Chantier collectif

Our Architect is building a house in Bagnere (our nearest town), he is having various 'Chantier collectif' (collective building work) sessions where people help him and he will help them back. Apparently there are many such works in the local area. We agreed to help because he is using various eco insulations and finishes that we are interested to learn about.
Today was straw and earth insulation (and the rest of this week and next week - we may do another day next week too so we can see how it is getting on).
We spent the morning dunking straw in to watery mud (or muddy water depending how you look at it). 5 buckets of mud (washed from stones in the local quarry) and 8 buckets of water was the recipe in this case, it depends on your mud how much water you want. Apparently you want the resulting mixture just to stick to your hand if you dip it in, making a 'glove of mud' and when you coat the straw you don't want it to be too muddy, just a thin coating of mud. The insulation won't be very good if there is too much mud/clay in the mix. We were told some stuff about telling how clay-y the muddy mix is too.

The house and garden

The mud and water mixing station

The covering mud in straw station

In the afternoon we swapped over and moved on to installing the straw in to the walls. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of this as I kept getting distracted by peacocks every time I got the camera out. They were very loud, if I lived there they might suffer some kind of tragic accident.

Basically we were filling in the holes in a timber frame wall with the wet muddy straw. Planks are screwed to the front of the frame while you pack the straw in and removed afterwards leaving the straw filling behind. This will eventually be plastered with earthen plaster. It was hard work as it had to be really packed down so it doesn't settle with time leaving a gap at the top of every section.
Despite the effort involved, we enjoyed it, as it was a chance to meet some new people (French and British) as well as rule out one type of insulation for our house! Far to labor intensive. The five of us probably did 2 feet up one rather small wall in the whole day - although we did make much more of the muddy straw than we used.

More on central heating and hot water

Ages ago I rambled on about our thoughts for central heating and hot water. It is an expensive part of the rennovation, plus it will make life expensive, hard work and uncomfortable if we get it wrong. Oh the pressure!
Since then we have read even more on the internet. It seems that a lot of systems like we are thinking about have two water tanks, an accumulator for the heat from the wood burner, which is used for central heating, and a smaller tank for DHW (domestic hot water - got to speak the lingo you know) that is heated by the solar thermal panels. The DHW tank also has an electric emersion heater for when the sun doesn't shine enough. We are keen to have free heating and hot water so this arrangement doesn't exactly suit us. It is not clear whether we could heat the DHW tank with heat from the accumulator in the summer. It is possible to do as I described before and have the solar and wood burner feed the accumulator and not have the other tank, however because the accumulator is something like 2000l (the DHW tank is smaller at maybe 200l) the solar panels are unlikely to heat it hot enough so you have to burn wood all summer. This isn't terribly efficient for just hot water as you are heating a much larger volume than you need. Another alternative is to use solar to heat the accumulator as much as possible (which is likely lukewarm) then have further heating as you use the water, called 'on demand' or 'in line' - this can be electric or gas.
While reading about all this I came across people who, rather than use solar thermal for their DHW, use solar pv. The solar pv generates electricity and this is used to heat water either via a heat pump (ground or air source) or via an immersion heater - or more likely a combination  of the two. There are a lot of discussions about whether solar pv used like this is in fact more cost effective now (as it gets cheaper to install) than solar thermal. This is interesting to us because it would mean we could harness the effort free energy from the sun rather than the effortful energy from wood and it could provide the heating as well as DHW. However of course these systems have their complexities (and costs). In general heat pumps are better suited to creating warm rather than hot water, which means they are well suited to underfloor heating (which we have assessed to be too expensive) but not so much to radiators or DHW. It seems though that they can do higher temperatures as the systems get more sophisticated so we are investigating further.
My head is spinning after reading so much on the internet. It is hard to find people in the same position as us. Most people are happy to use some electricity, as the system will still work out cheaper than gas or electric heating. However for us our most basic heating is wood which is free, so the other solutions aren't saving us money - only effort. But that is important too, as there is only so much work it is realistic to think we can do each year with the animals, the growing things, the maintaining the property, perhaps the earning some money, and hopefully the having some time off and enjoying ourselves! There are of course people out there doing similar things (I am not a beautiful or unique snowflake) but I haven't managed to find any very detailed descriptions of the systems they have settled on.
I am sure you will be hearing more on this subject.

How does your garden grow?

I must get round to taking some photos but I keep meaning to and then not doing it... we have spent some time planting seeds in the cold frame as well as some in to the garden itself. Three raised beds still need to be dug in, all are constructed though.
I can't remember the full list in the cold frame, but it includes tomatoes (6 varieties), chillies (6 varieties), broccoli, kale, peas (various) beans, courgette, peppers, strawberries, sunflowers, borage, nasturtium and passion fruit (showing no signs of life). Direct in the ground we have carrots, shallots, onions, garlic and 110 potatoes (three varieties).
The weeds are certainly growing very enthusiastically but the mulching we did with leaves and straw has slightly suppressed them in the raised beds. The onion bed has rather a lot of weeds and as we planted the onions through the straw it is rather difficult to pull them without disturbing the onions, we will just have to leave it and see how it goes.
I will update with some photos soon - we have a load more stuff we need to plant soon.

Butchering Bro

The meat animals don't have names, but they do tend to get labels to make it easier to know which one you are talking about. The first hogget (lamb over a year old) we butchered we called 'White Face' because he had a white face... This one is his brother, hence Bro.
We collected the carcass, fleece and this time the pluck (heart, lungs and liver - last time for some reason we didn't get it, I think they forgot) back from the abattoir today. It seemed to be 'old payesanne bloke collecting his meat' day at the abattoir. Each of them had a pristine white sheet that they openned out and spread on the back seat or in the boot as the sheep or cow was loaded for them. I felt out of place with my green towels and bin bags!
We used the same instructions for butchering as we did last time with the hope that it would be quicker and easier the 2nd time. I have to say that it was not - it took about 4 hours. We did do a few things different though and chopped up some meat for sausages instead of a roast and boned some roasts that we left bone in last time as well as cutting them smaller - more suitable for 2. So we did a slightly more thorough job. The total weight of meat was just over 10kg (from a carcass weight of 12.4kg) with the rest going to make stock (which we will use with some of the joints to make stew mmmm yummy).
We have put the pluck in the freezer to make haggis when we have got our hands on some pinhead oats.
The fleece is being washed to get the salt and the sheepy smell out of it. There will be another post about curing with Alum this time (we used Oxalic acid and soap/fat last time)

The sheep watching Doug

Cut in to bits

Lunch (perspective is wonky - chops are bigger than kidneys)

Hoisin pork chop

1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup honey
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp fresh ginger minced (or 1/2 tsp powdered ginger)
1 tsp dijon mustard
2 pork chops

Mix together everything except the honey and smear a bit on each side of the pork chops.
Fry the chops for about 5 mins a side
Mix the honey in to the remaining mixture
Add the mixture to the frying pan and continue to cook for a further 10 mins, turing the chops occasionally. The sauce should have thickened but not burnt!

Serve with noodles or rice (egg fried rice went well)

So much fencing

We seem to spend half our time moving animals around and cobbling together fences.
We now have a grand plan for what we would like the fencing to be. However at the moment we are trying to get something less sophisticated that will work for all the animals this year, then hopefully we will have time to do a more permenant job next year (or maybe the year after!!).

This is the Grand Plan.

We will have 5 proper fields and a big one that contains most of the woodland (if we can find the edges of it). In addition there are 2 orchards, the potager and the hayfield (obviously we hope to make hay here - it will have to be by hand as it is rather steep - we have an idea of asking a local farmer to see if they can manage on the bottom of the bottom field where it is a bit less steep - but that is all for another time)

One of the proper fields and the woodland field don't have water in them. The others are provided for either by the runoff from the house spring, or by a second spring that comes out below the drive. Our plan for the fields without water is that one will get water collected from the roof of the stables (when we get them) and the other will have a 'run in shelter' and we will collect rainwater from the roof of that. We are not quite sure what the monthly rainfall is, but it seems to be a lot!

We plan on having 3 strands of electric fence round everything at something like 25cm 50cm and 100cm. The intention is that this will keep horses, sheep and cows in. We need to experiment by fencing the currently unfenced part of the orchard like this before commiting to it everywhere as we are not 100% sure it will keep the sheep in.

When we arrived there were 2 fields only (Top - 1, 2, woodland and Bottom - 3, 4, 5). When Daisy arrived we repaired part of the top field and added an extra bit so we have very rough and ready fencing round what will become field 1. The 4 horses are in there now.
We are now working on repairing the fence round the bottom field with a view to putting the cows in there and perhaps the horses later in the summer if the eat all the food in the field they are in. This is quite a big job as the fence is broken in places, overgrown with holly and brambles in others and too high at certain points for such little cows.
Col and his 3 ewes and their 3 lambs have been in the 2nd orchard for quite some time and it is grazed right down, we moved them on to the driveway today so they can graze that on their way to the orchard which is quite lush. Until the bottom field is finished the cows are living with them. The other flock of sheep are currently in the bottom field contained with electric sheep fencing. We will move them perhaps every 3 weeks or 4 weeks around the field, we plan on them remaining there when the cows move as the field is huge for the cows and they won't eat all the grass.

What a lot of animals! What a lot of fences! What a lot of work!
 

Déclaration Préalable (plans submitted to the Mairie)

We asked at the Mairie what we needed to do to get permission for the work we want to do, they said we don't need a Permis de Construire (planning permission) just a Déclaration Préalable (declaration of works). This is good as less documentation is required and the time taken to recieve an answer (hopefully permisson) is less.
We have (finally FINALLY finally) finalised the plans with the architect and submitted them to the Mairie. Apparently they should respond in a month. Hopefully with permission. It seems it is likely to be accepted, partially because we are so far from the village and cannot be seen from it, but mainly because we are not asking for anything extreme.

Downstairs

Upstairs

Before going to the Mairie we went to the architect's office (ie his kitchen) to sign and initial all the plans. We had an interesting chat with him and his girl friend (and his 2 month old baby) about work they doing on their house in Bagenere de Bigorre. There is some information here. They live in a flat while the work is being done, the walls there were plastered with earthern plaster - it looked really nice, rustic and appropriate for an old house. They had it painted ('chalk paint', I guess that is limewash in english) white in places and just the natural colour of the earth in others. We have volunteered to go and be part of a work party doing some 'cob' work on their house. We think it will be a good way to meet some french people who are doing interesting rennovations as well as meaning we won't feel guilty about asking the architect stupid questions about various things. The earthern plaster is an interesting idea. It is important apparently for the walls on an old stone house to breath, lime plaster would also allow this but we are interested in the idea of being able to use something really local. It is harder of course to get the right mix as all mud is different so you can't just have a recipe for it. There seem to be some experts around locally though. Tricky in French though!

There is still much more detailed planning to be done. We need to get estimates for work we want others to do (we have ballpark figures from the architect), we need to work out how we might schedule the work to continue living here while we are doing it, we need to work out details of the heating system and we need to make more detailed plans for the electrics and plumbing to allow the quotes to be done. Plus a lot of other stuff I am sure.

Another one bites the dust

We took the 2nd of last years lambs to the abattoir today (now a hogget rather than a lamb as it is over a year). This one is the twin of the other one we did. The process of catching was a little slicker than last time (with some help from a friend) and it was less stressful getting him unloaded at the abattoir as we had done it before. Hopefully the butchering will be a bit quicker too as we have done it before. Last time we left a few of the cuts rather big and did not take the bones out as we were getting knackered by that point.
The sheepskin from the previous one we cured with oxalic acid and fat/soap, this one we are going to try using alum with.
We will be getting the skin and carcus on Thursday so more info then.

Toad in the Hole Recipe

I love Toad in the Hole. It is so easy to make and so yummy. In the UK we had it with frozen sweetcorn, but we can't seem to get that here - only tinned which I don't really like. We will have to grow our own.

For 2 people

150g plain flour
2 eggs
160ml whole milk and water mixed (half and half) or skimmed milk
A pinch of salt
4 sausages
1/2 onion per person (optional)

Preheat your oven to 220°C
You can use the sausages whole or cut in to pieces (I normally cut in to pieces)
Oil your dish with -  (my dish is 15x25 cm or sometimes I use 2x le creuset 18cm small ceramic dishes)
Add the sausages (and onion if using) and put in the preheated oven for about 10 mins until the sausage just starts to brown/

While cooking the sausages make the batter mix (or make it in advance for a better rise)
Weigh the flour in to a bowl.
Add the salt and eggs. Stir lightly and add some of the milk water mix and mix some more until the mixture is smooth. Add more of the milk and water until the mixture is the consistancy of thick cream.

Once the sausages are brown pour the batter over them and quickly return the dish to the oven.
Cook for 30 mins or until the batter is risen and browned.

Serve with ketchup (not if your name is Doug) and some veg.

Dandelion Cordial Recipe

60g Dandelion petals (remove the green bits from the flowers)
1/2 liter water
1/2 tsp citric acid
Zest of a lemon
300g sugar

Picking dandelions and getting rid of the green bits is quite labour intensive, I let through the frondy green bits up the side of the flowers and just removed the bottom bit of the flower - life's too short!
Boil the water and add the flower petals and lemon zest. Stir and leave to soak overnight.
Strain out the petals and return the liquid to the pan
Add the sugar and bring the liquid to the boil while stirring constantly
Allow to boil for a few minutes, add the citric acid and allow to cool a bit before bottling

 The resulting syrop is flowery and pleasant, on the whole I prefer elderflower cordial as it is easier to pick the elderflowers. This is a pleasant change though

Lamb 9 (the final one)

The final lamb was born this morning. It had a slightly traumatic start to life as it managed to get the wrong side of the electric fence not long after it was born (it was still damp). It was trying to get back through when we spotted it but could not manage. Doug heroically rescued it and it seems to be doing fine now. It looks tiny, but they all do when they have just been born.

Owen is here!

Since Daisy arrived a few weeks ago she has been a bit lonely, calling and stamping to try to find other horses. She now has LOADS of friends. Two friends rode their horses over to stay with us for a while, their horses field was very muddy and Daisy needed company so it is good for everyone. They arrived yesterday, initially we put them in a different field, then let them all in together today. There was a bit of jostling initially but it seems everyone is getting on fine (this picture is Daisy, Tiggi then Kira)

Later in the morning Owen our new horse arrived. He spent a few hours in a little separate area, but then we let him in with all the girls. Mostly everyone seemed to want to eat grass and occasionaly have a few little discussions about who was the boss (Kira)

Once Owen had met everyone and had a chance to eat some grass and settle down from his journey we took him out for a little ride. He seemed to enjoy the grooming first and was pretty calm throughout.
We had a lovely ride, he was keen and responsive but also very safe and sensible feeling. What a good boy!

Our house from the other side of the valley

He is a little bit fat at the moment we think, he needs a bit of exersize and less concentrate, just nice healthy grass. Probably - we don't know. He is lovely whatever. Daisy is lovely too of course!
Owen came with his own saddle so we plan on taking them out together tomorrow. We just took Owen out on his own for the first ride to make sure he was settling in ok. As Daisy had just had the excitement of so many new friends, and hasn't been with us that long anyway we thought it would be safest.

Ski touring

The weather has been lovely for a few days so we took the opportunity to do a bit more gentle ski touring. I remembered the camera this time. The ski area is quite strange as it is in perfect condition and looks like there should be people everywhere. But it is empty.
We have a very pleasant walk - about an hour or a little more up and 10 mins down - it only took that long coming down because we were trying to get a video of Poppy running after Doug, but she was too excited to cooperate and wanted to run at me with the camera.

Lamb number 8

I don't have a photo yet, but the 8th lamb was born this morning. It is a little black one, born to the smallest of the ouessant ewes - Tiree.

Saddle for Daisy

When we bought Daisy we got her bridle and bit with her, and borrowed a saddle. We ordered a 2nd hand saddle from the UK (they are quite expensive here- and rideaways charge very reasonable postage). It arrived last week. When we first tried it on Daisy she was not a happy camper. We went through the process as described on the internet, putting the saddle on her back without a blanket underneath and inspecting it from all angles to make sure it wasn't pressing anywhere on her spine before mounting. When Doug mounted she put her ears back and bared her teeth in an unusually angry fashion. Doug got off and I started to get on at which point she snapped at me - which is unheard as she is quite mellow normally. I didn't continue getting on, we went back to the borrowed saddle and she was fine, then back to the new saddle and angry Daisy was back. We stopped at this point for a reevaluation.
It seems hard to find saddle fitters here, but a friend of a friend allegedly has details for one. As the friend is bringing her horse here for a little holiday next week, we were waiting until then as she wants a saddle fitter to look at her saddle too.
However the owner of the borrowed saddle suddenly needs it back. What were we going to do?? After extensive searching in the Yellow Pages and phoning various local equestrian shops (in French yes) to try to locate a saddle fitter, I phoned the nice people at rideaways. They were very helpful and said we needed to put the saddle back on Daisy and sit on it, so we could tell them some measurements (distance from pommel to withers initially). We weren't super keen to repeat the crazy fang Daisy experience, but Doug very bravely volunteered (ok I told him it was his job) to mount while I did the measuring and held Daisy's head pinned so she couldn't chomp him.
But as it turned out we put it on her back and she was fine, not a bother with it at all. Doug then went for a little ride (as recommended to settle the saddle in position before taking the measurements). Daisy was fine with ears flopping happily. So we are not sure what happened the first time, but we are glad it seems fine now. The saddle fitter will be coming anyway so we will get him to look at it just to be sure, but all seems good.
We are very relieved as the saddle is nice and comfy for the rider - plus we were going to have an issue having given back the loan one and not yet got this one right.

Another lamb (number 7)

Finally the white sheep has had her lamb. Last year she had a black one, this one is white. The father is the same. It is pretty small considering how fat she was!

Chickies

The adult chicknes seemed a bit put out by the arrival of the rabbits.

But they calmed down after an hour or so. Not sure what their problem was.
The little chickies are growing fast. Some have little mini wings now with proper feathers and everything. They eat a lot and need their water changing about every 3 minutes because they poo in it all the time. They poo in the food too and everywhere else. Delightful.

A friend for Daisy

Of course we have always intended to have two horses and not just one. We have been looking for another since we got Daisy. She is a bit lonely and likes us to go and keep her company and sometimes calls to try to find other horses. We have bought her a friend. We had to drive fairly far to see him, so it was a relief he was as lovely as he seemed in the advert. We have reviewed many many adverts to find him.
He is called Owen (or possibly Owan) and he is 12 years old. He is a teeny tiny bit fat after the winter so needs to go on an excersize regime! He is a boulonnais/arab cross and has a very sweet nature. He doesn't seem phased by much but is still quite keen to go.
He is not as pretty as Daisy (Doug says he is odd looking - I can see what he means as he has quite a small elegent arab head and a big fat boulonnaise body but I think 'odd looking' is harsh)

Wabbits

For some time we have been planning on getting rabbits. The idea being that they eat grass (and clover and various other pasture growing things) and produce meat (in the form of babies).
After some research I decided we wanted Fauve de Bourgogne, they are meant to taste good and they have pretty coloured fur - I want to try curing rabbit skin as well as the sheeps fleece.
We have bought 2 female Fauve and a male Lapin Lièvre Belge - the male was a bit of an impulse buy as the seller of the Fauve was offering him a bit cheap and he will be ready to breed at the same time. We may well replace him with a Fauve male however otherwise we won't get the pretty coloured fur. The females won't be ready to breed until July so we have some time to decide what to do.

The hutches

One of the females

The male

Poppy is so good!

We went ski touring today (walking up then skiing down) in the ski area. I forgot the camera so there are no photos! It was a lovely sunny day and the snow is still really nice in the ski area. It took more than an hour to climb what the lift whisks you up in only a few minutes, but you have more of a feeling of satisfaction when you reach the top!
Skiing down Poppy could hardly keep up, it was funny watching her try to with her legs 'wheel spinning' in the snow. She couldn't believe we were going so fast! It took about 3 mins to ski back down what it had taken so long to climb up.
Anyway the point of this story is that at the end of the tour as we were just getting back to the car park we met another dog. Poppy and it (black lab maybe - an old one who should have known better!) greeted each other and then started running around together quite madly. The owner of the other dog started calling it, as he was just setting off and wanted it to go with him. It totally ignored him and continued prancing around with Poppy. So I called her and she came and sat as she is meant to. The other dog carried on frisking around her, and in the end his owner had to come and physically drag him away. Many times we have been shown up by Poppy totally ignoring us, so it was quite amazing and lovely to have Poppy show up another dog instead! What a good girl she is - some of the time - but it give us hope! She was way prettier than the other dog too...

Slow roast lamb

You can do this with any cut but it is best for things like bone in shoulder or hock.
You also need 1/2 an onion per person and a mix of veg such as potato, sweet potato and carrot (also squash is good) cut in to cubes

Sprinkle the lamb with salt.
Put in a casserole dish with a lid with some rosemary and cloves of garlic. The dish should be big enough to add some veg around the lamb later in the process.
Roast in a 150°C oven for 3 hours.
Put the veg in to a pan of cold water and bring to the boil. Drain and add salt and oil. Add the veg to the dish with the lamb. Add the onion (cut in to quarters) as well.
Return to the oven for a further hour. The meat should be very soft and pull apart easily.
Serve with mint sauce or some kind of fruit jelly.

Chinese pancakes (for crispy duck)

We both love crispy aromatic duck. I can't remember what the largest order we made was (a whole duck maybe?), but we have sometimes had just the crispy duck in restaurants and not bothered with any other courses. Mmmmmmmm.
Sainsburys do a DIY one, so we could even have it when we couldn't be bothered to go out (take away ones always seem to arrive a bit soggy).
Chinese food is reasonably popular here, but the chinese in town doesn't do crispy duck (!) so we decided we need to make our own. We tracked down plum sauce in the chinese supermarket in Tarbes (we went there for the first time today - excitingly they also have various curry ingredients and indian pickles). They didn't have the pancakes though so I had to make them!

Makes 16 (approx 15-20cm in diameter)
250g flour
approx 170ml boiling water
Some oil

Add the boiling water to the flour and stir into a sticky dough. You can add more water if you need.
Kneed briefly to ensure the mixture is well mixed (no need to kneed like bread)
Divide in to 16 equal size pieces and roll in to balls

Flatten each ball and roll out a little - so it is maybe 5 cm in diameter

Then paint one side of each with oil (seseme ideally - but any will do) and stick them together oily sides facing and roll out further until they are between 15 and 20 cm in diameter. Try not to get creases as you roll as that will make it more difficult to separate the two later. You shouldn't need flour to do this as the oil should stop them sticking to the work surface.
Fry the double pancake gently in a dry frying pan (no oil on the outside of the pancakes). Do for a few minutes each side. They don't change much in appearance so just guess when they are done :)
Pick up out of the frying pan and peel the two pancakes apart with your fingers. They should come apart easily

Put the pancakes in to a steamer (ideally a bamboo chinese one, but a normal one will do fine). Put down a layer of grease proof paper or tin foil before you put the pancakes in.

Serve wrapped around plum sauce (going to have a go at making that too sometime), cucumber and aromatic crispy duck.
This first time I just used a duck leg we had already roasted in the freezer - we are going to give proper (ish) aromatic duck a go. I say ish because the authentic process involves being able to deep fry a whole duck which isn't going to happen here!

Traffic stopping horse

Our horse is so lovely she caused a traffic jam. We were just coming out of our drive when one of our nearish neighbours came round the corner, she stopped (with her daughter) to admire Daisy. Then someone else who lives a little bit further up the hill came along (with her daughter) and stopped too. Then her next door neighbour (no daughter) came along as well. The road was nearly blocked, but other cars managed to squeeze past. Was all very jolly and everyone admired Daisy who was very tolerant of all the little girls stroking and admiring her.
Doug has this song stuck in his head and sings it every time he looks at or thinks of Daisy... it is quite delightful I can tell you. 
When we finally got going, we didn't go far, as the heavens suddenly opened. Within a few seconds of starting to rain it turned to huge hail stones about 1cm diameter. Daisy was keen to turn back and we agreed!

Another lamb

Lamb number six has just been born. This was to Mrs Suffolks daughter (Miss Suffolk) one of the year old sheep we were not sure would have babies. Originally Miss Suffolk was scheduled to attend the slaugher house but we thought she might be pregnant so we gave her a stay of execution. I quite like her as she is a cute looking thing but we will have to see. Maybe if the baby is a girl we could sell the two together (they are part suffolk and part ouessant and we intent to focus on the ouessant breed - although the suffolk and jacob are both larger and have larger lambs which has some benefit)

Mrs Suffolk is still fat and has still not produced any offspring. Not sure whether to worry.

First veg in the ground

We have managed to get carrots, parsnips, onions, garlic and potatoes in to the potager despite the seemingly never ending rain (we had to give up waiting for it to stop and just get on with it. We are from SCOTLAND, a little rain won't stop us!). Poppy was not too impressed.

Potatoes

We have constructed all the beds we plan on havingnow (16 - of varying sizes) but 5 still need to be installed properly.

The ski area WHAT??

Yes it seems very early, but the ski area closed this weekend.
We had a lovely day skiing on Sunday, the last day, with fresh powder on a good base. It is MADNESS closing, but I guess it just doesn't make financial sense for them to stay open longer. It was pretty busy - not suprising given the lovely weather and the fresh snow.

We plan on doing some touring (putting skins on the skis and walking up) around the ski area with the dog over the next couple of weeks - if it ever stops raining...