It is a good job we have the snow plough! I know the snow is very beautiful but I am sick of it now. This is it today, Monday!

We have got piglets! Peter and I went to Cheadle and came back with 5 little piggies who are settling in already.

Two little billy kids born to Sochi this afternoon. Both on their feet and looking sturdy. Fingers crossed!

Pretty snowy here today. The geese think they deserve more food. The rams are enjoying their haylage. Peter has snow ploughed the track so we can get out in the Land Rover but the Ka is going nowhere just now.

Cats! Naan [on the left] has been wandering about for 3 days with one eye shut; she didn't want me to look at it, so I felt it was painful. Took her to the vet this morning. She wailed all the way there and then, when she was with the vet, had both eyes wide open! I felt very silly. The vet says she has a touch of conjunctivitis and has drops. This is her now, cuddling up with daughter Aloo [more white] and I think they are swapping stories on what a mean person I am.

The sheep are always glad of extra food.

Oh No! someone has their head stuck in the fence! Is it Headstuck? No, it is a boy, feeling very sorry he did it! There is Headstuck, at the back of the group, quite hard to spot despite the fancy headgear. She has not had her head stuck since Beth and Jeremy fixed it. Hooray!

We need to talk about Headstuck. She got her head stuck 15 minutes after Peter had freed her this morning. Beth and Jeremy were armed with a bamboo stick and some gaffer tape. Headstuck was apprehensive! Beth caught her, Jeremy cut the stick to the right length and taped it to her horns. When she returned to the flock, Headstuck used her new head gear to start a few fights! Let's hope her new head gear will prevent her from sticking her head through the fence in future.

The story of the little beech tree. It was sitting in Kate's garden in Newsome, next to some fine pampas grass, when Kate decided it was getting too big for her garden and dug it up. Looking at its roots, that took some digging . Peter has now planted it in the pond field, near the enclosure with a hornbeam, our old Xmas tree and a couple of self seeded ones. Let's hope it will be happy here; it looks a bit wind blown today.

I've heard of a headless chicken but a headless cat? This is Kulfi, enjoying the hay.

Peter has worked incredibly hard to get the hay made; it is not brilliant quality but it might just keep the animals going over the winter. He is not putting it in the barn yet so has stacked it outside on pallets, sheeted, to help it cure. Fingers crossed. He has put a bit in the goat shed.

It has been a trying week. The baler needle broke on Sunday. We rang a blacksmith to fix it on Monday but he was ill. We found an online store and had it expressed delivered for Tuesday but it had the wrong bolt fixings. I sourced one in Poland but they were out of stock and it isn't going to arrive until the end of next week. We found one on ebay in Omagh but he wasn't sure if it was the right one. This morning, I found Nicholson and Harris, blacksmiths at the National Coal Museum. We rushed it over, had a lovely lunch in the museum café, went back and he had welded the bit back on. Peter is pictured here, with the needle in his hand, about to work out how to stick it back in. It is due to rain any minute, but you never know!