Reunited.

Just back from a quick trip to London. The weather was absolutely perfect , 27 degrees and the mildest of breezes to blow away the humidity. London can suddenly become the most continental of cities on the all too rare occasions when the sun is out. People were sitting outside having breakfast at one of the cafes in St.James's Park at eight in the morning - a sight that would have been undreamt of even a fews ago.That's global warming for you.

The two boyz were euphoric when I got back from the airport last night. Two 20 kilo bundles of fur were hurtling into my arms before I'd had a chance to take more than five steps from the car. Keeping the family flock together is a deeply,deeply ingrained priority for Polish Lowland Sheepdogs.When one of us is away they sit at the farm gate peering out , patiently waiting for the wanderer to return. Even though I'd only been away for a night they were both up before five this morning sitting quietly at the side of the bed staring at me. They are too well behaved to make any noise but their silent vigil and burning concentration soon had me awake. The unspoken message was that there was lost playtime to catch up on. Words can barely describe the enthusiasm with which they flew down the track towards the village happy that the pack had been reunited and that the world was a safe and ordered place again.

Readers of the blog will know that we are very keen not only to return the grounds to organic cultivation ( without chemicals and pesticides ) but also to reduce our use of fossil fuels. In London I learnt that if you add up the power inputs that are needed to make all the things that we consume then the average Brit uses 125 kilowatt hours of electricity a day, and the average American 250 hours. By comparison a hundred and fifty years ago the average Brit would have been using 20 kilowatt hours a day. Boiling the kettle for 20 minutes a day uses 1 kilowatt hour of power, the newspaper you buy in the morning required 2 kwh to produce, every bath you take uses 4 kwh and so on. The power needed to produce ( not cook ) our daily food is an amazing 15 kwh per person and every trip to New York from London requires the same energy as running an electric fire,day and night all year round.Don't know what we'll do with all this new knowledge but we're determined to get our carbon emissions down further from the 17% we're currently saving without giving up on the luxuries we've got accustomed to.