Sarah Todd: Shell-shocked, but where there's muck there's money...

Finally, a few customers started calling at The Daughter's egg stall at the bottom of the lane. The jam jar began rattling with takings and the inevitable happened. The young entrepreneur questioned why her little brother's name was on the egg box labels when he "does nothing".

At first she offered the six year-old 20 to walk away from the business. But he started chuntering and moaning, so she reduced it to 15. Tears came as he explained that he never fed the hens because "she's too bossy" and we told him it was best to let her get on with it and do his own thing.

They had also sold the odd bag of horse muck to friends, but nothing more. It must have sown a seed because within about five minutes, the poultry reject was designing a poster for his own fledgling business.

"Well-rotted horse muck" (50p a bag) is what the sign above the drawing says. And it seems the old saying about where there's muck there's brass is true.

His jam jar started rattling on the second day (it took a whole week for that to happen for the eggs business). Never before had he volunteered to collect the droppings from the horses' field. But there's a new vigour now that he's grasped the idea that if he doesn't add any new muck to the heap, it will run out.

His pony – or rather "ponee" – Velvet, really tickled me. She's won a Thelwell lookalike class this year, and that's exactly what she is. It amused me that in the picture he's got her smiling and has included her big round tummy.

As an aside, she's the funniest thing. He'd been to Filey for a few days and really impressed me with the way he went straight out on his return to tell her all about it.

"Was Velvet pleased to see you?" I absent-mindedly asked, unpacking the buckets and spades.

"Well, sort of," he said. "She listened for a while but then she bit me…"

That's just what she's like. She'll smile and be very interested in his first five minutes of chat. But if he bobs back under the fence to tell her something he's forgotten, she'll do that Thelwell thing of giving him a nip or slyly stepping sideways on to her young owner's toes.

But now she's immortalised in the horse muck business poster, left, next to the skinny curly-haired lad who's frowning underneath the self-explanatory thought bubble at the task ahead.

We give it a week before big sister's after muscling back in on this excellent new business venture.

CW 14/8/10