Bright and Breezy.

The wind is still blowing down from the cold north  but it's been bright and sunny. We worked outside as a family, with Peter as technical adviser, Vytas as chainsawer and myself as general carrying away person. Today's main achievement was to take down the tallest tree in the above photo safely. The one next to it is not in a good position to get down but hopefully we'll get some of the others down. Already the view is opening up into the field and woodland next door and I'm looking forward to more sun in the garden.

It's a good thing that Peter has had a lot of experience in tree cutting. Even so this mother's heart was worrying about possible accidents. But I kept my worries to myself and everything went to plan.  

I spent most of my time clearing brush and wheeling barrow loads of wood over to our temporary wood pile. I also did some work to the pond. Since last summer when it didn't rain for a long time the water level tends to drop quite quickly. The pond was simply dug into the clay soil and I presume that the clay cracked enough to let water out. Today I took advantage of the drop in water level to get in there to pull out the unwanted grass. Then I had a good stomp around the sloping sides to 'puddle' the clay. That might work. 

Later, after some mowing I went up to see the foal and had my first finger suck from his little bony gums. So cute.