Brambles

I thought the brambles had ripened earlier this year, but when I looked to find my bramble sorbet and jelly recipes I found the recipes were dated August the 17th. So not that different really.

However there do seem to be a lot more of them than other years - partially there are just more plants as we are losing the battle against them (!) but there are really more too and they are bigger and tastier too. Yum!

Flies

The flies have been horrendous this year, both in the house and outside all over the animals. They cause all kinds of problems on the animals.

Poor Harris has a big hole in the top of his head where he has injured round his horn scratching where the flies are bothering him. He spends a lot of his day not eating properly with his head in a bush trying to keep them off too. We have been treating his head with pine tar which is antiseptic as well as keeping flies off to a certain extent. But this morning the skin kind of cracked away when it was pushed squishing a load of pus out, I feel a bit queezy thinking about it, blood I am fine with but not gross infections. We have cleaned it all out and sprayed with antiseptic and added a barrier cream to try to keep it dry as well as smearing deet all over his head to try to keep the flies off. We need him to be in peak health very soon as it is breeding season coming up!

Mrs Suffolk has managed to get an enormous hole in her leg and she won't leave it alone as the flies are all over it, so it is not healing and we are worried about fly strike there. We have treated with pine tar and it is starting to look better.

The cows have their eye infections which were spread to them by flies. They sometimes seem really bothered by the flies and don't eat too.

The horses get really annoyed and tetchy with being covered in bitey flies all the time.

The pigs have lice on and off. I keep thinking we have got rid of them, then I see one again. At the moment they seem ok, but good to have something that can treat them.

I have ordered some stuff called Coopers Spot On which can be used on all the animals and should apparently keep the flies off a bit as well as killing ticks and lice along with maggots so we can use it to treat any future cases of fly strike we might get. 

It is quite difficult to chose a product like this as there are a lot of dangerous chemicals used on farm animals that I don't really want in my milk or meat. I don't think the Coopers is great, the active ingredient is deltamethrin, but it seems less nasty than organophosphates and it is licenced for dairy cattle along with the other animals and has no withdrawral time for meat. We have tried to avoid using such things (except on the dog and cat for ticks) but we have given in as the flies are just such a bother. Hopefully it will work a bit at least, realisitically I don't think anything can solve the whole problem. Shame it can't kill the ones in the house too.

Baby rabbits dying

Since we have successfully managed to breed the rabbits we have had quite a number of deaths amoungst the young ones. I took one that had just died to the vet for an autopsy. We didn't want to start giving vaccinations and wormers just in case so we thought it was worth the cost of finding out what it actually was. It was not expensive in the end anyway. It turns out to have been enterotoxemia for which there is a vaccine. Although you sometimes see diarrhoea with this, and we haven't, the vet said they often die so quickly it doesn't have a chance to start.

Unfortunately one died in Bernardette's latest litter after I got the vaccine but before I had injected them. I found it when I went to do the injections this morning in fact. Typically we have seen several in a litter die once it starts and the vaccine takes a few days to take effect. Darn! 

Ginger's litter were all done, so hopefully they will be ok. They all need to be redone in about a month, then annually. Quite a lot of injections! We have done some of the lambs too although there are 2 we cannot catch.

Buttercup is in heat

Hainoa is much calmer now she has found a good herd leader in Buttercup. She is happy to br stroked while lying down chewing her cud. Doug was stroking her and having a bit of a chat this afternoon in a nice mellow way when Buttercup rushed up and leapt on Hainoa. Luckly her bell warned Doug that she was approaching at speed so he was able to jump out of the way.

This evening we went out to see how they were to find the neighbours's cows in the next door field again (they have been gone a few days) and a lot of mooing and jostling going on. One of the books we have says you can tell when a cow is in heat because it 'moos amorously' we couldn't decide whether Buttercups moos were amorous of not? 

Apparently a cow tries to mount others as she comes in to heat and if there is a bull around she will try to mount him. Then at some point she will stand to let the bull mount, which is called 'standing heat'. This is th point you want to call the AI guy and he needs to turn up about 12 hours later. The window seems to be quite short. I tried to call a guy today (the people we got the Jersy's off gave it to us) but just got voicemail. We don't really think we will get her bred this heat, but it would be good to locate the right person and be all ready for next time. 

When we were out in the field she made a bit of a dart towards me as if she might be going to try to mount me too (having given all the other cows a go) but Doug and I both shouted NO really loudly and stepped energetically towards her and she seemed to get the message. Phew! The other cows all seem a bit frisky too in sympathy. 

This is her staring longingly at the neighbour's cows, we are not quite sure if the bull is there or not.

Car is back!!!!

Yay we have the car back FINALLY. It has been something getting on for 3 months since it went in to the garage. In the end Nissan paid for most of the work - they paid for the parts and we paid the labour which turned out to be quite reasonable and amazingly a lot less than they quoted.

I won't bore you with the ins and outs of it all, but a friend who speaks better French than us was very helpful finding the right phrases to use on the internet which seemed to finally motivate them to do something after weeks and weeks of frustrating promises to get back to us and failure to do so.

What is eating our potatoes??

Initially I blamed the moles as there are a lot of mole tunnels that I find when weeding. However when I was reading up on how to get rid of moles I discovered that they are carnivores and don't eat veg. They eat mainly earth worms and also various insects and slugs. The cat does catch a mole from time to time. 

So who to blame now? It seems that other rodents such as voles will use mole tunnels to reach veg so perhaps it is them. Something has also eaten ALL the garlic which is more annoying as with the potatoes there are still a lot uneaten. Not sure if it is the same thing eating both. Whatever ate the garlic doesn't like shallots which were in the same bed and have now been safely harvested.

This year at least we have managed to keep the slugs and snails more under control (with pellets). 

Tiramisu Recipe

Serves 4 

50g sugar

150g mascapone cheese

2 egg yolks

1 egg white

About 80ml espresso coffee (or strong coffee)

About 20mls spirit eg amareto, whisky, brandy

8-12 sponge fingers (lady fingers) - buscuit à la cuiller in French

Optional - 1 tblsp crème de marron

4 low ball glasses or bowls (approx 250ml)

Cocoa powder (or grated plain chocolate)

Beat the egg yolk with the sugar in a bowl until it is creamy. Add the mascapone and stir.

Beat the egg white until stiff and gently stir in to the mix..

If you are using the crème de marron, stir a spoonful of the egg mixture in to it.

Mix the coffee and the spirit.

For each glass, take enough sponge fingers to cover the bottom (you may need to snap them in half) and dip in the coffee mixture then place in the glass.

Cover with a couple of spoonfuls of the egg mix (approx 1/8th as there will be two layers of it.

If you are using the crème de marron addit now. Then another layer of sponge fingers dipped in coffee then e rest of the egg mixture.

Finish by sprinking the top with the cocoa powder.

Refrigerate for a couple of hours.