Pureed parsnips

Cut the parsnips in to small pieces, about 1cm thickness max.

Put in a pan and then pour milk over so it nearly covers the parsnips.

Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 mins or until the pieces ar tender when poked with a fork.

Liquisise and return to the pan, add some butter and cream and heat gently.

Serve. Should be sweet and creamy and lovely!

Lemon Curd Recipe

Juice of 4 lemons

Zest of 1 lemon (or more if you want)

200g sugar

100g butter

3 eggs and yolk of one more egg

Put everything except the eggs and yolk in to a bowl over a pan of hot water. 

Heat and stir occasionally until the butter melts.

Add the eggs and yolk and stir gently until the mixture thickens (10 mins maybe). You don't want to boil the mixture and you need to keep stirring. If you see any little white bits, you are heating too hard, remove from the heat for a mo and stir harder.

When the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon (a thin custard consistancy) stop heating and pour in to sterilised jars.

Doug is always nagging (edit - apparently he isn't nagging, he just mentions it) me to make this. Useful when you have made limoncello or something that uses a lot of zest but not juice of lemons.

Thoughts about what next

Although the roof and insulation is far FAR from being done we sometimes think a bit about what we will do next on the house - there may be things we need to sort out in advance, such as our accommodation!

Doing the insulation was an easy first choice as it doesn't affect the area we are living in. The next things we can do will involve starting to demolish things.

One idea is to get a caravan with a loo and shower and use that for those facilities and sometimes sleeping and living in. We would also get the outdoor kitchen ready for use so that some of the kitchen stuff could go in there. It needs a new roof and a concrete floor as a minimum.

We have a slight worry about whether we will get a caravan up the drive. Our car cannot turn the corner of the drive in one, and I am not sure about doing it with caravan attached. The trailer is fine, but is much smaller, I sometimes worry it is going to dent the car as I reverse back getting round the corner.

Car not making it round the corner

Bank below (steep drop although this picture doesn't look it)

Bank above corner

We have plenty of other stuff to do too - such as planting the potager, cutting wood, protecting our new trees, clearing the drive ditch and undergrowth, various fence and land maintenance thing. Getting some more pigs and loads more stuff.

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin Recipe

Serves 4

1 pork tenderloin (400 or 500g probably)

For stuffing (or use your favorite stuffing - apple and chestnut would be nice)

1 onion

1 eating apple

6 dried apricots

Handful of sultanas

4 lumps of candied ginger

Juice of half a lemon

2 tblsp white wine or ginger syrup from the candied ginger

2 tblsp olive oil

Some breadcrumbs (about 20cm of baguette or 4 slices of bread)

Diced bacon or ham

Seasoning - eg salt, pepper bit of chilli, rosemary or thyme

Some more ham or bacon to top

The tenderloin is long and thin, 'Butterfly' by spitting it down the middle so it is a bit wider.

Make the stuffing:

Fry the onions gently in the olive oil until softened. 5 mins perhaps. Stir in all the other ingreients.

Lay the split tenderloin flat on a plate and cover the top of it with the stuffing (the above stuffing recipe is probably twice what you need - put the remaining in a dish and roast alongside the tenderloin), then roll up and tie in to shape with string. It should be a nice fat roast shape now.

Put bacon or ham on top if you wish..

Roast at 200C for about 50 mins until 60C in the middle

Rest for a few minutes, then serve with mashed potatoes. You can make a little sauce by heating some wine in the roasting dish with some diced candied ginger and adding a little cream.

The roof

The carpenter has reappeared this week and has been busy cutting the bits for the A frames to shape and size. He hopes to get at least one of them installed next week.

Some of the bits

To do this a bit of wall needs hacking out with a jack hammer for the feet to sit in. It will look like this when done.

Then they will be built in place which sounds a bit complex to manage to get everything in the right place. Doug is going to be needed to hold things. He hopes to get them installed later this week. V exciting.

In the mean time Doug has been spending wet days putting up rail and supports in places where they won't interfere with A frame construction. He has been using our new scaffold which seems perfect for the job, no wheels, but more sturdy feeling to stand on for that.

A bunny girl died

One of our two ginger (fauve de bourgenons) bunny girls died today. She didn't eat her breakfast - which is unusual - and was quiet this morning. I checked her and couldn't see anything wrong, so I thought maybe it was because she was pregnant she was a bit off her food. Doug checked her later in the day and she was all covered in diarrhea. We washed her off and put her in a cardboard box with some straw, but when we checked shortly afterwards she was dead. 

I have since read that rabbits have a tendency to get a thing called GI stasis where for one of various reasons their gut stops working properly. Maybe it is similar to colic in horses, not sure. Most advice on the internet is for pet bunnies and suggests rushing them straight to the vet as it is a serious condition. Tummy massage and force feeding liquids seem most common other advice. One thing suggestd an enema (!) but said that it was very easy to burst their intestines, I just can't see it being a good idea.

We are going to cut back on the number of pellets we are feeding them because hay is very important for keeping it all moving and they seem much keener on the pellets than the hay and perhaps she ate too many.

We feel sad, even though we have them for meat (although we haven't managed to get any yet!) we are very fond of them - they are quite funny little things. We thought of skinning her as we got the fauves because they have pretty fur, so that we could use the pelts for something, but we couldn't bring ourselves to. It seems different somehow when you have decided to kill an animal for meat and more sad when it has got sick and died. Probably not logical - perhaps due to feeling we failed her, and she looked all sad and bedraggled after the washing.

I doubt I could skin and gut one of them even if we had decided to kill it, but we have agreed Doug will do that, maybe one day I can - I can manage chickens fine, but they aren't as friendly as the rabbits. Tricky stuff this raising animals for meat.

Healthcare is sorted - hurrah

The nice lady in the CPAM office phoned and said that they had made a mistake, and that I am now included in our healthcare. I had to go in to th office to get a bit of paper which is proof of coverage until my proper carte vitale turns up (maybe about a month) because my number has changed now that we are a single healthcare unit. Apparently I will still have a seperate number but it is a diffeent one to before and is linked yo Doug's somehow. So that is all good! Not sure what happened, but glad they sorted it, so quickly.

Healthcare frustration

I spoke too soon when I said our healthcare was sorted out. Doug's is, but mine isn't and I am VERY annoyed.

For the first two years while the UK was paying for our healthcare we had separate 'accounts' as we had both paid sufficient NI contributions to be covered. But in the French system we applied as a 'Family'. It took me two days to fill in the application and copy and print all the 3479 documents they required to support the application. I filled it in with Doug as 'head of the family' despite wanting to fill it as myself - I do all the paperwork afterall. But I though I should try to go along with their beliefs and system, plus I did also think it might confuse things and make it go wrong if the man wasn't head of the household.

The upshot of this is that Doug has healthcare and I do not. We went in today to update our carte vitales - which look like credit cards and are used to access all healthcare. I have been deleted off the system because my old healthcare from the UK has expired and they have failed to add me on to Doug's account. It is so frustrating, the lady in the office phoned the people who processed the application and they say they will find the records from the vault tomorrow and explain what happened. It seems they thought it was just an application for Doug, they must have failed to read some parts of the 400 page long form, and not sure what they though my birth certificate, our marriage licence etc are doing in there.

It is very frustrating. I want to go to the doctor because my ankle doesn't seem right since I twisted it - and I twisted the other one falling through the barn floor. If only I had made a stand for feminism in France and done the application in my own name!

Progress on the insulation

Progress is pretty much stalled at the moment as we are waiting for the roofer to install the two additional A frames. He dropped off the wood and his scaffold around 3 weeks ago, saying he would be back tomorrow. I sent nagging email a few days ago and he has promised to be here tomorrow - we shall see. We are also taking the opportunity of a break in the never ending rain to get a bit of outside work done, so we do have other stuff to get on with.
We have done four out of fourteen sections - except the very top of two of them where we need to leave the ridge pole accessible so we can support it a bit when we get on to doing work on the walls.

You can't see the insulated bit very clearly because of the enormous number of scaffolds. You will notice that in these photos alone you scan see three different one. One belongs to the roofer, another we have borrowed and the other (the smallest) is ours. We have borrowed another one (because the first has to go back) but it is not quite big enough, so we have bitten the bullet and bought a proper professional one for ourselves (second hand from leboncoin - v useful website). We have not put it together yet but it goes up to 8m tall or can be 2 sections of 4m also. The sections are 3m long which is good as they will be enough to span the stair well allowing us to do above it.

Aidan visited

He was here a week, but it went by in a flash!
He did some useful things (no slackers on the farm) such as dig up the remaining potatoes and remove the wood chip mulch off the paths in the potager, making way for new.
We went for a nice walk at Payolle with some friends and their dogs. The weather was lovely and all dogs were exhausted by the end.

We went skiing a few times, lucky timing with the weather as it was perfect conditions with fresh snow and sun plus being very quiet as school holidays haven't quite started yet.

Owen has sore feet

Poor Owen, his skin isn't totally better and now he has thrush in his front feet. It is in the heel of the foot/frog and it has got sore enough that he was limping. We called the farrier and she pointed out that the groove in his heel is much deeper than on the back feet and said this is caused by the bacteria and fungus/yeast or whatever thrush is. So now we are treating his feet everyday with neat hibiscrub (antimicrobial used by surgeons). We are cleaning out the groove thoroughly and then using a syringe (without needle) to get it right in there. The limp has gone away after a few days of this treatment, but we need to keep it up so it doesn't come back. We may also start painting his soles with something called 'Le Goudron de Norvège' or in English 'Stockholm tar' (yes Stockholm is not in Norway, no idea why the different countries called it those things - it is also called pine tar and was originally for waterproofing wood, like creosote)
The picture is not very clear, but the circled area should be 'concave like the bowl of a teaspoon' rather than swollen shut to a narrow groove like it currently is. 
We are learning more as we have different problems, but poor Owen has suffered a little through our ignorance.

Cutting down a tree

Doug has cut down some very small trees, some of the hedge in front of the house, and cut up various fallen trees. Having planted some new fruit trees we have a number of old trees we need to take down plus we need to start cutting wood for the winter after next so we tackled a larger tree.
My mum might not approve (gender stereotyping or something...), but I am afraid of the chainsaw, and Doug is scared to let me use it too as I can be a bit accident prone so Doug does the cutting and I provide the required tools (wedges etc) at the appropriate time. Plus watching (from a safe distance) and warning if the tree is starting to fall before it should or whatever. V stressful. It all went smoothly though and it fell where Doug intended. We may tackle slightly larger than this, but don't plan to do enormous trees without professional help. Dangerous business - all the locals seem to chop trees down willy nilly, only the odd one gets squished.
There are some behind the house we need to cut before they get too big and another which may touch the electricity cables if it gets much bigger.

Fruit Cake Recipe

Doug is obsessed with something called 'Cricket Club Cake' that his mum used to make. I got the recipe and made it but apparently it was not right as it wasn't solid enough. A friend here makes similar cakes also with tea in. I need to get the recipe and give it a go, but in the mean time I tried this (but without the baking powder!) which came out possibly too solid. Next time I will include the baking powder.

8oz mixed dried fruit

1 oz mixed peel

1 oz glace cherries

1 oz flaked almonds

8 oz plain flour

4 oz sugar

2 small or 1 large egg

1 cup hot black tea

Pinch of salt

1 tsp mixed spice

1/2 tsp baking powder

Soak the fruit in the tea (overnight is ideal)

Put flour, salt and spice in a bowl

Add the egg and stir

Add the fruit and tea and stir

Pour in to a 1lb loaf tin

Cook for 1 hour at 160C or until a skewer comes out clean

Baby bunny died

Mrs Robinson didn't seem to manage to feed it at all and even in th house with a heatlamp it was a bit cool for it all on its own. Hopefully she will do better with caring for the next litter.

Sour dough near disaster!

I broke the jar it was in by stirring it too enthusiastically, so I had to throw it all away as there were bits of glass in it. Boooo! Luckly I had just taken some out to make bread so I have taken a chunk of the bread dough and put it in a bit of water. Will feed it extra for a few days and should be fine. Hurrah!

Baby rabbit update

It is still alive, but hasn't been fed and has been rather cold a couple of times.

It crawled out of its original nest on to the concrete floor of the cage and I (perhaps unwisely) rescued it and warmed it up. I remade the nest in a cardboard box and gave it back to Mrs Robinson, she promptly turned it over leaving poor baby splatted on the floor again. So I bought the box inside for the night. Some people say that in the winter they always bring the nestbox inside and just put it in with the mother a couple of times a day for feeding. I have put it back a couple of times and she just over turns it leaving poor baby cold again. So now I have returned Mrs Robinson to the indoor cage she was in when she first arrived with the baby in a nest in the corner. Now if it gets spilled at least it will be warm - less cold anyway. We will leave her until tomorrow morning and then see if there is any sign of the baby having been fed. Apparently they can survive up to 72 hours before the first feeding.

It is very unclear to me whether she even knows the baby exists, rabbits ignore their babies except when they are feeding them, and they don't move them if they fall out the nest, but I would guess that generally ones that are aware of having babies don't keep tipping them out on to the floor and then stepping on them.

I have read various things about helping babies to nurse when the mothers aren't feeding them and also about hand raising them (which seems to have low success rate). Having saved it from the initial freezing to death, it is hard to stop trying to help, however it is probably just prolonging the suffering. Plus they are meat rabbits and having a litter of one isn't very productive, in reality it would be better to remate her and hopefully get a better litter next time. Oh well, we have started helping now and will continue, I am sure it is all a good learning experince and it has a small chance with our help.

In reality also, if Mrs Robinson can't get it together to look after a litter properly (and to have more than two in a litter), she is going to have to be culled. Which is a shame as I like her. It would be easy just to keep her as a pet, but that way leads to a very full farm of 'cost' rather than 'benefit' animals. This time she gets the benefit of the doubt, having had a stressful move to a new home while pregnant and no nest box and materials due to misinformation about the due date. But watch out Mrs Robinson, 'no slackers on the farm' not even ones with cute twitchy noses.