Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Our worst fears were realised as we headed down to the smallholding this morning and discovered a much ripped polytunnel. Five 'elbows' are now torn and worse, the right hand side of the bottom (far end) doors has been torn from the apex (the very top) almost down to the ground. The tape we had used on the elbows had not really worked as the photo shows, so we resorted to 'gorilla' tape (very strong but not very pretty) for the rip by the door!
The weather forecasters are now saying that last night's storm was the last for the moment so we hope that without any more really strong winds, this taping will last until we decide what we need to do long-term. Current thoughts range from abandoning the polytunnel completely and turning the top poultry paddock over into a series of greenhouses and cloches to patching up as well as we can and seeing how this next year goes!!
Today was still and calm and it was hard to imagine how windy and wet it was yesterday and overnight. All was well on the animal front, mind you, so that was the most important thing. As we have extra help at the weekends from Arthur and Joel, we gave all the stalls a really good clean, getting rid of the damp bedding underneath. The clean straw we put back down is meant to be the animals' bedding but as you can see, the goats (and also the sheep) have a jolly good chomp before they then decide to lie down in it!!! So, a clean and calm end to the day...