Your Valentine card from Eggsy Pony
other wise known as a Valentine's newsletter
Happy Valentine’s Day
With
love & Best Wishes
from Eggsy Pony & Friends xx
Here we are the middle of February already, February the border between winter and spring. For us this time of year feels like we’ve broken the back of winter, even though we know the weather can still turn nasty, traditionally it’s when the hens start laying again, the birds have certainly been more chirpy these past few weeks.
The Fieldfare know a thing or two about Spring having flown thousands of miles from Scandinavia to spend the winter gleaning our orchards. They’re still filling the skies around the livery yard, which has neighbouring apple orchards, and filling our ears with their incessant chatter. They won’t make their journey home until Spring arrives, though they’ll leave here if they run out of the fallen apples to eat.
The rabbits are busy too, infuriating one of the other liveries by digging on the track near her paddock, she keeps filling it up and every morning they’ve dug it out again. She’s tried tarmac planings, rocks, even horse poo to no avail. I don’t think she’s noticed that the rabbits really don’t have an aversion to horse poo, they’re burrowing into the muck heap, it’s possibly their idea of a des-res with central heating during a cold spell.
Talking of muck heaps, we saw our first Bumble Bee of the year hovering over it the other day. A Queen Bumble Bee having awoken from hibernation seeking a new place to nest, they especially like old mouse holes already furnished with bits of warm fluff and straw.
You’ve probably heard that we’ve sadly lost Gingee, the stray who stayed to become our barn cat at Muddy Bottom, who then became a house cat when we had to move. Sadly he passed away earlier in February, we’re glad he had the comfort and warmth of a house for the last year of his life. There’s a bit about him, with photographs in The Eggsy Pony Diaries here on Ko-fi
Hansel the goose continues to live in the garden, we’re curious to see if he’ll develop any aggressive tendencies this breeding season, when he lived with the horses he got overly protective of Madeline attempting to prevent anyone from going near her. He hasn’t got female companionship in the garden so it will be interesting to see how he behaves over the next few weeks. We’ll keep you updated.
It’s over a year since we moved into livery and much to everyone’s relief we’ve all settled into our new way of living quite nicely now. With that piece of good news we’ll end this, our second newsletter, with thanks to all who read it, and special thanks to all of you who have subscribed. Thank you, enjoy the rest of February.
Love from
Eggsy Pony and Friends xx