Tuesday 8th April 2008.
Today the marquee was due to be taken down and yesterday Cassie managed to empty, clean and pack away all the show vats. This morning my first job was to remove the final pieces of the jigsaw from the marquee, this included all the electric cables and pipe lines, the fridge, tea urn and the Hikari stand.
At the end of the day the marquee still stands where it was! It's not a problem and I'm happy for them to take it down when they want, as they always put it up a day early for me.
I spent some time moving the koi which were in the floating nets over the weekend, these were selected for sale just a week or so ago and now I've moved them to the general sales ponds. I then turned the heat back on the remainder (those which were under the nets). These are my tategoi and will stay in these heated ponds until May when I do my final selection.
Cassie gave the filters their first clean in a couple of days, these are normally cleaned everyday, but as the koi were not fed for a week, they stayed clean and time just does not allow for them to be cleaned on Open Weekend days.
When she finished we went into the mud pond tunnels. The sun was out and it was a real initiation for her, it was just a little warm! I fired up the rotovator and continued working my way into the mud ponds. Although it is a real struggle to push the 'self powered' machine along while the wheels are spinning in wet clay, as soon as I break the surface, within a couple of days it starts drying really well. Good progress was made, but it brought on a good sweat!
Cassie spent time picking up the remnants of polythene and hot spot tape from the old tunnel roofs and then spent the rest of the time pulling up grass and weeds which were up onto the liner edges and I'm unable to mow them. The grass and weeds have started growing like crazy now it's warming up.
The end of the day rushed up and we were both happy to walk away from the heat!