A Bit More Ploughing

Back before Christmas I ploughed most of the 5 hectare field but as it was my first attempt at ploughing I did have a bit of a problem in places. I just couldn't get the plough shears to dig into the ground, resulting in them just scraping the top of the soil. This occurred over quite a large area and then as quickly as it started, it stopped and the rest of the field ploughed correctly.

The result of this surface scraping is that the grass just grew back over winter. So I've been out re-ploughing the badly ploughed area which has been interesting. I've just about got the hang of starting on one side of the field and working across but I don't have the time to re-plough the whole field so I just ploughed the grassed areas.


This is the view of some of the grass. I'd ploughed the left-hand section first as it was the worst area and rain was forecast. As it was, the rain didn't happen and I have been able to go over the whole area.

All I have left to do now is finish the strip round the edge of the field and that's probably about another 4 trips round. I still haven't worked out how to do the corners properly yet but I think I've an idea from a bit of trial and error. I think it involves ploughing the outer line in one direction and the inner rows in the opposite direction.

There is a very great difference between ploughing here and the UK. Whenever I watched people ploughing in the UK there was always a large flock of seagulls following the plough. Here I don't get seagulls but I usually have half a dozen or so wagtails darting about. They're black and white but not the same as the pied wagtails in the UK. Apologies for the not very good photograph but they are rather small and flew away whenever the tractor approached.

The Wheel Turns

One lovely thing about working outside is that you get to see nature happening around you. Back at the beginning of March I was lucky enough to see the storks migrating northward and it triggered the feeling of spring arriving. Today as the sun began to set I heard that call again. For the first time I have seen them on their way back south.


There was a group of 30 or so that flew overhead, their calls can be heard before you see them. I had to run to the house to get the binoculars as they fly so fast and pass overhead in a few seconds. A little while later I spotted another small group on the horizon. Having been out all day I knew that these were the first groups. Finally just as the sun had set and the light was fading fast I heard more and turned to see an arc of a couple of hundred birds passing overhead. It’s amazing to watch the continual movement in the group as it appears every so often, possibly every 15 – 20 birds, the one at the back pulls out and moves to the front of each little group, taking over the head position. I know it’s done to allow each bird to rest in slipstream of the others but watching how effortlessly they do it is a marvel.


As I watched them disappear into the distance I wondered if I’ll see more tomorrow or if they will fly over during the night but it also occurred to me that I felt the end of the season happening; the end of summer and in some ways the end of the year. It also dawned on me that in the pagan or Celtic calendar this is the end of the year, Samhain, the New Year occurs on the 31st of October.

The Joys of Living Here

Take 2, let's hope Blogger doesn't screw it up again!

Despite the trials and tribulations of living here – no customer service, intermittent water, double guessing the weather etc. being here more than compensates.

Turning the hay yesterday I was treated to an aerial flying display by a flock of swallows as they swooped across the field all around the tractor to feast on the insects I disturbed. Their aerobatics were amazing; I kept expecting a collision as the dived, turned and generally put on an incredible flying display.

Cutting the swathe and then turning it for the first time disturbed a whole new lot of insects. Most numerous were the grasshoppers; they were all sizes and colours, brown, green, stripy and ranging from about half a centimetre in length to a whopping 5 or 6 centimetre one that’s body was at least as thick as my index finger.

There were also the locusts; bright green and looking like white fairies as they flew away. There were a lot of those and I almost stopped looking at them but then one of them dropped back to earth right next to the tractor and I realised that not all of what I though were locust were actually locusts; they were praying mantises.

I’d seen one 15-cm/6-inch brown one at the end of last summer but nothing since then. G had spotted a small green one when distributing the fencing posts and I had spotted another one when ploughing, but the long grass down by the pond was full of them. All that I saw were green and ranged in size from a couple of centimetres to 6 or 7 centimeters.

Having turned the hay I took a walk around the pond, the moor hens ducked away under the brambles and I could hear the coypu humming in its den. The butterflies, blue, brown, white, yellow, red admirals and peacocks all enjoying the swathe of thistles I’d left, flitted around far to fast and too far away for me to capture on the camera. I did have a go at photographing one of the many yellow and brown spiders I’ve seen this year – a bit out of focus as my little camera doesn’t do close-ups at all well. I’d seen quite a few of these running off as I cut the grass and they get quite large, the abdomen being over a centimetre long and around 3 cm overall including the legs, but walking round I found them on their webs. The first thing I noticed was the white zigzag on the web, I’ve not yet had the time to find out what they are but my guess is that as well as using the web, they might drop onto insects using the zigzag silk as a sort of bungee.

The pond has also been a focal point for hundreds of dragonflies and damselflies. There have been the azure blue and red damselflies black, brown, green and yellow striped, red and dark blue dragonflies. This, again out of focus (I’m still working out how to justify a new camera just for blog pictures), is one of the red dragonflies, a common darter I think.

Final 2 pictures are the view from down by the pond. The first is the marsh area that leads onto the hayfield that curves out of site below the sunflower field in the distance.

This is looking the other way down my ‘hidden’ valley.

It’s really not hard to put up with some trials and tribulations when this is the reward.

No Posts Doesn't Mean No Work

I've not posted for a while for a few reasons. The main one being that most of the work has been 'more of the same'. It's also been hot, 35°C and humid so working through the day has been impossible. As a result of this I've changed my routine; I get up early (well for me) and start work outside at 7:30 - I'm not a morning person so this is at least 3 hours ahead of my normal. I then work until 12 to 12:30 by which time it is getting too hot for me. Lunch and siesta follow followed by some housework until the temperature drops enough for me to carry on outside. My farm is in a shallow south facing valley and it seems to collect the heat from the sun. I then work until 9:30 or until it's either getting dark or I'm getting too bitten by mosquitoes. By then I'm far to tired to post.

Also Blogger has started giving me HTML errors if I try to cut and paste from Word; I usually write the post in a Word document that I add to and edit during the day. And I've noticed while writing this post it doesn't seem to be spotting all the spelling errors

So just what have I been doing? Well there's always the animals; the alpacas are still loving their new hay and devouring a bale a day. The chickens have stopped laying - the best layer is the one with the chicks so I'm wondering when she will start laying again. My second best layer has just gone broody as well and the other two, well who knows. I did wonder if they were laying alsewhere in the paddock but I've yet to find any eggs if they are.

I've been collecting the eggs daily from the new broody, she lays 2 eggs every 3 days and one of the other hens has I think laid twice in the nest in the last 8 days. When we finally got to 5 eggs I put the 4 I'd removed back under her and this morning she'd laid another one, so we now start the 21 day wait to see if they are going to hatch.

The 3 chicks are growing well although they are still far too small to be allowed out in the paddock. I have at least one pair of small birds of prey nesting in a tree adjoining the chicken paddock and the buzzards are always around too.

This week also sees my children coming over for their holidays and I'm trying to create 3 bedrooms for them. While I'm not quite there yet it's getting pretty close so they will have somewhere to sleep although they may prefer to be outside in the tent if it stays this hot.

The highlight for the week has been a visit from Debs of Lehners in France. She came over today to meet the alpacas and was due here at 2 pm. When it got to half past and she wasn't here I began to get a bit concerned. It turned out that despite reading and re-reading my direction to her on how to get to my place I'd managed to write a right when I should have written left - hang my head in shame. Debs being Debs wasn't too phased by it. She did a tour of my neighbours got an introduction to the mayor and got the correct directions from him. It was really lovely meeting up with Debs again and before we knew it the time had flown past and she had to race back to feed her animals.

I've been attacking the weed patch jokingly known as the veg plot and fruit area. The weeds around the fruit trees were getting on for as tall as me so thank goodness for the scythe. I've also had a go at rotavating a bit more of the area but the soil is now so baked that the rotavator just bounces over the surface. So I've had a re-think on weeding and am now scything down the large weeds and then hoeing what I can and trying to either fork out or pull out anything else. While it's not perfect it's quite fast and will stop the weeds from seeding.

Where I used the straw mulch it has been moderately successful. It has suppressed a lot of the weeds but has been colonised by the bindweed so I see a session of pulling that and burning it.

So while I may not have been posting I haven't been slacking. I still find the heat a bit hard to work in but it is easier than last year so I may be acclimatising at least a bit. It's so good to have the sunshine again after nearly half a year of grey weather.

Hay Time

Hay making was an interesting time and great fun too, I really enjoyed it. I’d been watching the weather and the other farmers and when the forecast changed and threatened rain I knew I was going to have to get cutting on my own. While cutting on the Friday I kept a good look out for leverets and I found 2. I thought I’d photographed them – I actually stroked the ears of one of them but no photographs were on the camera when I downloaded. I tried checking the camera screen while out in the field but the sun was so bright I couldn’t see a thing.

The buzzard, along with a couple of other smaller birds of prey and a few crows were following me round the field so I chased the leverets into the cover of the surrounding ditch to give them a chance of avoiding the circling horde. I didn’t see the buzzard take anything but the smaller birds had a couple of mice and the crows seemed to be after the locusts. The locusts have grown so quickly; about a month ago they were average size now they are more or less full size, 3 inches, long. I love watching them fly, they seem to me to be like fluttering fairies – hmm maybe I spend too long in the sun. What I also spotted were the beautiful cornflowers and some camomile, so the bunch of flowers at the end of the blog are now adorning my kitchen and just yell summer to me.

Regis arrived Saturday morning and showed me how to set up the tedder and then I spent a very pleasant time turning the hay. As I’ve said in previous posts, there wasn’t much so it dried really quickly and in the afternoon I put it into windrows. Sunday, Regis was away so baling was done on Monday and is in Monday’s post.

So Monday afternoon found me lying on my back on the top of a hay cart surrounded by wonderful sweet smelling hay with a cloudless azure sky above and brilliant sunshine. Life doesn’t get better than that.

We got about 100 bales off the field and have stacked them in the hay loft attached to the house. It was an interesting experience; I’d not been brave enough to venture up there on my own. Nothing to do with any possible inhabitants there but whether the floorboards were rotten. They creaked and bent a bit in places but held and we got the two trailer loads of hay safely stored.

That evening I gave the alpacas some of the hay from the broken bales. They ate it quite quickly so I took some more down a couple of hours later. They almost mugged me for it; I dropped some as the bale was falling apart but continued over to the hayrack to put out the rest. When I turned round they were almost fighting over what I’d dropped. I think I have some very happy alpacas and I’m happy too. They’ve got good hay again and I’ve got easy to manage bales, I can carry it down in one hand and each bale fills the hayrack and there’s no dust or bad hay to sort through. Suddenly feeding them has become a 10 minute job rather than the ¾ hour it used to take to pull enough good hay from the large bales.

Spring is Sprung

It was lunchtime, there was no traffic, the pneumatic pruners were silent in the plum orchards as were the chain saws in the little wood at the bottom of the drive. I took my coffee out to the patio, the only sound was the overwhelming hum from the myriad of insects darting from flower to flower in the ornamental plum tree. Peace and quiet, it’s what rural France is all about.

Then a dog at a neighbouring farm started barking that excited sort of bark that makes you look to see why. That’s when I saw them, five big black birds heading this way. Excitement filled me, were they the storks? But there were only five and they weren’t flying in V formation; I went inside for the binoculars. By the time I got out again I fully expected them to be gone. I remember last year being amazed at how quickly the storks passed overhead, but they were still there, circling.

As I focused the binoculars about fifty more appeared and headed for the scouting party of five. It seemed to me that the five had gone ahead to find a thermal as the group now massed together and circled for nearly five minutes slowly gaining height. Finally they moved off, first as a bit of a rabble but gradually spacing themselves out into that characteristic V.

It was the first of March last year when they passed here, had this not been a leap year it would again have been the first of March. And they manage it without a calendar or PDA!

I waited for an hour but no more followed, so different from last year. About 5 pm though the sky was full of sound, the main group finally arrived. In the space of half an hour 6 – 7 groups of two to three hundred birds tracked their way NE over the farm. They make quite a racket and you hear them well before they appear as a line snaking their way across the sky.

The main group were much later in the day than last year and I don’t think as many have passed so there might be some more tomorrow if the weather hold out. It’s strange, although I’ve not been brought up with the migration both this year and last seeing them really makes me feel spring is here and all is right with the world.

As the sun went down this evening with the rain clouds passing overhead the light gave a wonderful golden glow over the fields. The green really did look that vibrant and the soil in the sunlight had a golden hue.