The first job this month was to collect, and then distribute tonnes of stone into the areas that Craig had dug and flattened around the house and the animals. The ground has always become very muddy during the wet weather, which meant that we had walked mud into the house and slid around the animal pens. One day, one of us is going to fall over - and it's bound to be me ! It's easy to say that we would take our shoes/boots off every time we come in, but it's not always as simple as that !
Anyway, as I said, the stone was collected from the quarry, tipped, and then spread with several hours of back breaking work. The result was great, and has proved its worth, time and time again. Less mud in the house, less mud in the car, and as a bonus, less weeds !
What a difference eh ? A new wood store too at the back of the area - just need to fill it now.
Another batch of chickens - is that the name for a group of chickens, can't be flock can it ? - was ready for the freezer - all caught (during the only thunderstorm of the month !), delivered and then collected again from the abattoir. We're definitely set up for the winter now.
In between these jobs, as is always the case, Craig was working inside the house. He tiled the downstairs bathroom, fitted architrave round doors - nice finishing touches to make rooms seem more complete. It also means that materials that take up space can be used, and more space created (often for other materials !).
We enjoy wandering around the numerous Vide Greniers that are held here. There are some that we wouldn't visit again, but there are others that have some lovely unique items for sale. I suppose that is the same in the UK of course. Some are held monthly, some have more English type stalls than others and we enjoy having a look, so long as it isn't raining. We visited a lovely Mushroom, Honey and Apple Fair spread over two sites near to Brasparts, and spent an enjoyable couple of hours there.
The farmers work together at Harvest time, so the road outside the house becomes very busy, and often very muddy, from the constant to-ing and fro-ing of tractors with huge trailers full of maize, which they use for animal fodder. The road is very narrow, and there is sometimes quite a traffic jam, and some very near misses.This year was slightly different in that there wasn't just near misses, there was an accident as a trailer tore part of our outbuilding roof off. Two tractors tried to pass each other at one of the narrowest points, the trailer tipped into a ditch, caught the roof paneling, and then drove off !!
This has proved to be a very long drawn out process to get this repaired. To start with the driver didn't stop, and we had to involve the police. The driver turned up on our doorstep the following day, and was very apologetic, the insurance papers were completed, and sent off, and nearly a year later, we are still waiting for it to be repaired !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We realise that we have to accept that the 'idyllic' life, isn't always just that and we have to take the rough with the smooth, and although the month had started so positively, it ended on a sour note - the roof damage, and then we lost all the egg laying chickens overnight to a predator - we assume a fox, but cannot be sure. We forgot, for the first time, to shut them in their housing, and Craig discovered them all dead in the morning. I'm not sure the sight that met him will ever leave him, but he wouldn't let me see it. It was very disappointing too of course and completely the wrong time of year to replace them - no fresh eggs until the Spring now.
Finally, the month ended with some terrible storms - received in the UK too. We were prepared, as they had been forecast - nice and cosy inside - and prepared too for the inevitable power cuts. However, maybe not for the 18.5 hours of cuts that we experienced ! We were quite lucky in comparison to others I understand.
Roll on Spring - and Winter hasn't even started ............
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