Horse vs Machine

One thing that constantly amazes me about Faith is her boundless curiosity. My other two neds have pretty much seen everything, and frankly if something isn’t at least as interesting as the grass in front of their faces, then it isn’t worth bothering about.

However, Faith has to investigate absolutely everything. We had an amusing incident with the tractor the other week. Michael was moving a pallet of bedding on to the yard using the forks on the back of the tractor. He had to drive through the front paddock to get to the yard, and the horses just happened to be in there.

Tilly and Tommy have long found tractors, and farm machinery in general incredibly boring, and barely spare it a passing glance. Faith however thought that the tractor was the most interesting thing ever, and totally prevented Michael’s progress across the field by standing directly in front of him, blocking his path. Once satisfied about the front of the tractor, she proceeded to explore every bit of it that she could reach, going around the back and up the other side. Only when she was satisfied, did she let Michael continue on his way, and even then followed him across the paddock until I closed the yard gates behind him.

Well today we had a delivery of 16 telegraph poles. They arrived on the back of a vast articulated lorry, which had a massive crane and a grab. I shut the horses in the front paddock next to the road while the driver unloaded the telegraph poles on to the railway line. Well all the time the poles were being unloaded, I could see Faith straining to get her head and neck as far over the fence as she could to inspect the delivery as it was being made. I am hoping that this natural curiosity and fearlessness of machinery will stand us in good stead when we eventually start hacking around the machine infested countryside of the Fens!