Wednesday 30th January 2008
Well Tom finished up today, it is going to be very hard work on my own, but I shall try my best to keep up with everything. It has been a long learning process over the last 2 years, we have had our ups and down, but we have ended at a level where I can comfortably leave Tom to run the farm if I were unable to come in for some reason.
He has learned most aspects of koi farming and husbandry, with just a little more time on being able to handle the health side of koi keeping and he'd have the whole package.
I'll miss him a lot and I feel sure he is going to miss the farm.
We had a strange visitor today, well not so much strange, but a creature which I am sure visits often, but not at the time of day it did. It was a fox and it knew the area well. It was on the main farm side of the stream, heading in a direction it must know well, it came straight to the tiny timber bridge we made back in 2003. This bridge is just made of 2 pieces of 3"x2" timber, with slats joining the 2 pieces together, between these slats is a good stride and the fox made it look like an everyday trip. Over the bridge he came and started strolling around the outside of the polytunnels, perhaps hoping to find a snippet of food.
From a distance it looked odd, as it got closer it became more obvious why, it just walked past me as if I were not there as I stood motionless. It must have been nosing around a bonfire somewhere and looked like it had set itself alight. On the rear end of it's body the fur was all burned and also part of it's tail, also around it's head and it's eyes were near closed, this is why it did not see me.
As it moved along a little, I carefully walked to the van to get my camera, I followed a little to get closer and then snapped couple of shots. There was nothing wrong with it's hearing, as the first click of the camera was enough to send it running off and I only managed a couple of quickly snapped shots.
I had to take the photos quicker than the camera would auto focus, but you can see where the fur has been singed.
