catching up

The rain came in a deluge after the long hot summer. As is usual for the area it is either a secheresse or an inondation, (drought or floods) with not a huge amount inbetween. The grass looks greener already. Is that really possible? The animals are enjoying the cool and will shortly be released from the forests again to wander around grazing the new seasons growth. The markets have been a little subdued over the summer for practically all the stallholders. Lots of people walking, not a lot of people purchasing. The problem with having a market as a tourist attraction is that unless the tourists spend some money then the attraction will cease to be.
A new website is under construction with hopefully an easier layout for people who like to order on line. This will not change our current structure of markets and delivery services. But in the future, finances allowing, we hope to have a shop.

We have diversified a little in the last year and now have very large dogs, eggs and chickens. The dogs work hard and we have been astonished at how quickly they learn their family and their enemy. They are not to be toyed with. The chickens have fitted in to our grazing system very nicely improving the quality of the pastures by fertilising and aerating the soil. They are fascinating to watch, but are really quite awful to each other so it is difficult to have empathy with them. Be warned, introducing new chickens into an established group is not easy or advisable and really does illustrate where the expression "hen-pecked" comes from. If you have the newbie chickens in a cage close to the original birds for a while this can sometimes work to trick the originals into accepting the newbies, but not always. 

We took our eye off the ball and did not move our dogs around fast enough during the summer and had some fences stolen, whch was disappointing. It is not pleasant to know that the theives live amongst you, watching and checking  movements so they know the best moment to take advantage. The thefts that we have had have been a contributing factor to my lack of activity on the internet. A photograph which was posted last year was quickly followed by a theft of the item in the photograph. This brings me neatly to google maps whose new photographs of your property are now so clear and invasive that you may as well have a sign saying come on in and help yourself. I do recommend that you get in touch with them to blur out some of the detail if you have recently had the google car in your area, they do seem to be quite reactive.

In other news, on a more joyful note, our family is growing and Gavin and I have our first grandchild. Gavin is also now a French citizen so can finally vote after many years of only voting for a very predictable outcome in Zim. Vive la France!
See you all soon
​Helenx