Rural Life

Comice Day 2 - the important stuff!

While Day 1 is seriously agricultural, Day 2 is more about community, or communities.  The morning is marked by the ploughing competition between the mayors of each of the villages in the commune, not made easier by the fact that they aren't all farmers, they have to use old tractors (I think there is an option to use a horse, but never taken up), and they have to wear period costume.  For some reason not totally clear to me, this year actually seemed to turn into the festival of the old tractor, and the parade, while led out by the mayor of Vieil Baugé, in a fetching land girl costume, numbered some 75 old tractors, which takes a long time to go past!  We got an early preview as most went past our house to get to the staging area.  The exhaust does stink rather.

Anyway, here are several old tractors, to give you an idea.

There were a few oddities - this one I found puzzling, including wondering what it was for and whether there was really enough demand to make a run of them!

While this one is not allowed on the road, so had to be brought in by trailer!  You can see why.  This one had a staring role as it had been restored specifically for this Comice by the mayor's husband, Yves.

So many old tractors, all wanting to take part in a ploughing match, meant that went on way longer than normal.  But some tractors had to hurry away as they had a second role - pulling the decorated float for their village. 

In the past I have been involved in floats, I've designed them, I've made flowers for them, I've made papier maché bits and bobs, I made a fake organ once, and I've been on them too.  They take an immense amount of team work and hours of volunteer labour to get ready for their moment of glory on the Comice Sunday afternoon parade.  Thankfully it was dry - wet weather and crèpe paper don't mix!

Anyway, to give them their due, here they all are - led out by Vieil Baugé as the hosts.

Vaulandry followed up - they will be the hosts next year.

Fougeré should be the year after - their idea of a stop me and buy one ice cream seller was interesting.  

Baugé will host after them - this is always a challenge as there is no farm land in Baugé any more and you need 27 hectares for a ploughing competition!

Next up le Guedenieu - the more mature ladies of my acquaintance say that there used to be good parties there in the sixites but they always ended up with a fight...

Cheviré le Rouge always manage to get a musical theme and a song going on their float - this year, that wasn't a challenge.

We had lots of fun at the Bocé Comice, I hope they had fun at ours.

Most tractors pull their floats - Cuon pushes theirs.  I have no idea why that is at all, apart from it must be to do with the design of the underlying trailer.

St Martin d'Arcé were accompanied by musicians.

Then came Echimiré, who bravely hosted the first post-Covid Comice.

Finally Pontigné brought up the rear - they hosted last year.

The afternoon and early evening entertainment was provided by Mademoiselle Orchestra - a six piece cabaret band, who are very good and very amusing.  Sadly the heat and the excitement took its toll on us and we went home for a nap, but did catch the end of their second set, before joining the queue for the pig roast dinner.  14 locally born and raised pigs had been turning on spits over fires since 9am, and by 8pm we needed our portions!  The guy on the next table (British) complained there wasn't any crackling, so his French chums went off to find some for him, and came back with a whole head.  Lucky so and so!  The small boy next to him was astounded.

The final band of the weekend was a boisterous group mixing rap, hip-hop, French pop and a sleazy horn section.  The energy was amazing.

All good French events end with a firework display.  By this time we had gone home, but popped out to the field opposite our house to enjoy the spectacle.  It was very loud!

Now all that was left to do, was to tidy up!

 

Day 1 - the serious stuff

I know you are never supposed to apologise over this sort of thing, but I had hoped to get the Comice story out there earlier than this.  I blame a combination of being VERY tired indeed, extreme heat, the challenges of getting a new van, and a sort of general maiaise (not Covid - but we did check yesterday, we were so off) for not getting down to it sooner.

Friday night wasn't the best night's sleep as we worried about the podium and the rain.  We were on the field promptly, but the forecast was still dodgy so we didn't unwrap things until about 10am when we could see no more clouds heading our way.  There were also magnificent arrangements of dried grasses and grains, some with a bit of red paint to them, to give a classier air to the stage, in time for the hour and a half of speeches to open the event.  I caught up with those on a live stream on Facebook - I really could not be bothered to wait around to see them in person!

The serious stuff on the Saturday morning, other than the speeches, is the Young Farmers' Ploughing Competition - held on slightly adjacent fields, and with its own bar, so the ones on the field were quite quiet.  I don't know much about ploughing matches, so I didn't go and watch.

For those of us on decorations duty, the other thing to do was to ensure that the tables were decorated and ready to welcome diners - there were 580 metres of tables, each with benches on either side, giving a theoretical 1,400 covers.  We certainly needed them on the Sunday!

There was a certain nostalgic feel to the event - while guingettes are becoming popular again, they were more of a 20th century phenomenon.  It was therefore only right that there were a lot of old tractors knocking around and also a few other old implements - this is the chain oil application end of a two person chainsaw that was demonstrated a few times over the weekend.  It did the job, but it was loud, fixed and needed two people to make it work.

Day 1 is also about livestock, with a cow competition and a Percheron competition (a local breed of heavy horse).  The cows and goats were mostly only in for one day, although a few came back for the second day, just as an interesting feature.

While we weren't there too long on the Saturday afternoon, I did insist on going to see the Percherons.  The mares are so beautiful, and the foals often behave so badly!  A bit like a Lippizaner, Percherons are generally born dark and as they grow older, take on a grey white colour.  They are good work horses - sometimes they are used by loggers to move tree trunks around as they do less damage to the soil than machines - and also make reasonable saddle horses for the portly with long legs and supple hips!

After that, we went off to feed cats, water plants, eat food and rest up as Sunday would be a long day.

The Sunday story should be available during the week - keep an eye out for it!

 

Final push to get it all ready

My last post was brief and quite enigmatic as much of what we were working on was embargoed until the weekend of the Comice itself.

John and I were working on the big arches for the two entrances to the site - the big one was an issue just because of its size, as it was over 2 metres tall and very long.  To get sensible sized letters, we had to make a number of stencils for letters that would be nearly 60 centimetres tall.  The logo could be projected onto the panel and traced, but any other decoration had to be done by hand.  And for the reverse side - the "see you next year, elsewhere" - apart from the fact the letters also had to be pretty huge, there was no guidance, no colour scheme, no theme, so we made it up as we went along.

The smaller arch was more of a problem - no space for projections, too long in relation to its height, and more space to fill in.  Our preferred method of doing the letters with packing labels did not work as, and I'm not sure you will believe this, packing and shipping labels aren't brilliant at sticking in slight humidity.  The weekend before the Comice it was a real rush to get that one finished, so that I was free for the next set of tasks.

There was a nice video of John working on the arch, but Typepad won't let me upload it, and YouTube has done something silly with it, it seems to me!

Then on Monday and Wednesday (Tuesday was a bank holiday) we started to put up more decorations in the village - up to that point, it had just been bunting and the straw bales, now we had silhouettes of dancers popping up all over the place and a stream of jolly music along the wooden barriers by the village hall.

Then on Thursday and Friday we were on the Comice site, putting up even more bunting, dressing the podiums, decorating the vast numbers of marquees, adding fairy lights, signs and all sorts of other bits, so that the exhibitors had a clear run on the Friday afternoon to get installed.  Lunches were served at the village hall for the workers - cold beer has never tasted so good!  It was lovely being all together, working to a common goal and getting to know new people.

Then on Friday evening, we were all summoned to the site for the distribution of volunteer t-shirts for anyone working on site over the weekend, a few words of encouragement from our President, and the unveiling of the big arch.  There is a video stream of that, but California doesn't seem to want to play ball with technology at the moment - I guess they have other problems - so here is the great arch unveiled, and there was applause, which you will have to imagine.

So after a drink to seal team solidarity, it was home to a sensible meal and early to bed to be refreshed for the event - except that rain was forecast, so we spent the night worrying about how various aspects of decoration would stand up to moisture!

To find out how that panned out, look again in a couple of days' time as I'm not wrestling recalcitrant IT any more today!

 

So much to do, so little time!

It's the final straight before the Comice.  Most days this week have been taken up doing "stuff", but unless that stuff is already out in the streets and fields, it is embargoed.  The weather has meant less progress has been made on some aspects than we would have liked - the wind and rain made working on straw bales nearly impossible.  It was possible to progress items that will be installed on the fields in due course, as we are working on them in a disused piggery, so we have shelter, power, space and quiet (unless we have a bluetooth speaker with us to blast out radio).  And when I say we, it isn't just John and I, it is all sorts of other people, including my next door neighbour's granddaughter, getting involved.

Next week I will find links to blogs I have written on previous Comices (Comici?) to show what the fuss is all about.

When not working on decorations, I have been keeping an eye on the new trail camera.  The boar are still around and a deer or two have passed by - they look rather odd from a higher angle!

On Thursday, I caught a different strange animal on the camera - one that I would not expect to see on our land before September.  I wasn't delighted, but I think I remember seeing a couple around this time last year too.

We think that the cristophine might be contemplating flowers - today there was a slightly different growth on a couple of the main stems.  It has grown another three feet or so in a number of directions so there is certainly enough oomph in it to think about flowering and fruiting I would suggest.

The sweetcorn got a real battering in the winds during the week - two named storms at this time of year and this side of the Atlantic is a bit odd.  While we were not near the strongest gusts, the gaps in hedges and trees funnel the wind in weird ways.  The big fields of maize are closely planted and dense, while our wee area of sweetcorn is only three rows deep, but it has all survived and the silks are out and starting to turn brown, which is good!

Digging up the week's potatoes, I met one of my garden helpers.  From the size and shape of her, I think she has been doing very well on slugs, and certainly none of the potatoes have slug damage, so I think she is rather effective, if not the prettiest person on the plot.

Anyway, I must now go and deal with a rather pleasing problem.  Back in the days before Brexit was even considered, my mother in law bought us a Victoria Plum tree, to take the place of the medlar tree that didn't seem to like our garden (shame as the flowers were gorgeous).  It wasn't cheap and we had to source it in the UK, as they aren't a thing in France.  Since then we have nurtured it and protected it and been rewarded with at best a dozen fruit in a season, and only if we can get to them before the chickens.  This year is different.  This year it is loaded and we have supports under many branches to help it cope.  This afternoon I have promised myself I will make a batch of plum crumbles for the freezer, as well as one for tonight, so I'd better go and pick and stone some fruit and get baking.

Have a good week!

 

Harvests and cameras

After weeks of nurturing, watering, weeding and worrying, the first serious harvests are starting in the potager.  We've been digging up a couple of potatoes from the first block of 18, for a few weeks now - well this is the seventh weekend to be precise.  The potatoes are second earlies and were planted in three blocks over a period of about 4 weeks, and the first block are very ready to be harvested.  By taking just a couple of plants a week, we have enough and more for us to eat over the week and don't have to worry about storage and drying off.  The next two blocks will need that level of attention, but that is a way down the line, post-Comice.

Today's basket of goodies includes potatoes, carrots, a few onions that I missed yesterday when lifting the main block of red onions, a couple of courgettes that I didn't cut yesterday and a couple of little gem lettuce that looked like they were thinking about bolting.

We've also had aubergines - I think 5 so far, or it may be 7, and half a dozen courgettes already and of course there are the red onions to look forward to.

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This is only the start too - there are as many set borlotti beans as we had all season last year, and the bean vines are covered with more flowers.  The butternuts haven't yet got into their stride, but there are quite a few female flowers developing.  The tomatoes have some good looking trusses on them - fingers crossed that they ripen and don't get struck by blight.  And there is the cristophine vine, which gets bigger as you watch it and now has a vast structure set up for it to rampage over.  Perhaps one day there will be flowers and fruits too - in the meantime it provides shelter for a couple of tomatoes that I rejected for the main plot as they were runt plants, so have gone totally mad as companion plants for the cristophine.

Another bit of companion planting that we did as an experiment also seems to be working.  Parsnips are very slow to get going, so "they" recommend inter-sowing with something that is quicker off the mark and doesn't stay in the ground as long.  I put the row of parsnips at the edge of the potato bed, so one bit of companion planting I guess.  I sowed parsnips every 4 to 6 inches and in between sowed carrots.  As you have seen, the carrots are doing fine.  Many of the parsnips are also doing very well too and their leaves can be seen over the potatoes and swamping the carrots in places!  They've got months more growing time to go too.

So to the saga of the trail camera.  It developed a fault.  Basically the switch inside the protective shell got disconnected, and despite having had it less than two years, it was out of warranty (I know EU warranties are 2 years - I did point that out to the supplier, but I know when I am on a hiding to nothing).  It had been attacked a few times by boar, a pine martin, a few garden birds and a few hornets, so it had a hard life!  Anyway, I couldn't cope without one, so blagged a discount code off the supplier, who were very good and allowed me to apply that discount to something that was already discounted, and also made sure it was sent through express, so the new one arrived on Wednesday and was installed on Thursday - once I had read the instructions with the help of a magnifying glass!!  We rigged it up in a tree close to where the last one died to see what was happening and test it out.  Boar are what is happening - they must be on their second litter of the year, and they do just love the shallow ponds for wallowing in.  The fish aren't so keen, but as there is little water, despite the rain, the fish are dying off, so I guess the boar can have their fun.

We'll see what more porcine fun appears over the next week.

In the meantime, the Comice approaches at a terrifying speed and I need to concentrate on painting dancers and doing lettering (some of it very big) so that people have an idea what is going on.  I've done the logos on the two arches (photo is of the smaller one), now for the lettering....

Have a good week!

 

Being a good peasant

Apologies for not posting yesterday - I was indeed being a good peasant, and had just got my hands on 4 kilos of very ripe yellow plums - if I didn't jam them yesterday, they would have gone in the new burping barrel, and that would have been a waste.  I had also turned down a tray of apricots in favour of free plums for jam making, so had to get cracking.  But taking the stones out and chopping up 4 kilos of plums takes time, then you have to gently cook them, before adding the sugar and pushing to setting temperature.  Still, we started the half jar today at breakfast, and it was jolly yum, so definitely worth it and you will have to believe me!

And once that was done, I thought I was on a roll, so I spent an hour peeling the tiny shallots for pickling (no photo), at which point it was time to do all the bits for crab and comté soufflé for dinner.

At the start of the week, I was able to enjoy this wonderful vista over a vast field of sunflowers - in general they are nearly over but I was able to catch this field near its best.

Close to, some of the flower heads were huge, and while still flowering at the centre. birds had already started to peck away at the ripening seeds.  I picked out a few myself for sowing next year (just 8) and they were slightly sticky to the touch but fat and well filled.

Midweek I was able to spend a bit of time working in the potager and was able, after doing a bit of watering, to thin out the carrots a bit, particularly those that were quite close to the nicely developing parsnips.  I sowed a sort of heritage variety of multicoloured carrots - apparently all shades between white and black, via yellow, orange and red.  So far those I have thinned have been firmly in the white to orange spectrum, which is a shame as black carrots are so dramatic!

The woodstore by the potager is very useful for drying off crops once lifted, such as shallots, onions and potatoes, before they go to storage or are used.  It has the standard tin roof, ventilated wooden walls and a sandy floor.  This seems to be an ideal home for antlion larvae.  I've not dug down to see what they look like, but we have a lot of depressions which are very characteristic and very intriguing.  If I were 50 years younger, I would probably dig one up, now I am more live and let live.

The week has also been about Comice preparations.  I spent Thursday afternoon in a disused piggery with a laptop, projector and a load of paints, trying to trace the logo onto part of a giant panel.  It all went well until the scaffolding holding the projector shifted just a smidge!!

Saturday was Bunting Day - I helped on the morning shift, stringing up bunting down the main drag of the village to get people in the mood for fun.  It's amazing how lots of small triangles of fabric on a piece of bailing twine can make everything seem so much more festive!  In the afternoon our house got bunting on its façade too, which I can see a small bit of when in the back garden - it's the small things that can give so much pleasure!

Next week I'll try to be more timely, but there is a lot more Comice preparation to do!

 

Budget bulbs and the Tour de France

I don't follow much sport nowadays - I used to spend much of the summer in front of the TV watching test cricket, but the sell out to Sky and the move to France scuppered that.  The French aren't quite so intent on giving over mainstream TV to sport on a weekly basis but there are a few events that they go nuts for.  Obviously key football tournaments come into that category, as does Six Nations Rugby and I imagine that as host of the Rugby World Cup later this year, that will be wall to wall too. 

There are two events that I follow with a passion though - the Dakar Rally during the first couple of weeks of January, and the Tour de France during the first three weeks of July in general.  We are on day 9 now, and a day where the stage finish is at altitude, finishing with 4.3km of 11% climb going up the Puy du Dome sometime near 6pm French time.  I need to watch!  The area is interesting as it has been blocked off from visitors and spectators as a nature reserve, so my usual chuntering about why stupid people jump out in front of the riders will not apply today.

This is the end of the stage.

We are currently enjoying lots of flowers, including dramatic summer bulbs bought from the Pound Shop in England when such things were allowed, and also from Aldi.  They provide a bit of drama at a period when many of my favourite flowers are coming to an end.

Today at the potager, I lifted the shallot crop - rather disappointing given the size and quality of the start bulbs, but they will make a good couple of pots of pickled shallots which are rather nice with cheese and cold meat.  I transplanted into the space they left, some little gem lettuces that we had set off in a seed bed and were far too close together to do any good.  I'm hopeful as the soil is quite moist, but nothing ventured, nothing gained as they say!

Anyway, I've got a report to write, so just a short update this week. 

 

All quiet here in our bit of rural France

Well, I say all quiet, but the countryside is rarely quiet.  There are frogs that make the most awful noises, sometimes just for the fun of it.  There are birds, so many birds, so many different songs, from the eerie cry of a buzzard having fun on the thermals, to the quiet but intense song of a robin - it sounds so melodic and sweet, but I think in the main they are saying "b*gger off, we want to explore where you are for a feed".  Annoyingly, after the quiet of lockdowns, there are planes, all sizes and at all different heights, from the air force boys who went over at about 200 feet last weekend, through the light aircraft from the local aerodrome, to the jets up high taking people to and from Scandinavia and Portugal. 

But this week it has been the Moisson - the grain harvest, with the combines out in the fields of wheat and barley, followed by tractors and massive trailers to take the grains, then more tractors with bailers to turn the straw into vast wheels, and finally lifts and more tractors with the big trailers to take those round bales away into storage.  It doesn't stop for weekends or lack of light - once conditions are right, the competition and demand for the machines is such that they are on the move 24/7, and bad luck if you are near where they are working overnight!!

Last weekend was fiercely hot and humid too - with temperatures up over 30ºC by lunchtime and not below again until after 6pm.  Two days of it was enough to undo the good that the rain the week before had done to the ponds, and sadly at least one of my fish has expired (no photo required).  It also blasted the ripe broad beans from the second sowing, and as it was too hot to pick them, they too got fried.  We rescued some beans and have sown them in some land that needs a bit of green manure, but whether that will work remains to be seen.  It was a disappointment.  The photo shows the fried out pods along with three carrots from the perpetual rounds of thinning them out, with one almost worth eating!

On a more positive note, and surprisingly with the cooler weather, I spotted a couple of my favourite butterflies yesterday - two swallowtails were enjoying a quick snack on the buddleia.  They are often found on lavender round here, but I've not seen them enjoying the buddleia before.  Of course it was pretty impossible to get close to them so these two photos are the best I could manage.

There was also some fruit!  Yesterday while doing the rounds, I spotted that the mirabelles were ripe, so went back for a bowl and picked all that I could, leaving those with a bit of damage or rot for the local critters, but for once getting some for us.  Enough for a 4 portion mirabelle crumble - wowzers!

We have not been responsible for any looting or destruction, but we have found evidence that it has been going on.  This year's thrush anvil is surrounded by empty and broken shells and it is hard to spot the stone that is being used.  I do love this as a sight, as I am very fond of the thrushes, and they do a good job.  Apart from a couple of well munched tomato plants, so far we haven't had any major snail damage this year to small plants, and this is why!

I like black flowers - I know they aren't natural in this part of the world, but i really enjoy them, even if they aren't really jet black.  This year I succumbed to temptation and bought an exotic petunia (just the one) called Black Glitter - the glitter effect comes from tiny white flecks on the flowers - you can't see that from a distance, but you can admire how happy it is in its beer barrel.  Another that is happy in its beer barrel is my black day lily - this really is stretching the definition but it is how it was sold to me!

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Not quite the grapes of wrath, but certainly very happy grapes and magnificent bunches on our vine this year.  Any marks are due to them being brushed past by a car as we drive into the courtyard.  The vine is loaded with them, so I am looking forward to making large quantities of grape jelly - no point making your own wine around here when you can buy excellent professionally-made wine en vrac (not bottled) for 2,80€ a litre!  Also these aren't wine grapes, but table grapes, although with pips so not polite eating grapes.  The chickens love them too.

On a serious note, the riots in the urban centres are frightening and disappointing.  Looting a carton of milk from your local convenience store that won't open for a while now as the owner tries to repair the damage, and your family have to find the money to travel to another, more distant shop is insane.  Similarly trashing and burning down the youth centre where you happily spend time in the winter and during the long holidays makes no sense.  It has nothing to do with the death of a young man, driving a Polish registered car in a bus lane without insurance or a valid drivers licence, and sadly paying for such minor delinquency with his life.  A minority of people are destroying holidays, livelihoods, neighbourhoods, reputation and ensuring that festivities people have been looking forward to for ages are cancelled.  I hope it stops soon.

Ideally by next weekend, if not sooner!  Have a good week!

 

Something of a passive week - and the earth moved

Modern cars are marvellous - when they work.  I love my Peugeot 2008, but he has an awful lot of bells and whistles, and he is very communicative.  His latest communication was that the level of additive in one of his filters was dangerously low and I needed to do something about it.  Of course, with bells and whistles, you have to take the car to a garage to make any sense of it, and I have a quote for putting said additive into the required spot, but from 10 days ago, when the car started to tell me this, the garage couldn't actually put said additive in until sometime next week.  I was sent away with my quote and dire warnings about keeping my kilometres to a minimum as a problem would be even more expensive to fix (I believe them as a replacement wing mirror (new) was 650€ - I went previously owned).  Anyway, that meant that I got to play on public transport for my trip to the big city (Angers) this week for my rendez-vous with my rheumatologist. 

It was actually quite fun and relaxing letting the bus take the strain.  At a higher level, I could see over hedges and across fields that I can't as a car passenger, and shouldn't as a car driver.  The journey took about the same time as it would if I had driven myself, although the wait at the bus stop for it to arrive added on time.  it was less stressful as it wasn't me driving and of course I didn't have to find the entrance to the car park I use that seems to move every time I visit the city.  Overall a positive experience, and as I had to wait for the return bus, I could sit in a café and enjoy a pot of tea,  watching the world go by.

The big event in our village this year will be the 148th Comice - a sort of village fete/agricultural show/fertility festival/excuse for fun and games all rolled into one.  Most years I do a blog about floats and animals and the like, if you look back through August posts.  Since November last year, I have been part of the Decorating work party.  We have brainstormed ideas, then spent happy Thursday evenings making bunting, lots of bunting, panels with music, panels with silhouettes of dancers, templates for painting silhouettes of dancers on covered straw bales, bunting (did I mention the bunting), and table decorations for the sit down meals.  On Friday there was an open meeting to engage even more volunteers - an event like this needs about 240 volunteers in the run up and over the weekend of the event, and for taking stuff down too.  That is in addition to the municipal staff who have to do the 'at height' bits, and the farmers who provide the fields, the straw bales and other more arcane services.  These two photos are unashamedly nicked from the Comice Facebook page, while you can find more on the website.

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Along with most of western France, we have been on orange alert today for storms - it's been hot, consistently hot, for about 3 weeks now.  Not the seriously awful 35 - 42ºC we were going through this time last year, but consistently 28 - 31ºC in the shade.  Last week there was a bit of rain, which drove up the humidity to seriously unpleasant levels, bringing on a heat related malaise that I never want to experience again.  This morning was a bit cooler, but this afternoon the promised storms hit.  We reckon about 12mm rain here at home (probably more at The Shack as it is a bit further north and on the track of the storms), and for a while, a more comfortable temperature, but it will take a while to cool down the inside of the house.

And then of course on Friday, there was the earthquake - no pictures of that!  But at 18:38 on Friday afternoon/evening, as I was sitting perspiring on the sofa with a cat at my side, there was a bit of noise, and the sofa seemed to wobble.  I thought that there had been a particularly overloaded tractor and trailer going past, or wondered if the structural integrity of the sofa was about to fail.  Social media soon put me right.  We are so pleased we got the chimney fixed last year, or that would have come down I think.  Anyway, no damage hereabouts, although people are blaming poor internet and dodgy electricity on it.

The trail camera has been rotated about 90º to the west, as something was setting it off in the early morning, but with the rising sun falling straight on the camera, I had no idea what it might be.  I think this is the culprit and it is not one of ours!

The stag is out and about quite a bit, always handsome to see, and doesn't he know it!!

While the boar have been busy doing what boar do, at least twice a year, and then brought the latest batch to visit.  I have got a nice little video, but with the storm bouncing around making internet connections a bit hit and miss, really couldn't be bothered to fight the fight to get it up.  Perhaps for next week.  But here is a cute, stripy person.

And of course, not just one....  Have a good week!

 

 

 

Something weird happened during the week

The first I knew about it was when I was walking down through the Orchard, admiring some newly appeared bee orchids.

I thought the long grass looked a bit odd and assumed that either young badgers had come out of the set and had been dancing around, or that the local boar had been through on their way to dig up a neighbouring field.  But then I found other evidence that had nothing to do with pigs or boar or badgers.

So I carried on down to the ponds, and there found a lot of the shrubbery had been pushed around and broken and someone had been wading in my pond!

I doubt the fish were happy when it happened, and they aren't happy now, as there is so little water available for them.  I am hoping to get someone in, to get them out, and transfer them to a deeper pond.  I will be sorry to see them go of course, but I don't think they will survive the summer in our pond.

Yes, some neighbouring heifers got bored, broke through the single strand of electric fence, followed the path the hunters take, and gambolled in the Orchard before being taken away again (the wire has been reconnected it appears).  As far as I can tell, there is no film or photo of this episode on the trail camera, as it was pointing in slightly the wrong direction, but I will be checking when I download all the files, as it is home to have its batteries recharged.

In the meantime, here are two different hares passing through.

Have a good week!