My Dad's New Crazy Idea

My dad, as I am sure many of you out there can sympathise with, is one of those Dads who pretty much every week comes up with a new outlandish idea to solve an on going problem or tackle a big DIY project. The example my family always use to highlight this is the bird table he once built. It currently sits on a 45 degree angle and hangs off the garden fence by a few screws and a bit of rusty bracket but as my Dad says, at least it has a perch for the birds to sit on!

This always causes much amusement whenever it is brought up over meal times and things like that, but it really does typify our Dad's imagination. Another thing about my Dad is that he is a farmer. Well actually he just likes to pretend he is a farmer, really he sells fertilisers to farmers and stuff like that, and keeps a pair of wellies in his boot at all times. That kind of a farmer. However, a couple of years ago my sister suddenly decided that she wanted some chickens. So my family did the most rash thing they have ever done in their lives. We decided to get chickens.

We spent a few weekends building chicken runs (which I designed, just thought I should point that out. Why my parents trusted me to design and build a chicken run, heaven only knows) and getting everything ready for the arrival of 4 new members of the family. With me and my sister solemnly promising to look after them, and then of course not looking after them, my Dad has sort of started a farm in our garden. we now have 12 chickens, numerous vegetables growing in random corners of the garden and a greenhouse, as well as I believe 2 grape vines, with the intentions that one day they may grow enough grapes for us to actually make some wine from (it's never going to happen).

Now Farmer Dad is on the hunt for some more stuff to put in his farm... trouble is he has sort of ran out of space in the garden. Naturally he has turned to the family smallholding in the Yorkshire Dales, where we now spend our weekends and holidays... And any other free time we have...

One of the fields that belongs to my Great Uncle, sits behind 3 lovely holiday cottages which as you may or may not be aware we are currently in the stages of "doing up" slowly but surely, to the extent where we just spent our family summer holiday fitting a new kitchen. And painting windows. Standard.

Anyway this field has 3 problems: Long grass, nettles and rabbits. A lot of rabbits. Think Wallace and Gromit and then some. My Dad's solution to these problems... wait for it... Get some sheep. That is right. My Dad would like to get a to quote "small flock of sheep" (apparently they don't like being on their own, ya know, because they are highly sensitive creatures) to keep the grass down and expose the rabbits so that they all "bugger off." And these are to be kept in a field 130 miles away. Actually 131 to be exact. 

The thing is though, I may mock my Dads crazy ideas, but they are ingenious, I have to give him that. So you never know, in a year's time I could be writing a post to you from the lovely dales of Yorkshire surrounds by thousands of sheep.

The trouble with this whole thing is, is that all I will be able to sing on the journey up there is "It's Shaun the Sheep, It's Shaun the Sheep" And I don't think there is any more to that theme tune so I could be a long drive up the A1/M1/AM1/(A)(M)1/North Road Thingy...

Thanks for reading!

Follow me on twitter for further updates on the sheep... and whether my Dad has been taken to the lunatic asylum yet @peachy146

My Summer Holiday

Apologies for no posties for a long time, but that is basically because I have been on my summer hols. Nowhere exciting and even more boring when I tell you what I spent my summer holidays doing!

I drove up the M1 for the third time this year in Lucy and arrived in lovely sunny (really it was rainy, I could barely see 20 yards in front of me...) Yorkshire. For 2 weeks we stayed in the cottages in a little village in Wensleydale: Home of Wensleydale cheese, funnily enough. 

For those 2 weeks, we spent our time being very productive. We fitted a new kitchen into one of the cottages, repainted all the window frames and sills, as well as chopping down half the foliage on the nearby railway embankment so to quote me dad: "We could see the steam trains properly."

Why, I hear you ask, did we spend our summer holiday doing DIY and gardening projects. Well that is a very good question. If you ask my mum and dad it is so that we can enjoy the cottages properly in the future, but if you ask me and my sister, considering the fact I am going to university next year and won't be about to enjoy the cottages, I say it was slave labour. I suppose we did get a MacDonalds and a curry out of it though!

Nevertheless, I did spend a lot of time at my 88 year old great uncle's farm, which is no longer actually working if you like, but there is still everything there. So our 2 projects were to start the 1972 Land Rover Series 3 and also to start the 1951 David Brown tractor. Now that was something special in itself. I has so much history on the farm. My uncle was saying that when the farm was operational and fully functioning, that tractor arrived new on the farm in 1951, an has been the workhorse on it ever since. It is one truly beautiful piece of machinery and not only that, but my uncle bought another tractor exactly the same which he used for parts, and another with a front loader on it so he could pick up the bales of hay.

So that was my summer "holiday." I put that in inverted commas, because that is what it was sold to me and my sister as by the rents. It was far from! 

Thanks for reading!

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146