A Post about Posts.

Just a very quick post to say, thank you, to everyone who’s commented on the blog and apologise for not responding individually. We’ve started fencing the 3-hectare field; nearly all the post holes have been drilled by the tractor around the circumference – except for where the ground is so hard it can only get about 6 inches into the ground – but there are still all the inside posts to sub-divide the field to be done. Around 60 of the posts have been tamped in hard so only about another 440 to go! I’ll try and post more when we are not so exhausted, after 10 or more hours working on the field thinking is rather difficult.

The picture below was taken this morning with the first 60 or so posts in place waiting to be tamped in.

Mains Water

Last Sunday I had a visit from the mayor, finally after months of waiting the water board had sent the estimate to connect my property to the mains water supply.

The good news about it was that I would only have to pay 50% of the bill, the bad news was that my 50% still amounted to €15 000.00. The mayor was in shock too; "Bring the signed devis back to the Marie if you want to go ahead" he said and left me to mull it over.

Well after a few days thought I decided that it is just too expensive so rainwater harvesting is the route to go. When I first thought about it last year I realised that my roof is ideal as a collecting area as it large. We have just had a little over two weeks without rain though so I need to go back through the rainfall data I've collected over the last 15 months and see whether that is the longest gap between rainfall and how often it's likely to occur. Then the next few weeks will be spent finding out how much water I actually use so I can go through the calculations on size of holding tank.

Other news is that my daughter, C, and one of my son's, G, and his girlfriend, M, have arrived for their summer breaks so posting will be even more erratic - but then that's summer here in France, as the weather gets hotter time in front of the computer diminishes.

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.

Fabulous Friends

I’m blessed with some wonderful friends, some who have been mentioned in the blog and some who haven’t. Some have helped me if what are outwardly little ways but they are there and many little ways mount up to a very large way, there are others who have stood by me through my emotional crises and their contribution is really unlikely to be acknowledged in a blog but they are always there and there are those who step in when something needs to be done and help me to get things finished. I’m also lucky to count my children as friends too. I am really grateful to all of them. I know it’s always dangerous writing about particular friends as it’s possible to make the others feel they aren’t appreciated as much but today I’m going to risk it. Over the last couple of days I’ve had major help and it’s lifted a great weight from my shoulders.

On Monday, Regis came round as promised; he’d asked round his farming friends on Sunday and had been told how to use my tedder to combine the rows of drying hay to reduce the amount of traversing the baler would need to do. The hay from the paddock field being really sparse had by now thoroughly dried. Having combined some rows it was onto the baler. With great in trepidation we got it started; it clanked, it whirred it chopped and compressed and then it broke the baler twine.

Half an hour or so later; once we’d worked out how to correctly thread the twine, Regis set off again while I checked to see if it was working. Everything seemed fine but when it chucked the bales out the back they fell apart, the twine wasn’t being knotted. More adjustments, try again and the same results. Time to call in help in the form of Mr Bonetti who has the local agricultural machine repair place. After riding on the back of the baler watching what was happening he decided that he couldn’t see anything wrong and suggested that the baler twine might be the culprit.

I’d tried to get sisal but the local agricultural merchant didn’t have any so I’d got the plastic baler twine as time was of the essence. Luckily Regis had some sisal twine in the back of one of his barns, left over from when his father was farming and raised cattle. Once they were run through if worked perfectly. I spent a very hot morning running along behind the baler stacking the bales in groups to speed up the collection of them later in the day. Ann then came round following here morning commitments and after a communal lunch we loaded the bales onto the trailer and from there into the barn. All in all I think there were a hundred bales, which should see the alpacas through until they get into the fields. I then have another field to cut for the winter hay but I don’t think that will be until July because of the waterlogged ground.

As if that wasn’t enough cause for joy, C and S who have a home nearby popped round and C said that if I was around in the morning he would pop over and put up the errant corner cupboard. Can you imagine my elation?

C duly arrived and after a good couple of hours got the cupboard up and more importantly level. It had taken a great deal of adjustment, repeated trials against the wall, packing in some areas and eventually a cold chisel to make a recess in another area before it was up. After that the two flanking cupboards were relatively easy although a couple of strategic battens are still required for long term piece of mind just to ensure there is no chance of the cupboards being able to lever themselves off the wall.

So in the space of 48 hours the two most pressing jobs to be done have been done and I know what a lucky person I am having the friends I do.

Is Victor Meldrew* in the House?

Either that or I'm morphing into him. My hot shower this morning wasn't - so cue quick chorus of 'I don't believe it'. No switches tripped on the distribution board so it looks like the immersion heater has given up after 3 months. I could try sending it back but I think that by the time I've gone through the hassle it will be cheaper to ask my sister to send me one direct from the UK.

Just what I need with less than 2 weeks to go until my children arrive - so I'm off to connect up the solar shower and hope the sun keeps shining.

I'm begining to wonder 'why me'?

* Victor Meldrew - One Foot in the Grave

PS. anyone else having difficulty pasting into blogger at the moment.

Oh No! Or Words To That Effect.

I'm beginning to think I should retire to bed, put my head under the pillow and stay there. Something has it in for me as far as cutting grass goes.

The mower started fine this morning but after about a minute or so, it began to billow white smoke so I think there is an oil leak or gasket problem there.

I then went off to cut the first lot of hay; it's taken over 4 hours, it always takes me much longer on the tractor than I think it will. But the paddock field is cut so it was back to park the cutter and change to the tedder. The cutter has a transport position so I duly folded it up and locked it into place to get back to the yard. On putting the cutter down, I didn't want to leave the cutter in the up position so undid the locking clamp and returned to the cab to lower the cutter on the hydraulics. Thankfully I was in the cab and there was no-one else around because the hydraulics pushed the cutter from the vertical but did nothing to slow the descent, so it bounced on the drive chain which promptly snapped. ARGH.

So think positive, at least I've finished the first field and as the second one is underwater it would have to wait anyway.

On the negative side, I now have 2 walk-behind mowers, 1 ride-on mower and 1 hay-cutter all hors de combat. Not really my week is it?