Mrs Down's Diary August 19 2009

For example. This morning when breakfast had not arrived on the exact stroke of 6am, she helped herself to a packet of fat balls I had left out for the birds. Crunched through my wicker picnic basket. Found a packet of Frosties in a shopping bag. Even managed a salami stick.

All this on top of three big meals a day and what she can steal from Holly's and Nell's biscuit bowls. As George, our previous Labrador Meg's son, is coming to stay for a few days, she will no doubt muscle out the others from his bowl and help herself to even more food.

That small fault apart she is brilliant. House trained. Goes through the night without a mess. Sits when told to sit. Comes when called. Stays when told to. Very affectionate and confident. We adore her. But have been very careful not to make the other dogs jealous and so far, they seem to have accepted her company. Grudgingly.

I made a mistake last week when I said we only had spring barley to combine. Forgot we actually had a field of winter barley. Between showers and sunshine, John has managed to bring it all home. He had to turn the speed of the drum up which smashed the straw rather badly, as the combine did not seem to be threshing all the grain out.

He also had to put a de-awning plate on to grind the barley more in the combine's innards. Nothing else is anywhere near ready yet and with the drop in corn prices, it will be a dispiriting job brining home the harvest anyway. According to the farming mags, there is still a lot of corn in store form last year, and this is helping to keep prices depressed.

The winter barley has been a relatively heavy crop, but, because it has all gone into bins for cattle feed for the herd over winter, we have not weighed it. I have been flexing my muscles this afternoon helping to pull the augur into position so that the grain can be carried up into the bins. Between us the job looked rather perilous.

Me tugging away on ropes and John balancing on a wobbly ladder. But we got there.

I've just got out of a bath after working with the barley and John will be following once he has finished clearing out the trailer. There is nothing quite as itchy as barley awns. They are the long spike on the end of the barley ear and mature awns, when the barley is fit, are extremely fragile and break into small pieces.

They are irritating and persistent in working into your clothes when working with the harvested grain. Even dangerous if a piece gets lodged in your eye or throat. Nothing as momentous as that has happened today, but it leaves you with an intense desire to scratch all over. A good soak and clean clothes soon sorts the problem out.