1st Ouessant Lamb

Finally the first of the Ouessant lambs.

Much later than normal, but better late than never

The others are doing well

Potato scones to celebrate

Snow!

It's been so warm, and we have been doing so much busy busy stuff trying to take our minds of the corona situation that we had kind of forgotten that it is only March and we should still in fact be skiing. Here was a little reminder from the snow gods. Didn’t last long...

The basil has finally shown signs of life also!

Changing the beds in the potager

We had raised beds for some years but the wood finally rotted. I think I mentioned it before. We have decided where the fruit trees are to do away with beds and just mulch round the bottom of each bush. This creates a little more mowing, but a lot less weeding, and it is easier to mow without the raised beds as they made too many tight corners to manoeuvre the mower around - you do have to be careful now not to mow things in the beds!
Still a lot of weeding to do here, but you can kind of see the beds. We will grow veg at this end (there is one remaining raised one with strawberries in that will eventually move, probably to the bank behind)

This is the end with the fruit. You can see where the beds were, we hope the raised bits of ground will go away if we just keep mowing!

Keeping busy and seeing friend

Had a fun day ‘video call baking’ with Anne for her birthday challenge Hot cross buns. Yum! Anne’s yeast seemed a bit of a dud, so we are going to have a take 2 before Easter. 

Also planted some seeds, mowed the lawn...

and Doug checked the bees and rotavated more space for the potatoes (not planted yet as frost forecast).
It was quite an exciting inspection as one hive has surprisingly replaced its queen. The new one seems to be laying, so hopefully all good.
The other hive has been queen less for a while, we gave them some eggs from the first hive and they seem to be creating a new queen as we hoped.

The resultant buns. Yum!

Vin d'orange and crisps

Happy Birthday (for tomorrow) Wee Anne, and have fun ‘video call camping’ xx

Slow Roast Mutton Leg

Roasted for 3 hours at 150C then about another 30 mins at 180C. I started the potatoes cooking before I did the meat and put them back in for the last 30 minutes.
Before roasting I put cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary under the skin.
We had it with roast potatoes and carrots and some beetroot I found hiding in the garden as I was weeding.
Came out really yummy!

Keeping busy to take our minds off the end of the world as we know it

Again not a surprise, but the lockdown has been extended. To the 15th April initially, but expecting another 2 weeks after that. They don't want to depress us with is all at once :)
We have to fill in a form when we leave the house stating the reason (shopping, helping others, walking dog etc). I have been out to the supermarket and animal feed shop a couple of times but generally we walk the dog on our own land. Which is just as well as the new rules say dogs have to be on leads - Poppy doesn't like the lead and doesn't get enough exercise unless she can run around like a nutter.
As well as walking the dog we:
  Sangria and popcorn, beer and pizza.
Organised seeds,

 planted seeds,

weeded, mulched, finished path up to pottage and strimmed lots of things.

Then sangria and popcorn,

and beer and pizza

This lockdown is not good for our weight!

More gardening, eating and drinking

Is the garden getting boring yet?? As I said before, we would rather be skiing and living our old normal life, but there is a lot of satisfaction with getting the garden sorted, trees cleaned up and things we often don't find time for.

I planted these columnar trees two years ago. Despite my best efforts they have been a bit weed swamped and not maybe kept watered enough. This is the year they are going to be cared for well enough to fruit the following year! In this photo I have strimmed the bank, but not obviously right up to each tree

Break for lunch.

Bacon and egg sandwich!

This is after I have trimmed all the grass from round each of the 11 trees and mulched with material, with horse poo on top and staked each tree.

Sloe gin and tonic reward!

More gardening and keeping calm

The potager is still a big old mess, but it is getting there, you can at least see there are beds!

Before

During (not got to after yet!)

We are adding a potato patch at the end, I can’t normally be bothered with potatoes because they take up a lot of space (which means a lot of weeding). But these are not normal times.

Doug is making a path up the steep slope so it is less of a Herculean (Sysiphean?) task getting the lawn mower up.

Ginger cookies as a reward for all the hard work!

Keeping calm and carrying on

Normally we would be skiing and feeling a little stressed about not bringing the garden under control for Spring. While I would much much rather the world was still its old self, it is satisfying to be getting a good start on the garden.
Records tell me though that I was pruning and tying up raspberries on this day last year too.
There is satisfaction in the continuity of life!
The supports did a good job and lasted well. They were blown a little squint in the worst storm over the year, but otherwise remain sturdy.

The rest of the garden is a mess. I have done a first pass strim and look forward to getting it under control early this year!

Another lamb!

It’s a girl! This is Dagmar’s second lamb. Dagmar is my favorite sheep, she is quite friendly because her mum died when she was youngish and she needed a bit of extra care, she has nice wool too. The twins are doing well, they keep getting confused between Missy, their mum, and Dagmar. I thought that although I struggle to tell Missy and Dagmar apart by sight, surely to a sheep would be able to tell them apart! There is certainly 2 more to come, and maybe 2 after that, depending whether the 2 youngest sheep have one or not.

Proud father

This little one may or may not have a lamb this year as she is just about a year old herself

Dagmar with her new lamb

The twins, you can see one just peeking out behind his mum. The white one is a mummies boy and the black one a little adventurer.

Farinata (Italian chickpea pancake)

150g chickpea flour (also called gram or bessan flour)
450ml water
4tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
Black pepper, rosemary, cheese and tomato for topping

Mix together flour and water. Leave for at least 4 hours or up to 24 for the water to soak in to the flour.
Stir in the oil and salt.
Put in to an oiled tin. It can be 1 to 2 cm thick.
Top with the black peoper, cheese, rosemary and chopped tomato (or any other topping to fancy)
Slice and serve, warm or cold.

Fixed the lawn mower!

Tried to fix the lawnmower we were given a while ago, decided it needed a new carb which arrived before 'lock down', finally found the time to fit it and it works. So pleased to have diagnosed and fixed the problem. Now we have a dud streamer to look at next...

No photo, so here is one of one of our other lawn mowers...

The Covid-19 corona virus and lockdown

This has been building up for some time, so not a surprise as such, but still a horrible frightening time. France introduces some measures on the Friday the 13th of March with advice to stay at a distance from people. At this point the ski area was expected to remain open for at least another week. On the Saturday evening though further measures were announced with the ski area closing immediately and with strict lockdown for 2 weeks from the 17th midday. We did some shopping on Monday the 16th and went up to La Mongie to shut it down in the anticipation of not being able to go back to the apartment for some time. The most important thing of course was retrieving our only remaining jar of marmite!
Scary times with worry about what will happen to our income as of course people will not travel.
Things like 'May God be with us all' sound appropriate despite a lack of belief in God!

First lambs! Finally!

We normally get the first lamb end of Jan or early February kind of time. This year we had to wait until mid March! This was because we had a new ram and he was very young so took a little while to get going and get the hang of things. Good job though because the first ewe had twins!

They look like tiny tiny little scrappy things but they are actually quite sturdy and she has done an amazing job of producing two sturdy little fellows. Both boys.

Skiing with friend

Lots of skiing and skiing with friends. Lovely weather!

Skiing Off the Pic du Midi

The upside of the recent bad weather is more snow in the resort - and the sun has finally come out. We went up to mid station (Taoulet) and had a lovely run down. Excited by this, we went up to the top of the Pic du Midi.  We thought it would be lovely, but it was NOT, the top section was ice and rocks and a total TOTAL nightmare. Amazing views though and once below the ice/rock field it was very pleasant.

In the cable car

Our apartment is in the bottom right of this photo

Climbing up...

Bit of a slog...

Worth the walk though for an amazing view and great ski down (the ski was much much longer than the little climb up, so that makes it worth it!)

Up in the cable car again

Amazing view as you get to the place you can ski from

Terrible terrible ice and rock conditions. The little person to the left of the picture gives a scale to the amount of ice and rock we had to get over. My bum is very bruised now!

Lots more beautiful views so not all bad... but not at all keen to repeat the top section

 This bit was a little tricky and rocky, but all good fun!