Nature and Nuture

Our solar tunnel (a slightly more sophisticated polytunnel) is finally up – accompanied by lots more swearing - and should be put into production within the next week or two. It’s stonkingly hot in there on a sunny day (of which today it isn’t – raining but gallingly hot in Dover apparently – sigh) so we’ll maybe try melons this year. We have tomato plants galore as the boys wanted to help plant the seeds and got carried away – it’s amazing how big a ‘pinch’ of seeds is from a 5 and 3 year olds hands!!!! Just as well actually as Rowan ate an entire punnet of tomatoes for his breakfast yesterday. He has big plans to make his own tomato sauce this year, Jamie Oliver style. They are both keen vegetable growers and eaters - thank goodness on the eating side, oh goodness on the growing side. Gardening jobs seem to take twice as long when you have ‘helpers’. They want to set up observation tanks (read ‘water bottles’) for worms and caterpillars – obviously not burying the caterpillars in with the worms, nor indeed burying them atall. Last weekend they had a soil pest (the long white one with the orange head – yuk) under the microscope linked to the computer and scared themselves when it moved on the screen. Then they decided to just do a soil sample so now there’s mud all over the computer desk – sigh.

A Sad Day

We’re in mourning – a fox got into our hen house last night and killed all three of them L Well, I say ‘last night’ but it was actually at 8.30am this morning. The gall of it. He took one and left the other two. We went indoors, gutted. And when we went out again, he’d come back and taken another!!!! Ben is out adding major reinforcements as you live and learn. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some more quite soon as I actually quite miss them even though we’d only had them for a few days.

Heavy heart.

Scything

I am getting heartily sick of our lawn-cutting devices breaking down. We have a tractor with a cutting and collecting attachment, 2 ride-on lawn mowers, 2 petrol powered push mowers, a petrol powered strimmer and an electric strimmer plus 4 pairs of shears. Of this list what currently works is.... the electric strimmer. Even the shears are blunt. And we have 2.5 acres of 'living area' to keep under control over and above the other 15 acres that we're leaving as meadow. Not so great. And what do you notice about most of the list? They rely on oil derivatives and that's not really where we want to be (or at least *I* don't, Ben is more of the mind to get the job done in the least possible time even if it means using some fuel other than human sweat). So I'm on a quest to find out about scythes. I know they take quite a lot of practise to become proficient but the thought is that hopefully by the time we reach post-peak-oil we'll be skilled in the art. Maybe one day I'll be like this woman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugSO54WKm8I

Three French Hens

Yes more additions to our family, 3 chickens – and as Rowan pointed out “three French hens”. They joined us on Monday after Ben had finished swearing as he finished their fortress (hopefully to be safe from foxes). Now they’re not the prettiest of girls, being a breed called “Cou Nu jaune” that have bald necks (weird) but they were all that the lady had available until September. Looks aren’t everything so long as they do their jobs we reckoned. They seem to be settling quite well despite being haranged by Rowan and Brodie and have today started clucking in a happy sort of way when we go near their pen. Next week we hope to let them go free-range – well actually not quite free-range for a few weeks cos I want them to be hen tractors on the veg patch eating all the weed seeds and undesirables. That still represents a massive 240m2 so I hope they’re up for it. We hope to have some eggs from them too in about a month’s time J I’m quite glad to have a few more females on the premises actually and fear that I may well being having womanly heart-to-hearts with them before long.

Update – just been out to close up the hen house for the night (I’m on my own as Ben has gone over to Dover to get the Bongo MOT’d – another story). Now, we’ve been told that they toddle off to bed in their house at twilight and you just pop round and make them safe for the night. Ho no – not ours. They’d squeezed themselves like plaster on the outside of the door of the hen house so I couldn’t open it to ‘encourage’ them with a full door for access (they have a little pop hole that they’ve been ‘popping’ in and out of all day but couldn’t oblige me by using it tonight – bl**dy things). I tried to ‘shoo’ them but they weren’t having it and just clucked at me. So I thought, I’ll just have to lift them in. I’m not normally worried about handling wild animals/birds etc but Jaune, as one of them is called, decided to protect her friend Cou by having a wee peck at me. That made me a bit timorous. I therefore had to steel myself and go about lifting them to their perch through the half-dark and chicken poo whilst battling with the bulge that is Sammy strapped on constantly in a sling. I say again, bl**dy things – they’d better start laying.

Bongolini

Yes the Bongo. Sadly the French controlle technique (MOT equivalent) won’t give it a French certificate as the sliding door for rear passengers opens on the traffic side ie the left. Not much we can do about that. We need to register a car in France within 6 months and for that we need the French MOT. Stymied then. Since we didn’t officially ‘check-in’ with our local Mairie until mid-February, we have 6 months from then. We so love the Bongolini but they don’t do a left hand drive version so we’re trying to decide what to do. Anyone like to buy our lovely friend?

The Reception

Well we had our little ‘reception’ and Sammy was welcomed into the community, as were the rest of the family. There were quite a few local folk there and the Mairie had gone to the trouble of getting a lovely quince tree to plant in Sammy’s honour, hoping that “he will put down strong roots here and grow well”. They are making a plaque bearing his name to go beside it. Plus they gave me a beautiful bougainvillia bush and an Anne Geddes My-First-Five-Years momento book. And the champagne flowed – not that I could take full advantage being a breastfeeding Mum contrary to one of the newspaper articles that said Sammy was unaware of the fuss, oscillating between bottle and sleep!!!!! Goodness, he even had a feed halfway through the evening and I don’t *think* my boobs look bottle-shaped (I asked Ben and he agreed that they do not look bottle-shaped normally, only in certain lights). That indignation aside, we were in 4 papers – news here in the rurale is slow. Ben’s Mum is with us too. Check the scowls on Rowan and Brodie’s faces!

Fairy Godmothers

We now have Granny Sheila staying with us for a fortnight and that is just wonderful. I can concentrate on feeding and cuddling and don’t have to worry that Ben is over-burdened. It’s like having a fairy god-mother in the house as I think of something that needs done but find that’s it already being handled. Rowan and Brodie are also enjoying having her here for an extended period of time though I’m not so sure that Sheila’s voice will make it back unscathed as she is constantly harangued for yet another story.

We have become small celebrities in our little village. We went down to the Mairie’s office to register the birth and, lo-and-behold, no births had been registered there since 1966 as all the women give birth in hospital in Le Mans and it gets registered there. So cause for celebration - the Mayor himself raced over and they opened a bottle of champagne - and lots of books and flowcharts to refer to to guide them as to how to fill in the paperwork!!! And on Saturday morning the Mayor popped in chez nous to say that they’d organised a ‘reception’ for us and the Press would be there and all the prominent members of the community to welcome Sammy. Oh gosh. So that’s this Friday. Better see if I can find my best frock!