Cats!

The bucket contains rainwater just the same as their bowl, but this has added dirt.

Update For First Week in February

This week has thankfully been a bit less traumatic, I’m still waiting for the results of the autopsy on Theo (autopsy is used for animals here in France) but Leah visited on Thursday and has given me some general pointers. So the alpacas will be out in their field as soon as possible and a couple of them need a tooth trim. The hay is not bad but not good either. I cut it a bit late because of the wet weather last year and that means it’s not as rich as early cut hay. No one round here got any early cut hay, but hopefully this year will be better and I’m aiming for a cut in May.

There have been chicken things too this week. Sadly sick-chick finally succumbed to whatever was here problem. She was the one who had the three maggot attacks last year. She seemed happy enough but never really recovered. Over the last few days of her life I noticed her tail was down quite a bit and an extra dose of wormer didn’t do the trick this time.

Egg-wise, I was really chuffed when the hens started laying after the shortest day but they stopped after the storm. I was a bit miffed at this as I was just getting back into the swing of having plenty of fresh eggs. Then on Thursday I noticed that the young hen was missing when I was feeding them and I wondered if a fox had been round. I carried on working round the house and then just in the time it took to turn round I noticed another of the hens had gone missing and not a fox in sight.

I then spotted her under a log stack that sent me looking for the other hen. I eventually spotted her under the branches of the felled tree round the back of the house. Once they were both out and about again I checked the two spots and was rewarded by 2 eggs under the logs and 13 under the branches. They’ve only been laying outside for a week so I quickly gathered the egg and took them inside to test them in a bowl of water. All of them sat at the bottom of the bowl, so eggs are back on the menu here.

On Wednesday I noticed a group of cranes flying over, four weeks earlier than last year. Well I think they are earlier, it might just be that I’m outside earlier than last year and so able to see them. Still it’s another harbinger of spring along with the first of my crocuses flowering. They are a little late but since I only put them in the ground Oct/Nov I think they’ve done really well. I’m now waiting for the snowdrops but they might take until next year to flower.

Bafta Night

It's February again and that means it's Bafta time again, so it's a TV night for me tonight watching on the BBC and reminiscing. I was lucky enough to be 'live' at the Bafta's one year, all be it one of the lesser people with a press pass. Even so the buzz was tremendous and the free food wonderful! Funny how my memories of show business revolve around food, I was also an extra and again the food was great.

Show business, you just can't beat it.

Fire and Floods

Thankfully not here but I wanted to send my love and prayers to my Australian readers. From floods in the north at the beginning of the year to the lethal fires that are now ravaging the south. I truly hope that the weather settles down and that you are all safe.

As a footnote, if Ann (Lisle-) Smith or anyone who knows her reads this could she please contact me via the blog as I no longer have your address.

Should say that the last address I have is Palymra but I think she was then near Sydney but moved from there a couple of years ago.

Oh What A Week

Suffice to say this has been a tough week. I was very lucky in respect of the storm damage here but at the start of the week, I had another alpaca die. Totally different symptoms to the others but sadly the same outcome. I am now at my wits end trying to find out why this is happening and why my alpacas will not put on any weight.

I have been through many reasons and have been told many conflicting 'solutions'. Loosing my beautiful Theo so soon after Ashan has knocked my self confidence greatly.

Since the vets here have no idea as to what has killed them, I've arranged for an autopsy on Theo and am now awaiting the results of that. Robin at Utopian alpacas has been really helpful again; we've been through possible causes and our current thought is liver fluke, although why he should have got it when the others have been here for longer is something we haven't' a reason for. Until the results come back though it's all speculation.

Robin has also put me in touch with an alpaca breeder, Leah, who lives about an hour north of here. She has very kindly agreed to come down next week to go through things with me and see if there is something I am doing that is wrong, to look at the land and to look at the hay. Local farmers have said the hay is fine but their experience is with cattle so maybe...

Tonight though I'm suffering from backache; I've spent most of the day helping a neighbouring farmer in his orchards. He had around 900 trees blown over in the storm and the local farmers have been working on his property for the last couple of days.

Yesterday I made a couple of chewy chocolate cakes for the communal meal this lunchtime while this morning found me in the orchard with about 20 other farmers. Everything was in swing. There was a group collecting and distributing 6 ft log posts to each prostrate tree, then the next group of 3 or four would move down the rows with a bucket-less digger. The digger arm was used to press the post 3-3.5 ft into the ground and then they moved on. After them came another ground with a digger (because they are tracked they coped better on the land which is totally saturated), a strap was placed round the tree and it was hauled back to vertical and then strapped to the post.

After that the tree was heavily pruned and then came me, along with Ann and another friend, N, and our job was dragging all the branches to the middle of the track-ways so they could be bulldozed out of the way.

It was interesting again that none of the French wives worked in the orchard, their job was to prepare the mid-day lunch, it's still quite sexist here. Being single and a farmer I think I honorary male, especially after I did the tractor run to the plum drying cooperative back in the summer

Part way through the morning we had a visitation, the Conseil General - the department's general council - arrived along with their official photographer, the local mayor and photographers and reporters from 2 regional papers.

Lunch tile came and about 30 of us sat down for lunch at the village hall and in typical French fashion it was simple and yet a feast at the same time. A vegetable based soup that was delicious made by one of the men from the village as his contribution as he was unable to help in the orchard due to having his knee smashed by a kicking cow.

Then there was grated carrot and macadonie (mixed veg) served cols but mixed with vinaigrette, surrounded by quartered hard boiled eggs. It was a feast for the eyes as well as the body, oh and there was home-made mayonnaise too.

After that the main course was roast pork and creamed potatoes. I dread to think what the calorific value of the potatoes might have been, I know that they contained butter, milk and creme fraiche. Delicious.

Then came the lettuce with an enormous platter of cheeses and after that the dessert accompanied the coffee.

After that it was back to the orchard for another hour or so before I had to leave to do my chores here. I have to say there is something really heart-warming seeing how so many people here are turning out to help their neighbours. There is still community spirit, one of the reasons I wanted to move here.

Looking at the amount of work that is building up here, I think I'm only going to be blogging once a week, partly because a lot of the work is going to be very repetitive and partly because I think I'm going to be rather tired by the end of the day and I need to use what time I have for research.

As I'm probably not going to be blogging tomorrow, Happy Imbolic to those who celebrate it.

A Few More Pictures

By 5:30 pm, the wind had dropped quite a bit so I ventured outside to have a look a little further away from the house and to round up the escaping plant pots etc.

Down by the pond a quick look at the tedder left me thankful that poplar isn't a particularly heavy wood or a tree that produces lots of heavy branches. I think once I remove the tree the tedder will be fine. The ground is very wet there and consequently soft so I'm hopeful that the damage to the tedder will be minimal.



Keeping well away from or at least up wind from any trees I wandered round the field above the pond. Three small trees/bushes have had largish branches snapped off so I'll need to clear them next week too if possible.

This picture shows the two poplars from above the pond and also gives a good view of the oak that came down before Christmas. I need to clear that sometime too but as it's on my neighbours land I have to be very careful to pick my time so as to not damage his wheat crop in the field.


Coming down the other side of the field from the pond this run off from the neighbour's field is heading for the pond but gives an idea of the amount of rain we've had over the last couple of days. There's more rain forecast over the next couple of days, some torrential so I don't know when the roof will be fixed but the winds which were the strongest recorded in this area, have gone.


Oh and all the chickens made it back safely too, and my red shoes are staying very firmly in the shoe rack.

And The Wind Did Blow

And blow, and blow, plus another 20.5 mm of rain to add to the 39 from yesterday. Added to which the power went out at around 8 am but was back on at 2 pm – I was battening down for the day without electricity as the winds haven’t let up so there must be some pretty tired people out there battling away to restore the power.

Link to BBC report here.

Last night we were just on orange alert but it’s been upgraded to red alert this morning – now I’ve got onto the computer. Apart from the wind coming in off a depression in the Atlantic, there is another depression coming down from the north and that is bringing much colder weather so possible snow flurries and ice.

The farm has taken some damage; on the windward side roof tiles have been lifted so rain is pouring into the rear storage area. I’m hoping that it won’t get much worse or it might start to affect the lived in part of the building. It’s far too windy to risk going up to try and fix the roof.


Down by the pond I have 3 young poplars that I thought would be fine. Wrong; when I looked out this morning, one of them had snapped and by lunchtime a second had also snapped and looks like it’s fallen onto my tedder, which is stored down there. I’m really glad I wasn’t tempted to go and look at the damage after the first tree came down and yet again I’m so glad that the 3 over large and rotten poplars round the house are down.


Elsewhere, the large plastic patio table has had the centre section broken – I tried removing the parasol but the base has swollen into the holder and everything was just too heavy for me to do anything about. I do now realise why wooden furniture is so popular here.


One of my wild cherry trees has also taken a battering; it’s not that tall so I was a bit surprised to see it leaning but the ground is so waterlogged, I guess it just couldn’t hold on well enough.


The chickens stayed in when I opened up this morning but when I went to give them their grain at lunchtime some of them decided to venture out – or rather ran past me. So I hope they are feeling strong or goodness knows where they will end up. The roof of their hut is also taking a battering and I’ve had to weight it down with more bricks. So still here at the moment and waiting to see what the rest of the day brings.