Last night, (apparently doing horsey stuff after dark is the latest trend), there were screams from the stallion, the mare and a younger horse. I assumed they had brought home the mare and last year's foal with a view to separating them one from the other (they having established a very strong bond). But no. According to gossip from Joan at the History Room a new foal has been born to the mare. God knows what they were doing last night, but whatever it was involved the mare being out of the stall and near my fence, the foal being alone in the stall and the stallion objecting strongly to being unable to protect either.
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I confirmed the gossip by driving by the paddock where the mare and her last year's foal had been paddocked since the foal was a week old and sure enough, that yearling is now paddocked with the younger filly who has till recently been paddocked with the stallion. She is still showing signs of agitation but is otherwise fine.

This year's foal was apparently struggling to stand and suckle and last year's foal was doing her best to prevent that from happening (she has been suckling up till at least 4 months ago). So presumably I have a mare and foal in the stall next door and goodness knows that barbaric things they are trying to do to it. Sigh.

The day in the History Room was leavened by a visit from the travelling curator provided by Arts Council. We had a good long talk about establishing a 'direction' for what we are doing and clearer roles for the individual volunteers - all of which I am fully in support of, but goodness knows how the older volunteers will react. She will write to us confirming our conversation. I have also asked for recommendations for software to use for acquisitions and photos. Our present register is in Excel which works well, but heaven help us if someone does a sort in one single column and gets the details reorganised and chaotic. Since Steph is the only one using it at present that is unlikely, but better to be safe than sorry - anything that will import our present dataset would be useful.

Frozen water this morning but a lovely sunny morning - it clouded over later and looked like snow, but that seems to have blown away and we are only expecting 2 tonight (compare with last night of minus 3.7).

So the fire is on, the chicken soup is about to be reheated and I am girding my loins for a trip to Hobart tomorrow as I have deferred it so long I have run out of prescription cat food (so am feeding roo meat at present as that does no harm, short term).