Araucana blue eggs - my first

 

Lovely aurprise just now amidst all this horisontal snow and blizzards, my first blue Araucana chicken eggs.

Very hard to photograph - they are a sort of beige blue, and they are larger than I had expected as the chickens are quite small.

I think they look more blue in the photo below which is of our complete colour range of eggs!!

From the left - small bantam egg, two Araucana eggs, two dark brown Marans Froment (wheaten) eggs, they started laying at the end of the summer.

the Araucana eggs are such different shapes that I thought the ducks had nipped upstairs to lay an egg, but the breed of duck I have Khaki Campbells apparently lay white eggs, so the variation is in the Araucana.

Short posting I am afraid as we have to drive down the mountain to collect one of our cats from the Vet, more about Billy later.

Chickens in the kitchen - blackbirds in with the ducks?

This is 'Chatty' a young hen hatched in November which is late for here, she has two sisters, Lucky and Morse.  I found Chatty this morning crouched under the horse box unable to move.  It had been minus 6 here last night and had risen to a tropical minus 3 by 9am, and as it was sunny we gave the chickens the option to come out or not.  Chickens are stupid but not that stupid, most of them tumbled outside and quickly went back inside where we had fed them....all except Chatty who we found half an hour later.  She seems to like it in my jacket????

Anyway she is tucked up with Lucky now in a cat box in the kitchen and she has not stopped tweeting since.  She is much bigger than Lucky and should do well.  Lucky I think I mentioned is called Lucky as she was in a similar situation to Chatty a few days ago and was picked up by our french hunting dog, Frida, and deposited on the road up to the house.  She survived but since then seems to think she should be up at the house, inside, and every day at 5.30 pm she trotts up to the house when all the other chickens are making their way home, and pecks on the kitchen door until we let her inside.  So for the last couple of days she has been inside as the weather has been attrocious, blizzard conditions with 110Kph gusts of wind.  Only 'chutes de neige faibles' - light snow showers were forecast we have another foot deep drift against our doors and all along the path to the main road.

I have a video of this but this french blog does not seem to allow videos in the middle of blog postings, so will try to replace the spinning video in the right hand column with my video.

 

Terrible weather conditions here again.

As I had my face pressed against the window videoing this the tiniest bird I have ever seen with quite a long pointed beak landed on the 'owl' door bell we have just outside, it was so close to me I tried not to move but I wanted to try and photograph it, but I moved and it flew away, it might have been a wren but it seemed to be investigating the hanging plant pots we have between the shutters and the french windows to get out of the wind.

 This is a lucky blackbird, lucky Dave found him that is in the flight with the ducks and Araucana chickens, we checked him out before releasing him, he was fine.

Since this second round of extreme weather is due to last until Tuesday I am glad I put some hyacinth bulbs in pots in October, they are just right to cheer us up at the moment.

Silk Noil and Carrier Rods - results of dyeing

Here are the results of my dyeing experiments yesterday.

The first thing I suggest is that you split the rods after dyeing, as the ones that I split beforehand became very stringy during the rinsing process.

 

The rods dyed in the Dylon dye were very dark, I made up this dye some months ago and I believe it had become concentrated, but still colours I will use.

The four Landscape dyes at the right of the picture all dyed extremely well, but I think I could have been even more economical with the dye to make lighter colours from the start.

 

The two rods on the left were dyed in the old concentrated Dylon dye, and the noil on the right was put into the saved dye from this process, totally different colour!!  It was difficult to get the noil to submerge and absorb any dye at first, but I persevered and kept pushing it down, reheated the pot in the microwave as before.

 

Although the 'rose' dye looked pretty weak after the second process with the noil, I popped in a little piece of wool roving which has purple Angelina fibres already mixed in  http://www.worldofwool.com  ended up with a beautiful baby pink and nothing happened to the Angelina fibres in the microwave. 

All the other dye pots I have kept as the dyes still look full of pigment, so I will use them again.

I am very pleased with all of these results, even the cocoon dyed well, sorry no photo, it was flat after I strained it so when it was nearly dry I blew gently into the 'worm hole' and it inflated perfectly.

Now what to do with them all........?

Silk Carrier Rods - Dyeing with Landscape dyes

• The photos above are:  carrier rods flattened from the pack.
• Rods split and one being split - hard to do and hold camera.....
• A silk cocoon complete with little worm waving from his escape hatch - didn't make it huh?
• 5 pots of dye on Rayburn and one cup of coffee - thirsty work but don't drink the dye

I obtained some small packets of Australian Landscape (elements) dyes from UK Ebay recently - they are as their name suggests 'landscape', earthy colours with some lovely bright yellows, and bright pinks and blues.  A little goes a long way for dyeing things like carrier rods and cocoons. Silk carrier rods are the scrapings from the poles that guide the silk being extracted from the cocoons.  These poles get covered in a mixture of silk and sericin, which is the gum that the silk worm uses to hold the cocoon together.   Periodically they are cut and discarded, they are now sold and crafters love them for adding to embroidery, weaving and spinning or collage work etc.  They dye beautifully and this is my description of how I dyed a selection of silk carrier rods, mistakes and successes.

I collected jam jars all the same size so I could dispense with measuring - just fill to same level, about half, each time.  The shorter, fatter jam jars (Lidl marmelade) fit better into the microwave.

Apart from jars you will need - teaspoon - hot water - salt - white vinegar - sticks or metal spoons to stir - plastic gloves unless you are careful or like me don't care about having multicoloured hands - and a note pad to jot down quantities iin case you want to repeat colours. Paper towels for drying rods on (can be reused), or wire cake rack.

Today I have used  some old Dylon dyes that I mixed a couple of months ago - Dyes can be used more than once until all the dye is exhausted, but successive dyeings will be progressively lighter.

You will also need a spare,  empty jam jar to strain the finished articles into to save the dye.

The Dylon dyes were rose and peach also bought very cheaply on Ebay.  The Landscape Dyes from Australia were - Wild Raspberry - Marine - Plum and Sage.

Half fill the jam jars with hot water and put  table spoons of salt into each jar, and 2 tablespoons of clear vinegar to each.

Add dye to hot water, I used 1 1/2 (one and a half) teaspoons of dye per jar - cleaning the spoon between dyes.

Mix and set aside - I put the pots on top of the Rayburn to keep them warm.

Prepare carrier rods - I bought 100gms £2.50 UK) from World of Wool (UK)  Link in the side panel to the right.

World of Wool has a shop on Ebay called qualityfibres.   I buy direct from W of W.

Depending on your source you may or may not have to flatten them and split them.  The ones from World of Wool are quite screwed up and need some flattening and there are also worms and cocoons mixed in with them, but the rods are quite thick and I was able to split some of them twice.

IMPORTANT: The first batch I did I put through a 'degumming' process - DON'T do it if you want to use the dyed rods as decoration or inclusions - I did this process so well the silk separated into strands good enough to card and spin !!

The rods can successfully be plit into one or two layers - to do this do them dry, straight out of the pack, flatten out and gently pull along the length of the rod then rub an edge in the middle between your fingers as if you are trying to open a plastic bag at the supermarket!!  Push your fingers inside to separate the layers and gently push your fingers to either end - Voila!!  2 or 3 for the price of one and softer to spin.

You could also just throw them into the dye pots without pulling them apart, you will then get a tie-dye effect, with lighter and darker places depending on the folds in the rods.  This is why I prefer to buy the 'rougher' rods from World of Wool rather than ones already pulled, split, and dyed.

Save some little bits and pieces you find in the bag for dye testing and throw a few into each pot, they are great addition for firbre work as well.

Immerse the split and flattened rods into the dye pots about 6 to 8 in each but depends on size of rods, so just make sure they are all covered in dye fluid, push down with stick or spoon.

Microwave on HIGH (750) for 1 minute.

Take out - jar will be hot - push down any rods that are above dye level but do NOT stir - the rods are always fragile when hot and wet.

Return to microwave on high for 30 seconds

Remove from microwave and stand in a warm place for 4 hours - this time can be lengthened or shortened by testing - pull out one of the rods or a little test scrap - rinse until water runs clear - if dark enough for your purposes - great - if not return to jar - reheat if necessary.  Remember colours will always be slightly  lighter when dry.

Gently lift out rods individually if possible and strain - catch the dye in the clean jam jar to use again.

Wash the jam jar to use for catching the dye from the next pot.

Rinse gently in cold water until water runs clear - spread out rods and dry on paper towels or a wire (stainless) cake rack.

I will post photos of the finished rods good or bad on here, I am waiting for them to dye at the moment while I write this article.

For more information on silk, and silk production got to the endearingly named website: 

http://www.wormspit.com

For Landscape dyes in the UK:  Try Ebay or Wingham Wool Work - link in my list to the right of this article.

Moulin de St Jean - its history

 

Our Site Inspector - Maitre d'Oeuvre - Father Christmas - Pere Noel 

un lien vers notre blog dedie aux recherches de l'histoire de notre moulin:

http://moulindestjean.over-blog.fr

Thank goodness I was introduced to a local historian, I had been looking in totally the wrong place to research the history of our mill.  Because the mill, known locally as the Moulin Degrave, after a previous owner, was a property owned by the Knights Templar, all records are part of the Fonds de Malte, which come under the Haute Garonne and as such are kept at the Archives in Toulouse.  I had been making enquiries at our Archives in Carcassonne, and had found nothing.  The name Degrave is also a relatively recent name, now that we know the history dates back to at least 1260!!!

What I found incredible was that some of this information came from an ancient, rat-chewed, coverless old book written in 1555, found in the attic of an old local notaire, it was given to a local historian and I was recently pointed in his direction.  This book was plonked on the table when I met this historian, I was shocked but fascinated, it was in terrible condition, written partly in latin and partly in Occitain - old local french.  The historian taught himself to read this old french in order to read the book as research for a book he is writing.  Not only did he have to do this,  but he also had to brush up his school boy latin to a very high level and decipher the abbreviations used throughout the book.  His main interest started with old place names in the area, which he said gave some of the biggest clues to the history of our mill and the surrounding land.

The historian had been trying to contact us for some time and I had received various messages from him via several other people in our village.  I finally managed to arrange a meeting after he had told me to take the signpost down on the main road as the name of my mill was wrong.  I needed my wits about me at this meeting, all his 'notes' for me were in miniscule hand writing on a piece of paper about 4ins by 2ins.  When he started talking to me about the history I started taking notes - but in what language???  He was rapidly giving me references in, french, Occitain, and latin, my brain was working overtime, and when I tried to look over the table at his notes I could not read them they were so small.  I wrote a very rapid time line for the mill which is a list of previous owners made up from ancient notaire's records.  All the notaires are named and quotations from documents seen in Toulouse by the historian are clearly recorded.  As this ancient book was in the local man's possession I was able to ask for an immediate photocopy of the document of 1555, which I will scan when possible and add to this blog, for now, here is a timeline for our mill.

MOULIN DE ST JEAN - LARQOUE DE FA

The following list of relevant dates for the mill were the result of detailed research over many years by a historian in the next village.
Additional information traced by the owners in the records of births, deaths and marriages for the village since 1600

1263      
Olivier de Termes sold a great deal of property to the Templars, including the Moulin de St Jean, but the mill was not yet named in documents.
 This document is written on a hand sewn roll of parchment, in the archives des Fonds de Malte at the Archives de Haute Garonne in Toulouse - a copy of which was given to the historian in Felines.

“ Quandam pecia terre in termineo sti martini de vilario ubi voccatur ad lamaloledam affrontat de meridie in recho molindini” this is a reference to the Moulin de St Jean

  The mill and the land were part of the 'reserves' of the seigneurs - Knight’s Templar - the 'Condamine' - the land between our mill and the other mill linked to us is where the farmers, employed by the Knights and the people who rented the land, grew their fruits and vegetables.

1407      
Terrier de Laroque - old records name the Molin Na'mira (literally the Mill of Mrs. Mira)
Which is now known as the Moulin de Cabrol, the next mill along from ours, and is also owned privately.

        At this time there was a depression in the region after the plague which killed half
        the population, this probably contributed to the fact that the mill is not named before
        1555.

1555      
in the archives of Maitre Matthieu Graffan - Notaire in Villerouge - original book now in the possession of local historian, given to him by Maitre Oustric of
        Fabrezan - I saw this original document, partly eaten by rats ! And have a copy of
        the relevant page for 3rd June.
        “Le molin bladier du seigneur commandeur de Holms ( now Homps) nome le Molin
        de St Jehan.  M. de Badans - Lord of Laroque." - “Grain mill owned by the Lord                 commander of Homps - called the Mill of St. Jehan (Jean)”

        The two mills were owned by the same lord and were often rented out to the same person.

1587
        Rental agreement for the Moulin de St Jean in Laroque de Fa
        Notaire Me. Francois Graffan

1685   
   In the archives of the Fond de Malte - “Chemin que font les habitants de Davejan
        pour aller au Molin de St Jehan” - “A track used by the residents from Davejean to
        the Moulin de St. Jean”.

1608        In the archives of the Fond de Malte
         - “un ylhe a la passiere )pronounced Pashier) du molin St Jehan” refers
        To an ‘island’ of land in the mill race of St. Jean’s mill - possible reference to the dam
       
1608        26 may: again in the archives of the Fonds de Malte.
        “chemin des Molins de Namira et du Commandeur”  the road to the mills of Namira
        And the Commandeur (Moulin de St. Jean)

There is a much larger list of references that I have in fact just deleted as they name families still living in the village and we have not yet asked permissions, needless to say the list of information is amazing.

 
       The mill has then been known over the years by four different names:

        Molin de St Jehan
        Moulin de St Jean
        Moulin Roquenoire
        Moulin Degrave

2010        January - The present owners, have reverted to the original Templar name of Moulin de St Jean
                Moulin de St Jean, and with the knowledge of these names and notaires we can probably obtain
                further references and maybe documents from other local Archives.We are totally endebted to this
                local historian, now a friend.  I have not named him here yet as I have not asked his permission.  A
                copy of this history in french is on our other French blog dedicated to the research and
                renovation of the mill. 

Here is a link to the blog:
http://moulindestjean.over-blog.fr

I have some daffodils up in a tub........is the end of the cold weather in sight?

This has to be the most boring photo I have put on this blog so far!  It did make me feel good, however to see this little daffodil shoot, after all that snow.  I have not blogged lately due maily to sore hands from the cold and snow, I could not spin either with all the little cuts and chilblains on my hands, but they are nearly better now.  This has been the longest cold snap in France for a long time, not only that,  it has been so grey and now wet, normally the winters here are very mild and when it is cold the days are sunny and warm and only the nights are cold, this year is has been really hard, but there are some signs of spring now.

I did manage to knit something and finished a hat in the purple spinning from merino wool and silk, photopgraphed in an earlier posting.  I did not use a pattern and the hat was a little too short, so I picked up stitches all around the bottom and knitted a few moe rows in the opposite direction !!  LOL :o)  it does not show at all, but the hat was too big for me so it has been passed on to my husband.  I have a photo but it is to scarry to post.....I will make some adjustments in Photoshop and post later.

We have had a hectic weekend of eating and drinking.......all the New Year celebrations and 'aperos' had been cancelled due to the bad weather and this weekend they all seem to be on together, from Friday through Sunday, so Sunday evening was spent asleep on the sofa, after lurching from one drinks party and lunch to another.

I found another good spinning website and blog : http://blog.houndscroftfarm.com and have put a link and a feed on here.  Spin in Public is an event in September 2010 worldwide, www.spininpublic.com mainly publicised on US webs but I hope to be able to get something going around here for that date. 

Our mill is also on the Route des Moulins, on the FFAM website (Federation Francaise des Amis des Moulins)  http://www.moulinsdefrance.org  even though it is still very much a ruin, and will be open to the public for the weekend of 19/20 June, the French national Journee des Moulins (National mill open day).  As our mill is now known by its original name, the Moulin de St Jean, and the fete of st Jean is the 24th June, and our first village fete of the 'season' is around this date, we will be having a celebration here probably a barbeque and a 'bring-your-own picnic and tent'  type of event, so watch here for details - it might even turn into a 70's style arty, spinning 'Happening'.

Sitting in the sun today - such a difference!!

The snow was shrinking fast yesterday and it poured with rain.  The ground is sodden and the mud is horrible again - oh the joys of living in the country.

Very sunny and 'tropical' temperatures of 13 degrees C, so we have just come in from eating our soup out in the sun.

The chickens made it up to the front door again for the first time in a week.  We were able to go out and have dinner with friends last night, after I made sure all the snow had been cleared from the stone stairways.  The village is built on the rock in the name and all the houses are perched on this rock, so it is not easy getting up and down for me, but the are little alley ways and steps hidden all over the 'rock'.

After the snow, the floods.......we have another weather warning about rain, the forecasters were warning about us having a month's rain in 24 hours......It takes about 12 hours of stair rod rain for our bridge to be compromised.  As the bridge is already damaged and sitting at an angle we do not go out, not for fear of the bridge giving way, but for fear of not being able to get back on to our property.  It has sometimes been over 5 foot high of water above the bridge.  If there is lots of driftwood brought down from upstream the bridge looks like an enormouse beaver dam, then the rushing water digs out big holes under the dam to continue on its way.  So after a storm it is always interesting to go out and see the new paths and shapes created by the water.  So again, we are on a warning and will stay in the dry, the house is on a high spot but we have a small stream opposite the house which only runs in extreme conditions and if this overflows the water level can creep up near the front door......we shall see.......

What can get damaged by these flood waters are all the fences, the fence to the llama paddock was demolished once and we woke to find two llamas and two goats looking in at the kitchen door, but there is plenty of high ground for them to climb up to, and they never go far, they always want to see what we are doing.

Hopefully now all this is calming down I can get back to doing some spinning, I have been unable to do so because of little cuts on my thumbs which catch on the threads, and my hands have been cold.

I also hope that the flood waters, if any, reduce before tomorrow evening as I have a council meeting to attend.  This meeting is probably going to be contentious as it needs to address the ongoing problem of famers, lack of fences, lack of electrification, and cows everywhere, so we need all the non-agriculteurs on the council to attend.

The Mayor walked over to see if we were OK !!!

We had visitors at 6pm last night, the mayor and one of the deputies walked half a mile from the main road to make sure we were OK.  I was impressed, they had trudged through snow up past their knees.  The track to the main road is still blocked by a five foot snow drift, a farmer on a tractor tried to get through it earlier yesterday and tipped his tractor over the edge.  Another farmer succeeded to get in and out in a v ery large tractor, but it is impossible to get the snowplough down the road, so we are still prisoners.....no great problem for us as we have plenty of stocks of food and animal feed and while the electricity is on we still have news  on the TV.  At least our village is on a main avex road in the department and the snowploughs go up and down continuously, other small villages are worse off than us, and nothing is getting through.  This weather is all over France and down to sea level, the UK is also very bad in places. 

We now have the phone back on which is a relief.  We also have beautiful sunshine and clear skies, we had a cup of coffee outside, it was like being in a ski resort cafe, lovely.  However the temperature is due to drop and then there is more snow forecast for Tuesday, so if I disappear from here and Facebook you will know why.

A bientot!!

Quelques flocons - A Few Flakes !!!!

Saturday 9 January

Quelques flocons is the phrase the French use for just a little snow 'A Few Flakes' - a dramatic understatement today, read on……

I was abrupty cut off on Facebook yesterday as I started a ‘conversation’ with an old friend, I apologise for that, we lost all types of phone connection.

We still have no telephone, nor mobile network which is a little disturbing as we would find it extremely hard to walk out of here to get help if one of us had an accident.  So we are conscientiously being careful, I suffer from chronic arthritis and walk with difficulty anyway, add to that the fact that I am prone to falling over and dislocating shoulders, and you will understand why we are being careful.  Dave is doing all the animal care at the moment.

Our neighbour is on her own at the moment and her husband is in hospital some 60Km away on icy road, thi been bad enough for the last couple of days but this has been compounded by the lack of phones of any sort, so she cannot even ring the hospital and the hospital cannot contact her.  Yesterday this department, the Aude, was on an orange alert for snow and ice, this morning they lifted this alert, why?  I have not a clue, conditions out there are dangerous.

Minus 4 degrees last night and at mid day it has only risen one degree.  We have gale force winds with gusts up to 120Kph, so we have snow going up, down and horizontal at high speeds.  I have tried to photograph the tornados of snow that are whisking around us.

 We are in a valley so all the snow is blowing from the tops of the hills around us down onto us.  It is four foot deep outside the door to the chicken shed and hip deep along the track to the llama and goat shelter, the goats had difficulty running out to get their granules just now.  The llama is, as usual, not bothered, when I spoke before about him sitting out in the snow and frost and leaving a dry bare patch underneath him, I forgot to say that when he got up and we heard the ripping noise, we looked at his imprint and he had left an oval of fleece behind.
 
The chickens we fed inside and fortunately thrit water pots had not frozen inside, so they seem to be happy.

The ducks are loving it, trying to ‘swim’ around in the very deep snow, slip sliding down the snow drifts quacking all the time, they then make little indentations in the snow and sit there quite happily.  We have not broken the ice in their bath as we felt it dangerous if they happened to not be able to get out on the ice and slippery bath sides.  We also have a stupid  Araucana chicken who thinks she is a duck and I would hate to think she might go into the icy water, so we have put a basin of water in the pen as they are dabbling ducks and take their food with water.

Add to all this an invasion of desperately hungry cows yesterday afternoon.  I felt so sorry for them, they headed straight for part of our stock of hay and tucked in, we left them a while before chasing them down towards the river.  The farmer was taken into hospital with a kidney stone on Thursday, he came out of hospital yesterday afternoon, but he could ask one of the other farmers to take a bale or two of hay to them by tractor,no excuse really and the snow is so deep for the calves, even under the trees
so there is nothing for them to eat at all.  We have had a 16 year battle with this farmer.

At least for the moment we still have electricity, there are about 50 thousand homes in France with no power, and they have been like this for over a week now.  I was amazed this morning that the first item on the news was only indirectly connected to the weather.  The sales started on January 6th and the news item was about the lack of customers in the shops!!!!! 

It is nearly 13:00 and the temperature has not risen more than 1 degree so far, and is due to get even colder tonight for the foreseeable future.

I found this amazing video on another blog

Putting chickens to bed

We don't look elegant, but then chasing chickens in a blizzardis not conducive to looking good.

The chickens that had passed the day on the doorstep refused to walk in the snow back to the coop so we had to chase them and pick them up to take them home.  One white hen ( would be white???) was missing and we eventually found her trying to hide under some brambles in a 'snow cave' in the mill race, so Dave had to fish for her with the net.  We still have Fanny in the house with us as she chose the last month to moult and has hardly any feathers, so she is in a cat box by the fire.  The three baby chicks are in another cat box......one of them tweets all the time (clever thing)....so she is called Tweety Pie, another constantly does four quick tweets followed by some tapping on the floor, so she is called Morse.....there's a connection in there somewhere ..........

Next job was to knock some of the snow from the netting on the peacock pen and the duck and Araucana flight.  Dave had the big pen to do and I had the camera, which was lucky for me as I attempted to knock the snow from the netting with my umbrella only to break the umbrella and be covered in snow.  It was nearly dark when we finished.

It is still snowing heavily, we have no picture on French or english satellite tv systems, and power cuts are forecast for tonight.  The weather forecast is for snow, snow and more snow, all night and all day tomorrow, then a big freeze, maximum minus 5 in the day, and if that is based on Perpignan that means it will be minus 8 for us up here at altittude.

Just a reminder for me as well as anyone else........this is the South of France, and it has snowed right down to the mediterranean coast all day today.

Must send this quickly and get some candles out for imminent power cuts, they always seem to come when most of France sits down to eat and watch the news at 8pm.

Even the chickens want to come inside..........

It has been snowing heavily all day here, so another corner of France grinds to a halt.  We had an orange warning this morning for heavy snow, and the weather girl on FR2 said the snow would start between 11 and midi - and for once she was right.  It started slowly at first with tiny little icy round balls of snow, then the temperature went up a degree to 1 degree !! and it started to snow in massive big flakes.  It had been minus 9 degrees Celsius last night so the ground was hard and has formed a good base.

It took us ages to sort out the animals this morning as all the drinking bowls were frozen solid.  No point in breaking the ice on the duck's pink bath as it would just have refrozen quickly so we filled pans with luke warm water for them, Jemima duck tried to get in the bowl but she didn't fit.  The Araucana chickens who are house with the ducks came out, made a lot of fuss and then went back in, I fed them in their house.  The ducks were sitting quite happily out in the heavy snow.

Larry llama is sitting out in the snow, chewing the cud and the snow is mounting up on is back, we usually have to brush it off him if it gets too thick, so will be going down to check him again soon.  Another snowy day he sat out for ages and it started to freeze, we went down to put the chickens away and he was sparkling in the torchlight, then he tried with a little difficulty to get up and we heard a ripping noise, it appeared he had melted some of the snow around him and it had frozen his long fleece into the snow....!!  He came over for a kiss and left an oval shaped clear patch of grass, he returned to it after we left.

Most of the chickens followed us up to the house as usual but headed straight for the doorstep and they have sat there all day looking in, scattering occasionally if we let dogs or cats in and out.  Frida our hunting dog, a Bruno de Jura, refuses to go out at all, this morning we pushed her out and she turned round immediately and barked at the door.  Shiro of sourse being a snow dog, loved it and turned into a puppy again and tried to jump about biting snow flakes.

The snow is quite light now as the temperatures are dropping again, we are on an orange alert until tomorrow evening, so we could have quite a bit of snow by then, we have 5 inches now, but there are 110Kmp gales forecast for tomorrow as well.

So I am off to check Larry's snow level and brush him off, I hope the chickens follow me, but as the snow is quite deep I have visions of us having to pick them all up and take them to the coop.  I will let you know how we get on.....

Mad cows.....and I cannot even spin them..........

A whole herd of cows in my vegetable plot this morning.........I awoke to see them out of the bedroom window, they were so quiet, these do not have bells on and can sneak up on us.....Dave had to chase then back into their own field, the first picture was taken about half an hour after the others when this really skitty cow was back in the garden, she did not appreciate being chase down into the river, but that is the direction she came from.  This has been a problem ever since we moved here.  The farmer does not have adequate fences, usually only a single electric wire that never has power running through it.  Our land is in the middle of the pastures used by two farmers and the 'fences' criss cross the river and the communal roads, which is against the law.  Neither the mayor nor the gendarmes will get involved, they say it is a 'neighbour problem' unless of course there is an accident.  I suppose the farmer knows this and never makes any effort to put up more substantial fencing.  However, at the moment there is a big argument between the town hall and another farmer for exactly the same reason, but the town hall can deal with it as the land being invaded by the animals (in this case sheep), is owned by the commune.  This has had a good effect on my neighbour who is frightenes he is going to get the same treatment and have his rental agreements revoked, so he is grovelling around fixing fences, and tells me a friend is coming to erect better fences with him this month......we will see if this happens.

Meanwhile I do love these cows and there are calves at all times of the year and at least they have a reasonable life here, free range in the mountains and are not crated up cruely for veal, I just wish they were not SO free range and did not have a liking for my vegetables.......

Spinning - my first 'Art Yarn'

Pic. 1  The two finished singles on my old Haldand castle wheel, single treadle, double drive.

Pic. 2  The two bobbins close up, the purple is a mix of purple, pink and turquoise merino, combed with silk.

The turquoise bobbin is again a mix of merino and silk.

Pic. 3  Good planning, more by luck than judgement......The purple yarn is more slubby and I tried to estimate the amount of turquoise, in the end I just spun what I had carded and hoped for the best.  I had a yard left, which I used to tie the skein on the kniddy knoddy.

Pic. 4  The very full bobbin. Just had enough space on he bobbin after I plied the singles together....!!  Only just.

The skein is still on the kinddy knoddy at the moment, I will wash it and beat it before I go to bed and it will dry on the Rayburn - these was 100 yards in total plied, not as much as I had hoped for but as a beginner it is really difficult to estimate how much yarn I will make.  I have checked on ravelry http://ravelry.com for patterns for 100 yards of bulky and I have seen a neckwarmer I could adapt a little.  The purple and silk I have blogged about previously on here (see archives), was a similar amount but it was not enough to even make a hat, so I compromised and used up some scrap fluffy acrylic in a toning purple, now I have a pixie hat with ear flaps - photo to follow.

Have you had a look at the You Tube video in the right column of links yet?  It seems such an easy way to put beads into yarn that I am going to try this, probably my next project.  In fact I am unfortunately on my own at the moment as we had an urgent call from our new neighbours about an hour ago, her husband had been taken to Narbonne hospital by the pompiers (firemen and emergency service) this morning, with complete kidney failure and has since been transferred to Perpignan, so my husband has taken her to Perpignan, about an hour and a half from here.  So I will be sitting up waiting for them to get back, I have made up a bed for the neighbour in case she does not want to be on her own in her own house.  So while I am waiting I will be threading beads on to little pieces of wool roving.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM WINDY FRANCE

Dave and Josie would like to wish all their family and friends a very Happy New Year and welcome to the 'Tens', the new decade........

We were at quite a bizzare New Year Party last night....watch this space later for some photos of our Christmas and New Year.

A BIENTOT........

 

Sunday Dec. 27th. Spinning and animal care day

This is a cat bed.....?  Frida the hunting dog adopted the bed as soon as she came to live with us.  The following month Spitty the cat and her three tiny kittens moved in.  The cat above is Marmy, one of those kittens, he has always been bold and the first of these wild kittens to venture into the house.  He has always made a fuss of Frida and often lays along the dog's back on the sofa.  Frida was in the cat bed asleep and Marmy just pushed his way into a tiny corner, there are never any complaints from Frida, she never growls, and lets the cats sit all over her.

Today has been wonderfully sunny and a heady 11 degrees, so we have been out cleaning chicken coops and making some urgent repairs.  Termites or ants have softened one of the big oak posts that hold up the roof to the llama and goat shelter, and the goats have eaten all the wood, so there is just the outline of the post now!!  Fortunately we made the shelter on 'earthship' principles, using old car tyres filled with drink cans and sand, covered with soil.  This goes up to roof level and protects the whole structure from wind.  Some of the soil has erroded away now and of course the llama and goats have trodden paths all over it now, and perch on various levels in the evening sun.  We had to clean out the remains of the old oak beam and tidy up a little to prepare for a new post.

Dennis Hopper the actor has a fantastic home in California built in 'earthship' style, check it out on the internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship


http://www.fabprefab.com/fabfiles/containerbayhome.htm 

We also 'liberated our 3 latest chicks.  They are about 6 weeks old, hatched very late by BTM a silly chicken who hid in the canal for 3 weeks to brood them, we did not find them until they all trooped out behind her one day and it was a race to get to them and catch them before the cats heard them, we managed it and put them into a cage with the mother inside the chicken coop.  Today as it was warm and sunny we let them out into the coop and waited.  It was ages until one of them, a black bantam hen, ventured out and she was completely stunned by the pea fowl in the next enclosure, and the pea hen was mesmerised by her and displayed her tail feathers to her, I have only seen peacocks do this.  We stayed close to the chicks for a while as we were recovering some of our hay from the hay stack which had got wet in the extreme weather we have been having.  We put it in the sun out of the reach of the goats.

The next job was to trim the hoof of one of the goats, he limps because of arthritis and the hoof or nail on this leg always grows faster than the others as he does not put enough pressure on the leg to wear the nail down quick enough.

It is 3pm now and will only be warm for about another hour so time for a cup of tea, then before we realise it it will be time to shut all the animals away for the night.  We will need to so this early tonight as soon as it is dusk to make sure the new chicks go in safely, we will probably have to put them up on a perch this evening unless they go back in their cage.

I have been wanting to spin some yarn for a few days now and yesterday evening I prepared a batch of turquoise, magenta and pink merino with some pink banana fibres and some silk, by combing the colours together on my hand carders.  I was able to do this quite quickly as all the fibres we already bought as prepared rovings.  I divided the colours and brushed them together to make about 14 rolags ready to spin.

I had also bought some pink and orange rovings from Etsy (www.etsy.com) in the US which had arrived just before Christmas.  It had been hand dyed by the seller and I was a little disappointed in the colour and it seemed to be slightly felted, but it may have been just because it had been squashed and packed for a week or so. Anyway I decided not to recomb it and spit it into finger-width pencil rovings instead, something I have never done before.  I will spin this as thick and thin and experiment with it as I am not too keen on the fibre.

Christmas Eve - HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUT THERE

Dave and Josie wish all their family 

and friends a very Happy Christmas 

and New Year

If this is the first time you have visited this blog feel free to trawl through the archives and see what we have been up to for the last few months.  

There is also a link to You Tube you can use from this site.  

If you want to keep up with postings on this blog then click the 'Follow' button and you will be notified of new postings.  

There is a list of blogs and sites I use, mainly for information on peacocks, glass fusing and spinning, I add and change these regularly.  You will also find a silly gadget to feed some fish.

Today I have been working at the town hall trying to get the municipal bulletin out before Christmas Day, and there was also a big discussion about the usual problems of cows wandering about everywhere, which is one of my pet hates.  Tomorrow I have offered to go in early to help staple and distribute the bulletin, then we will have cackes at the Mairie before getting home to start the short holiday.  There is no 'Boxing Day' in France, and so the day after Christmas Day is not a holiday, although this year being a Saturday most people will not be at work.  In France, if a public holiday falls on a weekend, tough, there is no day given in lieu.

The snow situation in northern France is as bad as in the UK and just as in the UK there will be many people on the roads today trying to get to their families, and heaven knows how Eurostar are going to get their backlog shifted in time.  Easy Jet was ready to make flights on Christmas Day and was calling in staff, but apparently the Civil Aviation Authority say that the airports will not be open.....well maybe they will be this year to get people home.  Just like there was never any tennis played on the middle Sunday at Wimbledon until one year when there was so much rain they needed the time to finish all the matches.

We had to retrieve one of our hens from under the haystack this evening.  We were one hen short when we counted yesterday and thought she had been taken by a fox or something, but she was out eating this morning when I fed the cats.  When she was not in the coop today we went to look for her and found her sitting on a clutch of about 15 eggs under the plastic tarpaulin covering the hay.  She protested when we picked her up and took her to the coop, and as it was dark in there we had to actually place her up on a perch, this always causes some clucking and shifting about in the coop as all the other chickens had already chosen their places for the night.

We are waiting now for our first blue eggs from the Araucana hens we have.  Very strange hens these, they have no tails and they have horizontal feathers on their 'cheeks that stick out giving them quite a comical look.  All this and they lay blue eggs.  They are approximately 18 weeks old now and should be at point of lay at 20 weeks but this of course may be delayed because of the cold weather.  We have not had any 'wind' eggs yet from them - these are thgeir first strange efforts at laying eggs and can be small soft shelled things.  I'll post some photos of these hens after Christmas.

Time for bed I think, I have promised to be at the town hall before 9am and I am not usually awake befor that time, and it is Christmas Eve after all.

Don't forget to put a drink out for Father Christmas and carrots for the reindeers.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE

Dave and Josie wish everyone

a very Happy Christmas

and New Year 

Thankfully, we spoke to Andrew last night and during the conversation we realised that Christmas Day is actually on Friday, we had thought it was Thursday......this is what happens to people who retire to the wilds and rarely check the date on the telly.

Our snow has disappeared for the moment but I hear you are having a white Christmas in the UK nearly everywhere.  We are having a very quiet Christmas here this year, on our own for the first time in 26 years!!  

This has not stopped us buying in enough food for a 6 week seige, and we have not forgotten the wild birds, we went out of our way yesterday to go to a hunting/fishing department to buy some mealworms for the robins.......mad or what?

Bookmark this blog if you want to periodically catch up on our news out here,  look on the right in the archives, there are plenty of articles about us and the animals,  we will post more news and pictures on Boxing Day, in the meantime eat loads but stay in the warm.

Purple,magenta and glitz mix.......and a trailer of snow to Narbonne.....

The purple and magenta with glitz that I spun last week turned out very well, and is soft and glitzy.  This trial square means I can match it to a pattern.  I knitted it upstraight away but just didn't quite have enough to finish the hat, so I unpicked it (frogged it in the US!), I can still knit the same pattern but will make a band of fluffy mohair on the brim just so that I have enough wool.

On Thursday we went to Narbonne Christmas shopping,  which is about 50Km away, down on the coast of the Mediterranean.  We attached the trailer to our car as we intended to bring back our Christmas tree.  We parked in the main Carrefour car park at the Tridome in Narbonne but our car and trailer were causing a stir.  Everyone was staring and commenting on the snow on the roof of the car, and then people spotted the trailer which had loads of snow in it.  We though it would be much warmer in Narbonne but it was still minus 1 degree so all the snow stayed int he trailer.  We came out with our trolley load of shopping to find the trailer surrounded by kids poking the snow and some were making snowballs.  One mother nearby said her daughter aged 3 had never seen snow and was fascinated.  LOL :o)  made our day......

Since then we have had further snow showers and temperatures have not risen above 2 degrees maximum all week.....thank goodness for Ugg boots.  This evening is the carol concert in the old church - which has no heating.....Hmmm...I am wearing a large cape to hid the hot water bottle I will have underneath - taking no chances.  Made a big pot of vin chaude, spiced wine today and the smell has permeated through the whole house.....very Christmassy.

It has just started to snow again but we think it is really too cold for it to be much, but who knows, it will add to the atmosphere of the carol concert anyway.  Off to chase chickens and ducks into coops now before we go out, it is still light so it may be hard but always good for a laugh, they may all be inside because it is so cold.

21:50

Just returned from the carol concert and supper at Rik and Christel's in the village, and we are in a blizzard again, the roads covered in about half an hour. The neighbour's cows and calves were all sat on the road to our property, they moved as we drove past which was a shame as they needed to be there under the trees to be out of the snow, one little calf was only born yesterday - hard life this being born into a blizzard and then the first human you see comes and inflicts pain clipping a tag in each ear.

The Christmas tree is up, it has survived half a day without a cat climbing it, but give it time.  Last year we had just brought the tree inside and had to go quickly to the village, when we got back there was a chicken sitting in the christmas tree,  'Dave, there's a chicken in the Chritmas tree', is not a phrase you hear very often, not in normal household's anyway.

It certainly snowed..........and more to come

 

 

The animals were not impressed.......except Larry the llama who is always happy.  The chickens were all crushed up behind the one or two blocking the door and they eventually pushed their way back in.  The ducks jumped in their pink bath and skidden on the ice - missed that shot.........and the cows were looking for grass near the trees.

Will write more later but I have to go out to the village to our craft workshops, we are finishing boxes to sell and wrapping presents for the village tree.