Hedgerow Maintenance.

Greetings Muleteers! Dragon and The Mini here today to tell you about some maintenance jobs we have been diligently undertaking.  We are lucky to live in the beautiful county of Devon which has sun (sometimes), sea (never seen it but we'd like to go!), grockels (Devon word for tourist - they like to gawp over the gate at our mulificent selves! we can always tell when they're grockels because of the lack of ingrained mud on their hands or baler twine holding up their trousers), cream teas (can we please try one human??) and finally hedgerows.  Hedgerows are full of exciting birds and plants and female human says that they are protected, yikes that sounds important?

Now the thing with hedges is that they require maintenance which in our Mule Kingdom involves eating them.  Yes that's right, eating them.....  Female human has just put us in to another paddock which has no grass, we are desperately awaiting the return spring grass as we have eaten all of ours and are bored of straw now, so she let us loose on the hedgerow which is great fun!

When people ask what the differences are between a horse, a donkey and a mule one of the biggest ones is what we like to eat.  Us long ears are much more flexible, we like to browse as well as graze which means that given a choice we like a significant amount of woody branches and leaves including brambles, beech twigs, ash twigs and willow.  We are not posh like the short ears and don't just want grass (although we do like it) we're happy to eat just about anything.  So we were delighted when female human opened the gate, took down the electric fence and told us to get to work!  Well nearly all of us..... Roller Polar didn't get it, he just stood looking puzzled as we chowed down on some delectable morsels.

Dragon and I have developed some important techniques for hedge clearance.  

She takes the high branches (alright for some!)

And I take the low ones!

We have also got a technique to make sure we don't prickle our mulificent ears, we put them in to reverse (g)ear and then hold them back so that they are protected from being prickled!

Sometimes Dragon takes hedge trimming a little too far and practically disappears in to the hedge, I can't imagine what she's found to eat in here......

 There are also limits to hedge trimming, Dragon eyes up the holly, she has been known to give it a go but has soon discovered that even mules have mouths too delicate for this!

Poor Roller Polar just can't get with the programme, hedge maintenance is not his thing.  He had a quick glance at the gorse but seemed unimpressed.  We think he was really pondering the old saying that when the gorse is in flower you can kiss the girls!  We don't think he's realised that gorse flowers all year round, we'll keep it to ourselves or he might want to play kiss chase with Dragon every day!

Until next time Muleteers!  We'll be busy at our important maintenance duties for the day and then it'll be time for a snooze before starting all the hard work again tomorrow, it's a mule's life!