Horses, rain, sheep and useless software - oh, and a big CJS Weekly too.

With more rain threatened (promised) TB decided to risk the fords and move the last two horses up to their summer pasture on Monday morning.  Apart from a sore shoulder when Titian remembered he was a racehorse and took off for home it all passed uneventfully.  All five equines are now blissfully reunited and strip grazing their way across the top field.  The rain started on Monday night so it was perfect timing, the river is now very deep and there's no way they would be able to cross for quite a while.  It feels like it has not stopped raining since, TB's top field is now in two halves, a lovely lush green side and a brown paddled side where the horses are grazing.  It's so wet and the mud so deep (on both sides although only visible on the horsey side of the fence) we're thinking of investing in some rice seed!

 AWs ewe, Blossom, went into labour on Sunday night, she was struggling so investigations were required.  AW could feel a small head and feet but they didn't seem right, being out of practice (their first ewe, Blossom's Mum, had lambed for years without any problems) she wasn't quite sure and called her in-laws to come and take a look.   The first lamb was delivered but it had been dead for a while, over a week they think, and it was blocking the way for the second one.  He arrived safely and is huge but the troubles are not over, the dead lamb has upset Blossom's natural rhythms and although she produced colostrum initially there is only a very small amount of milk and so the new arrival is being bottle fed for now.  AW's 2½yr old daughter has named the male lamb Bambi, we have no idea from where she heard or found the name but it's firmly fixed now!

Poor AW is not having a good week, she signed up to take part in a webinar from home yesterday afternoon.  Towards the end of we received an email with the subject line, "I want to scream!" First the app for the ipad couldn't be found so she'd use a laptop instead but the software for the webinar wasn't compatible then finally in desperation tried the desktop but being at the end of the broadband string it took over half an hour to download and when it did finally launched the software decided that the connection was not strong enough for the files being transferred.  Obviously only intended for people in town with superfast broadband.
Back to quill and parchment...

Which this week has been working overtime to produce a big CJS Weekly, 20 pages this edition with lots of news about 'the drought' although here in soggy North Yorkshire we're thinking it must be the wettest drought on record, the second part of the training calendar and those all important jobs, 35 new paid posts of which 32 came direct to CJS plus 19 volunteer placements.  We're also asking for your feedback on some proposed new features.
Paper editions are already falling off the printers, digital ones will be live and emailed later this afternoon.