Yesterday Ash and I were sat in the garden having a BBQ, watching a hot air balloon fly slowly towards the house. As it got closer and closer it got lower and lower and then landed in one of our fields right next to the house!

We wandered over to say hello and got chatting to the guy and then the support crew turned up in their Land Rover’s and handed us a bottle of scotch, tradition as thanks for using our field.

Just another day on the farm I thought! It’s never a dull moment around here.

Which got me thinking about all of the random things that have happened since we moved here 16 months ago…

1) Chasing after cows

Not unexpected at all to most farmers as daily life normally involves running after a cow in some capacity or another, but the cows certainly have put us in some funny predicaments. For example recently a cow went missing and I managed to find it by following the fresh cow pat, and once when we were moving the bulls we noticed one had barb wire in its tail and we had to sprint across the field to get ahead of it to stop it from going any further. We’ve also moved the heifers across large open estate land which involved jogging along side them to keep them on course.

2) Woodpecker on the bird feeder

We hear woodpeckers in the nearby woodlands all of the time but I never imagined I’d look out of the window and see one actually in the garden eating the nuts!

3) A calf in the back garden

Equally so you don’t expect to be sat watching TV then look out of the window and see a calf in your garden! Yes we live on a farm but they are meant to stay out of our garden.

4) Kittens

We knew of one feral cat that lived around the farm when we moved in but rarely ever saw her, then before we knew it she was looking pretty big and gave birth to kittens!

We managed to find them and kept an eye on them, bringing them inside frequently to help tame them and two of them are now much loved pets of ours.

5) Zebby bringing me dead animals

Everyone who has a working cocker, or any dog for that matter, will be no stranger to the dog finding dead things and either eating them or bringing them back to you, however the variety of dead things that I have had brought to me is quite surprising! The first thing was a whole crow, which Zebby picked up and ran around with, almost as if to say “I think I’m supposed to do something like this with dead birds.” Since then we have had a lambs tail (we don’t have sheep here), a rabbit leg and goodness knows what else.

6) Red kites

Where we live isn’t an area for red kites and I’ve never seen them this far north before, other than Yorkshire, so it was a real shock to see two of them slowly flying around. Ash has seen them once more since flying very low over our chicken pen, but we haven’t seen them since.

7) Picking up our Tesco delivery in the kubota

It’s normal to be snowed in for a day or two when the only access out of the farm is a little lane and you don’t own a 4×4, however it was quite a novelty to drive to the local village in our farm vehicle to pick up our Tesco delivery this winter.

8) Unexpected calf

It’s normal that calving starts in winter, however we only have autumn calving cows on our farm, so it was quite a surprise for Ash to go out one morning and find a calf shivering away. Zebby happily helped to warm it up by giving it a good lick.

10) Hot air balloon

And that brings us to last nights events of the hot air balloon landing in our field! As we were chatting to the guy in charge I saw a kid pointing his phone at me, obviously taking a photo or a video, as if I was the oddity in this situation! Er no a great big balloon landing in our field is the odd occurrence here!

Seriously what is my life?! I love it! I do wonder if people see my instagram posts and think WTF?! It’s certainly entertaining, you never know what’s going to happen next and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Just think of the stories we’ll have to tell after many many more years of farming.