16th July 2018

It has been a busy few days and late nights for one reason or another. I have been battling our water supply for the house, searching the farm for leaking pipes, over flowing water troughs etc etc. Our water for the house is from a spring below us, it is pumped up to a holding tank and gravity fed back to us. I couldn’t get the water to the holding tank, the catch pit below the house suggested that there was water so it had to be either faulty equipment or a leak. Yesterday, 3 days into it all, by a process of elimination we discovered the cause of it is an intermittent electrical fault. I have had water pumps out of the ground, cleaned holding tanks and generally been tested to breaking point.  No more so than when I heard the washing machine going in the house! The yard is supplied by a borehole which incidentally had a new pump last week so the horses have been fine. The new electrical contactor is ordered and tomorrow we will hopefully be in full flow again. 

The 3 year olds are all going nicely, lobbing around the sand. Those all back in off grass are also lobbing away around the sand and up the hill. Polydora and Coningsby came in today, both were shod at lunchtime and will get on the move tomorrow. 

King Spirit ran a nice race at Stratford yesterday afternoon finishing 2^nd. Nico got 6 days’ holiday for giving Alex Edwards a nudge, years gone by Alex would have found himself the wrong side of the rail poking were he was, he went out onto the hurdle track to get the inside rail and Nico didn’t appreciate it. The two tracks at Stratford share the bottom bend which doesn’t help anyone trying to protect the inside. King Spirit seems fine this morning. I’d dearly love to get him in the winner’s enclosure having missed 4 years through injury. 

The diggers have moved out for the summer, the schooling strip is widened, the walk way home has been repaired, the edges of the sand gallop have been pulled in and we are all set for the season ahead with a lovely bunch of horses to look forward to.