Chicken down!

Last night when they went to bed there were five chickens.

They huddled in the coop for most the morning because they didn't like the pissing rain. When we finally got a chance to count them again in the middle of the afternoon there were only four!!??

Doug went on a walk around to try to locate the missing one or any evidence of it's fate - but couldn't find anything. Did it escape and wander off? Or did something eat it? There are a lot of big birds that fly overhead although we haven't seen any today (presumably they are huddled at home too due to heavy cloud cover interfering with air traffic control). Also we felt if this had happened (or the dreaded fox) we would have heard a fuss from the other chickens, as we have been around all day (we are cowering in our house because of the pissing rain too...)

Maybe it will return for bedtime. Or maybe it is just gone. Perhaps a snake ate it?

A herd of electricians

I mentioned that the electrician currently putting in some temporary wiring downstairs so we can start work upstairs found a dangerous issue with our electricity supply.

We have had two visits from EDF (the electricity supplyer) today and at one point had a lot of electricians around - all scratching their heads, sucking their teeth and saying 'putain' a lot (I have noticed this is a popular word with workmen viewing the barn and a few other 'features' of our property). I like that they coordinated arriving in a red van, a white van and a blue van. Very patriotic.

The upshot is that they need to replace the three nearest pylons to us (basically the ones between us and the nearest neighbor) to fix the issue. They are trying to get it done as quickly as possible but they are having some issues getting the correct equipment that can do the job and get up the steep slope.

Chickens attaaaaaackkk!

Part of the dream has always been to have chickens, then we got more keen on them because a lot of (local) people when we mention we have seen snakes in the house tell us we need to get chickens as they get rid of snakes. We imagine the chickens commando style with leader shouting 'chickens attaaaaaack hut hut hut' and then mad pecking frenzy, but it is apparently because the snakes don't like the constant scratching as they can't 'hear' anything above it.
We ended up ordering the chicken house (le poullailer) from the UK because it was cheaper.

Constructing Poulailler

It is made of recycled plastic. May not be most attractive thing ever, but is alledgedly easy to clean.

The chickens moved in today but won't start laying for something like a couple of months. There are (currently) five poules de gascogne. I say 'currently' because we have spoken to a number of people round here who seem to have problems with keeping chickens alive for more than about 5 mins because the fox gets them - even during the day.
The house has a door that closes at dusk and they have an electric fence around them, but we will see.

Chicken and Poulailler

Two of the chickens have already managed to bust through the fence, the largest (shown here) and the smallest. Plus we have had an exciting incident where the largest chicken decided that she couldn't get in to the hen house (having fallen off the ramp) and was then running around in a panic looking for somewhere to roost saying 'puk puk puk PUK KAAAK' a lot and flapping maddly on to the roof of the house then back down. Three of the others were happily inside but the littlest one was following her around. Eventually she managed to get inside once Doug had shoved some of the others out of the way and the door closed. I hope they make it through to morning! I expect they are going to wake us at dawn as at the moment the run is just out the back of the house so we can see what they are up to in the early days while we get the hang of it.

There was an old lady... (or cat trouble)

We went to SPA the nearby cat and dog rescue place a couple of days ago to get a cat because every farm needs a cat to deal with rodents etc.
We ended up coming away with two, a male and a female. Unfortunately neither has had the chop so we now have an interesting (and entirely predictable) situation on our hands.
The vet can't fit them in until next wednesday, she started coming in to heat and we now have a pair of sex crazed cats on our hands (who aren't meant to be going outside until they are used to this as home) who can't get on well enough to be in the same room (plus that would result in many more cats the world doesn't need)

Like many things recently I now know more than I ever expected to about cat heat cycles.
The first night she was in Proestrus during which (god knows why) she is very attractive to the male but unwilling to mate. He was MAD for it and wouldn't leave her alone but if he got to close she went a bit crazy hissing and slashing. We were thinking 'Gonad' or 'The Bollock' would be a good name for him.

I should mention there are basically 2 rooms upstairs that they can safely be at the moment, one is above our room. We decided for the first night (for some reason I can't remember) that it would be best to put him in the room above us and her in the other. We then spent the night listening to The Bollock yowling because he couldn't get at the girl cat (despite the fact that everytime he did get near she nearly took his head off)

The second night we decided that as the previous night had been so disturbed we would swap them round for a good nights sleep. However she had moved on to the next phase, Estrus, where she was mad to get at the boy cat and spent all night yowling and trying to break the door down to get at him as well as writhing around in an 'alluring' fashion - but when he did get anywhere near still swiping at him. Her names could be Fang, Killer, Slasher or Cock Tease.

We went to (the very helpful and lovely) vet to get some flea stuff for them and he told us we would be best putting them together as it won't cause a problem with the operations next week, as cats are induced ovulators so and pregnancy wouldn't actually have got started, and should keep them quieter... here's hoping...

It makes me think a little of the 'There was an old lady who swallowed a fly'  rhyme, because we had some rodents making a noise above the bedroom who were making a noise so we got some cats who made more noise so we got some...???
Which reminds me that while the yowling and scrabbling was going on we could still here the rodents in the wall happy as larry ignoring the cats. Aaaaargh!!

The names we might give them if they survive operations and our lack of sleep are Pernod (him) and Sambuca (her).

Pernod (left) and Sambuca (right)

He is very cute when not sex crazed, we haven't had a chance to tell about her yet. Hopefully she will retain her killer instincts though - but toned down.

The good news and the bad

We spoke to the electrician a while ago about doing some work on the crazy electrics in the house so they are not strewn all over the floor upstairs making it dangerous (as there are no proper fuses or trip switches) to start any work upstairs.
He did a quote for doing a temporary installation which would allow us to have safe (but not necessarly pretty) electrics downstairs, while we work on getting upstairs completed with new proper electrics and then finally downstairs redone as we do the work downstairs. Not the cheapest solution, but one that lets us live in the house safely while work is done.

The good news is he started today (hurrah) and was ahead of schedule by the end of today so it will be cheaper than quoted (hurrah).

Not pretty...

...but safe

The bad news however is that he discovered a dangerous issue with the supply coming in to the house.

It is apparently the cause of the dimming and brightening of the lights when the water pump (and other appliances like fridge etc) kicks in. The electrician said it was too complicated to explain  (we didn't mention we both have degrees in electrical and electronic engineering... anyway in French might have somewhat stretched our understanding)
Some surfing Doug did suggests it is an issue with the neutral on the three phase supply that comes in to the house (most houses in UK and France are supplied with single phase but farms are often supplied with 3 phase apparently)

Electrician is speaking with EDF (the electricity supplyer) asap. We are a bit nervous to touch anything at the moment.

Wedding

We went to a lovely wedding while we were in the UK.
I failed to take many photos as I was too busy talking. Hopefully the official photos will be available or someone like Joy who was being more dedicated at photo taking can share some.

The venue was lovely outside...

... and in

The speaches were all touching and funny

We got dressed up in something other than overalls

Aldeburgh and Thorpness

We took a few days off to go back to the UK for Iain and Hilary's wedding.
Before the wedding we went to visit Lorna. Amoungst other things we went to Aldeburgh where we had lunch, a walk on the beach and cream tea. Relaxing and yummy.

Lorna and Rhoda on beach at Aldeburgh

Lorna went for a minimalist blog entry but I am adding more photos (I can't manage to link to her entry directly for some reason)

Horned poppy

Lorna avec voiture

Doug in the statue

Dismount

Boats at Thorpness (where we had cream tea)