Day After Glorious Day

They keep on coming, those glorious days. Day after day of sunshine. And for many that seems like a good thing.... until you become a farmer or a family trying to be self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables. I was talking to a French friend yesterday who lives in town and she says that the folk who live in Paris and Mamers (her town) just keep saying how lovely the weather is and it's not until she comes here that she realises the gravity of such an early drought.

It is serious. We had a relatively dry winter with less than average rainfall so the water table was already sitting low. As at today's date 33 departements (of 95) are on the most serious drought restrictions with more being added weekly - interestingly not the south of France. As yet we're not on that list but we are coded as next in line. We have had 4 hrs and 10 mins of rain in 13 weeks (yes I add up every minute of falling rain) and it can only get worse as the summer moves on.

The garden looks like it does normally in August with parched brown grass and cracking earth. The fields are due to be cut for hay but there's not going to be much there - that's a big part of our animal food for the winter. We have planted seed in the fields but there's no rain so it isn't germinating - that's our animal food and our own stores. Normally I would mulch everything to keep every possible drop of water in the ground but there's nothing to mulch with as the grass isn't growing. Where the pigs have kindly tractored our fields, it's a dust bowl and our precious topsoil is blowing away. That makes me feel so sad as I fully understand the implications of that and try hard to keep as much ground as possible covered for as much as possible. The only areas that are protected to a degree from the ravages of the sun are the areas under the trees and although we have planted loads of trees with more planned, we just can't get them growing quick enough.

The farmers around here are saying that the wheat isn't putting on growth so even if it does form grain, the stalks will be short which means much less bedding/food for the cattle for the winter. And they can't go to another farmer to buy more as they are all in the same situation. One farming friend thinks that he will have to cull as many as half of his cows as he won't be able to carry all of them through the winter like normal. And that is farming, the side that all those sun worshippers don't think of. I think we can look forward to higher prices of commodities if this continues.

Another Drought?

Once again we haven't had rain for weeks. This is the middle of April and our 'lawn' looks like this....
I had to water plants in pots in March!! Unreal. I'm hoping that it's not another sécheresse like the past two years but if it is then we're much better equipped to deal with it this year. We have mulches everywhere; we have drip hoses running under the mulches and they are linked to our rain water collecting butts; we have a comprehensive rainwater harvesting system (see here); we have swales out in the fields to keep the rainwater from running straight off the hill. Yes I have learned many, many things since becoming interested in permaculture. I have learned to work with nature thereby reducing our own workload and protecting valuable resources. I only wish I had known of these things earlier in life.

Farm Hands

That's what I've got now, farm hands. No that doesn't mean that I have lots of helpers here - indeed we are WWOOFer-less at the moment and will remain so until May. It means that my hands are now permanently engrained with dirt. Clean dirt obviously that I soak and wash to try to get off but the marks of my occupation cannot be removed. I don't have any blisters because those tender places have been replaced by callouses. Yes, tough working hands I have now - farm hands. But I love it and wouldn't change a thing. The work isn't hard but it is very constant. There's a compelling pressure to be 'out there'. Nature doesn't wait.

Money Back

Gosh what a surprise today - we got some money back from the French authorities. They gave us a reimbursement of 40% of our land tax thanks to 'reduction of harvests due to the drought of Summer 2010'. How nice!

Blossom

Well I haven't posted here for ages (since December last year!), yet I have lots of things in my 'waiting' file but I reckoned that if I waited to complete all those then the blog would get so far behind that I'd lose heart. The trouble with trying to write in the winter is that our little house has one BIG living area where everything gets done, and where everyone is. That means it gets Noisy with a very capital 'N' and I can't concentrate to write. Then at the end of the day when the children have finally gone off to bed I could arguably write some but then I'm so tired that I too just want to go to bed. So here we are, Spring, and I'm posting with the here and now and may go back and fill in January and February.

We have had a very mild and dry winter according to the weather reports and, with the exception of December, I'll second that. March had a couple of frosts but this last week has seen us working in t-shirts and cut-off trousers, eating our lunches outside. And since the clocks went forward last weekend we have even been able to eat our evening meal outside too as it's been sunny and still since Sunday. Right just now though there's a bit of rain so I'm in writing.

I'm glad for the rain too. We have only had two days of rain in 6 weeks and whilst it has been a sort of blessing by keeping the weeds back whilst we got things under control a bit, the ground does need it. The pigs were very happy as it must have brought bugs up to the surface for them. Normally they go to bed around dusk but since Sunday (when we had a morning of heavy rain) they have still been snuffling around at 11pm. At first I was worried because I thought Maybelline was maybe losing her piglets. She is 6 weeks pregnant, the 'deed' having been done on Valentine's Day, but she's fine. They are all just enjoying the Spring Snuffling. They have sustainably and gently tractored a vast amount of the ground on the south side of the farm and we intend to move them to a section of land that Josiah, one of our WWOOFers, top-cleared of brambles. We have an issue with rabbits there and we hope that the pigs rooting about in the ground will make the rabbits pack up and move elsewhere.

Talking of land-use, we have decided that all the animals will be moved from the south side of the farm to enable us to crop it for the summer now that it is nicely fertilised by pig and goat manure. The goats will join the sheep in the field closest to the house on the north side. This will give them plenty of browse and will also allow me to watch them closely for signs that they're about to kid. It might also give us nightmares in terms of them escaping up the drive as we can't see where the holes are in the boundary fences until they have eaten back some of the growth. We'll look forward to that. Still, it wouldn't be LPM if there wasn't some kind of escapee at least once a week! You can tell that we're new to this can't you!

Once the pigs have moved the rabbits on, we'll move them into the field to the east of the house. It's an awkward piece of land to know what to do with as it drops away from the house at a 45 degree angle and then flattens at the bottom. This is where most of the rainwater goes, the flat bit, so maybe after the pigs have been in we'll turn it into a willow coppice. That or put in some more swales to keep the water back a bit (my favoured option). It would make sense to have a forest garden there in the future, or at least some kind of agroforestry type cropping. It just seems daunting right now.

The sheep should be lambing in the next couple of weeks. I say 'sheep' - that means one! We have two ewes and a ram but I don't think our youngest ewe, Etoile, 'took' this year. Her mother, Ema, though is looking fairly round and is going very slow now. I'm sure that I saw Mr BD smiling his toothy smile mid-November last so mid-April should be about the right time. We'll watch and wait.

The birds, hens and geese, continue to lay eggs, eat and poop with not much to report.

The pear and peach trees are heavy with blossom and have been for about a week so hopefully we're in for a bumper harvest. I hope that we don't have a frost. We planted 16 new fruit trees into the orchard and an almond into the newly created area on the west side of the house. This last planting, the almond, was done out of the orchard as peaches and almonds should not be grown within 50m of each other as the almonds go bitter due to cross-pollination. So it's very annoying that I have just remembered the peach tree that is well-established at the side of the barn just 10m away from the almond - grrr. I'll have to re-site the almond, maybe into the mini forest garden that we're creating at the south end of the 'lawn'. Always work to be done!

Sheep for Milk?

I have been wondering about getting some sheep for milk production. Yes we have a farm within walking distance where we can get fresh cows' milk but it's not organic (nor is it sustainable). We could get a cow ourselves though apparently the paperwork involved in France is horrendous for cattle - just one or a thousand, same amount of paperwork. Plus we'd probably be swamped with milk. Then there's the goats but at the moment that's a disaster and their milk is naturally homogenised (the fat is naturally distrubuted through the milk, unlike most cows' milk these days that has been UNnaturally homogenised for commercial reasons) so making butter is nigh on impossible. Sheep however have milk that is very high in fat content and therefore is very good for making butter, cheese and ice-cream.



I'm researching. I quite like these Zwartbles, nice compliments to our little Ouessants.

Blizzards

Well we have had blizzard conditions since 10am this morning (it's now past 2pm) and the snow is indeed quite deep. I have just been out to do 'house check' on the animals and first call was the goats. And there was poor Granny standing in a very 'bright' house - bright because part of the roof has blown off! Fortunately I think it had happened fairly recently because there wasn't much snow on the blown off panel. The other 3 goats had obviously been spooked because they had moved over to their new-under-construction house despite it still being a bit airy around the walls as the pallet gaps haven't yet been filled in. Ben has now gone out in the blizzard to re-roof and I'm in cosy next to the fire doing 'home education' with the boys - we're learning about armadillos of all things.