My Birthday

Technically I don't have a birthday this year as it is not a leap year. However I still expect gifts!
Unfortunately my biggest (ever) present hasn't arrived yet.

Hainoa hiding behind mummy

Aidan managed to take the extremely subtle hint and give me a steel frying pan, however it had a bit of a tragic accident with a plastic spatula during it's first time on the cooker (for seasoning).
I have managed to scrub it off with a pan scourer (Doug wants it noted that he spent some time scrubbing too... Various ideas on the internet including nail polish remover, bicarbinate of soda and peanut butter did not work) but the surface doesn't look quite as lovely and smooth as it did before. Over time it is meant to get blackened and build up more of a seasoned surface on it, so I am just going to start using it and hope for the best. The darker bit is where it got hotter with the oil in it during seasoning I think.

Before ruination

After ruination and after scrubbing the melted spatula off

Doug has promised to buy me a new one if it is ruined. (yes you did darling... if you EVER want pancakes again...)

We meant to go skiing, but didn't manage because we were lazy and stayed in bed, then the people came round to see Pernod. We went for a walk instead.

Princess Poppy doesn't like the brambles!

Thanks also for other presents. We will watch Skyfall tonight!

Pernod has a new home

We decided to find a new home for Pernod because he wasn't very happy here. He wanted somewhere he could sit by the fire and be cuddled and played with a lot. He has gone to a lovely French family with youngish children who will love and entertain him. He will finally get his wish of being allowed inside, and perhaps they will also find out his love of tomatoes and give him plenty of those too. It was a bit sad to see him go, but also a relief that he will be happier. He was a bit of a slacker when it came right down to, as he didn't contribute to catching things, he just ate some of Sambuca's. Hopefully the other animals will take the warning that there are no slackers on the farm!
Byeeee Pernod  and good luck with your new family xx

Planning planting

I couldn't decide whether to call this post 'planning planting' or 'planting planning'. Whatever it is called, it was hard work and my brain doesn't work properly after it. We need some kind of computer program to work it all out for us...

Despite the return of winter we have continued to think about spring and planting things. A number of seeds should be being planted now or soonish. Obviously they are meant to be in a greenhouse or cold frame where they will not freeze. We have ordered a cold frame kind of thing, but it has not arrived yet despite ordering it some weeks ago. Their website tells me everyday that it will be sent within 3 days, I have emailed to ask when it actually will be sent, but am not holding my breath for a response - ordering things from french websites can be a bit unreliable. Things take ages to arrive and it is impossible to get information about what is happening. Except one shop called Darty where we bought the fridge, freezers and ice cream maker who seem like a 'proper' shop.

In preparation for it's arrival and for spring more generally we have ordered some (loads of) seeds. We seem to have rather a lot, as we ordered these plus we have bought various throughout the year. We have some duplicates - we didn't check what we had before ordering more. Doh!
To help us work out what raised beds we need to construct plus what we need to plant where and when, we have done a planting plan with a little map and a schedule. It was extremely brain straining to do with over 50 things (mainly veg but some fruit, flowers and herbs) on it. We feel exhausted just having done the planning, never mind the actual planting.
The map is upside down in this picture but I don't think that will affect your ability to understand it! There is a key as well to remind us what it all means. Essentially it covers the potager, the bank below the potager, in front of the house and the bank below the house and has some other things on it such as the compost heap and leaf pile.

Super easy to use map

Hard at work (with plenty of tea)

Planting schedule by month

More snow and collecting our trailer

We have had snow at the house for a few days now, it all looked very pretty this morning. We have not had this much settle on the drive before.

Despite the snow, we got out ok to fetch our new trailer. We will use it to transport the sheep to the abattoir as well as for various DIY type things, such as getting gravel from the quarry to do further work on the drive.
We looked at the tractors longingly, but cost aside, our land is just to steep for a tractor (unless you are semi suicidal french farmer with lifetime of experience behind you)

I have towed things before (boats) but not often. I feel I have just about got used to the giantness of the pickup, along with the rather limited view out the back, so having a trailer will be an interesting new challenge. It didn't cause any bother on the way home and I managed to get it round the bend in the drive ok - I was a bit worried as the car doesn't make it round in one so some reversing on the corner is involved (with steep drop behind).

It has a lid that fits over the top which hopefully should keep the sheep in.

Skiing, snow and driving

There has been quite a bit of snow over the last few days. We went up skiing yesterday, the snow was very nice and fluffy, but the visibility wasn't great. Sometimes you couldn't tell up from down as everything in all directions was white. It was pretty darn cold too at -8°C in the car park and still snowing quite heavily.

The drive down was quite exciting. First we came round a corner to find a snow plough doing both sides of the road with a double plough speeding at us at about 2000 mph, and when I applied the brake to slow down and pull in to the side we just slid. Fortunately not far and the snow plough swerved back on to the other side of the road just in time. I guess they are expert at not plowing people off the road. It would give them a bit of a bad name.
We didn't drive very fast and it was generally fine, but there was a nerve wracking moment when we came round a corner to find a number of stationary cars and the road blocked by a car that had spun across it. When I braked (broke?) the car just slide with the ABS desperately trying to keep grip and failing (we were in 4wd). I managed to steer on to the wrong side of the road to avoid the stopped car and slid past them on the wrong side of the road. They got very het up and were gesturing that we should stay behind them and that they were before us in the queue! I ignored them and went back to trying to stop the car. Having dropped in to 1st we were slowing down, I considered for a moment swerving in to a garden at the side of the road with a big bank of soft looking snow, but decided we were going to stop in time. We did stop, and looked around, Mr Irate French Man was still gesturing angrily. Perhaps he didn't realise how nearly we rammed in to the back of him!

What to do when car is out of control - close your eyes!

Guess who's back, back again. Winter's back.

You will see from various recent blogs that we have been having lovely sunny weather. This made our thoughts turn to spring and getting the garden ready for planting things, we planted some things and started making our raised beds.

As you can see from the photos we have got the three raised beds we have wood for finished, but the weather has changed back to being most definitely winter. The temperature hasn't risen above freezing for a couple of days, and has been much colder at night. Today it has been snowing most the morning.

The sheep are more excited than usual about their hay. They seem to be coping outside fine, you can see the snow settles on their backs without melting. It is very cold on the hands clearing the ice out of their water.

The dog still loves the snow (even though her hair isn't as effective as the sheeps at keeping the cold out)

The news papers tell me that adult 'onesies' are very trendy at the moment. Maybe you can't see in the video, but I am wearing a John Deere 'farmer's onesie'. I love it in weather like this, as there is no gap between your top and bottom for the cold to get in. All I need is a fleecy one for indoors wear...

The first raised bed

It is possible we don't really need raised beds here for the purpose of helping the soil warm early in the year to extend the growing season, as the growing season is a reasonable length anyway. However we want them to keep the beds there they are meant to be, and to stop the wood chips we plan on using on the paths from getting in to the beds.
A few weeks ago, we layed out the outline of the area with string, we then bought and cut the wood for 3 beds. (There will be something like 20 in total. It is unlikely we will make them all this year)
We put together the first bed

and while I dug more mud off the car parking area at the top of the drive (6 more wheelbarrows full - back breaking work)

Doug dug the bed in to the ground and then dug over the earth in it

 Added some leaves (we hope they will break down a bit before we plant anything)

And then put some damp and partially rotted hay that the sheep have thrown on the ground on top to finish killing the weeks. We hope it will be ok if we just plant things like beans or courgettes through the straw. Carrots for example we will dig the ground more thoroughly for and not give leaves and straw.

We don't know what we are doing though, so hopefully it will all work out. The wood we used for these beds is intended for concrete forms and not treated in any way, so it is possible they will just rot away pdq. We hope not as the wood seems pretty solid, and treated wood is a.) expensive and b.) full of chemicals that will leach out and be bad for us.
You can't really see in the photos, but the bed is made by screwing the sides on to corner pieces. These corner pieces are not hammened in to the ground, they are just as long as the planks are wide, then the whole bed has been sunk a few inches in to the earth which will support the sides a bit we hope. They are rectangular - although the corners don't look 90° in the photo, they are.

Some visitors

These are medium sized calves (I couldn't guess how old knowing nothing much about cows) that made a little visit to our field. We think they are the neighbour's from down the valley as he has just moved his cows back in to the field adjacent to ours (not sure where they have been). The other neighbour also has cows though. As there are only 4 of them we just left them, presumably they will return to her mummies at some point. It doesn't say good things about the state of our fence though (or the neighbours) and we need to go round the whole edge of it before Hainoa arrives, or at least before she is set free in to the whole field, she will spend some time initially with the sheep in a smaller enclosure.

Magic sheep catching sticks

We made a determined effort on the sheep today, and we have FINALLY dealt with all the ones that are going to slaughter. All three have eartags and the injections they need. We have also bought a trailer so we can get them to the abattoir (it is not a livestock specific one and will be useful for getting gravel for the drive and drains etc as well). We are picking it up next week. I am a bit nervous about driving the car with it although it is reasonably small.
We made their enclosure smaller which helps to a certain extent, although they can leap like little fat gazelle and jump over the fence if they really try, so a smaller enclosure doesn't guarentee success. We also got some shepherds crooks. All the shepherds have them so they must be useful surely we thought. We didn't go as far as getting a dog, as we thought the lead time with training might be a bit much. We had two to catch, I managed to grab one with my hands (but the crook was useful for waving it in to a corner), Doug caught the other one with his crook. So a useful addition. Plus we look cool like real real farmers now :)

Poor sheep huddling as far away as possible after tagging

I am a dur brain

When Aidan was here we nearly didn't have pizza because I couldn't be bothered to make the dough - all that kneeding you know. Aidan pointed out that the breadmaker could do it for me on it's 'pizza' setting. Hurrah! I am VERY stupid not to have noticed that before. Today we are having curry and hurrah again, it can do the naan bread too. Thanks to Aidan for being clever!

Oh no, we are mad aren't we?

We have been trying to identify some animals that can help us gain and keep control of our land. We don't want to spend all our time strimming and chopping things down. The grass hopefully can be dealt with by the horses (when we get some) and the sheep, but a lot of other stuff such as brambles, bracken and tree saplings grows equally if not more enthusiastically. Goats seemed a possibility, but they need very good fencing as they are escapologists, also people tell us that actually they are not as good at eating everything as they are supposed to be. They will eat a little bit of everything, but generally don't prefer the stuff you want them to eat and just leave it, or escape and eat something else (your veg for example).Having seen a report on Countryfile about some conservationalists using Dartmoor ponies to clear scrub land and keep it clear, I started reading a bit about conservation grazing and it seems that Highland Cattle are also good as they eat pretty much everything and trample down what they don't eat so it doesn't thrive. It happens that there is a couple who breed them just a few miles from here, so we made an appointment to go and have a chat with them and see their cows.

They are only 150 meters higher than us, but it felt we climbed and climbed up a road that started narrow and got narrower.

There were a couple of little villages along the way, the car only just fitted through the gaps between houses.

This is the valley where the coos live. They have 30 of them, a number of them they imported from Scotland, a few from Germany and the rest were either born here or come from elsewhere in France (but their parents came from Scotland).

Their mud makes our annoyance with it look trivial. The cows come down close to the house over the winter so it is easier to feed them hay, which means there are a lot of them in a small space with a stream running through. I got stuck in the mud twice and had to be extracted by the nice man! Oops how shaming.

We chatted away with Sebastien who is very knowlegable about the cows and we just loved the look and nature of them. They have two female calfs at the moment, one is ready to leave its mum this month (February) and the other in September. It just happens that my birthday is February and Doug's is September. It was clearly meant to be and we have reserved both of them!
I can just imagine Lorna saying 'Is this one of your most sensible plans?' as she often did, but always meaning it in a nice way, just that she was laughing at us...
I am not sure it is, but I am sure it will be fun. Hopefully they will be as useful as we hope.

They will be ready to have their own calfs when they are 3ish at which point they can go back to a different bull at the farm they came from. I have some dreams about being able to milk them (people do) but it is a while away and we will see how we are getting on with them then. The horns are mighty big when they are full grown and you wouldn't want to piss one off. Highland cow beef is meant to be very tasty, it is leaner than other beef as they keep warm with their shaggy coats rather than with fat. Apparently the first one to arrive will be happy with the sheep as company until the other one turns up. This does limit the ground we can put her on to start off with though.
Their names at the moment are Hainoa (the older one) and Ilona but we are thinking of renaming them (they can keep those as their official names as they are in the records like that). We are thinking names of single malts for them but we haven't thought of the right ones yet, or perhaps we will decide we like those names anyway - we are worried they sound too similar and we will be confused. Hainoa colour is called yellow and Ilona is red (other possible colours are black, white, dun and brindled).

Hainoa in the mud

Ilona and her dad Duncan (he is Hainoa's dad too)

Hainoa

Hainoa with her mum

Ilona

The views where they come from are lovely, hopefully they wil be happy with their new one.

That is our birthday presents for this year sorted anyway!

More on the driveway

I left you last time with the ditch in the drive not quite finished, in the morning we went and finished filling it in around the gutter and we put the remaining gravel/earth on to the bit with a dip.

Watering it in

Close up

We are a bit concerned that the end where it goes in to the ditch may move around a bit as it is not very well supported, but we will see.
There is still some more work to do stabilising the bank, but we really need to get a trailer for that so we can get lots and lots of small rocks and gravel and tip that over.

We have also removed another four wheelbarrows of earth from the top of the drive where we park the car and put it on the flower bed where the hedge used to be. There is a lot more still to go but hopefully it will be a bit improved next time it rains.

We went for lunch with some English people who live 'off grid' - or not quite off grid as they have phone and internet but not electricity and like us they get their water from a spring and 'waste' goes in to a septic tank.
I mention it here because their drive makes ours look in perfect condition, mud free, short and nearly flat. The house when you get down the several km of drive is a pretty converted barn and comfortable despite them still having work planned. We had an interesting conversation about treating wood for woodworm/capricorn beetle as they had injected their beams. Something to think about.