Koala babies born

Mrs Koala had 9 babies after exactly 31 days of incubation. What a good start she has made as a first time mum. Now she just needs to feed them!

Looking really pregnant the day before

Super nest with loads of fur. This is WAY beyond what the other does did.

Proud mum, she seems to be handling it well so far.

Little blind wiggly babies

Horses moulting

Still plenty to come out... 

Apple trees

We are a little late on the pruning and getting the garden under control, but doing as much as we can amongst going to Paris, skiing and moving animals about.

Doug cut the branches off the tree that fell down so that we can try to resurrect it. May or may not work, but worth a try. Clearly we need to push it upright now.

I have pruned the apple trees (not the ones I planted in the autumn, the slightly older ones). They have been in 4 years (or maybe even 5), but we failed to prune them for a few years so I had to be a bit drastic last year and this one. Hopefully will all come good and we will get some Bramleys soon! It also has a hard life as it was blown over and gets swamped in bracken each year as well.

Last bit of skiing

The lifts are shut, but we went for a nice walk and a ski in the sun.

We took a picnic of soup, bread, muffin, dried fruit, tea and juice. Important to stay hydrated!

The snow got quite sticky after lunch. This is Doug jumping a turn, tricky!

Nice hot chocolate when we got back

Day 21 and 22 of incubation

The chicks hatched out exactly when they were meant to - which shows the temperature was good, unlike the previous batch who were too cold and didn't survive. However the hatch rate wasn't great. We got 9 chicks from 40 eggs. They seem nice and lively.

Once we are sure no more will hatch I need to go through and work out whether chicks grew but didn't hatch or whether the eggs just didn't grow.

The BEST Mango Chutney Recipe

I experimented quite a few times - more than there are recipes on the blog for - to get one which is like they do in Indian restarants. The other recipes http://laviealapetiteferme.blogspot.fr/2017/10/mango-chutney.html are very good if you want something a bit fresher, perhaps with cheese. I discovered the key is using enough sugar to give that lovely shiny look that the proper stuff has. Strangely I failed to find info on this anywhere on the internet!

600g really ripe mango

100ml vinegar

Juice of 1 lemon

500g sugar

Pickling spices, eg cardamon, cumin etc.

Optionally poppy seeds

Cut the mango in to small chunks (however big you want the chunks in your chutney to be)

Put in a pan with the lemon and cook until the chunks are clear all the way through and starting to go a bit muchy (or cook more if you want a smoother chutney)

Add the vinegar, spices and sugar and cook until a set is reached

Put in to sterilised jars

Weekend in Paris with family Roemmele

We spent a lovely weekend in Paris.

My friend Mary was over from the US for a couple of weeks with her family. So Doug and I went up to Paris for a couple of days to meet up with them. Mary and I have known each other since before we were born - our parents met in antenatal classes.

Weren't we cute :)

We all stayed at the Westin right in the center of town

Close to the Louvre

Lovely drink by the Seine in the sunshine

Sunset on the Siene

Notre Dame

Doug and I went out for Thai food. We have found an Indian not far from us now so we have our fix of Indian food (home made is nice but not the same...) but there is not a Thai, and it is a lot of effort to cook at home I find. It was YUMMY and I would thoroughly recommend the restaurant

We had a nice beer in an Irish pub too. Strange to chose that in Paris, but we have a lot of French beer so we fancied a change.

Singing in the rain!

The whole family

People have gone mad on the tradition of putting locks on things. I think they do it in Venice a lot too.

Taking a boat trip on the Siene

Mary and me with the Eiffel tower

We went to the Market Puce (flea market) up in the north. Really fun with a great variety of stuff.

This shop sold lots of copper

This is a Futuro house. I love them. Very rare though. 

A lion! It appeared to be real

Then Mary and the guys had to go back home and Doug and I stayed on a further day and a half to see and eat a bit more of Paris

First stop - Versailles.

We turned up and there was an ENORMOUS queue, perhaps 3 hours so I went and did some investigating and found a tour of some private rooms that we could join that would leave us in the Chateau to see the rest of it ourselves. 10 euros each. Bargain! 

The rooms we saw on the tour had been used by the family whereas the rooms open to the public now were also more public then - but only accessible to noble people (and servants) of course.

This is a famous and amazing clock. Bit ugly!

Apparently the queen bought lots of things from Versailles that was auctioned off some time ago. She has the rest of this set.

The Royal Opera House. It has recently been restored. They have performances there now and we hope to go one day. I can imagine it might not be very cheap...

View out on to the gardens. I remember the gardens a lot more than the palace from a visit with my parents when I was perhaps 7

After the tour we went through the public rooms. They were much more opulent (and crowded)

The hall of mirrors

We had dinner in a super posh restaurant because we wanted Pekin Crispy Duck. We were a bit suspicious of the sauce to go in the pancakes as it apparently had peanut butter in it. Delicious though!

Just before we left we popped in to the Orangery and saw lots of Monet and other impressionists.

Hopefully they won't sue for me posting this pic here.

Fun was had by all and we were tired but happy when we got the train home (we were meant to take the train up there too but strikes got in the way)

Baby rabbit progress

We have two litters of rabbits with another on the way, hopefully.
It is very stressful as the babies are growing, as we have had such problems with them dying at around 4-6 weeks. We think it is coccidiosis and plan on treating these ones prophylactically.  There are downsides to this as the drugs prevents the uptake of thiamine which is also bad - so we cannot just massively dose them. I think we could also get immunity to the drug which would also be bad.

The older litter are currently 3 weeks (a bit under in these pictures) so entering a worrying age! I am about to start medicating... being sure you have got each bunny the right amount of medication is difficult too as it is given in the water and depending what they eat they get more or less...

The other litter is just over 2 weeks with eyes open now, they are all white and all but a couple have red eyes, I find that quite cute but Doug doesn't like it... 

Poppy says she doesn't mind what colour their eyes are she wants to eat them ALL.

More eggs. Day 5 of incubation

Sadly Chesney didn't make it, but we have more eggs in the incubators (did you notice that... not incubator... incubators!)
The one on the left (Novital) doesn't manage the humidity, we replaced it with the one on the left, but as we were having problems with batches I have put both on so we can compare. They are each (approx) half full of our eggs and ones I bought (10 White Legbar, 4 Marans 10 tricolour sussex).

For the Brinsea (right hand) it is easy to weigh all the eggs together as they are in a tray that lifts out. In the other one it is more difficult as you have to take each egg out individually. I just weighed 5 of them together and hope it is evenly spread. They are being weighed throughout the incubation process to assess whether humidity is correct. We are looking to lose between 10% and 13% over the incubation period. This creates a correct sized air cell in the egg for the chick to use while hatching.

Starting weights were
Novital - 254
Brinsea - 1717

After 4 days we have
Novital - 245
Brinsea 1666

Percentage loss
Novital - 3.54%
Brinsea - 2.97%

Extrapolating from 4 days to 18 days (incubation is actually 21 days but humidity much higher in final 3 days so not much weight loss)
Novital - 12.74%
Brinsea - 10.69%

So broadly humidity is good. Might turn it down a fraction in the Brinsea. The Novital is much less adjustable as there is just a pot you will with water. Hard to change the surface area of it. I could add another pot or remove water for a few days if required...

Through the hole in the rock

It has been lovely sunny weather. There was a few cm of snow overnight so lovely conditions. Steve came up for his last day of skiing this year and suggested we did 'through the rock'. This goes from the top of the Quatre Thermes lift (top left of the map) and you climb up over the ridge beside the chair, you can get through because there is a gully or 'hole in the rock'. You then ski down behind the mountains and down a valley back in to the other side of the ski area at Tournaboup. 

Skins not needed, it is a bit of sidestepping then a boot pack (I don't fancy doing if someone else hadn't been before and made the steps up)

The 'hole' in the rock is visible in this photo taken from Quatre Terms as a little notch in the skyline just to the right of center.

Doug climbing up (much steeper than it looks)

Steve climbing up

Doug at the very top going through the hole and Steve just behind (picture taken from below)

Rhoda coming up the hole in the rock (picture taken from above - I am saying this because the perspective goes all weird in photos. It is nearly vertical but kind of looks like I am crawling along the ground!)

View once you get through the hole

This way!

Steve at the top of the climb getting ready to go

Steve skiing the top bit

Looking back up at Doug who is about to ski the first bit

View

Rhoda skiing down a bit

We came over just to the right of the center of the picture by the little white bump

Beautiful fresh snow

Happy!

More view

A hut nearish the top where it appears there is a building of 400sqm going to be built!!! It is way in the middle of the mountains!

The valley flattens out through little trees

Have to cross the stream

Not much snow on the bridge!

Fun day. Good idea Steve!