Haybaling in Winter

Wednesday I had an early morning call from Bob the Goose at the goose farm,it seems he had purchased two large round bales of hay,and needed help to convert them to small bales,to sell on to local horsey types(,having sold all the produce of his own hayfield) this entailed loosening the big bales and feeding them into a machine to create small square bales,easy if the machine functions ok,this of course was not the case,and we spent two hours trying to unblock the thing hitting it with iron bars and poking out blocked up hay.
So once we were up and running it took 3 hours of pitchforking to complete the job,speaking to Le Blade on the phone later I offered to give him my voluntary job at Bob's but he declined to accept it,and gleefully informed me he had been for a stroll on the beach during my bout of hard labour,and probably was imbibing a little cider which is his favourite drink,madame Le Blade was recovering from her Rotterdam visit by undergoing coaching on her new laptop,by her daughter,which she confidently predicted she would have forgotten 5 minutes after her daughter left.
Le Grande Edward has loaned me a mole trap as the little bugger is creating hills at a rate of knots(notice the maritime reference a legacy of the north sea crossing), I had set it before my hard labour at Bob's,but Edward decided to visit just in case,and so Sheila enjoyed a chat with him and his dear wife,who doubles as president of the W I.
Poor Montana Mike is not fully recovered from his unwise purchase of a pasty in Brazil,and his blog is once again a tirade against the political establishment in America,and not helped much by having to remove snow from his drive and back porch,a job I carried out for him last february in a quarter of the time he has taken,and I also snowballed his two dogs at the same time.