! I think I would have felt guilty for taking the whole lot.
STILL no rain so I had to fill up all the water butts with a hosepipe this morning using metered water - THAT HURT! We have 2 separate water supplies, the one to the farm buildings and campsite is metered but our house is still based on the old ratings value from when we moved in 21 years ago. Unfortunately there is no way to connect a hose to any house taps and I feel that that would be cheating anyway. You know about the watched pot that never boils, well a filling water butt never fills until you do something else for 5 minutes and then it overflows! It certainly makes you think about water supplies for crops in dry countries when you have to spend a lot of time moving and carrying cans of water - it's heavy stuff. One of the charities I support is Water Aid, they do brilliant work in many countries. Luckily in the UK there might get be rain here tomorrow, I hope there is. If the big tanks by the sheds get filled by rain they will flow automatically into the small tanks by the polytunnels which will save me a lot of work.
Thank you all once again for your thoughts and prayers. I just hope he gets to Papworth soon. Luckily he will go by hospital transport and it should only be an overnight stay there so I will not need to go. I shall just
Back tomorrow.
