We anticipated at least some pipes freezing up, and that’s what has happened upstairs. Our old farm cottage faces optimistically south with the back wall taking the full brunt of the wickedly cold north winds that make Creuse winters so memorable. Despite thick layers of insulation on the inside, and the layer of enduit (plaster) on the outside that Chris applied during the summer, and not forgetting the two foot of stone and mud in-between, the cold gets through.

I had a nice hot bath on Thursday night, and the water is still sitting there on Saturday morning. It won’t drain away. Chris has drilled, poked, prodded as far as he can up the offending pipes but there seems to be a lump of ice just beyond his reach. The kitchen wastewater pipes have frozen too with some washing-up water joining my lurking bathwater before we realised what was going on. And I can’t use the washing machine for similar reasons so I’ll have to wash through the kids’ clothes for school next week the old-fashioned way this weekend. Rors gets through so many socks!

And last night, for fun, the electrics in the kitchen decided to stop working for reasons we can only imagine are connected with the extreme cold. Luckily, the kitchen is currently colder than my fridge at about six degrees (that French window facing north is the main culprit), so at least food won’t be going off! The main worry is that someone will trip over or strangle themselves in all the wiring and extensions Chris has strung up around the place to bring some power there.

I cancelled my trip with Caiti to Grenoble for the journée portes ouvertes at the University there because of the adverse weather. It was disappointing for us both, but sensible. Last night I took Rors into Boussac to see Le Chatpotté (Puss in Boots) at the cinema. I was well out of my comfort zone driving in, as the D2 had sheets of black ice over it in places. Specifically in places where certain farmers have taken down the trees and ripped up the roadside hedges. Why can’t the leave them alone? I didn’t go over 50km till we got to the main Boussac road, which is one that’s maintained by the Département, as opposed to the commune, and was blissfully clear and salted. The minor roads are dealt with by the communes and so subject to widely varying standards of treatment. It doesn’t look like Bussière does anything. Their stretch of the  D2 was worse even than our tiny little road which the maintenance guy at Nouzerines had bulldozed with his multi-purpose tractor/digger/hedge-distructivator.

Anyway, the film was fun and Rors got his long-promised treat, and a second one one when he saw a huge rat scuttling along the pavement! The things we do for our kids. (OK, my gesture doesn’t quite match Sarko’s action in flying his tummy-bug struck son home from Turkey in a private jet at a cost of €35,000 to the taxpayer, and a huge carbon footprint, but hey.) I survived the stress of the drive. But I don’t think I would have driving 500 km to the Alps in ever dropping temperatures. So hopefully we’ll be able to get Caiti up to Paris next week to visit the two universities there that she’s interested in. I hope so but the extreme cold is continuing for the next ten days with more snow on the way. So we’ll see.

All three lakes are well and truly frozen now. At least that will keep the cormorants off them. We went down to inspect the big lake and found hundreds of little roach wiggling around in the mud just below the ice. We’ve never seen this before in the yearly lake freezes. The fish seem to be displaying spawning behaviour by shoaling together in the shallows. We’d noticed some going on a week or so ago, when it was still unseasonably mild. But why they should be doing it in such cold, I’m not sure. They don’t seem to be stuck there, although the cold is making some of them dopey. Most of them wriggle away after a while. It’s quite a mystery.

Nessie wasn’t bothered by that, and was happy to sit on the ice and watch the world go by, with a couple of metres of very cold water underneath her!

As visitors to our gite and fishing lakes will be aware, we are building up an old style farm with a selection of animals. OK, they didn’t have llamas on an old fashioned farm but that is another story). Currently we have llamas, alpacas, sheep, turkeys and  chickens and pets such as a dog, some cats and guinea pigs. Now we are planning to expand into old breed pigs. In preparation for this I attended a pig experience day held in Poitou-Charente by David  and Lorraine at Le Logis old breeds farm (www.lelogisfrance.com). Before this course I hadn’t been closer to a pig than the supermarket meat counter!

Berkshire pigs

It was an old fashioned drive across France. I say old fashioned because the centre of France has no east-west motorways, so it was a case of travelling from town to town like England in the 1960s. It took 3 ½ hours to drive 150Km west to Poitiers and then 30 minutes to drive the last 60km south on the motorway to arrive at the pretty Charentais farm. After coffee and introductions we went out to get hands-on experience, starting with feeding and maintenance. We tiptoed past one of the farrowing stalls where one of the sows had given birth to a litter the previous night. Lorraine explained how critical the first 24 hours were to the welfare of the new litter and Mum can be very touchy.

We first met the Berkshire pigs that Le Logis is becoming famous for and it was immediately obvious that these animals were a cut above any farm animals I’d met up to now.  The pig is rated the 4^th most intelligent in the animal kingdom, only behind chimps, dolphins and elephants. The Berkshires trotted over to greet us, vocalizing amiably (it would be an understatement to just say grunting like in a childrens story). They tucked into their food and played around with the buckets afterwards. Lorraine explained that they loved to play with toys and that an overweight pig could be slimmed down with a toy that had some treats concealed within.

We topped up their shelters with straw and I was amazed at how clean and tidy they kept their sleeping quarters. I know some teenagers who could learn a thing or two from them (mentioning no names).

Gloucester Old Spots

Lorraine talked us through the various breeds that they have at the farm, not just Berkshires but Gloucester old spots and the rather fetching Oxford Sandy and Black, also known as the Plum Pudding pig!

All too soon it was time to drive back to Notaire’s but with plenty of time for planning where to raise the pigs; in the wooded section below the house lake where they could have a very naturalized life or should we use them to turn over the cereal field next to house where we could spend more time with them. Watch this space and I will keep you posted on our progress.

Rounding up an escapee

France now has a pair of pandas at Beauval. We visited there last summer and at the time we commented on how OTT the Chinese section of the park seemed to be, with statues, pagodas, lanterns but very few animals. Little did we know Beauval was gearing up for pandas. Certainly there was no mention of them at the zoo. But then they don’t sell batteries so they’re fairly clueless. A bit of advance publicity sur place wouldn’t have come amiss.

Anyway, Huang Huang and Yuang Zi arrived on 15th January to great excitement. They were the first pandas to set paw in France for eleven years. They were transported by FedEx in a specially painted aeroplane, and then by road in specially painted vans with a police escort from the airport to Beauval. Yes, you read that right – police escort. Your guess is as good as mine as to why! Whether it was to keep the pandas in, or panda-nappers out, who knows. But it was successful and the pandas arrived safely and probably very puzzled at their new home. The public will be let loose on the pandas on 11th February. They need a few weeks to settle in.

Huang Huang and Yuang Zi are here for 10 years at a cost of around €750,000. Beauval is remaining tightlipped about the exact sum. So expect a hike in the already fairly hefty entry charge. The money is apparently going towards protecting pandas in the wild in China. And heaven knows they need it since they are the world’s dopiest animals.

I saw Edward Heath’s pandas, Chia Chia and Ching Ching, at London Zoo in the 1970s. They just sat and ate bamboo, as you’d expect, and were generally the most boring animal in the zoo. I have been completely underwhelmed by pandas for a long time.

Whilst there is no doubt that they are very striking and harmless animals, let’s face it they’re hopeless. The female comes into heat for between 3 and 7 days once a year. So if either she or the male has a headache during that brief space of time, that’s it, the chance for making a baby panda has gone for another year. I saw a TV programme about pandas in an American zoo. The zookeepers were desperate for the pandas to breed and were monitoring Mrs Panda constantly for the telltale signs of her arousing herself from her usual semi-comatose, bamboo-munching state to being hormonal. The second they reckoned she was ready, they unleashed Mr Panda. He made a couple of extremely feeble attempts to mount her then gave up. Mrs P went all huffy and then the pair of them sat and sulked in opposite sides of the cage. (I hope this doesn’t remind you of anything!)

So the scientists swooped. They first knocked out Mr P and got busy with rubber gloves and syringes and extracted some semen, and then knocked out Mrs P and gave her AI. What a palaver. But it worked and a miniscule baby panda appeared 5 months later. It weighed 5 ounces. Baby pandas are 1/900th the size of their mama. I mean, come on. How pathetic is that! Human babies are around 1/15th to 1/20th of their mum’s size. Admittedly, delivering one of them hurts like blooming heck and traumatises you for life but it’s possible. Llama cria are roughly 1/8th to 1/10th of their mother’s weight, and you don’t hear them complaining. And what’s more, if a panda has  more than one cub, she has a breakdown. She is incapable of looking after two at the same time, so just leaves one to die. Pandas are severely survivally challenged. They really need to get their act together.

Limpy

We have a missing chicken situation tonight. When I went out to put the turkeys and hens to bed, I couldn’t find Limpy anywhere. Limpy is a Labelle chicken, and must be about three years old now. We bought her and five of her siblings for the freezer, but she was trodden on by a llama when she was quite young. She couldn’t walk at all for about a month, so every morning we carried her out to the garden and every evening we carried her back to a comfy nesting box in the hen stable. She became very tame because of that, and we grew fond of her, so she became a pet and escaped ending up as Dagg food.

She doesn’t wander far since, as you might have guessed, she’s got a bad limp. I’ve checked all her usual daytime haunts so the chances are that she’s settled down somewhere for the night. I was a bit late to see to them this evening and the weather’s bad, which often makes the chickens go to roost earlier than normal. It’s very gloomy in the barn so she might have been there somewhere and I just couldn’t see her. I hope she turns up tomorrow.

Our broody bantam had a whole stable to nest in

Chickens are very much in the news at the moment in France. Back in 1999, European legislation was put in place to ban battery hen farming by 2012. Why it should take 12 years to get round to supplying hens with slightly larger cages escapes me. With a bit of effort I’m sure farmers could have managed it within a year or so, and they certainly should have, morally. Politics obviously had a lot to do with it. Anyway, now chickens must have larger cages so that they have room to preen themselves and turn round. Until the present that hasn’t always been possible. It’s horrific, and is why I gave up buying battery eggs many years ago, long before we got chickens of our own.

There are in fact two types of hen accommodation that are allowed under the new legislation: 1. Enriched cages which give the chicken 750 square centimetres, and 2. non-cage systems with nests (1 per 7 chickens) and no more than 9 chickens per square metre. In addition, both types of housing must provide perches (15cm per hen), litter for them to peck and scratch at and access at all times to a feeding trough (12 cm per hen). These still aren’t overly generous allowances for them.

Here's Madge, a Limousin chicken

It seems so sad to me that battery chickens have been treated so abominably up to now – and still are. There is a high level of non-compliance. 1st January this year was the deadline, and European health minister John Dalli has said there’s going to be zero tolerance for farms that have flouted the law. Legal action will be taken within the next few days to stop hen farmers not meeting regulations from selling eggs to shops and supermarkets. This could mean a shortfall of 51 million eggs for Europe in the short term. Not here though. We always have fresh eggs to spare and there are still a load in the freezer.

Chickens are troopers. They’re stoic and adaptable and will put up with anything, and that’s why they’ve been so abused in the past. If they’d only stopped laying eggs in their rotten battery conditions then something would have been about it a long while ago. As it is, chickens just keep going. They’re born survivors. Long after humans have died out, there’ll still be chickens on the planet – mark my words!

We were close to home and Benj and Caits had gone on ahead with the key since Rors was getting a bit whiney and starting to dawdle and they were getting impatient. Caits wanted to get back to her Kindle and Benj needed to be back in touch with his petite amie (girlfriend). Suddenly Caiti reappeared round a hurriedcorner, saying there was a dead deer that seemed to be caught on the fence. We  to investigate. Sadly it looked like she was right. But then, as Nessie the dog came up for a sniff, the deer gave a cry and moved, and we saw that it was caught in a snare and struggling to breathe.

Well, we couldn’t leave it there. Chris tried to free its neck, but the chevreuil became very lively and noisy at this point. So Benj held the animal as still as he could while Chris battled with the metal loop. He finally got it off. The chevreuil collapsed in a heap. It must have been caught there for a long while, possibly more than a day, since it was totally exhausted. Even with five people and a dog so close to it, it couldn’t move any more.

We watched anxiously for a moment, worrying that we’d been too late in our rescue attempt, but after a few minutes the deer wobbled to its feet and lurched drunkenly off into the undergrowth.

We examined the snare. It was attached to the barbed wire fencing at the side of the lane.

Some research when we got home revealed that it was a stop snare (collet muni d’un arrêtoir) and, incredibly, these things are legal. Well, all I can say is that whoever passed the law legalising them has never seen an animal trapped in one. It was horrific. OK, so we deprived someone of their dinner but who cares. There’s no need in this day and age to use barbaric, medieval methods of trapping a living creature. What’s more, chevreuil aren’t even on the list of nuisance animals that can be trapped (per L’arrêté du 30 septembre 1988, complété par l’arrêté du 6 novembre 2006). Also, the law says that tous les pièges doivent être visités tous les matins (article 13 de l’arrêté du 29 janvier 2007) – a snare must be checked every morning. It was nearly midday when we found our deer, and as I say, there was every indication it had been there a long time. A snare is totally indiscriminate in what it catches. It could be your cat or dog that strays and ends up in one.

I’m also pretty sure the snares (there was another close by) shouldn’t have been put alongside a public path. My understanding regarding traps of any kind is that you can only put them on your own land. Snares have to be declared at the mairie, so I may just call by and check up that these ones are registered.

I’m not anti-hunting and I’m not soppy about animals, but snares are going too far.

Anyway, our wrongly trapped deer lived to enjoy Christmas day. As did we – too much dinner and too much telly, perfect. Caiti and I set off for a bike ride in the afternoon to go and take photos of eolienne 3 from as close by as we could, but Caits got a puncture and I realised I wasn’t up to a big ride when I started wheezing. We’ve all had rotten coughs which are still bugging us. So we turned round and went home and consoled ourselves with chocolate! Well, it’s Christmas.

Haven't had the helicoptor by yet ...

We had a pre-Christmas shock a short while ago. A vanload of gendarmes pulled up outside the house and a significant amount of firepower clambered out. It was gone four o’clock, three days before Christmas. Surely they weren’t here to check Chris’s gun licences or my paperwork for the business. Everything’s in order but it’s still hassle having to dig it all out.

But no, fortunately. Apparently some horses had escaped onto the ‘main’ road and they wondered if they were ours. We only have well behaved llamas and alpacas, cats and a dog who never wander far away from the house, slightly naughty sheep and goats but they’ve never made it off our premises, and completely harmless poultry and guinea pigs here. The horses almost certainly belonged to our neighbour Yann. He has a field-full of heavy horses, Percherons and Bretons. They’re beautiful, gentle creatures. When they’re in the field adjacent to our llama field, the opposing sets of animals spend ages simply looking at each other. After a chat the gendarmes set off to see Yann and probably spend an hour or so helping to catch the horses. It was a good job we’d dealt with the turkeys in the morning. I always dread having someone call round, especially armed law enforcement officers, when either I’m busy plucking or Chris is removing various turkey body parts in the slightly gruesome preparation for the eating procedure.

We’re well known to the local police, but for non-criminal reasons. Since Chris has guns we have to get various permits approved by them every year. So we make several calls to the local station in Boussac or the one further away in Chatelus (depending on where the rural Creuse force, which seems to only consist of a couple of cops, is based at the time) to get that sorted out. They’re always very interested in the llamas. We didn’t recognise any of the gendarmes who called today. I guess they must be the holiday-cover crew, shipped in from somewhere out of the area. I hope they’re used to handing several tons of horse at a time.

An unexpected visit from the fuzz is in keeping with this Christmas holiday so far. It isn’t going according to plan. The weather’s rotten and we’re all full of colds so the crafty activities and long, healthy walks I’d mapped out for us to do aren’t happening. I still have to boil the puddings and make crackers, and I’m not entirely sure I’ve got presents for everyone either! And as well as feeling fluey, Benj is moping. He’s turned soft after three months in an overheated flat in the city. He reckons he’s cold and has borrowed clothes off practically everyone to keep warm. He also has sore teeth after the visit to the dentist on Tuesday and he’s missing his woman/women (more than one name has been mentioned!).

Things are very soggy round the farm at the moment. It’s at its most dismal.

We’ve gone from dry, concrete hard ground to waterlogged muddy mess in the space of a week. We’re on heavy clay here so it goes to crazy extremes. But on the bright side, I don’t have to fill any water buckets up for the outdoor animals. They’re collecting more than enough water from the barn roof.

Gigi refused to come out of the barn till the rain stopped

So, not a great run up to the big day. But there are still a couple of days left to get into the spirit of things. We’re not quite at the ‘bah humbug’ stage yet!

Normally this is a white alpaca in a green field! Poor muddy Mellie!

We only succeeded in dealing with two of them. Number three took off at a run when Chris came after her, and is probably still running! There’s a chance she may potter back tonight to the hen house from force of habit, but I’m not betting on it. She’s definitely smarter than your average chicken. And Chris has come to terms with being outwitted by her!

Roly the cat was very keen to help with the plucking when the time came.

That’s my job. I’m a left-handed plucker. I’m actually right-handed in everyday life but can be heavy-handed with that hand when pulling out feathers. The result is torn skin. Very unprofessional.

Anyway, one chicken is now in the freezer and the other is in the fridge for Friday night’s tea.

Friday is also carol service night. I’m doing one of the readings, and in  French! It seemed a good idea at the time when I volunteered but I’m starting to feel nervous now. Caiti has run through the pronunciation with me but there are a couple of words that keep tripping me up. Grrr. Fingers crossed I’ll get it right on the night. It’s the reading about the three kings (les roi mages) arriving in Jerusalem and asking Herod where the new king is. Hardly subtle were they!

'The Three Wise Men' by the brilliant Roger Fereday www.rogerferedayillustrator.co.uk

Back to food, it’s fish feeding season. The carp in our three lakes need extra noms (you have to know what noms means! – if not, go and look up lolcats) over winter. For most of the year they get well fed by anglers, and that’s on top of the naturally occurring food for them in their environment. All our lakes are stream fed which means edible microscopic goodies are constantly being washed into them. But the carp need a top up at this time of year to keep them in good condition. Since the lakes freeze for at least several weeks each winter, we need to get plenty of food – but not too much – in for them before that happens. So every couple of days, Chris and I lob in a carefully measured amount of carp pellets into each lake to meet the demands of its population. It’s a surprisingly fun job. The pellets make a lovely ploppy sound as they hit the water and it’s refreshingly mindless to chuck them about. The four-legged animals enjoy the occasion too. There’s a line of one dog and several cats behind us every time we head off. They snaffle up all the pellets that get dropped or misthrown (mainly by me) or otherwise don’t make it into the lakes. Even the goats like the pellets, which have a very strong fishy smell, but then goats like anything!

Our carp get through a tonne of pellets each winter

Ste Sévère is a beautiful little town in neighbouring departément Indre.

The walk begins just down the road from the shooting club the guys go to, next to this moving monument.

Poor brave Pierre Boury, killed by the Nazis in July 1944 when he was only 20. Our Benj will be 20 soon. Life’s only just got going at that age.

Rors raced ahead, enthusiastically searching for beetles (coléoptères – probably my second favourite French word after trombinoscope!). But despite looking in all the likely places, he only caught of a glimpse of a couple of beetles.

They didn’t hang around long enough to be photographed and described in detail.

We saw a lot more toadstools. Here are a few intriguing examples.

So we gave up on trying to collect coléoptère-related data and simply enjoyed the walk. OK, so we go a little lost but doing so, discovered a fascinating area of rocky outcrops. My camera batteries had run out by then, but we’ll definitely be going back and I’ll take some pics then.

And the reason we didn’t see many beetles is most likely because they’re hibernating or certainly slowing down. Invertebrates become a lot more inactive during the cold months, apart from grubs inside trees and stumps who are well insulated, or deep ground dwelling beetles. They don’t notice outside temperatures.

We’ll have to wait till spring to count our coléoptères.

The idea of these weekends is to encourage people to discover the ‘chemins’, the public footpaths and green lanes in their vicinity. There are a total of 1 million kilometres of them in France. The publicity refers to these as ‘trésors cachés’ – hidden treasures, and that is so true. We do a lot of cycling and walking as you know, and there is so much to see along these quiet pathways and tracks – trees, flowes, insects, birds, small animals, and even big animals. We often see deer and hares on our travels.

The event is organised by three nature protection groups – LPO (Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux); ASPAS (ASsociation pour la Protection des Animaux Sauvages)  and CPN (Connaître et Protéger la Nature) – Know and Protect Nature.  All three organisers are hoping to raise public awareness of the problems facing the pathways and surrounding hedgerows. These included overenthusiastic ‘fauchage’ (hedge cutting) by farmers which hamper pollinisation of wildflowers and slowly destroy the hedgerows, also pesticides, rubbish and tarring.

More about the three groups. First up ASPAS. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even know it existed. Do check out the website. They have some brave and good intentions. I may well join next year. This year I’ve been a member of SEPOL, a Limousin based bird-protection group, and much as I’d love to support every charity, until my novels make it to bestseller status I have to be strict and stick to just one. At present ASPAS is running a petition to stop hunting on Sundays. I’ve signed since it’s decidedly dodgy to go for a walk or bike ride during the hunting season, and Sunday is the only day this possible. Saturdays are work days. We’ve had several near misses from lead shot and frankly it’s dangerous.  I’m not worried by the hunting clubs who hunt together, but it’s the short-sighted very old men wandering around with their guns who scare the heck out of me.

CPN is a child-orientated group. You can find out if there’s a club near you here. CPN in France is running a beetle watch programme this year. I’ve printed out the protocol and the report to fill in. Maybe Rors and I will go looking for beetles tomorrow.

LPO’s aim is to protect birds and their habitats. So many speicies seem to be threatened these days. There’s a fun birdsong identification game on their website here.

Good old Mon Quotidien. I’ve learned a lot by using its little snippet about ‘rendez-vous sur les chemins’ as the springboard for this blog post, and hopefully you have too!