I Think It Might Be Autumn

The weather weird-ing continues, one stormy night followed by a day of rain and showers and the daily temperature has dropped by around 12C.  The usual couple of months where the temperature slowly ramps up in spring and then descends in autumn haven’t happened this year which is a great pity as it is those months when most of the outside work gets done.  Never mind, there is always next year

The harvest this year is much less than usual at my place; the cold spring along with the wet early part of summer which then over a couple of days turned to an extremely hot summer with no rain meant not many pollinators made it to my place and the plants themselves struggled to grow.  However in august things started growing so I had some fresh vegetables.

The nectarines were rather small but tasty.  The ones in the basket above are the white fleshed type.  The yellow fleshed ones, which are generally sweeter, only had 2 fruits that made it through to somewhere near ripening and they were both eaten by the hornets before they were ready to harvest.

The peaches though did reasonably well. 

Most of these were knocked off by the wind but I don’t leave the peaches on the tree until soft, again because of the hornets, wasps and ants.  As soon as they start to go yellow, I go through the tree and give each one a gentle twist and take off those that basically come away in my hand.  They are still hard but I found this way of ripening them somewhere on the Internet and it works better than any other method I’ve used.  The peaches are laid out on a cotton cloth and covered loosely with another one.  I check them every couple of days and remove any that are starting to go off but on the whole they soften ready for eating.

This year it was the early flowering almond that got the best of the weather.  Usually it doesn’t produce much as normally it gets the worse weather.  I don’t have anywhere near as many almonds as last year but that will make these even more tasty. 

The wild hazel trees have struggled too.  Most of the hazelnuts above I think are empty – they don’t fall out of their cases – but I will open them just the same until I convince myself that my theory works.

I lifted the shallots a few weeks ago and they hadn’t produced many large bulbs.  I’ve used a few but the majority will be going back in the ground for next year.

With the changing of the climate I think that saving your own seed is going to become more important to ensure that the plants you grow can flourish in your particular environment.  Lets just hope we can stop the EU legislators from banning us from saving and using our own seed so we have to fill the coffers of the mega companies.

The bees are still here too!

The swarm has probably quadrupled in size over the summer so I’m hopeful there will be enough of them to survive the winter; there needs to be a big enough group to generate enough heat to keep them warm and alive through winter.  However, I don’t think they have enough honey so I’ve not taken any for myself and have started feeding them some heavy syrup.  I will keep feeding them this syrup for a couple of weeks as I think they still have time to convert it to honey.  If however the weather looks like it is going to degrade further I’ll have to stop and change to fondant. 

Today though they were out and working and were bringing in a lot of pollen. 

Yesterday when I checked them, I also fitted the mouseguard as part of the winter preparation.  Again the bees were very patient with me despite me faffing about and intermittently closing off the entrance while I tried to get the height of the guard right.  Note to self, fit the mouseguard before filling with bees next time!

They adapted to the mouseguard really quickly and it will serve a double purpose.  Not only should it stop any mice from entering and building a nest to overwinter in the warmth of the hive but it also makes the entrance more defendable.  That point was brought home while I was doing my hive check. 

I’d just opened up the hive when I noticed a hornet taking rather a lot of interest in the bees that were on the crown boards I’d taken off.  Thankfully it was the European hornet and not the Asiatic.  I gave it a bit of a dousing with the water spray and it moved off.  About a thirty seconds later I realised it had returned.  I’d not seen it come back but a couple of the guard bees had wrestled it to the ground and were battling to kill it.  My boot came down rather heavily as I didn’t want there to be any chance of it going back to its nest and telling the others.

Help In The Garden

Stardate 18th and 23rd May 2009

It was time to plant the petit pois so I went out to the big veg patch and made the trough for the seeds; I was then joined by Cid and Snowy. As ever, they thought that the best place to lie was in the trough.



Patches on the other hand decided to chill.

Stardate 8th - 17th May 2009

I’ve been trying to leave some areas around the farm to naturalise a bit and was pleased to find a trio of orchids flowering beside the pond.



I was then overjoyed to find this bee orchid that flowered under the cherry tree that had been blown over in the January 2009 storm.



I then went down to where I’ve been protecting some orchids that were growing in a ditch by the road and was really pleased that so many more had flowered this year. From 5 the first year, I counted 25 this year. I think I managed to get 6 in this shot:-


The commune cut the verges and went round most of the orchids but I did find the following that had been cut.

This Week I Have Been Mostly Weeding

In the blink of an eye the vegetable garden by the house has become overrun with weeds. Well to be honest they’ve been there for ages but as they grew so early the ground was far to wet to hoe. Now the decent weather is here they have gone to seed. The two main weeds on this area are groundsel and bittercress, which fires its seed as soon as you touch the plant.

Because of the number of ripe and ripening seed heads, hoeing was out of the question along with rotorvating. Hand weeding I decided was the best option, to try and remove as many seed heads as possible. It is taking ages but hopefully it will be worth it by reducing the number of plants I will have to deal with for the rest of the year.

Each 30m row takes about 2 hours to do but having done each bit and seeing the clear row is very rewarding. I’m about halfway down or to put it in a more positive light I’m half finished.



Here’s a picture to show all’s well with the world today.


Snowy is also back to her supervisor self. She eventually decided that the comfort of her chair and umbrella (as shown here) would be better but it’s so nice to have her behaving ‘normally’ again.

This week I’ve also blown a few eggs.


They are either for Christmas decorations or next Easter, as I’ve no chance of doing anything with them before next weekend. Doing them now made sense, at least at the time. I had the eggs and I wanted to make a couple of quiches for summer picnics. One useful thing about having the alpacas is that I have various syringes and needles that proved very useful. Having blown the eggs, I gave them a wash in a dilute bleach solution and using the syringe I was able to inject the solution into the eggs and wash the insides too.

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.

A Quiet Wednesday

It didn’t rain today but after the 17mm we had yesterday the ground was far to wet to work today. The sky also remained overcast all day so it became a day of bits and pieces mainly indoors.

While letting out the chickens this morning I glanced over to my saffron bed and here it is…my very first home-grown saffron. It looks like I’ll double the quantity tomorrow too! While it might be one of the most expensive items by weight around at the moment, I don’t think I’ll be making my fortune just yet.


Later on in the day I was on my way back to the chickens to give them some grain and found this little chap in the grass.



He was only 15cm, 6 inches long at the most, about the same size as the hedgehog I saw last year. I’m wondering now if the hedgehogs are a smaller variety here than in the UK or if I’ve seen juvenile ones each time. Once he’d noticed me photographing him, he headed off across the flowerbeds towards the pile of weeds for burning. As you can see, Patches was curious but she kept her distance so I suspect she’s had a prickled nose before now.


While I love my bonfires, I never just set light to a heap of stuff I’ve left around. I always start a new heap to burn so I don’t inadvertently roast one of these delightful slug catchers. I headed him off and placed him under the bay tree behind the house, whether he will hibernate in the leaves there or head back to the burning pile, I’ll find out when I have the next bonfire. In the meantime I must dig out my hedgehog book and see if there are any ideas for making somewhere for him to hibernate that doesn’t require me doing any construction work as I just don’t have time at the moment.

The rest of the day was spent doing the little things like putting bolts on doors and trying to re-fit the curtain pole on my bedroom. The walls here are a mixture of rubble, breezeblock, terracotta block and bad plaster and one of the rawlplugs holding up the curtain pole had pulled out of the wall taking a rather large piece of plaster with it. So while the filler was setting I even managed a trip to the tip to empty my trailer of all the rubbish in it. All in all a quiet but satisfying day.

Winter Preparations

The tractor still isn’t back so I decided to make a start on some of the outdoor preparations for winter. First up was cutting back the mulberry trees. Last year I made the mistake of leaving it too late and there was a sharp frost. All the leaves dropped in one go and the rain and frost of the following couple of days turned them into a ghastly slime that coated the grass. I really didn’t want to have to deal with that again this year so out came the long handled loppers and the pruning saw and I set to work.

The trees have done what they were planted for all summer; they provided shade for the car and the washing line. Now that summer is over, the car doesn’t need the shade and the washing needs to be able to see the sun to have any chance of the washing drying. After a few hours of pruning (it always takes much longer than I think it will), voila –

One reason for the slowness today was the heat. It may be autumn, heading for winter and the overnight temperature may have been 5°C but by the afternoon the temperature in the shade was 25°C and in the sun it peaked at 44°C. Working outside requires two sets of work clothes, a winter type set for the mornings and a summer type set for the afternoons. Tomorrow however we’re forecast rain and a drop in temperature despite the lovely red sunset out there tonight.

Once I’d finished the trees and then dealt with the alpacas I turned my attention to the wooden garden furniture. A had very kindly painted it with a special hard wood oil when he was here back at the beginning of summer, looking at it after a summer in the dappled sunlight it hadn’t fared any better than the doors C and M painted with linseed oil for me and they spend a large part of the summer in direct sunlight. The special hard wood oil cost around 18€ for a litre, my linseed mix works out at about 2€30 a litre so guess what I will be using from now on.

The home-made oil is a mixture of linseed oil and turpentine (as a carrier). The book I got the recipe from states that for soft woods use 75% oil, 25% turps and for hard wood use a 50:50 mixture. Half the time I’ve no idea what sort of wood I’m treating so I make up a general mixture of two thirds linseed oil and one third turps and use it for everything. By the time the sun started to go down I managed to do the upper surface of the table and three of the five chairs.

The other two chairs will get done as and when and I will also be treating all the wooden handles of my gardening implements.

Back From The Twilight Zone

As quickly as my lethargy descended it has evaporated, life has started again. So what’s happening, well not much over the last month but the last three days have been busy.

Friday was day one of the recovered me and I set about finishing some to the things I’d started over the last few weeks but been unable to do. So the lawn has finally been mown and with the grass collector on as well for the first time this year. It's been on my to do list for ages and with the leaves now falling I wanted to add the mix of leaves and grass to the compost bin. At the beginning of the week I could only manage a couple of rows before having to give up, Friday there was no stopping me.

After the lawn I decided to get the rotivator out and make a start on the area Sue and I had cleared. After that I thought I should stop and make sure I didn't overdo it.

Yesterday was also a full day although I spent most of it sitting down and reading a book. Ann had her 'car boot in the garden' sale to raise fund for the cats she looks after. I help by manning the stalls and helping with the putting away – it’s a nice way to spend the day, meeting other people and reading when there are breaks.

So round to today when I was looking forward to a lie in but was rudely awaken by the sound of the hunting dogs close by the house. A lot of the dogs are not well controlled and I fear for the cats, chickens and alpacas so it was dressing gown on and outside to see exactly where they were and which direction they were going.

Earlier in the week I took a walk down the garden towards the pond and around the ‘wood’ field, leading to the picture at the top of the post. In the basket are the last tomatoes of this year. I then found a couple of mushrooms lurking in the field below the small alpaca paddock. I was hoping a light shower of rain the other evening would have persuaded some more to appear but sadly not. I also found some rosehips and after my double cold I am going to prepare some rosehip syrup to see me through the winter, although I think I will have to go on some walks with Ann to find a sufficient supply of the hips.

After doing nothing all summer, my mangetout peas have finally bloomed and I’ve just started picking some as the first ground frosts are occurring. In a similar vein my cape gooseberries bloomed too. The fruit is still green and I’m not convinced they will ripen but I’m really hoping some will.

Back to today, I decided to add a little alpaca manure to the ground I’d been rotivating. The soil itself is reasonably fertile but when I lifted the potatoes, which I’d planted on a shallow bed of the droppings the worms had loved the addition and the soil texture had improved. Digging out the old manure heap I discovered it was full of mycelium and beneath the couch grass that had covered the heap I found these.

I’m hoping that I will be able to get a good crop of mushrooms next year now that I know they will grow here and where to look.

Finally for tonight, a picture of Sick Chick. She’s still looking OK but I will be checking her again tomorrow or Tuesday. Her tail is still up and she’s moving round happily with the others and her diarrhoea has stopped as well. I still think she will have at least another maggot attack before the hole is fully healed but I am far more hopeful about her long-term prospects. She’s the chicken in the foreground.

Another Gift From Debs

As I was leaving yesterday, Debs handed me these:



They are Chayote, also called choko, chaco, xuxu and christophene. These two have both started sprouting from the single seed at the base of the fruit and I’m now scouring the Internet on the best ways to grow these. I will have to plant carefully as they produce a vine that can grow to over 30 ft and work out what to use to support the vines but I’m looking forward to growing them.

Jane Grigson has some interesting recipes using them, Chayote Creole and a sweet of Chayote in Red wine that sound rather nice. Roll on next September.

Digging Deep

Time is passing so quickly it’s frightening. So what have I been doing; well, digging digging, labouring and ploughing mainly.

While the tractor was on loan for a few days I continued with the pottager area. The general weeds come out quite quickly but the couch grass is another matter. It takes half a day to dig an area that would take about an hour otherwise, but the good bit is seeing the barrow full of roots ready for burning.

The cats also love it when I’m out digging and I usually have my entourage, the only one missing here is Hazel and she was watching me from the patio off to the left.


Digging also unearths scores of these, mole crickets which scamper away to find cover as soon as possible. My guess is that they don’t taste too good as Cid usually leaves them alone while he goes crazy for grasshopper snacks.



Talking of digging, a month of so back I was lifting the garlic and I unearthed this gorgeous little fellow, a baby toad. Up by the chicken house I’ve seen, but never had my camera of course, an adult that is at least the size of a saucer and possibly a bit bigger.


Monday I had the tractor back so decided to get on with ploughing the cereal field. There was the customary hour or so to fuel and check over the tractor plus hitch up the plough. Over the summer, G and I have been working out how to set up the plough so it does actually plough and not just slide over the surface.

The main problem is getting the lift arm short enough; it’s a chicken and egg type of situation. It’s best length is the length it needs to be when it’s actually in the ground ploughing but while it’s still too long it is difficult to get it into the ground.

I read one tip somewhere about running the tractor up onto blocks on one side to mimic the working position of one set of wheels in the rut which I might try next time, this time though I could put the tractor into the last ploughed rut and adjust it there. Still it takes time as it’s all larger than me and being large lumps of iron, rather heavy. It’s working pretty well now, the only slight problem being that the short lift arm means that the leaver to turn the shears now hits the back of the tractor and unless the plough is downhill from the tractor I have to get out and release the locking mechanism and manually swing the plough over. But it keeps me fit. I’ve about a third of the field still to do so it’s looking like the weekend before that will be finished assuming the weather holds.

Part of the reason for it taking so long is that other things need to be done as well; shopping for instance as I hadn’t been for a couple of weeks and I wanted to restock my basics stockpile. Then yesterday it was time to help Ann and Regis. They were stripping the tiles off the roof of Ann’s garage/barn and wanted an extra pair of hands to stack all the handmade terracotta tiles. With three pairs of hands it was done in the morning with the tiles all stacked in known amounts in fruit storage boxes ready for sale.

Ann produced a wonderful lunch and then I crawled home – nothing to do with moving the tiles but I’ve gone down with a head cold. At first I thought I’d managed to give myself another asthma like attack, as the last bale of hay I opened was full of mildew but as yesterday morning passed and no breathing problems had developed overnight as last time I realised it was just a cold. I put it down to the rapid drop in temperature over the last week or so plus the differences between the night and day temperatures too.

So the rest of the week is down to ploughing, the pottager if time and the weather holds, chopping wood if the weather doesn’t. I’ve also a trip to the dentist today – yes another but I hope this will be the last – and then a trip to Deb’s from Lehners in France as she has a Sussex hen and cock along with a Sussex-cross cock for me to add to the hen collection. It will be the final get together before she returns to the UK at the end of the month. Then over the weekend I’ve spotted a local agricultural fair which might produce some more point of lay hens.

Preparing For Winter 2

Well, some of what I hoped to do yesterday happened. I did get the pump field mown although it took much longer than you would think from the size of it due to the deep ruts left from where I got bogged down in it at the beginning of the year.

The wood arrived too but isn’t yet cut. We off-loaded it into the barn and I will start cutting it when the weather breaks, this spell of good weather is far to valuable to waste on cutting wood inside a dry barn.

So yesterday afternoon I continued with the pottager and also lifted the last 3 metres of potatoes.

Today it was back out again to the pottager. It’s slow work but I am making progress and the pile of weeds for burning is getting bigger and bigger; I’m just waiting for a breezeless evening to get that done. The weeds are mainly seed heads with a lot of couch grass and lesser bindweed roots, none of which I want on the compost heap.

I’ve also started lifting and drying the gladioluses. I didn’t do this last year and as a result lost all of one variety and a few of the others. Those that have survived look pretty good though and have produced lots of little bulblets for growing on.

The cabbages haven’t fared so well though, something has been eating them from the top down – don’t you just love slugs and looking at the outer leaves it looks like the caterpillars or something have had a feast on the leaves too leaving just the lacy veins. Part of tonight’s ‘work’ will be finding recipes to deal with a dozen cabbages.
Sto Lat here I come!

Preparing For Winter

Although the weather is still pleasant with day temperatures in the mis 20’s there is a general feeling of summer being over. The leaves are falling at an increasing rate and the morning dew is taking longer and longer to dissipate.

Having been spurred on my Sue’s efforts in the pottager, I’ve also been tidying up the rest of the farm. Basically if it can be mowed it is being mown. The new alpaca fields have been topped of all their sow thistles, the wheat field has been mown ready to finish ploughing it and today I mowed the garden extension, the field where the wood is and the hay field.

The hay field is being done for two reasons; firstly the hay cut left the grass very uneven and a lot of coarse grass was growing and secondly because about a third of the field was being taken over by blackberries as I mentioned back in August.
I’ve cut back most of them in the hay field and reclaimed a 4 by 50 metre strip. Over winter I’ll remove and burn what I can of them but I can now see where by boundary is and my neighbours field begins.

Tomorrow I’m getting another delivery of plum wood from Ann and Regis so the afternoon will be spent cutting and stacking that but in the morning I hope to cut the weeds back in the pump field and will have another go at ploughing that if time permits after I’ve finished the wheat field.

The Pottager Emerges

While Sue was here last week she bravely set to work on the pottager, it had just about disappeared under a covering of weeds this summer. I’d asked her to weed the saffron crocus bed, which she did and then like the energizer bunny, she just kept going.

I made a start on lifting the potatoes, more of which will be in a later post, and manned the bonfire to get rid of the perennial weeds.
Sue made such a difference to the area it has really spurred me on to getting it fully cleared over the next month and ready for planting.

Cherry Picking Chain Saw Style

I may not have been blogging for the last few days but 'stuff' has been happening and I'll do my best to play catch up over the next few days. Like many of the people round here I lost most of my fruit in the frosts at the beginning of April. I have 2 plums and I think it's 3 reine claudes and that's about it with the tree fruit. The sweet cherries have a little fruit on them but it has already split but a couple of the sour/wild cherry trees were spared so some of the time before today's thunder storms was assigned to picking them.

The trees have not been pruned and have just been left to grow resulting in the lower branches having very little fruit while way up above the reach of my ladder there is lots of ripe fruit. So cherry picking was combined with a little mega pruning.

I managed to pick about 10 pounds of cherries before the heavens opened. They are too sour to eat as is but I experimented last year with making glacé cherries and a good proportion of this year's harvest is designated for candying - a further post on this is to follow in a week or so when process is complete.

I will have far more cherries than I can use as glacé cherries so if anyone has any good recipes for wild/sour cherries I'll be really grateful.

I could bottle them but I have yet to eat last year's batch. I've preserved some in alcohol which I will taste when my children are over and I made some cherry jam last year. I still have a few jars of jam left mainly because it set solid in the jar and is impossible to spread on bread or toast. With so little other fruit to look forward to I'm loathed to waste these cherries so I'm off to check my many cookery and self sufficiency books for ideas.

A Bonus Day

No, there’s not been an extra day added to the week but I didn’t get the rain and thunder forecast for today. Instead it’s been sunshine the whole day (and it was dry yesterday too), so I abandoned the rainy day stuff I had planned for today and got on with scything down the 1.5 metre high grass along the ditch on the other side of the new vegetable area. That with animal feeding and washing just about sums up today. It doesn’t sound a lot but it has taken the day.

The cats have loved the warm weather, cue cute picture of Cid giving Hazel a quick wash.

Still it gives me plenty of time to cover yesterday and Tuesday.

The fencing posts for the alpaca paddocks have arrived – hurrah; hopefully the person who’s going to put them in will be round soon. I’ve no idea who it is as it’s being arranged by Regis.

The main news from Tuesday was the arrival of two new alpacas so let me introduce you to Dior and Dartagnan. Dior, on the left is a female while Dartagnan on the right is a male. They have both settled in really well although I think Dartagnan is missing some of his previous herd mates and hums a lot. No such problems with Dior who I think will eventually give Silver a run for her money and not be bullied.

Wednesday’ main event for me was a trip to the dentist, yes, the 3 weeks wait was finally up and the appointment was at 3:30. I found the place without any hassle and went into the waiting room. It was quite a different experience from my dentist in the UK.

In the UK I was with a modern practice, all shiny, new, lots of receptionists and lots of people waiting usually over half an hour their allotted appointment time. Here I was the only person. Granted I did have to wait but not very long. The next difference was that there was only one dentist and a receptionist who worked in a room off the surgery and not in the reception area. It turned out they knew of me; the receptionist is a friend of my neighbour and I’m easily identifiable as the Brit with the alpacas. The dentist himself only lives about a kilometre away too.

I’d gone prepared with a drawing of my teeth and a list of relevant words with their French translation. I explained that I had one tooth with a big hole in it but it was the tooth next to it that was actually giving the pain.

Both teeth were worked on by my dentist in the UK. I had to go onto a private dental insurance due to a lack of NHS dentists in the area and I had more done to my teeth after going onto the plan than I had before going on to it and that included all the remedial work that had to be done before they would let you join the dental insurance plan. In this case, a deep filling had to be done, while the dentist pulled my tooth around to the point I thought he was trying to extract it he managed to dislodge a filling out of the side of the adjoining tooth, something neither of us noticed until later when I had to go back because I was having a problem with it. He drilled out the hole and put in a new filling…that lasted about a week. Back again and he drilled out a bit more and put in another filling. That lasted about a month; just long enough until I had arrived here and of course cancelled my insurance.

But it was the adjoining tooth that he’d worked on that was causing the problem now and oh I heard on the grapevine that he didn’t last very long at the dental practice.

The dentist here looked at the hole and decided to check that it wasn’t that causing the problem. Did he poke and prod, not at all, he used a cold spray which caused no reaction from me so he was then happy that it was the other tooth. Another thing that was nice was there was no dental assistant dragging open one side of my mouth while a dentist worked on the other, it was far more gentle I didn’t feel so assaulted and I was actually able to talk to the dentist.

He removed the filling from the other tooth and saw that 2 of the roots had been killed but the previous dentist had left/missed the third when he did the previous work. It’s this root that is now part dead and decaying that is giving the pain. I’ve now got a temporary filling while the gunk that’s been put inside the root is hopefully killing it and I have to go back in 3 weeks for the next bit of work.

Another difference to the UK was the lack of anaesthetic injection. They were almost standard at my last practice and often resulted in very sore gums for a day or two where the 2 or 3 (for some reason one injection point never seemed to work on my gums) needles had been inserted. I was really impressed as I felt no pain what so ever. I flinched a tiny bit when he very gently poked the live root which then confirmed that it was the problem, but really it was nothing.

Wednesday evening I realised that it had been dry and warm enough to dry the alpine strawberry plants and on closer inspection they had been ripening despite the lack of sunshine. As rain was on the cards for today, I wasted no time and got picking. While I picked, the mosquitoes feasted. I think I managed to kill about as many as bites I received – I have about 20 – they were biting through my leggings and tights as well as my arms, talk about voracious. Still it was worth it, I got two baskets of berries that are destined to become Alpine Strawberry Preserve. Scones anyone?

Update on Super Mouse; he may have had his chips. The trap was sprung this morning and there was a much smaller mouse in there than last time. I think it might have been Super Mouse but the trap is back down and I’ll see if I catch any more. I might bait the humane trap again as well, if Super Mouse still lives he’ll get the bait from there with no problem and I’ll know he’s still about.

Thursday Just Went

Today just slipped by, the morning was spent going to Bergerac to get more lime for whitewash and an exterior light for the patio so I can get rid of the bare wires and normal bulb and holder that’s out there at the moment. It also tied in with a trip to see Ann and talk over things that I need for the farm.

Today it was getting someone in to put in the fence posts and getting equipment to cut hay along with arranging a convenient day for Mr Tibbs to go in for the chop.

The afternoon was back out in the garden; the dry day meant that I could get another go over some of the soil with the rotivator and break up the soil a bit more. After that I finally got some of my garlic into the ground, most of it has rotted while waiting but with luck I’ll get enough cloves for next years planting. I’ve still another 2 or 3 rows of another variety to plant but stopped because Regis called round.

He wanted to borrow the topper as his had broken down. While he was here he had a look at the ride-on mower that broke down last week. Needless to say it worked first time for him, leaving me feeling a bit miffed. He disappeared off to get his tractor and I decided to do some mowing. Would the mower start for me – would it heck, but at least I knew it should start. Eventually I figured out that the parking brake could engage in two positions. In one it activated the relay that allows the engine to be started in the other it doesn’t! So now I know another of it’s idiosyncrasies.

I’d nearly finished the ride-on mowing when the thunder spots started and that was it for the day. The thunder rumbled around for a couple of hours but with no obvious lightning from here.

So for a change I was inside in time to watch the news but fate was against me, the journalists were on strike again so it was a slightly different format news with only a few international bits, the rest coming from the regions that weren’t on strike.

All in all an odd sort of day, nothing much to write about but one that got little bits done that will make the following days easier – as long as the ground dries out again.

After the storm

Creeping Forwards

When I got back from Agen yesterday there was a message on the answer phone, the kitchen store had telephoned to say my stuff was there. They didn’t specify which stuff and I’ve learnt from past experiences not to get too excited. I was right to be laid back; it was the replacement leg for the unit that had arrived and not the missing unit. On the positive side though, the order for the missing unit was there in the book; if it has paperwork attached it will be done - just don’t ask when!

Still the trip into Villeneuve wasn’t a total waste, I found some more sandals, having worn out my last pair as if I’m not in my safety shoes (which are nearly worn out too) I’m in my walking sandals, and I filled the car with diesel – ouch. Long gone are the days when it cost fewer Euros than litres. On the national news the other day they were showing people who were filling up every day so it ‘only cost them a few euros’. I think they are only kidding themselves, I’d rather fill up and get the shock of how much it costs to encourage me to cut out unnecessary journeys than spend the money in dribs and drabs trying to convince myself that it’s not an expensive luxury.

Back at the farm I put in the last half row of potatoes and continued with a bit more ground preparation while it tried to drizzle. We’ve not had the thunderstorms and hail we were promised for today so that was good. I also started seeding the area in the grass I mutilated yesterday. I can only say started as the seed I had has only covered about a third of it so I will be getting some more when I’m next out.

Apart from that not much else got done, as I’ve been really tired. I’ve had a problem with one of my teeth and made an appointment with the dentist but there is a three-week wait. So I’ve survived the last week and a half on paracetamol but I think it’s leaving me rather out of it so I’m going to have to cut it right down and live with a bit of discomfort.

When I turned round from the computer this evening to see if it was dark enough that the chickens would have gone to bed I noticed the unusual lighting outside, it was a sort of yellow pink light. This picture gives a reasonable idea of what outside looked like – out of focus again because I can’t hold a camera steady to save my life.

I then tried to take a shot of the sunset its self. Well they say the camera never lies but it does really depend on the camera setting.

This first one is taken with the special sunset setting

It would have been quite a sunset if that was really what was there, I think I would be waiting for the end of the world to happen if I saw a sky like that!

In actuality it was closer to this, taken on the auto setting although there was a little bit more red in the sky but nothing like the earlier shot