And life moves on...

Actually I wasn’t sure whether to call this week’s blog, ‘And life moves on…’, or ‘Shattered!’ as both are appropriate. This time of year, this transitional period between winter and spring is crazy. There is just so much to do, and although I adopt the ‘hit the crocodile closest to the boat’ philosophy, which at any other time of year helps me prioritise, right now it seems to be working against me, as the bloody crocodiles seem to be climbing over each other to get at me, and I keep changing focus and now have a farm full of half finished projects.
You know how it feels? I don’t know if you can still get those kids toys where you have a flat picture in a frame cut into lots of square pieces with one piece missing, so you can move the pieces about to form a picture or mess it all up, but if you want to move one square, you have to move other squares out of the way in a complicated sequence first. That pretty much describes my land at the moment.
Sorry about the metaphors one after the other, that’s my allotted two for the blog so you’re okay, there won’t be any more.
Okay, so in a condensed form, this is what I’m facing: I need to bring all the wood that I have cut down in the woods into the stable to dry, but before I can do that, I need to move Maddy and her babies who currently occupy the stable. In order to move Maddy, I need to build her a new enclosure. To build her new enclosure, I need to cut straight, slim lengths of wood to use as fence posts. To cut the fence posts, I need to start burning some of the brushings from the last lot of wood so that I can get to them. But, in order to start burning, I need to move the horses out of the field that’s right next to the burning area.
No, no, don’t glaze over, there’s more…
I can’t move the horses up into the top field until I burn the brushings from the hedging I did up here. I also need to do work on the vegetable plot, and, and, AH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You see? The kids picture metaphor works, doesn’t it?
Last night I almost worked until it got dark. By quarter past seven I was completely shattered, and kept looking at the sky willing it to get dark so I could go home and have a glass of wine in the bath. I gave up at seven thirty, figuring it was almost dark, and last thing put the chickens to bed.
With spring in the air, the three cockerels have turned into little sods. They absolutely refuse to go to bed at night, and the only way I can catch them is to wait until one of them jumps on one of the hens and then grab him.
So last night, tired, aching, hungry and smelly, I had to stand in the middle of the chicken field waiting for the cockerels to get randy (which wasn’t long), and then when they did rush over and grab him mid-coitus, but, worried I might do some damage if I simply dragged him off, had to hold him gently until he had finished. I desperately wanted to laugh but I thought it might put him off.
Honestly, the things we do…