May update

Visitors

We had a lovely visit from Jennie, Ian and Dylan in March, followed by visits in April from Clive and Kitty first then Samantha, Mike and Elizabeth, and most recently Jeanne’s ex-Barclays friend Karen. Lots of trips out and welcome help on the garden, and the weather was mostly fine and warm for all of them.  Brilliant really for so early in the year. The pool is up and running and both Kitty and Elizabeth swam in it. We have more visitors booked in but plenty of time and space for even more.  There is a gap of a few weeks now but we’re looking forward to our next booked visitors in June so our number one priority for now is the French tax forms!  Everyone has to do them here, a bit like the UK's self-assessment but not as straightforward.

Our ever-growing menagerie

Dusty (the cat) now weighs 3.4 kg and she’s eating like a horse!  She now ‘goes’ outside so the litter tray is not being much used, which is a great step forward.  In the event we didn’t have to do anything specially to train her to do this, she just gradually started ‘going’ on the garden, and she’s very fastidious about covering up the evidence.  However she’s also getting much more adventurous and disappears for hours at a time now, returning for meals, of course.  She got up on the roof (how?) the other evening and couldn’t find her way down so a little rescue operation was needed.  Often she will shin all the way up the walnut tree in seconds and get herself down quite safely, though she generally lands in the chicken run, to the hens’ consternation!

Our four bantam chickens are still soldiering on despite their great (for hens) age! They moulted in the winter but now have splendid new coats and look ready for the show ring. Here’s a little beauty parade:

To our great surprise the bantams are laying again, though not very frequently. Their eggs are, of course, very small – about a third the size of a normal medium egg so it takes a lot to make breakfast scrambled eggs, but they’re good as there is a much smaller proportion of white in each egg and relatively big, tasty yolks. 

We have also bought five new full size pullets which we’ve had for almost a week and have had just one smallish egg from them so far. Makes it a very expensive egg!  Here are the new ones:

The two groups (hardly ‘flocks’) are just being mixed so they are sharing the big hen-house and the whole run area.  The two groups are still getting used to each other so there’s a little bit of fuss at times.  I plan to re-fence the old chicken field for them so they’ll have lots more space to rummage about.

We’re getting a bit tired (surprise surprise!) of cutting our two acres of grass, although most of our guests like to take a turn, but the cost of the petrol is mounting up as well so we’re thinking about getting some sheep, or maybe taking in a rescue pony or some other grazing animal, but are having to give that some serious thought as we know it would tie us up much more firmly than we are already, and we feel we need to keep as much flexibility as we can.

Jobs done and to do

The big jobs in the house are all completed, though we have a long list of small finishing-off tasks to do, but we got diverted a bit from them by Rhys’ treatment and preparation for and the arrival of the new chickens.   We’ve made good progress on the work outside, just about managing to keep the grass mown while doing all the other jobs.  Lots of vegetables sown / planted in the potager, including potatoes, onions, sweet corn, tomatoes, melons, broad beans, peas, peppers, lettuces and a couple of goji berry bushes.  The fruit bushes we planted last year are starting to crop and we’ve had a few crops of tasty rhubarb already.  Jeanne has worked wonders on the ruins of the old barn and there is now the first plantable area there in what will become a formal garden eventually.  The only thing we need a contractor for now is the drive, which needs a new surface.

Rhys’ health

Rhys’ radiotherapy treatment has finished now, thank goodness, so he now has to get over the side-effects, which is happening gradually. He’s getting back into the anti-cancer diet to try to fend off the possibility of any recurrences. It has left us full of admiration for the French health service which has been fantastic. One of the smaller advantages is that you never have to pay for the parking at the hospital and the health service is even supposed to refund us the mileage for driving ourselves there every day !