Jars, labels and storing produce

Kim gave us some marmalade (very tasty). Look at the lovely label!

I generally do manage to label things, but not so prettily, and sometime the system fails. It is annoying having jars of things you can't identify but such is life! I get annoyed though by labels that seem to have glue like superglue on them, then all the jars and bottles have bits of old label all over them and don't look pretty at all. For bottles I have started hanging labels around their necks, but that doesn't work so well on jam jars.
I have this vision of the future when the house is all lovely and done and I have all the time in the world (har har) and we will have a lovely pantry full of beautifully labelled and organised produce (jam, bottled fruit and veg and nuts, dried fruit and veg and mushrooms, cordials, cheese, beer, wine) stored neatly away to see us through the winter. I will have to find out how to print labels as nice as this!

Home grown food

We are going to be far from self sufficient in vegetables. As discussed before not everything has been successful - but we have learnt a lot for next year! We have had a number of entirely home grown meals though.
This one was roast lamb with roast beetroot, onion, garlic and potatoes, and steamed beetroot leaves (rather like spinach) and medlar jelly on the side - delicious!

Sheep and shearing

We have finally sheared all the sheep. I admit it is a bit late in the year and autumn will be here soon but we wanted to get them all done otherwise their wool gets very matted. I don't think the wool is growing much through the summer anyway and is perhaps just starting to grow now.
The last one we did was Mrs Suffolk's daughter from last year. She doesn't have a name, last year we planned on eating her, but then changed our minds, mainly because we like her (although she is very shy and a bugger to catch), but using the excuse that she might be pregnant. Which in fact she was. We need to give her a name. We will be eating her baby though as it is a boy.
The three we did before her we did in about 15 mins each as they were small and quite cooperative. She took longer though as she struggled a lot, she looks a bit tufty! Although the actual shearing doesn't take too long there is a lot of time spent catching the right ones before we can start so it is quite a time consuming activity.

We are also keeping her sister from this year who is white - we hope they will give good sized lambs with Harris. We haven't sheared any of this years lambs, they don't need doing until next year. Harris is pretty woolly and should be good and warm over winter.

The sheep haven't weaned their lambs yet but I think it should be pretty soon and then they will start thinking about making next years ones... We could force the weaning but we are keen for the ones we are going to eat to get as fat as possible before we do.

Smažený Sýr - Czech fried cheese

Having started a trip down memory lane with bread dumplings I went on to make fried cheese like we had in Prague. This was my second favorite after goulash and dumplings. Apparently edam is a good cheese to use - although my memory of it in Prague was more often squares than triangles of cheese.

Edam cheese (or gouda or similar)
A few spoonfuls of flour
1 egg
Some breadcrumbs

It is a bit hard to judge how much flour and breadcrumb you need, depends on the size of your cheese. Enough to cover your slices of cheese all over.

Cut your cheese in to slices a bit less than 1cm thick
Put some flour on one plate, the egg in a bowl and the bread crumbs on another plate
Heat some oil in a pan (few mm deep) until it is reasonably hot but not smoking
Dip each slice of cheese in to the flour, then the egg, then the bread crumbs then put it in to the pan
Fry for about 1 min each side until golden brown

Serve with chips and some health veg to off set all that fat and carbs. It is very yummy comforting winter food. Traditionally served with a czech tartar sauce. Need to find out how to make that next time.

We layed some concrete - finally!

We seem to have been preparing to lay the base of the shed for EVER. Deciding how big took some time, then digging the hole ages more, carrying the materials up there was an effort and the lost cows didn't speed things up. The weather has been changable recently, too hot some  days and too rainy others. But finally the forecast seemed just right today. I normally go for a girls cycle ride on Monday mornings but everyone kindly agreed to postpone until Wednesday. We got up early so we could get done by lunch time. We expected it to be hard work, and by golly it was!

We did 6 parts aggregate (melange or mix they call it at the quarry - 4 parts gravel to 2 parts sand) to 1 part cement and just less than one part water. 1 part was 8 liters.
15 mixers full = 90 buckets of aggregate +
15 buckets of cement (which was 5x35kg bags) +
15 buckets of water
We added water then 3 parts of aggregate then the cement then the other 3 aggregate and mixed for 3 mins. Resulting in a total of 30 wheelbarrow fulls of cement that all had to be tipped in and tamped down and leveled.
We are both KNACKERED!! And there is still the other half to go... and the garage and the outdoor kitchen and the whole house. Aaaaaaargh.

Aargh too dry add more water

Pouring it - hopefully not too dry now!

Mixing it up

Finishing touches

First improvement to the house

We have got permission for the works from the Mairie. In the end we haven't got a letter, but apparently if you haven't heard back within the allotted time frame (a month in this case) then it is approved by default - we went in to the Mairie to check why we hadn't heard and they confirmed this.
It was fortunate that we have permission as the roofer has started installing the ventilation triangles and will shortly get on to the velux. It is very exciting!

The roofer started when he said he would which was a bit of a surprise. We weren't quite ready!

Veg update

The tomatoes seem to have blight. We have had a couple, but nothing very impressive.

The courgettes are still cropping well, but not quite so fast. I need to make more courgette jam before they stop.
The fire beans have just started cropping. We are going to let some grow bigger and dry the beans inside rather than eating them 'mange toute' as we did last year. I think they are a bit like kidney beans and can be used in stews and whatnot. We will eat some fresh too as they are very good.

The mini french beans are doing very well. They have nearly as many beans as leaves.
All the pea type things (peas, mange toute, sugar snaps) have died.
The sweetcorn are getting big but we are a bit concerned they aren't going to get there in time.
The cucumbers are going mad, there are LOADS of them. We have made some soup (cucumber with other stuff we had around)
The beetroot are good (Doug is not mad keen on them though - I live them with vinegar). The carrots rather less so at the moment, but I think they will get bigger.
The rocket and lettuce seems to have bolted. We need to do something with the basil (make pesto and freeze maybe...)
Potatoes aren't very big, but they taste good and there are quite a lot of them
The shallots grew and didn't go to seed, but they are not terribly impressive as each one only had 3 or 4 segments. The onions were a bit of a disaster as they all went to seed and hardly grew at all. We planted 100 and harvested about 20 only a few times bigger than the sets we planted! The garlic did grow but they are not very big and seem to think they are done now as the leaves are dying back.
We planted rather a lot of broccoli in one bed thinking many would not survive, most of them have (so far - despite the cabbage whites who scoffed the kale) so it is quite crowded.
The squashes (butternut and pumpkins) have a number of tiny fruit. We are not quite sure if they are going to manage to ripen in time. We have nipped off a number of the growing tips to limit the number of fruit each is trying to ripen. We planted rather too many in the bed so they have all grown together and it is hard to tell what is what.

I need to get it all in to a spreadsheet so we can remember next year what we did and where everything was - so we can make sure to rotate things that need rotating and plant more or less of things as appropriate from our experience this year.

A bit of DIY

Last year Rob and Sarah helped us demolish the ceiling in what will be our bedroom. Nearly a year later we have just got round to throwing out the last of the rubbish from the demolition! Doug has also dismantled the platform that the old ceiling was attached to. The final beam was a bit challenging to get down, but a good angle grinding showed it who the boss was.

Poppy's first swim

Poppy has splashed around in the water lots and loves it. She hasn't actually swum until now though. Over the winter it seemed a bit cold to encourage her right in to the water, and lots of the places we go the water just isn't quite deep enough.
I missed photoing it because I was so busy encouraging her! This is her coming out looking very happy!

This is at Payolle. We went up there one evening and had a BBQ. Relatively busy as it is August but not busy really. We are trying to get in to the French way for things... still some way to go, we have the chairs but no table or table cloth and real glass glasses as yet.

Bread Dumpling Recipe - Czech style

Doug lived in Prague for a short while many many years ago. We visited quite a few times after that.
One thing we were particularly fond of was goulash with bread dumplings.
Way back then I couldn't find a recipe in English anywhere. Now there are so many on the internet (all different!) it is hard to chose which one to use. This is a bit of a mix of a few for simplicity. Can't claim it is a Czech authentic, but is tres yummy. Apparently Czech bread and Czech flour are rather different to those in France or the UK.

250g flour
1 1/2 cups of white bread (cut in to 1cm cubes) 80 -100g depending how stale it is.
1/4tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg

160ml milk

Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
Stir in the egg and milk
It should be a bit wetter than bread dough, mix until it is smooth and stops being so sticky (some recipes suggest leaving it to rest for an hour before stirring - I guess this is similar to making bread by a no knead method). Kind of like kneading but you have to do it in the bowl as it is a bit softer than bread dough.
Add the bread cubes and mix with your hands until well incorporated, if they break up some that is fine.

Put a large pan of salted water on to boil
Shape the dough in to two rolls about 5 cm in diameter and add to the boiling water - carefully. They should float.
After 15 mins turn the dumplings over and cook for a further 15 mins (ie 30 mins in total)
Cut in to slices about 1 or 2 cm thick (some people say to use a thread to avoid crushing the dumpling).

Curry with dumplings

This isn't a recipe as such. I ordered some spice mixes from here.  We have had the Vietnamese Curry (with coconut milk and chicken) which was delicious. We have also have some of the Chinese 5 spice, whole seed, which is very good. Today we had the Indonesian Curry made with lamb, and chicken stock. For some reason I fancied dumplings, so made them with cumin and turmeric in. I wasn't exactly sure how it would come out, but can recommend it now, having tried it. Of course we had to have courgette in it too. Not sure how authentic that is either...

Refreshing cucumber and mint water

As well as plenty of courgettes, we have a lot of cucumbers. We eat about one cucumber a month normally, if that! Unfortunately the lettuce didn't go very well, there is enough for the odd salad but that doesn't use many cucumbers. This is a nice refreshing drink for the sunny weather we have at the moment and uses a whole cucumber!

Use a peeler to slice a cucumber in to very thin slices.
Put the slices in a jug with some mint and fill with water. Leave in the fridge for a few hours.

As Doug says - add some strawberries and pimms and lemonade instead of water and it would be even nicer, but it is refreshing and a change from plain water.

Courgette Jam Recipe

No! Really! There is such a thing. It is made with citrus fruit and courgette and usually ginger.
It is a lovely tangy jam, the courgette is adding texture rather than flavour. Thanks to Aidan for pointing it out!

Lemon and Courgette jam
1kg courgettes
1kg sugar
2cm cube of ginger (optional)
4 lemons

Grapefruit and Courgette jam
1kg courgettes
1kg sugar
2cm cube of ginger (optional)
1 grapefruit
2 lemons

Method (same for both)
Coarsely grate the courgette
Zest the lemons, you can use a zester or for chunkier bits use a grater. Then juice.
Finely chop or grate the ginger
Put everything in a pan and mix
Leave for a few minutes for the liquid to start coming out the courgettes
Put on the stove and heat slowly until sugar is dissolved, then increase the heat until a boil is reached.
Boil until setting point is reached - may take some time as there is a lot of water in courgettes. The mixture will look quite lumpy.
Jar in to sterilised jam jars and cover with a wax disk.

Before cooking

Ready to jar

Waffle Recipes

I was suddenly gripped with the urge to make waffles for breakfast. Maybe because we were watching something American with people having waffles on Sunday morning.
I bought a cast iron waffle maker that can be used on the stove top, the BBQ or an open fire.

Waffle iron (on right - other is a toasted sandwich maker)

Both these recipes make a good number of waffles for 2 people.
Quick recipe
125g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
Salt to taste (approx 1/2 tsp)
1 tbl sp sugar
225ml milk
1 tbl sp veg oil
1 egg

Mix everything together in a bowl.
Cook as per instructions for your waffle iron. Our you have to guess wildly whether it is hot enough and then fill the bottom part of the mould and slam it shut before anything overflows.

Slow recipe
You need to start preparing this the night before.
125g plain flour
1 tsp salt
3.5g brad yeat (half a sachet)
1tsp sugar
1/4 cup water
1 cup milk
50g butter
1 egg
1/8 tsp baking powder

The night before you want to make the waffles, mix together everything except the egg and baking powder. It will rise overnight so make sure the bowl is big enough.
Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave overnight. It should foam and rise.
Just before you want to cook the waffles stir in the egg and baking powder.
Cook as per instructions for your waffle iron.

Yay! Cows are back!

Just as we were settling down to despair of ever finding the cows, and to fret a bit more about whether we were going to end up paying for loaner cow, the neighbour turned up. He had just seen our cows by his barn (a place we have checked several times a day since Friday...). We rushed over there with buckets of food and lead ropes. As always it was challenging getting Hainoa to cooperate but we managed to get them out of the field with the giant bull (who was very slowly coming towards us) quite quickly. Doug managed to hang on when she tried run away in fear (who knows what from...) and we got them home safely.
What a relief! We had better go and tell all the people we plagued about it that we have found them! Or leave them looking so that next time they are prepared...

Still looking for the cows

We went to the Police, the Town Hall and the Firestation (they do other things than just fires) and left a flyer/poster with a picture of the cows and our phone number.
They were all very friendly. We also went round a few more of our neighbours to leave our phone number with them. Where people weren't in we left a flyer in their letter box. One lady was very rude, she was a bit old and mad and I think failed to understand that we were neighbours and searching for cows - she was pretty bizarre and a bit stressful!
Various friends have mentioned it to their cow farmer neighbours - often their fields are a bit spread around and although they live a little bit away they might have a field by us. We will deliver a few more flyers, but after that we will just have to wait and hope - and keep looking out as we drive around.

Cool huh?

Not ours unfortunately. A friend lent it to us to hump the rest of the stuff for the concrete up to the shed area. Unfortunately we have been a bit delayed by the cow FIASCO. But before that we did shift a lot of gravel and sand and some logs.
Maybe you can't see too clearly, it is a wheelbarrow on caterpillar tracks powered by a petrol engine. Amazing!

Cows still lost

We have spent the day searching for them some more, but have not found them. We made a poster and put it on the feed merchants notice board and one at the equestrian center in the hope someone else will see them. We also spoke with some more of the neighbours. It is good to meet them, but we would rather have our cow!
It was useful going to the equestrian center too, we have been intending to go there for ages and talk to them about having some lessons with our horses - we did that while we were there, which was useful - but again we would rather have our cow back.
It was embarassing having to email and confess to having lost the cow that isn't ours too. They missed my email yesterday and were suprised to get an update today saying they were still lost. They are suprised that the cows have gone more than a short distance, and managed to disappeared off the face of the earth. They don't know Haïnoa as well as us of course - she seems an adventurous little thing and hasn't stuck close to home other times she has escaped either. We suppose we will end up liable for the cost of their loss as well as losing our cow - but we are trying not to fret, no point crying over spilt milk, maybe they will turn up etc. We are both frustrated and exhaused now after a day of walking and of talking french to so many (very nice and helpful) people and it is hard to maintain a positive outlook when one is tired.
We are planning on some more posters in the mairie on Monday and perhaps at the entrance to the walking paths in the woods.

Cows have GONE

The cows have escaped. It has happened before, but we have always found them after a few hours. I found they were gone about 10am (having seen them 9ish) and we spent the rest of the day searching for them - with no luck. We are both very hot and tired. The dog is happy having had a long walk though. In the past they have joined the cows of one or other neighbour, but not this time.
We find it strange and frustrating, when they escape they don't just eat the lovely lush grass in our other fields, but bugger off miles and miles away.
We did meet a neighbour we haven't met before, he was very friendly and gave us about a ton of plums!
We don't know where to look or what to do now. Our only chance is that a neighbour sees them and lets us know. Now we had better confess to Helora's owner that she is gone. Very unhappy.

New Ram

A friend has bought some young Ouessant sheep (this years lambs). She has two females, two males and a castrated male. As they are all related she is going to eat the males and we have sold her Col along with one of our female lambs. We were sorry to see him go as he is a gentle little ram (apart from when females are in season!) and nice looking with a bit different colouring (spots of white). However it is good for Kim to have an unrelated male and perhaps we can get back one of his sons one day when we need a new ram (you obviously tend to get inbreeding in a flock after a while and need a new unrelated ram)

Col and lamb happy in their new home

Initially we weren't going to replace Col as we only need one ram for the number of sheep we have and Tyson is a nice fellow too, but then we saw a Scottish Blackface ram lamb for sale and decided we would buy him. We will keep him with the bigger sheep - Mrs Jacob, Mrs Suffolk and two of Mrs Suffolks children (still to be named) and get bigger lambs from them for eating. So we have two flocks, a ouessant 'mowing flock' and a 'meat flock' for bigger lambs.
At the moment he is a similar size to Mrs Jacob and Mrs Suffolk, but he will grow bigger, I guess maybe half as big again. Old 'rustic' breeds like Scottish Blackface and Ouessant tend to grow slower than ones that have been bred to produce lamb meat as fast as possible so not sure when he will reach full size - sometime next year I guess. But he is ready to start mating now (or Oct/Nov when the sheep come in to season)
We have called him Harris - they use blackface wool when making Harris tweed.

Harris in his new home.

Hams!

AGES ago we put the hams from our pigs to cure. Initially they were hanging upstairs, but when it started getting warm up there with the summer (un-insulated black roof) we moved them in to the pantry. We have decided they are finally ready to eat so we got one down and tried it. It was pretty mouldy so we dusted it off a bit before cutting in to it.

It was delicious. There is a lot of eating on each one - we need to get on and eat fast!

Shed progress and visit to the quarry

Before we can start actually laying the base for the shed we need to get the sand, gravel and cement up to the site in the potager.

The sand and gravel we are getting from the quarry quite close to us. The cement, along with the rebar we will get from Point P, also quite close by.

We calculated it will take approx 3500 kg of sand and gravel (2 parts sand to 4 parts gravel) and about 550 kg of cement. That is a whole lot of stuff to wheelbarrow from the closest point we can get the car! But as there is no alternative we have been getting on with it.

We are going to lay the base in 2 parts so we have collected 3 loads of 700 kg from the quarry.

They mainly deal with huge lorries, but also do a fair trade in people with trailers. The guy filling the trailer does an amazing job, you can see the size of his bucket, for our three loads he did 690kg, 700kg and 700kg - unbelievable considering he can't see what he has scooped in to the hopper and can't see in to the trailer either.

We have heard stories where they accidentally dump loads more than intended on the trailer and they are squished flat! It must have been another driver though as this guy is awesome!

11.50 EUR each load cost. Not sure what 700 kg of sand and gravel costs in the UK, but that is a fraction of the price in the DIY shop anyway.

Once we got the load home I had fun trying to a.) turn the car and trailer in the reasonably tight space of our parking spot and b.) reverse the car with the trailer up the last bit of track to get as close to final destination as possible. It looks really straight here, but there is a bit of an angle to get on to it and it turns at the top as well. I was getting better by attempt three. Bit concerned about the burning smell that occurs when reversing in 4WD.

It then took approx 25 load in a wheelbarrow to get each of the three loads carted up to the shed site. That was up a steep slope, not very far but really really tiring. Each load is only 6 or 7 spade fulls  (28kg approx) but it is too steep to get more than that up the steepest part. Doug has done a lot more of them I must confess. But I have done other useful things instead. All works out fair in the end!

Stud bunny

We have tried to mate our rabbits a few times but the boy is just scared and huddles in a corner. We think it is because he is too young. So we took one of our females to visit a friend's male bunny. They did the business quite a few times, and hopefully this will result in some babies which will keep us entertained until bunny boy is ready. We will put the other female in with him again soon. The stud bunny was white with dark spots, interesting to see what the babies come out like.

Baby quail

A while ago we set 25 quail eggs. Sadly only one has hatched. Poor little lonely quail.
As you can imagine, coming from such a tiny egg, he/she is teeny tiny. I will call it a he for now as that is what we hope it is so he can go in with the 4 girls and make fertile eggs for us to hatch some more of. All is not lost if he is a she though because we are about to lend our incubator to some friends so they can give hatching their quail eggs a go. Hopefully they can control the temperature of the eggs before incubation starts a bit better - difficult in the heat of the summer - we think that is what went wrong with our eggs. They can then give us a male or female depending what our little guy really is.
He is also a bit suicidal so perhaps he won't actually make it to grown up anyway! He tried to hang himself off the side of the incubator a couple of times, he has tried to drown himself and starve himself. We presume he is eating now, to have survived this long, but have never seen him at it.

Courgette recipes

We have quite a lot of courgettes ripening. They seem to suddenly appear an edible size between one day and the next.

Previously we had courgette once in a while and pretty much always fried with onions and garlic and a little bit of salt and pepper. But so many to eat we had to get a bit more inventive. The chickens love them, the quail quite like a little bit. The rabbits, sheep and cows spit them out. The dog is desperate to get at them but then isn't really keen, although she has been known to eat a bit.

Courgette patties
Grate a courgette and put it in a bowl
Add a heaped desert spoon of flour, some salt and if you fancy a bit of paprika and/or chilli
Stir and use immediately. If you leave it after you have grated thee courgette it very quickly goes soggy. You can still fry but the patties are more squishy and harder to get to fry properly.
Shape in to a ball and then squish (like making a hamburger)
Fry in shallow oil
Serve with sour cream or sweet chilli dip

BBQ courgette with cheese
Slice in to 1cm slices lengthways
Oil and then salt each slice
Put on the bbq for a couple of minutes a side.
When you have done the first side and turned over you can add grated cheese if you wish.

Courgette and tomato soup
4 courgettes - yellow ones work well as the soup comes out yellow instead of greeny brown
2 tomatoes
1 onion
1 tsp turmeric
Optionally some garlic or garlic flowers - not too much though
1 pint of chicken (or veg) stock
Salt
Fry the onions for a few minutes, chop the courgettes and fry for a few minutes
Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for about 30 mins until everything is soft.
Blend until smooth.

Washed the car

Yes I know you wouldn't think that was an occasion worthy of note, but although we have washed it before in the jet wash at the supermarket, it is the first time we have done it at home. We were motivated into finally doing it by going to get some sheep with a friend. We brought back five of them in two dog crates. While most of the mess went in to the crates and was easy to wash out a certain amount ended up on the floor of the back of the car. As we had already emptied everything out in anticipation of this we were able to just hose it down. While we had the hose out we thought we might as well do the rest. Annoyingly there are little spots of tar that just won't come off - they resurface parts of the road every year and it is very messy when you drive though it. Loads of little stones fly everywhere and leave a dot of tar on the car. Shows a lot against the white.
Now we just need to hoover the front and she will be as good as new! Apart from the tar spots... and the scratches on the bumper where I slightly rammed the side of the drive, and the dent in the back bumper where someone must have bumped her in a car park, and the bit of the cover for the back that has peeled up in the heat...

The shed

No it is still not built. In fact the concrete is still not laid!
But we are getting closer. The last few days have been a bit cooler so we have made good progress - despite skiving off yesterday to go on a trip to pick up some sheep with a friend - she is going as mad on the animals as us and has been having great fun with them escaping everywhere!
We now have the hole dug out and leveled and the framework in place for pouring the concrete. We now have to go and buy sand, gravel and cement from various different places as well as reinforcing stuff to go in the concrete. We are still fretting a bit about how exactly we should do the reinforcing and whether we should put a damp proof membrane under or not. I guess it can't do any harm and we have it so might as well.
We still need to brace the shuttering along its length so it doesn't bow out with the weight of the concrete and we need to screw the piece of wood to the side between the two long lengths as we are planning on laying it in three separate pieces otherwise we are worried we won't be able to mix enough before it starts setting.
It is all very daunting. I am sure after doing it a few times it seems like a doddle, but at the moment we are fretting a lot because if we do it wrong we will have a giant lump of dodgy concrete in a place it will be difficult to remove it from or we will have a cracked and wonky shed base.
The diagonals are a couple of cm different so it isn't EXACTLY square but we have decided we have to live with that.

Animal roundup

I thought you might like to catch up with what all the animals are up to as maybe some of them haven't been mentioned for a while.

Chickens
Only one chicken is laying at the moment. Very disappointing as we have nineteen! Ok only five of them are female and of egg laying age, but still... we think it is the heat. Friends and neighbors say their laying is way down too.
Of the twelve we hatched earlier in the year six are male and six female. We plan on keeping a male and giving three females to friends leaving us with three females in addition to the five we already had. We will then have fertile eggs we can hatch later if we want.
We will eat the five other males. We thought of doing the first one this week, but after a feel assessment we have decided to keep them longer. They are only 18 weeks at the moment so they have some more growing to do.

Quail
Most days we get four eggs so the quail are doing better than the chickens! We have some quail eggs in the incubator, they should be done in a few days. I candled some and couldn't see anything going on - but we shall see. It was very hot when I got them which doesn't help the parents fertility or the health of the eggs themselves. We hope some will hatch and we can keep a male to keep with our females. We will then have fertilised eggs which we could incubate and raise the chicks for meat.

Rabbits
We have tried to mate the rabbits a few times. We put the female in the male cage as recommended, he cowers in a corner and runs away if she approaches. The cowering and running has got a little less each time we have tried - three in total. We have arranged to take one of the females to a stud bunny. He is a pet bunny of one of our friends. Hopefully Bunny Boy will grow up sufficiently to do the biz soon. Otherwise he is for the pot!

Cat
Sambuca seems quite happy and has caught a couple of rats recently (healthy country ones, but still yuck). She mainly stays out of the house as she is meant to, but got stuck upstairs yesterday after sneaking in. We heard some bumps and crashes and had to go upstairs with boots on (and other clothes too of course!) and a stick to see what was going on. We heard a concerned little meow and realised what had happened. Phew.

Dog
Poppy is recovering ok from the dog attack, although she is insistent on licking the wounds which doesn't help them. One was healing well until she licked the scab off again and again. We have had to tie a bin bag round her back end to try to stop her licking it so much. Pretty stylish looking let me tell you.

Coos
Hainoa is still pretty frisky and shy. She runs around the field frolicking sometimes, this can be a bit scary as she is quite lumbering and you wonder if she might mow you flat. Mostly she doesn't though. She comes running over to the fence when we appear for her daily feed of cow nuts. She isn't as friendly with Hélora as she was with Hoppy but they get on well and she is glad to had the company. Hélora is very friendly and wants to be stroked by everyone.

Horses
We are having a bit of a trial keeping shoes on the horses. We have got some very natty boots for Daisy - they look like round trainers. The first couple of times she wore them it was like she was a different horse than she has been for a while, so much calmer and happier without the foot pain. However we then tried adding an insole and that seemed to make her worse than ever before. We haven't had a chance to take her out without it again yet.
Owen lost a shoe (a few days after replacement would have been free - the farrier offers that for the first 4 weeks), the farrier came and replaced it. That afternoon Voltaire lost a shoe. Then a few days later Owen lost his other shoe.
We don't blame the farrier as some of the shoes have been put on by other people. We think it is the mud and perhaps the hill causing the back feet to slide in to the front which then levers the shoe off. We are thinking about trying to take Owen without shoes like we are Daisy. We have contacted a barefoot specialist who will hopefully come and have a look and advise us.

Sheep
At the moment we have 19 sheep. We plan on getting rid of almost all of the lambs from this year. There are nine; three females, five males and an unknown (the mother is really shy and the baby more so - going to be eaten either way)
2 will go to friends as meat
3 we will eat ourselves
2 are going to a friend who has recently bought some Ouessant sheep (from the person we got the pigs from last year! We went along for the ride and to say hello)
2 will join the flock

We have sheared 3 of them and have another 6 to go. Aaaaargh. We better get on with it before it is winter again. They would be cold!
Have I forgotten anyone?

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