Hello All
Well it has been a fairly uneventful week in the land of Franklin. The usual things have happened daily, wake up, feed children, ferry children, feed sheep, feed adults, do some butchery work, feed dogs, fetch children, feed children and adults, go to sleep. Variations may include drive a larger distance to ferry the children to an activity, drive a larger distance still, to get to a market. 
There seems to be a theme to our lives which involves rather a lot of feeding and rather a lot of ferrying, which leads me to wonder,and has for some years now, how one can involve some kind of energy friendly management systems into our business through control of our fossil fuel usage. Quite an important issue as it is remarkable to ponder on the fact that we have progressed at such a slow rate with regard to transportation and yet at such a fast rate when one looks at milking cows with robots rather than hands, or driving tractors with GPS systems rather than people, or communicating with people across the globe using satellites and fibre optics rather than paper and ink. 
I have always resented being controlled by people, but sadly the control that is held over the general population by the people who mange the tax systems and fuel supply is really strangulating and seems to suck the energy out of the desire or ability to change the way the world is structured.
Now a few years ago Gavin was aimlessly wandering around the internet and stumbled across the aircar:

In the 1970s during fuel rationing in Zimbabwe, Gavins Grandfather used to run a Land Rover on gas from a charcoal burner. Last time I checked trees were a renewable resource and yes maybe the technology is cumbersome and crude but where is the innovation now. Talking of trees I am still trying to understand in my head why chopping trees down in La Fôret de Double to make way for oceans of roadway and concrete to put in windmills to generate power in a low wind area was ever a good idea. However if I have understood correctly a Tribunal in Bordeaux has cancelled all the windfarm development in Aquitaine. If I haven't then the suffocating powers that be are hard at work again, more worried about where their tax euros are coming from than actually conserving the planet for the generations to come. 
Oh my, I have just turned into my Father.
So on a lighter note this is Mini our last lamb of this lambing period called Mini because she fitted in Gavins hands when she was born.
See you all soon
Helen

Hello All
Well at last we have a bit of Spring and if you look very closely at my not very brilliant telephone camera photos you will see the evidence with our lovely friends the Cranes (the little black spots in the big blue bit) flying North again, and amazingly they are pretty much flying on the same day as they have been ever since we moved here.
You are quite correct there was no blog last week and I have no excuse other than fatigue from quite a hectic week. Since we last communicated we have had 60 lambs so in between bottle feeding, shoveling silage (about 400 kilos a day) feeding hay, carting water and moving fences not to mention running the butchery there is not a huge amount of time left. So onward and upward.

Here is a series of photos when all the technology and the lighting and the sheep all come together in the right place at the right time. I do think that the old girl is looking rather relieved in the final photo and probably saying well thank goodness that is all over. What you don't see is that at the end of it all she yawns quite a few times and Gavin tells me they all seem to do that, and that they are probably smelling the air to get a strong bond formed between Mum and baby.