Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

With another storm forecast, it was time to check our gutters again. This is a job that is never done as often as it should be and is easy to 'forget' - it is messy and potentially dangerous as anything involving climbing up ladders usually is... The biggest problem with gutters is that you don't really think about them until it is obvious they are not working. The reason they don't work is because they get full of leaves and other debris and then the water no longer runs freely down them. The downpipes from gutters are even worse because if they get blocked with leaves they really need dismantling and unblocking.
David did a brilliant job of clearing the gutters around the barn and checking the downpipes but unfortunately we discovered that a pipe that runs all the way under the concrete apron (taking water from the gutters on the poultry side of the barn) is quite badly blocked. We have long rods that we can poke through but no matter which side we went from, we hit something 'solid' in the middle. Not quite sure how we are going to sort this problem: digging up the concrete is not an option...
In other news Parsley came back into season today so as recommended by the vet (see 16th January) we took her back to the billy for another mating and then gave her some antibiotics to hopefully kill off the possible infection she might have. We now have roughly another 20 days to wait to see if she is pregnant... the breeder who owns the billy was not hopeful as she told us she has had several nanny goats over the years with the same problem as Parsley and she has never managed to get them pregnant, despite the fact that like Parsley, they had kidded beautifully before!! Not encouraging but we will keep our fingers crossed...