Thank you from Poppy

Poppy has asked me to say 'THANK YOU' to Christopher for the lovely presents.

Here she is playing with Christopher and Doug with the robe bone he brought for her. She really likes this and plays with it a lot (tied on to a rope and chasing it as here or just chewing it)

The cats also like their chase toy (sorry no photo). Doug is training Pernod to chase things in the hope that he can rival Sambuca on the vermin front, he is really enjoying the training anyway.

(Doug and I would also like to say thank you for all the things brought for us!)

Brill new lawnmower

Or I should say new Brill lawnmower or Brill new Brill lawnmower

It is a manual mower, a Brill Razercut 33 which sounds snazzy huh?
We also have a Bosche hand mower and this one is WAY better. Unfortunately it arrived missing a screw. It works without it but a piece that holds the handle on works it's way loose as you mow and then leaps in to the blades which isn't ideal. Despite this I mowed our lawn in super quick time. I didn't time it, but was MUCH easier than with the Bosche which is pretty much impossible when the lawn is as long and shaggy as ours started out.

It still needs work as it is a bit patchy and has big holes in it (due to the cow escape) and rather a lot of tufty grass but should improve now we have a lawnmower and will hopefully mow it more often (not ideal with a strimmer)

Cows are out... again... and again...

The cows decided they were bored with their field and that it would be more interesting to live in the garden and on the drive.
They escaped three times on Saturday. We called the farmer after the 2nd escape when it became clear that it wasn't just a matter of a bit of fence being damaged by accident and them taking advantage of it. It took him some time to arrive, so we decided to power up the fence (the power hasn't been on the whole time they have been here). When he arrived (with his wife, son and father) he thought they should respect the fence now. However when I opened the front door on Sunday morning to take Poppy for a pee there was a cow staring at me. It ran off when it saw me (the sight of me first thing in the morning is a bit scary after all).

We called the farmer again and he turned up with his father and son to strim and scythe round the fence and fix up a few bits so the wire was at a better height.
While he was here they staged yet another break out.

But since family Baute finished with the fence they seem to be staying in the field. The garden is a bit covered in cow pats and big divits where their feet pressed in under their great weight (they are big big cows). Exciting work for Ruth and Huw helping herd cows!

She looks cute...

... but actually she is vicious a KILLER

Awww cute Sambuca (just watch your hand when she wakes)

Mountain lion pose

Goofy Pernod pose (scythe at top left  of pic, not sword)

There was a dead shrew on the doorstep this morning as a little present (better than a semi live one) we are pretty sure it wasn't Pernod who caught it. He had a tomato for a snack after breakfast and played with it a bit before he ate it, this is the height of his killer instincts although Doug is trying to train him with the cat toy Christopher brought - he also broke in to the kitchen recently and ate some cucumber (Pernod not Christopher)

Continuing mission to prepare sheep field

We spent today not quite repairing a few meters of fence. We had to chop down 4 trees that had grown up through and around the fence (that is they had grown through the mesh then grown and absorbed some of the mesh in to their trunks).

Fire wood from the trees (and hand saw we used)

We are planning to get a chipper to deal with these

The hole with the now freed wire ready for joining

There is still plenty of work to do as this side must be over 50 meters long and we didn't quite finish fixing around 4 meters of it today. aaaaargh.

New Kitchen Furniture

The main two pieces of storage in the kitchen both left a bit to be desired. One smelt rather odd and had draws that drove me mad by refusing to come out then suddenly crashing out at high speed (waking the puppy - let sleeping dogs lie). The other was a wonky piece of crap and about to collapse under it's own weight never mind the weight of the food, plus it wasn't puppy proof so couldn't have anything on the bottom shelf and despite that she nibbled stuff on it.
They have now both been replaced and relegated to the outdoor kitchen.

Just been delivered (old wonky shelf on left)

New shelves (with puppy proof door)

New dresser (with more storage and less smell)

Visitors

I haven't updated much recently because we have been off doing various things with Ruth, Huw and Christopher.

We went in to the mountains to La Mongie (where the cable car up to the Pic du Midi is and where the ski area is in the winter).
We went to the Grottes de Médous which are just on the edge of Bagnère de Bigorre. We had not been before and it was much more extensive and impressive than we expected.
Ruth and Huw also heroically helped clear round the edge of the field where the sheep are going to go. We need to be able to inspect the fence and fix where required before the sheep can move in. Between us we managed to clear two of the three sides (leaving the worst until last, as the final side has bits of the fence missing and a forest that has sprung up through a lot of it since it was last used).

Still excited about eggs!

Apart from Sunday, Big Chicken has layed an egg every day. We are still excited every time we open the coop and find one. Maybe when more of them start laying it will start to seem less exciting, or maybe not...

I don't like the car!

As I mentioned in a previous post (Poor Poppy) Poppy doesn't (yet) enjoy going in the car. Up until now we have been walking her around here, but we thought it would be a good idea to start going on car journeys to go for walks, partially to get used to the car and partially so she will see other people and things in different places.
We went up to Payolle which is a popular place to go for a picnic. There are various cafés, a village of chalets, a lake, various walks in the woods and a lot of cows.

Poppy sat at Doug's feet in the car and spent the first half of the way there trying to climb in to his lap, but after that was pretty good with only the odd little whine. I think she enjoyed herself once we were there and she behaved much better than we had hoped. Usually she gets restless if we try to stop for long, but she was very good while we had a Magnum and cup of tea in a café. She is nervous of other dogs (despite having grown up with about 20 of varying breeds) so we need to find more opportunities to socialise her with some friendly ones. She has met cows here but met more there as well as horses, bikes, push chairs, a lake, various children and some dogs.

The French know how to do Sunday lunch picnic in style and all turned up with tables, chairs, table cloth, proper cutlery and glasses as well as bottles of wine. We had sandwiches on a very small rug with juice (home made elderflower codial) and felt we weren't fully getting in to the local way of things yet.

The French know how to have a picnic

Everyone had a nap after lunch

Meeting a lake

Being good in the café

Doug meets cow

On the way home she was so tired from all the new things she made a tiny fuss at the beginning then went to sleep.

Relaxing at home, relieved it is all over (until next time!)

Training Poppy

Doug isn't squishing her in the photo honest! His hand is just above her encouraging her to keep her butt down. She loves crawling through the grass, so we are trying to teach her to do it on command (the command is 'commando Poppy'

Commando Poppy Commando!!

She understands (and mostly obeys if she thinks there is a treat in it anyway) - sit, stay, lie down, come here and shake. I think she might understand take it, leave it and drop also but they happen a bit less reliably. We are working on go to Doug/go to Rhoda, go to bed, stand up, commando and fetch (I thought dogs were BORN knowing how to fetch but I guess not - or we got a dud)

She also enjoys champing madly at the grass while rotating round in circles on her side. I think we might give training her to do this on command a miss as it makes her look a bit weird and by extension us.

Poppy the grass crocodile

We are making (very) slow progress trying to teach her not to pull when on the leash. She has a slightly distressing habit of launching herself forward in what seems to be an attempt to hang herself, this is getting much better though (she had got used to running round unrestricted in her old life on quite a bit farm and has struggled to come to terms with not being able to run where she wants)

Poor Poppy

We are trying to get Poppy used to going in the car. We put her in the back of the car and she seemed fine, no nervousness or anything, we started the engine and everything was fine. She has been for drives a few times in the front sitting at Doug's feed, she has fussed a little (ignoring the howling when we brought her home as that was different) but nothing too bad. So we decided she was ready to go in her crate in the back of Martha and took her for a trip just to the end of the drive, she wasn't happy. We went back to just sitting in the car and she was fine, so we decided we needed to try again with the driving and that maybe a slightly longer journey would give her time to relax in to it. We put her in the crate, she seemed quite relaxed (see below) and set off to Labassère which is about 3km away.

Unfortunately she still hated it and barked and barked, then on the way back had a bit of an accident. Cleaning it up was quite traumatic as she stepped in it and managed to spread it EVERYWHERE and then sprayed it on Doug as she leapt from the back of the car in her enthusism to get out.

We are not quite sure what to do now, perhaps return to her sitting with Doug until she is more comfortable with the whole thing then try again. We are all keen to avoid the poo shower re-occuring

Gooooood animals

I have spent some time complaining about the trails of puppy ownership and about difficulties with the cats etc so I thought (that is to say Doug thought) I should do an entry about the good things the animals have done.

Well done cats!!
We haven't heard any rodents thundering around in the ceiling and walls of the bedroom since a couple of days after the cats moved it. We are not sure if the smell of them discourage the rodents or if they actually caught them (it would have been Sambuca I expect if they did). This is a massive relief as it was getting very annoying to get woken up several times in the night and occasionally it sounded like they were actually trying to gnaw through the wall in to the bedroom and wouldn't shut up even when we hammered on the wall.

Well done chickens!!
The chickens obviously are in favour having layed some eggs we are a bit worried as there is a big bird (buzzard?) that has flown off a few times as we come round the end of the house. It sits on one of the fence posts at the top of the field - which is quite close to the chicken enclosure. We are worried it is eyeing them up for eating.

The pigs probably haven't been mentioned much recently, they are continuing to be entertaining and appealing. In some ways perhaps it is just as well we haven't had so much time to spend with them recently as they are getting on for slaughter weight, so we need to come to terms with saying goodbye to them soon (and work out how we are going to transport them to the abatoir in as much comfort and relaxation as possible).

The sheep haven't made it here yet, we need to get on with preparing their field which means providing water in to it and strimming round the fence and then repairing where there are holes (pretty big job which we need to have done by the end of the month)

Poppy is lovely and cute much of the time (particularly when we have visitors who then can't believe she is any bother) and she now goes for the whole night without a piss stop outside, this is a major improvement although it does mean getting up at 7am whatever time we go to bed so still not quite back to our old routine!

Fshhh (noise of workman sucking air through teeth)

The stone mason came to look at the house to check out various things we were worried about. He confirmed we would at some point need to remove the render from the front of the house as it is concrete and therefore unsuitable for an old stone house due to it's lack of breathability. He looked at the fireplace in the living room/kitchen which I think I have mentioned before due to the rather excessive slope of the mantlepiece. After some examination he made fshhhh sucking of breath through teeth noise that builders/workmen/artisans make when they are about to tell you that something is a disaster and probably expensive to fix. After full investigation including removing the protective panelling and sticking his head up the chimney (we didn't tell him about the snakes that live up there) his diagnosis was that the best thing to do is remove the whole wall structure that creates the fireplace. This would leave only the brick chimney stack at the top and we would need to make a box around the metal pipe we need for the wood burning stove. On the whole it will be an improvement as the chimney is pretty big and we only use a small part of it for the wood burning stove. It is going to create an almighty mess though and it is hard to know when we should plan this in.
I braved the snakes to take a photo up the chimney but it doesn't really show very clearly the problem. The outside of the wall has plasterboard on it so we don't see any issues but on the inside you can see that the stones are falling apart from each other and the whole wall is slumping down - which is why the mantlepiece is sloping so much as it is being pushed down by the weight of the collapsing wall above.

You can see though how little of the space the chimney for the wood stove takes.

Eggs!!

We didn't expect any for another month at least, but I found 2 eggs when I fed the chickens this morning! We think they were laid yesterday and the day before (we check the egg boxes occasionally just in case - and just as well as it turns out!)

We had them fried for lunch. Yum!

I found another one when I fed them again this afternoon, presumably laid this morning. We think it is big chicken who is laying them as the others aren't so developed yet.

Dog meets cats

We have been trying to introduce the cats to Poppy (or Poppy to the cats). She hasn't quite grasped that they are not giant squeeky toys yet and tries to play/chase them whenever she sees them. The cats don't seem too terrified. We have put their food and water and beds when a barrier so Poppy can't get at them for the moment, hopefully by the time she is big enough to get over they will all have come to terms with each other

The cats new home

The plan has always been that the cats are outdoors type cats not lap/fireside cats. They were bought to kill stuff and keep us rodent (and ideally snake) free. No slackers on the farm as I have said before.
Sambuca has been doing a good job as we have seen her catch a couple of things already, but Pernod has some other ideas

Pernod the lap cat

Pernod likes his food

We have moved their beds down to the 'bread oven room' which is beside the outdoors kitchen area and has an old bread oven in it which we hope to resurrect one day. There is a load of junk in there, some of which we cleared out to make room, but some of which is waiting for later.

Their beds are here now

Plain Flour Cake Recipe (Banana cake)

What happens if you forget to put baking powder in your cake (ie make it with plain not self raising flour)?
I always thought you would get a solid lump nothing like a cake. However I discovered by accident that this is not the case. The cake still rises and is crumbly, just not so much. A nice moist squidgy finish.

8oz plain flour
4oz sugar
4oz oil (eg sunflower)
2 eggs
Splash of milk
Pinch of salt
1 banana
Handful of chocolate drops or chopped chocolate

Mix flour, salt, sugar, eggs and oil in a bowl until smooth. Add the milk and mix again.
Mash the banana, add it with the chocolate drops and mix again.

Bake in bread maker (we can't set the temperature on ours, it decides) or in a cake tin at 170 for about an hour. Remove when it tests done with a skewer.

I put some marmalade on top of this one

Orange Jam Recipe

Maybe this is marmalade, not sure, but I always feel that needs to be made with Seville Oranges. I actually prefer the slightly sweeter taste of Orange Jam made with normal oranges. But Doug prefers the real thng. This goes well with cheese too.

I tend to make jam in small batches (I think I mentioned in another recipe) as I prefer a soft set and there are only two of us (discounting all the animals who I am sure would love jam but are not getting it) so there is a limit to what we get through. You can scale up if you require.

4 oranges
Equal weight of sugar as oranges (800g when I made this batch)
Juice of one lemon (per kg approx)
2 cups of water

Halve and juice the oranges.
Chop the remaining rind and pith in to small pieces.
 (I like my rind cut very finely but it is hard work so the resulting size is a balance between how thin I would like it and how thin I can be bothered to cut it. Some recipes suggest you can chop in a blender but I have always found this just gives you orange puree. Perhaps a different blender would give different result)
Put orange juice, lemon juice, water and chopped rind in a pan (this needs to come no more than a third of the way up the pan at this stage as you need room for sugar and to boil) and bring to the boil with the lid on.
Simmer for about 30 mins until the rind is soft and mushy if you bite a bit. The jam should appear quite gloopy at this stage as the water has soaked in to the rind (and some boiled off). If it is runny boil for a bit longer.

Add the sugar and stir until disolved then bring back to the boil and boil until a set is achieved (maybe 30 mins). I test for this by waiting until the jam falls off a wooden spoon in a sheet rather than a single dribble when you pull the spoon out of the jam. There are various different methods if you do a google search.

Put in to clean jars and add a wax top if you wish (I can't find them in France). Store in a dark place.

The view

We have HUNDREDS of pictures of the view from the house so I need to post some of them occasionally. Will get boring I am sure but it is lovely to look out and see it in all different conditions.

Meadow Sweet Champagne Recipe

This is a lot like Elderflower Champagne but using Meadow Sweet insteat of Elderflower. The Meadow Sweet comes out just as the Elderflowers finish (it grows in damp areas). This idea came from here but I used the same recipe as we use for Elderflower Champagne
This is a small batch, I like to make a number of small batches that fit easily in to a pan and aren't a major time investment to bottle. It also means they come ready over a period of time rather than a huge amount ready to drink at once.

10 heads of Meadow Sweet (or a bit less if they are big ones)
300g Sugar
3.5 l water (or thereabouts - I use the bottles I am going to put it in to mature to measure the water)
3 desert spoons white wine vinager
Juice of one lemon (and the rind)

Bung everything in a pan/bucket. Stir and leave for 24 hours (still occassionaly if you can be bothered)
Bottle.
Will be ready to drink in about 2 weeks, if the bottles (best to use plastic) seem to be bulging then let some pressure off (carefully).
Drink chilled.

Next episode in the water saga

I suspect this is going to be a long running story.
The current water basin holds something like 160l. The average daily (indoors) water usage is something like 250l (varies a lot depending what source you look at). Which would be fine if the inflow rate to the basin is fast enough.
We managed to run the basin dry recently and went to have a look at the inflow rate as we had not used the full 160l just prior to it going dry. We discovered that most of the water from the spring was running out down the side and not making it in to the basin, this meant that to fill the tank once it was dry was taking many hours.
To fix this we needed to have a look upstream of the basin, to do this we needed to excavate to find the channel. Having done this we found that some plant roots were in the channel and had blocked it by trapping small particles of mud. Once we scooped this out (gross and slimey) the water started flowing in to the basin again. We then needed to syphon the water out of the basin as it was all muddy from us digging around in the channel.

The water basin (with excavation above)

The excavation (it is deeper than it looks in the photo)

 We measured the inflow rate, after the recent very heavy rain it was approx 160l in 30 mins. We are not sure what the rate will be when it hasn't rained for a while. We need to wait and see.

We have spoken to the plumber about getting a bigger tank (rather than basin), probably 750l. This will allow us to use a bit more water in quick succession (eg a couple of showers and the washing machine) but it will not solve the problem if the inflow rate becomes much slower when it hasn't rained for a while.
This tank will also have a sensor in it like in toilet cistern but in reverse to detect when empty rather than when full. This would be a great improvement as the only way we have of telling whether the basin is empty at the moment is either going and looking at it (not practical during a shower for example) or when the tap runs dry - which means the pump is already running dry which will damage it if it runs for more than a very short period like that (very expensive mistake).
Ultimately we can connect to mains water as the next house down the valley has it (maybe 500m away), but it will be expensive to do as we have to pay for the channel to be dug and the pipe laid. If we did this we could continue to use the source water and only use mains when it ran out, as water is metered and (even) more expensive in France than the UK. Whatever happens having the source improved is a worth while investment.

The Tour de France

The Tour is passing close by here today - about 10 miles away at the closest. We debated long and hard about going to see it but in the end we decided not to. They are not coming down out of the mountains here (some years they do) which means there is a single road in and out. You need to drive up there around 6am to get there before the road closed and then cannot get back down for something like 12 hours, we decided it was going to be too long a day, particularly with a tetchy and overtired puppy. We are hoping they will come down out the mountains here next year and it will be easier to go and watch. Also hoping the puppy will be a well balanced dog by then not a tetchy puppy.

We also failed to go out and celebrate the 14th of July because we went to bed knackered after getting up at the crack of dawn to wrestle with the puppy. What wimps!

Poppy the land shark

Having a puppy is harder work than you might imagine. I expected a certain amount, but it is more and she restricts what we can do more than I thought about (won't walk on the lead so hard to go places, gets tired if out too long, can't go in to the supermarket - giving Doug cast iron excuse not to go either, can't be left alone too long), some of that will improve with age, but some not.I think I mentioned once before that we get up once in the night to take her to the toilet (3 month old puppies can apparently last 4 hours) and she has been waking up at 6am (this is now 7.30 which is an improvement). You will know that we need a lot of sleep and we are both rather knackered under this regime which means we are both tetchy and are not getting as much done in as day as we used to. I don't know how people manage with children. They can't be crate trained I believe.
'Some people' have told me I have read the internet too much about what we could do or should do but I want to do it right as I don't want an unruly badly behaved dog for the next 10-12 year. From this reading it seems that quite a lot of people find them harder work than expected, particularly when they have taken them on when they already have young children. Apparently it gets easier after the first 6 months or so, I might be finished before then.

She isn't properly difficult, just puppy naughty, but I find it very upsetting when she bites me (she does this when over tired and over excited, for some reason I don't understand does it much more to me than Doug). Internet says puppies do bite, but we need to work on her bite inhibition. It is also very tiring the way she wimpers and howls when she doesn't get her own way, for example on the lead or increasingly when put in her crate. It makes me feel like a cruel puppy whipper who is scarring her for life, when in fact limits are being set FOR HER OWN GOOD. A few days have ended in tears (mine not hers)

Look how cute she looks though!

Life isn't like fiction

There are endless films and books where people make a drastic lifestyle change, often a city dweller ends up living in the country(sometimes deliberately and sometimes for reasons out of their control). There is always some kind of bleak period where they hate the change, can't settle in and don't know how they are going to earn money. Then through some amazing good luck they manage to make their millions (and often meet the partner of their dreams)
The film that always comes to my mind is Baby Boom - with Diane Keeton, she inherits a baby which makes her lose her job, then for some reason I can't remember she moves to the country and has a nightmare, then makes baby food from the excess apples in her garden and becomes a millionaire (plus meets the man of her dreams of course). There are LOADS of others but I can't remember the names as they are too annoying as it is not like that in real life.
A lot of people have suggested that I need to write a book to make our fortunes. Probably they are inspired by there being quite a few funny books published with people moving to France and having a hilarious time with the locals, French red tape etc. I started to blog to try a bit of writing (as well as to let family and friends know what we are up to) but how does one take the next step? Books are very long with a lot of words, how does anyone manage to write that much (in such a way that people don't give up in boredom reading it)? Quite a few of the stories I am complaining about above feature people we are writing books and magically they manage to write masterpieces despite never having put pen to paper before in their lives. I just don't see that happening in real life. Although perhaps it happened for the Eat Pray Love woman - but a.) she cheated by being a professional writer and b.) I can't understand why her book was so popular anyway, I found it very annoying. With an extra twist to the annoyingness because she must have made so much money from it (bah humbug etc)

According to the Sunday Times, this blog (whatkatiewore) was/is massively popular and she has now gone on to do a blog about decorating their house (whatkatiewallpapered), apparently DIY and home renovation blogs are very 'now', 'hip', 'happening', 'zeitgeist-y' etc . How one wonders, does one get the Sunday Times to mention ones blog? Presumably it has to be popular already as well as 'now', 'hip', 'happening', 'zeitgeist-y' etc? Chicken and egg, how does it get popular without mention? If I was a character in a book there would be no problems as it would happen by amusing stroke of luck, I would write a related book and be a multi millionaire.

Meet the chickens

We are getting to know the chickens a bit as they are getting less shy and don't hid in the house or under the house every time we go near. I don't think we would have an easy job of picking one up yet though. They have been fighting a little bit despite living together before they came her. Big chicken has a bit of a hole in her comb but we haven't managed to have a close look, she seems ok as far as we can tell. Hen pecked chicken doesn't seem to manage to eat as much as the others and looks a bit depressed.

Big chicken (the boss) and little chicken (her minion)

Brown chicken

Brave chicken (or green chicken)

Hen pecked chicken

There are a number of big birds who keep flying quite close, we are a bit concerned they are trying to get a jump on Mr Fox and eat the chickens before he does.

Let me OUT

The cat shelter told us we should keep the cats inside for a month before we let them outside. They have been here nearly 2 weeks now and they were starting to seem a bit desperate to go outside.

I want OUT!

Maybe I can go this way. But the roof is slidey

The plan is that they are outdoors cats (I am a bit allergic - and their job is killing vermin outside) and will have a bed in the bread oven building (which is at one end of the 'outdoors kitchen' from which we recently cleared all the wood). But as they are used to living upstairs we decided they needed a transition from one location to the other. It is a bit high for them to jump and there is no easy way up and down (except for snakes).

We can knock something together with this wood and nails

Right where's it going?

Completed hillbilly cat ladder

Sambuca runs up and down it but Pernod is a bit of a dollop and won't try. Probably he is right as he is a bit mal-coordinated.
We need to either persuade him to use it of make it more sturdy so he will because he spent half the night running around mieowing for Sambuca who was out causing havoc amoungst the local rodent population (we hope)
We took them out down the stairs for their first outing. Sambuca loved it and was running around eating grass (what is it will carnivores eating grass? The puppy does it too). Pernod was more nervous and kept retiring upstairs until he missed Sambuca and went looking for her again. I think he thinks he is going to be a fireside cat - but he is NOT. He has a JOB to do. No slackers on the farm.

Sambuca in her element

Happy now she can get out

Admiring the view