November 15th 2009: A Wet Week
It's been a week of very wet weather here in Wales. The last few days have seen torrential rain and a heck of a lot of flooding all around the county. A trip into Carmarthen today (18 minutes away) confirmed what we saw on the News last night - flooding everywhere the eye could see.

We have had a heck of a lot of water come off our hill this week. Our driveway has been a raging stream at times, and the drainage ditch above the kennels flooded. That caused a few anxious moments until the water was diverted to a nearby culvert. Water has been seeping into our kennels and our planned excavation to fix this seepage did not happen due to the inclement weather. At times we could not keep up with making sure drains were cleared of leaves. Our pond broke its banks, and several bridges were flooded as well. Had we had some micro-hydro capabilities, we would have been laughing all the way to the bank.

We were supposed to have hosted a nursery trial today but this had to be cancelled because of the water on the course. Unfortunately the wettest places on the field were right on the drive lines, and shedding and penning would have been nigh impossible. We were so looking forward to hosting a trial. On Wednesday we sorted out 80 sheep and from then till Friday we were out in the torrential rain running various dogs on small groups of sheep to make sure they were not too frisky for the nursery dogs. Very disappointing. Meg, Jamie, Bee, Sioux and Roy still haven't forgiven me for making them work in almost no-visibility conditions. Next they'll be asking for 'danger' pay. At one point Bee could not go 10 metres without shaking the water off her coat. It was at this point that I decided to call it a day and go do drainage duties. Cian picked up a chill and spent Friday night sleeping in front of the fire. Not one word of complaint did he utter about this.

Today Jamie got to put all the trial sheep back to the hill. There was one very snotty ewe in the bunch who decided to charge Jamie and give him a good head butting. She got a sore nose in return but she had another go. Doubly sore nose, which finally convinced her that the hill was a good place to be. Just as well she did not get a chance to spoil someone's trial.

Cian and Steffi were put through their paces for Kelvin today. He hasn't seen them working for a while now so he was pleasantly surprised to see how they are coming along. They are really taking to driving and my little coiled spring, Cian, has decided driving sheep around a field is pretty cool. In fact, so cool he drove 4 cheviots all the way around the training field without stopping. I know this is only a small thing but Cian is at a point where I never imagined I would ever get him to!

OK, here's my rant of the week. The City and County of Swansea (where Kelvin works) has a weekly waste collection scheme for kitchen waste (food scraps). They implore people to "Reduce your waste by using the new kitchen waste collection scheme." They go on to say:

It is vital we all get on board with this collection service which will see even more of Swansea's waste being diverted from landfill and turned into useful soil improver for use by residents. It is also one of the best and simplest things we can all do to help tackle climate change.

All good stuff. Kelvin's school has a hot lunch program. Scraps from this go...where? Well, until last week, wastage was removed from the school daily and fed to some very enthusiastic and grateful chickens who would wait at the gate for Kelvin to arrive home, and then run, no sprint, after his car all the way up the driveway until he stopped and stepped out with their nightly treats (which was quite hilarious to watch). Last week this little recycling scheme was knocked on the head when some bureaucrat announced that "you can't do that. We don't do that anymore." What? You can't dispose of foodscraps to chickens? No! It must be removed from the school and thrown...in the rubbish... destined for...the landfill. Is this goverment speaking out both sides of their mouths?

Our chickens are pissed!

And on that note, till next week, happy trialling and happy training.