Somewhere warm to sleep

Missing cat
Lottie
Reward for finding her.



Lottie went missing again, we found her in the same place as last time, a few months ago we had a small leak from the boiler behind a plaster board wall, the boiler was dripping through the ceiling, normally this goes out side through a pipe in the wall but the pipe had frozen, Paul was at work and I wasn't aware the pipe had frozen, so I attacked the wall with a hammer, I'm not sure what I thought I was going to do when I got in but I thought there maybe a way of fitting a hose to the boiler. It was only after I made the hole I thought, I wonder, went outside a could see the ice, it took about 10 minutes of hot towels to defrost the pipe. When Paul came home from work tired a looking forward to a relaxing evening, I gently broke the news to him. He's blocked it up with a board and put a wall unit in front of it, Lottie must be eating Spinach, she managed to move the board and get to the boiler, no amount of calling or tins of tuna would entice her out, I managed to get a grip of her and pulled her out kicking and screaming. I'm not sure what she was doing there, but I had been complaining to Paul about the drop in water pressure in the kitchen, now the water pressures back up.

No longer a broody duck.

Our broody ducks stopped being broody and has left the nest, all the goose eggs have gone cold, Paul opened one and found a dead gosling inside, I've put the rest under the broody chicken but I fear it may be to late, the incubator is going on the weekend.




The nest of eggs Mike found, I binned most of the eggs but left three in the nest marked with a green marker pen, the chicken or chickens using the nest have been back so I was able to collect the fresh eggs.

My Mommy thinks I'm pretty

Working in the garden

Today Paul had a visitor that helped with the gardening rather than stopping him, our son Michael.
Paul and Mike work well together, so they got some work done. Cassie decided to help as well, Cas is a Jack Russell and would love to be a working dog but she does get in the way.
Mike also found something we didn't know was missing, a nest of Bantam eggs. I would have loved to help, but my baby brother called me on MSN and we chatted for a few minutes, well I say a few, it was nearly two hours, by then it was lunch time, maybe next week.

My brother David with wife Rebecca.

And me with his two girls, Alice and Isabel.

So much to do.

And done nothing, that sums up yesterday. a pleasant warm(ish) day, I was supposed to clean out the animals and Paul some more digging. In the car I had the key to Jillys Gite http://lustinbrittany.blogspot.com/ so before we started work we decided to drop the key off, put it in the letter box, on arrival we found Jilly hard at work gardening, we were obviously the excuse she needed to stop. Rob was staying in one of the Gite's, Rob is an English chap who has owns a plot of land near us and bought our mobile home to live in while he has a house built, at present he goes back and forth to the UK regularly so brings over lifes essentials such as English T bags for me. As I said we had lots to do but by the time we got home it was lunch time, after finishing that, Rob arrived so we had a couple of bottles (as you do) and that was the end of our plans for the day.
I did take a couple of photographs today, standing in the door way.

Some old photographs of Sixt sur Aff

Tig off ground

Your "it".

Random (very) funny

What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday, 28th of Feb, after spending the morning trimming a hedge and removing a bramble jungle, we sat in the sun eating lunch, neighbours came round and we had a few bottles of wine till the sun went round the house and put us in the shade. We didn't get a lot of sleep last night, at 2am we had a loose/lost hunt dog in the garden, our dogs were going mad, like most he was a soft friendly thing, and decided that my efforts to get him to leave was a game, he went through the gate when it was opened for him and then jumped back over when it was closed, Paul started taking him for a walk, every so often he would go off in search of something Paul would turn round and walk home, when he walked through the gate the dog seemed so pleased to see him return safe and sound. Eventually he decided to leave, obviously bored with this repetitive game. Sleep was soon disturbed with the arrival of Alan Deprey, Alan has done some work for us in the past, Paul had purchased a pig ark from a local farm but had no way of transporting it to Half Acre, spotting Alan working on a house near by Paul asked if he could borrow Alan's big trailer, of course he could, no problem, something got lost in the translation and Alan turned up at 7am ready to start work, there's no way this was possible, 7am is a little early to be waking people up on a Sunday morning to load a pig ark onto a trailer and there was no way two people would be able to do the job, Paul had arranged for Mike and Dan with Violaine and Veronique to come for lunch, with instructions to arrive early and help load the ark. Alan wasn't to upset about this and after coffee (no Pastis, that's a first) left leaving the trailer for us to use, Paul gave up on bed after that and went to let the animals out of the pens. It was a bit overcast today, shame after yesterday sunshine, but we had an enjoyable lunch aperitifs, Roast Pork and vegetables, and something the French don't have, roast potatoes with a meal, Cheese, bread and salad followed by fruit of the forest crumble with custard, the French find eating Crème Anglais hot very strange, and neither of the girls had tried a crumble before, but they enjoyed it (I think).

The pig arks in the garden awaiting doors.It needs a bit of work doing to it, its in the middle of what will be the pig run, the land divided up 50 - 50 with line running from the centre of the ark, we can then allow the pig to move to fresh land every couple of weeks just by opening a different door.