Phew!

I hit the limit today - there’s only so much you can do before grinding to a halt and while I usually keep pushing, not this time.

As well as the usual chores, I spent a lot of time balanced on the roof rack on the Land Rover using a pole saw to top the spruce trees around the vegetable garden.

These are getting well over 25-30 feet tall and block the winter sunshine from the vegetables.

By standing on the Land Rover, I was able to cut them off at around 20 feet, leaving a good windbreak but letting the sun back through.

It’s back breaking worse as the pole is about 12 feet long with a 12-inch, flexible saw blade at the tip.

The blade is sawed back and forth as the tree flexes, while you maintaining your balance and holding the saw with one end under your armpit and the other well above your head.

Of course, it also gets stuck from time and has to be pulled free, while the lopped tree tops all have to be pulled down and dragged away.

Still, I could have got through the day with that, the chores and entertaining the boys.

But Delilah, the in-pig Berkshire gilt, had another ideas. She decided that she had a thirst, a very big thirst even for a pregnant pig and kept emptying the 25-gallon trough.

Now, we haven’t the cash for all the fittings to connect the trough to the main water supply or the back-up pump yet (although we have scrounged the hose), so that means carrying the water up the hill in six-gallon loads.

The first 12 gallons of refills were par for the course, the next 12 gallons were hard work, and the final 12 gallons were the end!

In all, I had to cart around 165 litres of water from the water butts out to the pig pens - that’s 165kg on slippery, muddy ground and uphill for a fair bit of the way.

Add that to weeks and months of hard work, and eventually I just had to stop. Phew!

I’m now enjoying a nice cuppa while the Other Half keeps the boys out of my hair for half an hour.

And after that? Back to work again - this time making dinner, which will have to be simple!