La vie à la petite ferme

Saturday, 16 September 2017

Trip to Toulouse

We took Aidan to the airport in Toulouse, leaving Poppy with a very kind friend so that we could stay the night in Toulouse - and have CURRY! Hurrah!

We had the curry at Le Maharaja. Tres bien!!

With doing the house I am obsessed with finishing details and liked this sliding door in our hotel room - though more likely we will have ones in the wall.

This is the view from the care on the way to Toulouse. Though I have done the journey many many times (to get to Toulouse to fly to London for work) I hardly ever see the nice view as I am focusing on driving and it is dark a lot of the time.

Whisky caught my eye. Didn't need to buy any.

Gargoyles

Le Musée George-Labit - collection of stuff some rich guy stole from lots of countries back in the day. Good collection!

The canal du midi

French cafes

You're my lobster! (you need to have watched Friends to understand what I am on about - Lobsters mate for life according to Phoebe)

Musée des Augustins - Nice veg garden. Some interesting art and lots of statues and church type carvings.

Toulouse Lautrec

Roman carvings displayed with cool lighting

Super weed free veg garden

What happened here? We don't know.

We had sushi too

Street where the hotel was

Hay

We have been super efficient about hay this year. Or at least got off to an efficient start, it can still all go wrong!
We got up at 7am on a Saturday morning (!) to go and collect 120 small bales of hay from a really nice guy who we found latish last winter. It is hard to find people who sell the small bales and we don't have the equipment that makes large ones easy. Previous winters we have had the neighbour deliver some large ones, but they have been very unwieldy to get bits off and fed to the animals.
We calculate we will need something like 400 small ones to do the horses for all their hay needs and to cover the cows between times. This assumes another neighbour delivering a large bale every fortnight in to the bottom field for the cows as he has the previous two winters.

Look! It is still dark! Saturday morning!

This is regain (which is the regrowth of the grass after the first cutting). It is more nutritious so will go to the rabbits, sheep and cows as the horses don't need that, it is too sweet and causes hoof problems.

He has a nice view of the mountains (ignoring mud in foreground)

Many journeys required to unload. But the nice man helped us so it was quite quick.

This is half of it (the hay not the regrowth). The rest is in the other hay store.

Monday, 11 September 2017

Aidan visited

Aidan said he hadn't come to visit us, he had come for the beef (and other meat) so we ate a LOT while he was here.

So we started off with some Bavette de Boeuf

We helped Doug clear some of the trees from behind the house.
Then Aidan helped me put out some sheep fencing so we could move the sheep out the top field and in the next few weeks get the cows up there for the first time. This electric mesh is a godsend as it keeps the sheep in, but a bit of a kerfuffle to deal with too, so help appreciated.

Doug and I rarely make it to the market so it was nice to have Aidan around to motivate me to get going (leaving Doug in bed!)

There is a local breed of pig called the Noir de Bigorre it is black so these little black pigs are a very funny joke :)

We went for a horse ride on Doug's birthday. Aidan walked round the lake and met us near the end.

Roast beef with veg (we had it with yorkshire puddings)

Giant bird in the middle of the picture (honest!)

We went for a walk up in the ski area. There was snow here the day before.

It was quite cold and windy at the top.

The statue at the top of the col de tourmalet. It gets taken up there each spring and down in the autumn. I have rendered it in artistic black and white