It’s Autumn!

Another season is officially here and the last of my summer visitors has departed for the UK so it’s time to play catch-up with the blog.

Last Thursday was celebration day, it was Snowy’s 12^th birthday and while Sue and I has a glass of wine, the cats celebrated with some tuna.

And talking of pets that brings me round to Cheep Cheep; he’s been growing fast. This photo was taken around the time G made the outside run for him.

About a week later he was too big for the box we were keeping him in and we moved him to the segregated area in the hen house. After a week there we let him mix with the other hens but put him in the separate run in the chicken enclosure. Eventually he was getting a bit big for that and had learnt to keep out of the way of the other chickens really well so he is now running round on the edge of the flock – being the smallest he is at the bottom of the pecking order.

This photo was taken a short while before G and M left and you can see just how much Cheep Cheep has grown.

Looking at his feathers we think Cheep Cheep is a male. He’s still very tame and will sit on my arm to eat the wheat when I feed the chickens. His friendliness is a good thing on his part, he is now in line for reserve cockerel while the cockerel from the earlier hatching has therefore been renamed Coq au Vin.

Many thanks to M for the pictures of Cheep Cheep.

I Am Still Here!

I can’t believe how fast the time has flown by. Days have been filled with repetitive work such as feeding the alpacas and the chickens, days of hard work such as getting in the hay and days out. Sadly though G and M are due to leave at the end of the week, the 10 weeks they have been here has sped by and I will be really sorry to see them go.

I won’t be on my own though, the plane that is taking G and M back to the UK is bringing my good friend Sue for a return visit which I’m looking forward to very much. Hopefully she can have more of a rest this time as I don’t have 200 trees that need planting although she has volunteered to help me tamp in some of the remaining 400 fence posts.

With luck, over the next few weeks, I’ll get round to posting some of the things I’ve just been too tired to post over the last weeks

Another Day, Another Fête

We had a day off last week and managed to fit 3 engagements into one day. In the morning G, M and I went to Eymet, renown for being the most ‘English’ town in France, or so the local TV station says every time England plays France at anything. They were holding an oyster and wine festival. Sadly there were no Arcachon oysters as their sales had been halted due to an infection scare but there were some from northern France. There were also many local wine growers eager to promote their bottles too.

We started off at the tourist information booth that was selling glasses for wine tasting and I also bought some raffle tickets. We then did a tour of the town square to examine all the stalls. There were stalls selling all sorts of seafood (as in the picture above), stalls with moules/frites and stalls with wine. Once we’d decided at which stall we’d purchase our moules the only problem was to get a seat. Whole tables were being reserved by the gathering groups of French who were far better prepared than we were. They turned up with the covertures, aperitifs, coffee and picnic boxes crammed full of salad and other delights to accompany the oysters or mussels.

We eventually settled ourselves on the end of a table near the corner of the square where we could people watch and then set off in relays to purchase lunch while leaving at least one person to guard our places. Having really little idea of which wines to try our decided plan was to get three different rosés and have a joint tasting. Wine, mussels and frites and a plate of oysters were soon purchased and very quickly consumed with much enjoyment.

From there we travelled to Monflanquin where the medieval fair that progresses through the bastide villages in the area was currently installed. The atmosphere in the encampments is always fun and the visiting children and sometimes adults, join in, arriving in their own costumes to be entertained by the re-enactors. One of the highlights of the Monflanquin stage was a display of raptors and along with a wonderful eagle our hearts were taken by this eagle owl.

We didn’t stay too long there as I started to feel decidedly unwell. This was not a good sign as at Christmas I had been very ill after eating oysters. Yes, I was decidedly unwell again which was strange as I’d quite happily wolfed my way through a box of two dozen oysters soon after I’d arrived in France. Having thought about it I’ve finally concluded it is the salt levels of the oysters that I can no longer tolerate. The ones I’d had when I’d first arrived I’d kept in cold water in the house as at that time I didn’t have a refrigerator. The two lots that had made me ill were both fresh and au naturel. So I think I’d better give oysters a miss when I out from now on.

Thankfully the illness was short lived for that evening we were off to the local salle de fete for a village meal.

My village/commune although very small, around 200 inhabitants, is twinned with two other places in France that share the same name. one of the twinned towns was visiting our village for a four day visit and the paella meal was part of the celebrations – a bit more of this in the next post.

As is almost statutory at these village meals there was far more food than anyone, even G, could eat and of course because this is the prune (plum) growing area of France it was washed down with the plum eau de vie. We did well and managed a few mouthfuls each of the fire water and then decided that we’d bring it home to drink the rest later. I only had to drive about half a mile but that stuff is potent.

The wonderful day was given and even better feeling the following day when I received a telephone call from Eymet tourist office. One of my raffle tickets had been drawn and I am to receive a basket of preserves from one of the town shops, exactly what I won’t know until I finally get it but I am thoroughly looking forward to that.

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.

Blogger has just screwed up

I'll try to sort out the posts later when it may have sorted its self out

Never Trust the Weather Forecast.

I checked and re-checked the long range forecast, it said 2 days good sunshine then the possibility of a little rain and then 5 days of dry warm weather again. I decided to cut the hay; despite the 30+ degrees on the Sunday it didn’t quite dry enough to bale so I left it expecting to bale Wednesday. The light rain on Monday turned out to be 7mm and ther were a further 5mm on Tuesday. By then the long-range forecast had also changed to rain every day for the rest of the week! Argh… I’ve only got the tractor until the end of the weekend.

I was able to turn the hay yesterday afternoon and there was still some very damp stuff in there although I think just one good drying day and we could bale, it would then just be a case of how fast can we get the hay off the field and into the barn so fingers crossed. Thankfully the alpacas don’t require high protein hay and they should also be on grass by winter but I would like a reserve of hay just in case the weather throws a wobbly this winter.

Busy, Busy, Busy

It’s been lots of work here on the farm. The ploughing is slowly progressing. On the whole it looks good but there are large patches where the plough just skims the surface, which roughly corresponds to the damp/clay areas.

The weekend was forecast dry with Sunday being 30°C, ideal for haymaking now that the hay cutter had been repaired. So Saturday dawned and I waited for the dew to dry and went to set up the cutter. It wouldn’t lift the cutters plus the hydraulic connection was leaking. G came out to have a look and see if anything was moving at all when I operated the hydraulics. The ram had opened to the full extent but the chain was still loose – not right as the repaired chain had only had a link changed. While looking at the cutter G said, “what’s that for’? He was pointing at pulley, a pulley that really should have had a chain wrapped round it but didn’t.

We then proceeded to spend the next few hours taking the mechanism apart, and putting it back together correctly. It took a couple of goes, partially because we didn’t have the right tools and partly because it was trial and error until we got the adjustment right.

Eventually we were successful. I stood in awe of G’s strength when he heaved the cutters off the floor so we could get some working slack in the chain; something I would never have been able to do by myself.

It was now well into the afternoon so I didn’t finish cutting until after it was dark.

Sunday was warm and bright and I was able to set down the hay cutter without breaking the chain this time. I then filled the tractor with fuel and went to hitch on the tedder. It didn’t take too long to attach the side arms and adjust the lift arm and attach it so all that was left was the drive shaft to the PTO. Would it go on, would it h**k; I squeezed the release catch, I pushed the universal joint but it just wouldn’t lock on. Eventually I got G out – his treat for the week was a lie-in, but even he couldn’t’ get it on. Eventually I got the lump hammer and a piece of wood; G held the release catch and I applied the persuasion – it worked.

OK so I was running about an hour late but I thought there would still be time so I started on turning the grass. What I was expecting to take about an hour took nearly 4.

I remember the neighbour who cut the hay last year mention something about it being ‘mur’ (better). Turns out it was my lack of understanding his accent; he was talking about ‘mure’ (blackberries). There were long strands of blackberries running through the grass and these tendrils wound themselves tightly round the tedder until it was completely jammed. This of course happened when I was as far away from the house as I can be on the farm and no I didn’t have my knife.

This happened a couple more times although I stopped before the tedder was anywhere as completely jammed as the first time.

I didn’t have my camera during the first pass but took this picture when I went down to do the second pass. It shows a bit of the problem although this was nowhere near enough to jam the machine and only took a few minutes to pull clear.

I finally finished the first pass with the tedder around the time I was expecting to start the second pass after leaving the grass for an hour or so to dry.

I did get another pass in but the grass still has some wet leaves in it so baling wasn’t possible. I now have to hope that the forecast for tomorrow is wrong and that we don’t have rain but I think I will be drying the grass starting Wednesday and hopefully baling by Friday.

One hay field.