6 years!

We moved in to our house in France on the 2nd of May 2012 (after a season in Chamonix - http://lavieenchamonix.blogspot.fr/…/after-very-happy-few-m…).
We are celebrating 6 years here today, as the nearest weekend (‘cos even though we are not working we try to keep to weeks and weekends where we have a bit of a rest at the weekends...)

We had white russians (milked the cows today and made coffee liqueur some months ago) for apéro and then duck (thanks Don! Delicious!) with roast potato and home grown broad beans served with homemade Medlar Jelly and stewed rhubarb. Followed by rhubarb fool.

We swing between feeling the 6 years has gone in the click of a finger to feeling we have lived here FOREVER (in a good way).

We have finished approx 1/4 of the house - by area, it is the yellow bit in the photo - but we comfort ourselves with the thought that we didn’t start on it until 3 years in, and we have learnt so much doing this bit, that the rest will be done in the shake of a ducks tail...

Here’s to another six years as action packed as the first.

White Russians

Roast Duck (I helped Don pluck his ducks with the magic plucking machine and this was payment - brilliant!)

Rhubarb Fool

The lovely house

Drive work

The ditch is key to the drive staying in good condition, so Doug has been fettling it some.

You can hardly see it before he started!

Trees

No trees

Mowing the sides with the flail head on the mini digger

He then dug out the ditch with the smallest bucket on the mini digger.

The cows have also grazed it some, and the middle has been mown three times already.

Garden PANIC

Well ok... not panic yet... but the garden is falling behind a bit with all the other work on keeping animals fed, grass mown, drive passable etc.
I have strimmed the paths, pruned the raspberries and a tiny bit of weeding, there are also broad beans that I planted in the autumn, the rhubarb is growing well and the fruit bushes are coming to life.
Lots of weeding and planting needed... sooooon really soon.

Grazing, fences and wood

We have a few too many grazing animals at the moment and despite the spring growth we are struggling to keep them all fed, so we are working to get the field the sheep are in ready for the cows.

A couple of trees have fallen on the fence so the first task has been to get those removed. One of them as pretty big. Plenty more wood for the woodpile - though it still has to be split.

HUGE tree. Doug has split some of the rounds so they won't roll and just left it in the field for now. It doesn't show in the photo, but it beside a steep bank, so quite a bit of work to get it out.

I have split one log, it is hard work. Here it is burning in the fire

This is smaller bits gathered ready to be cut to length

The next thing is to clear and strim all the the brambles round the fence and fix the fence up.

Clicker training coos

All the cows have to get a blood test done every year to comply with French regulations. The Jerseys are very good and easy, but the highlands, particularly Hainoa, are a little more difficult because she isn't keen on strangers (ie everyone but Doug and me).
I have started clicker training her to improve getting a head collar on. It has worked well and we have now progressed on to getting her used to lots of movement and activity around her. She is very good compared to many cows the vet sees apparently, but still we need her to be better.

This is the clicker in my hand. The idea is that you teach the animal that when you click they get a treat. That then allows you to pinpoint for them exactly the behaviour you want. So when she investigated and touched the rope with her nose I clicked and she got a treat until she learns to do that, then I progressed to putting her nose in to a loop etc until the head collar was on. You can google it...

As you can imagine, getting the rope over those horns is tricky without some cooperation from the cow.

'Where is my treat??'

Here it is - I sometimes think she is going to eat my whole hand in her enthusiasm

Peek-a-boo

Islay has had some sessions too, but she is a much calmer personality and not so suspicious of everything - though still not keen on vets violating her rear end.

Cute photo of Myrtle

Myrtle is pretty friendly and curious though she won't take treats from us yet.

Venus is much more suspicious but they are both still only young so she should get more friendly.

They will both be being weaned soon.

Chick analysis

This note is quite scrappy and for my benefit rather than yours ;)

The conclusion is that we have several problems

• The eggs through the post actually hatched better than our own.
• The square incubator got more to grow than the octagon one
• The octagon incubator hatched all that did grow whereas the octagon one did not..

All very confusing and we don’t quite know what to make of it yet. We have some more eggs coming through the post in a little while. I will sterise thoroughly before then.