Eat, Sleep, Repeat

What I've been thinking about:

1. It's all about routines. 
2. Except when it isn't. 

It turns out that puppies are hard work. In the run-up to getting ours, wise people nodded sagely and said, "puppies are hard work." It went in one ear and out the other as my toddler brain screamed, "puppy, puppy, puppy!" 

It's now six weeks since we picked up the trembling bundle and brought her home and we're getting into our groove. Or so we like to think. What's actually happening is that we are fitting around the routine that the puppy has set for herself while fooling ourselves that we're the ones in charge. 

Hard at work

Having her has made me notice other people's routines around me. When I take her for her morning walk, I see the same farmer on a quad off to feed cows at the next farm and the same lorries on the way to the ferry. 

There's something quite soothing about routines, especially when the outside world seems a bit out of control. We set our alarm for the time the puppy wants to get up, we make her breakfast while trying to stop her eating our socks and we take her out for a pee as soon as we've sat down for a cuppa. 

 

The point at which the puppy always needs out

Apart from life with a 14 week old puppy, living on a farm is all about different routines, depending on the season. Except when things don't go to plan. Which is every day. 

Today, for example, there is a blocked culvert. This means that Ivie was an hour late coming in for breakfast, we've only seen each other for ten minutes all morning and he's behind on feeding the cows.

Farming is such a strange mix of fixed tasks done at a certain time and the biggest spanners chucked into the works every single day. Farmers seem to need a strong core of dogged determination combined with a heavy dose of flexibility to deal with the demands of the day. 

In my job, if something unexpected happens, I know I can catch up tomorrow but it's not quite the same on the farm. I can't quite imagine Ivie coming in for tea saying, "the digger needed a new part so I didn't get round to feeding the calves today" or us getting to February with no ewes in lamb because a tree needed cleared from the cycle track back in the autumn.  

At least some things are certain - death, taxes and the puppy being just cute enough to avoid eviction.