Woke up to a bite on my left arm by a brown bush cricket during the early hours of the morning. The pain was sharp enough to wake me from a deep sleep but did not pierce the skin. I spent the next 30 minutes looking for the fella before I could drop off again. 😴💤🦗

RIP Ozzie

….and we’re off after a weather delay.

I loved my Series III & my V8 110 and would do it all again but I do appreciate the versatility of the Hilux & L200 🛻

Stuck in hospital for a week and going nuts not to be able to get out in the fields with the lambs & ewes in this weather. To put a tin hat on it the first drop of pheasants arrive at 4am in middle of next week; thankfully everything is ready. Look what my wife has dropped off

It looks like a cracking year for fruit; apples, pears, medlars, sloes and blackberries, to name what I see by my sheep field. Celtic folklore warns us not to pick blackberries after Michaelmas as the Devil ‘spits and urinates on them’. 😳.‘The life cycle of a blackberry’

…. and the majority are sold in the USA; a journey of 21,500 miles +/-.Buying local, seasonal and sustainably grown fruit and veg seems a sensible option to a simpleton like me.

A cracking place to keep some sheep and just outside Exeter!

With two sets of triples this creep feeder has worked a treat. The ewes no longer try to get in and the lambs come and go as they please. Driving rain can be a problem but we haven’t had any this year! .Gate from McVeigh Parker, Cullompton. 🐑

Fond memories of the Archie Coates & Jack Charlton episode of Channel 4’s ‘Jack’s Game’ on Pigeon Shooting. The opening music takes me back to dark Sunday afternoons in the early eighties.

A welcome sight. We’ve never released French Partridges and to my knowledge, neither has our neighbour for 5 years. I would like to think our habitat management; butterfly zones, wild bird strips, properly managed hedges, headlands and boundary strips is working. 🦋

1888, Village of Balcraig, Scotland. This fabulous photo captures blacksmith James MacDonald, shoeing a farm horse right outside his forge. Maybe I missed my true vocation; my grandad and two uncles were farriers and a third was a coachman in Stockton on Tees.

Today is the Feast of St Gelert c650. I remember sitting cross-legged in a Ton-yr-Ywen School assembly listening to the sad story of Gelert, Prince Llewelyn’s faithful dog, with a tear in my eye🥲.

Trip to our local farm Abbatoir tomorrow early doors. Sod’s Law one has flystrike. Clean as a whistle two days ago and today, three areas on his back and neck. This recent wet warm wet spell has seen a surge in flies around the place. Thankfully maggots don’t like Spot On. ☠️

Amazing cloud formation last night, just before the dimpse. ☁️☁️☁️

The starlings have gathered and are destroying the thatched roof of the Royal Oak near by.

Bloody flies are bad at the moment!.They’ve all been sheared and clean but the flies are irritating the young ewes. Anyone use/make a good deterrent? I’ve heard garlic, peppermint oil and citronella help. I’ve put one of these out…⬇️ 🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰🪰

Plenty of life left in this gate. A lovely old boy often said to me, “Bob, always carry a penknife, a shilling and a piece of string in your pocket.” .Wise words.

Good to see one of my songs on the festival CD🎶.

If I was wearing one I’d take my hat off to the @hotline electric fencer dynamic duo, in Newton Abbot. I took two Falcons in that had been trampled and broken by the cows. New leads, new casing, new motherboard, tried and tested £85 each. ‘Triggers Broom’ springs to mind 🧹