Snow covered frozen lake

The phrase froid ressenti is appearing on the weather forecasts a lot these days. It translates literally as ‘cold felt/experienced’ but is pretty much the same as refroidissement éolien (wind chill factor) – nothing to do with windmills (éoliennes) this time!) Frequently the froid ressenti is 7 or 8 degrees colder than the actual temperature. I imagined that someone was estimating this, but the computation of wind chill factor is based on very sound science.

Wind chill is the felt air temperature on exposed skin. The first wind chill formula was created by Paul Siple and Charles Passel while working in Antartica. You can see what must have motivated them! They expressed wind chill in watts of heat lost per square metre of skin.  This didn’t catch on terribly well, so the formula was revised a few times by other people and these days it reflects the notion of equivalent temperature. This is what the formula looks like:

T_wc = 13.12 + 0.6215 T_a – 11.37 V^+0.16 + 0.3965 T_aV^+0.16

where _w is the wind chill index in Celsius, T_a is the air temp in Celsius V is the wind speed at 10 metres (standard anemometer height), in kilometres per hour (km/h).

Simple! So, the figures appearing on the météo each day have been carefully worked out after all.

Caiti hijacked Rusty Deux briefly!

There wasn’t too much noticeable wind chill today, which has been a balmy minus 4 actual temperature wise, although that’s dropping fast now that evening is coming. We fired up Rusty Deux the tractor to deliver hay bales to the llamas, sheep and goats. Then we drove down to the cabin to fetch the gas bottles. Our central heating is dodgy so we might need to get the gas heaters going.

One way to carry gas bottles around

I love the passenger seat on Rusty Deux. You get great views from up there. It’s quite deadly trying to take photos though, since it’s a bumpy ride and the seat is a small square of metal with a tiny bit of rail behind it so very easy to slip off!

And I did the famous End To End Ice Walk today – my death defying walk across our lake. It’s used to be a Christmas Eve tradition (the rest of the family were nobly prepared to share my pressies between them if I fall through the ice) but the last two years we haven’t been iced up by then. So it’s slipped back a bit. I don’t know how long the lake is exactly but it’s a 10 acre lake so it’s pretty big! It’s also pretty deep so I’m very careful on the way. Any cracks or strange sounds send me scuttling to the bank right away.

Tomorrow we’ll profit from the big freeze to do some tidying up along the banks. There are over hanging branches that need sawing off. It will be a lot easier doing them standing on the ice than from the rowing boat, which is what we’d thought we’d be having to do this winter since it started so mild.

Icicles over the stream

First up, we’ve brought the generator indoors so it’s handy if things go black. We’ve lost the power before during bad weather, many times, so we’re being prepared.

I must be spending at least an hour a day just filling up water buckets with hot water for the animals as the current supply either freezes or is drained by thirsty animals. They’re all indoors eating hay and that makes them drink more than normal. When they’re eating grass, llamas go for days without needing water. The watering cans are staying in the kitchen between uses to keep them warm. Relatively speaking, that is. It’s been around 8 degrees C in the kitchen today, and that’s with the radiator on. Putting French windows in the northern end of the room wasn’t our best idea!

All the animals are either in or have access to shelter. It’s a bit crowded in the corner stable where Denis the llama and Maisy the goat have been temporarily joined by Dude and Dudette (aka Cuppucine and Zebulon, the two small alpine goats we inherited for reasons that still escape me!) D and D drive us insane since they’re typical goats and a right pain, but we haven’t been driven to turning them into curry yet!

A bit crowded but cosy

White Bun is looking after herself just fine. She spends most of her time in the hay barn but comes to nibble grass every now and again. The guinea pigs moved into the barn a while ago and are keeping cosy in there.

The cats spend a lot of time trying to get into the house and generally being rebuffed, unless they look really pathetic, but for the most part they curl up in one of the stables in the hay. The chickens and turkeys refuse point blank to come out of their stable any more, so I keep them topped up with straw, grain and water. Even the sheep are staying in their shelter, despite their mega thick woolly coats.

So all the animals are warm and coping well. As for us, we’re keeping the fire stoked up and wearing a lot more clothes than normal. Gloves, scarfs and socks get wet regularly since we’re sloshing so much water ar0und, and trudging through deep snow, so there’s always some drying in front of the fire.

And we’re eating a lot of pumpkin soup! The grand froid isn’t getting us down. (Well, maybe just a little since we have some frozen pipes …)

Nessie surveys the scene

It’s not the snowiest it’s ever been here at Les Fragnes, but it’s pretty impressive. We were on vigilance orange (orange alert) for snow all of yesterday, but it didn’t start falling till we were walking back with Rors from Nouzerines around half past five last night. And it just kept going. Announcements were made online and on the radio in the evening that school transport was cancelled in Creuse for the 31st Jan so Ruadhri went to bed happy in knowing that he’d be skiving off next day.

Ruadhri in the snow

The animals have varying reactions. Nessie loves it. The young cats were wary at first and aren’t massively impressed but are taking it in their stride. Suddenly Wendy doesn’t look quite so white any more.

Wendy looks a bit grubby!

The camelids are being wimpy so far. They’ve been hanging around the stable and not venturing far. But that could have something to do with the new bale of hay we put out for them in there two days ago. Llamas and alpacas are equally greedy.

No one's going far

The chickens and turkeys don’t like snow. Limpy has found a cosy place to shelter.

Limpy Chick and Number 28

We had a walk round the big lake after we’d sorted out the livestock. The trees are beautiful down there.

And finally my attempt at an artistic shot!

Off to check out what the road is like next and then after dinner I think a bit of sledging is in order. Usually we sledge down the hill and out onto the frozen lake – great fun. However, the lake isn’t frozen yet so we need to remember to brake in time!

Stay safe and warm if you’re snowy too.

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

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!

So Les Fragnes is finally in full winter mode. The lakes have almost completely frozen over, well behind schedule. Most years I do my Christmas Eve end-to-end, death-defying walk on the big lake, but not in 2011.

The duck pond, recently refilled by November’s rain after drying out in the summer, was completely frozen …

… until Ruadhri got to work on it!

Rors seems to have been programmed since birth to break any ice he comes into contact with.

And the water butts were iced up, this one able to withstand Roly Poly’s considerable weight!

There was a heavy frost this morning. These crazy daffodils came up far too early. I hope they’ll survive the cold OK.

Our wood supply is holding up well, thank goodness.

The llamas, alpacas and sheep don’t even notice the cold. In fact, it’s their favourite kind of weather. The chickens aren’t so happy with it, but are coping. And we’ve tucked the guinea pigs up nice and warmly in their cages with bubble wrap round the sides and old coats over the top to keep the draughts out. Bunny, who roams free, seems to have hunkered down in the hay barn for the moment.

I don’t mind the cold. I prefer it to the wet, dismal (i.e. Irish) weather that we’ve had to now. Of course, if it stays like this for another six weeks and the pipes start freezing I may change my tune! At the moment it’s possible to break the ice on the animals’ water buckets and butts, but give it a few more subzero days and they’ll be solid. It’ll be in and out with a kettleful of boiling water than.

But for the time being, I like winter.

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!

Chris and Rors inspect the roots of the pine tree

As it fell, it had taken down a fairly substantial beech tree with it, and also about a third of the big oak tree. There was an awful lot of cubic footage of timber blocking our path.

Chris reversed back to the house and we bustled in to text the news to Benj and Caits. Rors phoned school to say he wouldn’t be in this morning, and maybe not all day depending on how long it took us to clear the drive. We told Benj to start walking home from Limoges (we were meant to be collecting him on Sunday) and began to make arrangements to get Caits back from the lycée bus. Normally she comes home at lunchtime on Friday and I pick her up at 2. That wasn’t going to happen today!

Two massive trunks we've got to saw through! OK, Chris has to.

Once it got a bit lighter, we walked round the estate, clearing the grills for all three lakes as the water was nearly going over the top of them. We’ve been deleafing them every day recently, and just as well as there’s a heck of a lot of water coursing down the slipways at present. There were a few more small trees blown down by the big lake, and a number of branches, but nothing disastrous. We checked all the animals and filled the outdoor guinea pig cages with straw practically to the roof to keep them warm.

Pine trees are very shallow rooted

We were about to start chainsawing when the next big wave of tempest swept in so we retreated indoors and hunkered down till early afternoon. Ruadhri’s teacher optimistically rang at 11.30 to ask if he would in for school dinner! I explained that we hadn’t been able to clear our way out yet – there was a lot of tree to move. And then the Berlin Wall blew down – the temporary divider Chris and I rigged up the other week to keep the sheep out of the llama field while allowing them access to the stable. We put it back up in the driving rain, but ten minutes later another strong gust sent it barrelling down the field. I nipped out and lured the sheep into the turkey’s stable. I didn’t want to take the risk of them getting in with the llamas and then pushing through the non-sheep-proof fence at the back into Yann’s large fields. No way was I chasing sheep around in this ghastly weather. Every time we went out we got soaked to the skin within seconds. It was truly grim.

Then suddenly the sun came out, the wind died down and it was beautiful, so it was time to set to work.

It took a lot of effort but we got it clear in a couple of hours.

Nessie never helps much

So we can get out and about again now.

Finished - free again!

Our phone cable has come down up by the gate but is safely on the grass. And the interent is working fine, which is all that matters! I hope it won’t take Telecom five weeks to sort this out like it did the last problem we had with a leany pole.

So, that was our first storm of the season. Plenty more to come I dare say …

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

At least Bertie is well behaved!

Our main job today was to re-engineer the fencing so that the three sheep and Seamus, the alpaca who shares their field, could get into shelter. Up to now they’ve been fine hunkering down under the trees at the end of the field. But it’s getting colder by the day and so they needed to be able to get into one of the stables. To this we’ve had to create a corridor across the front of the llamas‘ big field so that the sheep can get into one of the stables near the fron of the barn, and the llamas can get into the larger one at the back. This is only for the next few months, and we also need to be able to get through this fencing several times a day to check the camelids regularly. So we couldn’t do our usual post-bashing-in and nailing-on-wiring routine, which we’re really good at now.

The sheep exploring their new territory

It was time to go scavenging. We rifled through the woodshed and the stables and found some very useful huge bits of wood that we inherited with the farm. Whatever they actually were, they are perfect to keep sheep and llamas separated. (There’s no problem mixing the two species, it’s simply that we need to keep the sheep out of the main part of the llama field since it isn’t sheep-proof along the back fence.) We still have some of our large order of chestnut poteaux (posts) left, so we lugged a few of those into position. Chris dug out extra-long nails and after some enthusiastic hammering, we had a wooden Berlin Wall in place. There’s a wire section at the far end that I can easily unhook to get through, and it’s tractor-wide so we can bring either Rusty Deux or Sea Blue out from the hay barn when we need their services around the rest of the farm.

It won’t win prizes for looks, but it’s effective, and most importantly, has only cost a few euros for the posts and the nails since everything else is recycled. Sure I’d love swanky post and rail fencing and classy wooden gates for my fields, but we’d have to sell the house or the children to afford those so we make do and mend, and very successfully.

A final bit of DIY was needed. The llamas were now cut off from the stable with their bale of hay, which the sheep have delightedly requistioned, so we delivered another one into the top stable. Llamas are notoriously messy eaters. Let them loose on a hay bale and they’ll eat a few mouthfuls but spread the rest all over the ground. They’ll lay on that, then pee on it, and so it’s no longer edible. All very wasteful. Anyway, we’ve called their bluff. I’ve constructed another effective mangeoire out of pallets. The first model, top of the range, used bungees, but this one is using string. Works every bit as well!

The llamas approve!

Now our animals can stay well fed and warm in even the worst blizzard, which is probably more than could be said for us! Even with all Chris’s hard work on exterior plastering and constant upgrading of the insulation, there are draughts here and there in the house when the wind really gets going. And I must go and do a winter reserves shop to stock the cupboards up ready for the inevitable session, and usually several, of being snowed-in for days on end. We’ve been lulled into a false sense of security with the mild November and relatively kind winter so far. Time to act.

Turkey proof gate - patent pending