At the start.

First, I laid out some old planks of wood to define the size of the bed. Tan helped!

Cardboard and muck

Then I laid out a load of old cardboard boxes, weighing them down with small piles of muck to stop them blowing away.

The next stage

Having made certain that none of the cardboard was going to go AWOL I set to with the barrow and muck fork and covered the whole area with a load of muck.

And the next...

Once I was satisfied that there was a good layer of muck, I started covering that with top soil that had been saved when we were digging a trench. This is the half-covered bed.

Completion!

It took a surprising amount of topsoil to cover the whole thing, but was done eventually!

Come October, this was the result:

Half a hundredweight of tatties!

Meanwhile, underneath the growing potatoes, the cardboard had rotted away, leaving just a few pieces of tape to be dug up when I dug up the potatoes.

It’s going in the Annual Show on Friday. I’ll put up photos after that.

I’m taking 12 sheep and both horses (the horse classes are a bit low on numbers this year, so I’ve entered both of them).

Decided to wash their tails and manes this afternoon. Barnaby is an old pro. After a nominal (ooh, that’s cold!) movement from his back end, he just stood there whilst I washed his tail. I then washed his mane and he didn’t bat an eyelid (well, much).

Shanty was a very different case. I remembered that she hadn’t liked her tail being washed last year, so decided just to wash the end (the white bit) without getting water on her ‘dock’ the actual tail. Well, Victorian Maiden Aunt wasn’t in it. You’d have thought I’d made all sorts of improper suggestions to her! I managed to get the tail washed though, but after a trial jug of water on her mane (same reaction), I decided that she’ll just have to go well-brushed!

The sheep that are going have all been trimmed and all the lambs now have their ID tags.

I’ve finished the knitting that I’m going to put into the Industrial section of the Show.

Roll on Friday.

Fenella then arrived and we talked dogs whilst we drank tea and waited for the rain to ease off a bit. Then out to the field with the hoggs (last year’s lambs) in it.

Fenella had originally trained Tan, and I learnt so much just by observing and listening to the tone of her commands as she worked her with the sheep.

I now know how much to put into my voice and how to keep Tan listening to me. Hopefully I can put it into practice when I next work her with my sheep.

Get to the end of row 37 and I have 32 sts – 32! If the pattern is to be believed that should be 35. [Pattern says that at the end of row 39 I should have 36 sts.] I checked the Ravelry page to see if anyone had commented on lack of stitches – No. I checked my maths (always a good idea!). Ho, humm…

Having slept on it (not literally) I’ve decided that the correct number of sts is probably more important than correct number of rows, so am going to carry on increasing until row 45. Hmph…

Will post a photo when it’s got a bit further on.

Then she got comfortable!

Well, it's myVetbed!

We negotiated – i.e. she had a cuddle, then I got the photo I wanted!

Tan making herself at home.

The finished back