for friends, family, clients. a big thankyou As important today as they were in 2012 So here I am on Christmas Eve morning trying to catch up on a little paperwork, very scary stuff and feeling slightly irritated that Gavin had forgotten to turn off his radio alarm that goes off at 6.30am during the week because that is when Alice has to be up for school. And as usual it was imposible for me to go back to sleep, so I got up accompanied by Alices gift to me for Christmas this a year, a snotty nose, sore throat and a headache, to search for some rehydration in the form of copious quantities of tea. As usual not a soul is stirring in the house and I am wondering if I can cure my cold with some good old fashioned over indulgence later....?.....  The sky is just starting to pinken up in the East and I am hoping for a glimmer of sunlight today. I cooked our ham last night in I am what is hoping is a Finnish style. My friend could only give me guidelines (she is an English speaker) as the actual recipe was written in Finnish...a challenge for most brains I think. ;) All the children are home at the moment. I will make the most of the atmosphere whilst they take over the house with noise, laughter and general sibling bickering. Supply me with mountains of washing, and tie me once again to the cooker and the kitchen sink a change and therefore a rest from the life of a butcher just before Christmas. :) :) ;)  Sausagemeat for one market The end of this year has been extraordinarily busy for us and without the family and friends who pitch in when they do to plough through the mountains of meat, salt and spice I would be a very sad and weary person. I thank them hugely for putting up with my grumpiness, lack of communication,short and sometimes curt texting and also for too much emoji-ising (new word) and not enough words with my writing. That probably goes for friends and clients too who get the slightly more dark-eyed bedraggled look during December than I aim for at other times of year. So we have passed the shortest day and the only way is up now to longer days and warmer weather again; As one of my lovely neighbours , who is 88, is so fond of telling me "that is the worst of it over, January to March is a very short part of the year".
The whole family wishes everyone a very Happy Christmas and a New Year full of new adventures and the company of friends and family. Helen Gavin, Patrick, Emily and Alice....The dogs and cats. Nougat the donkey, the chickens, the pigs and some sheep.
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 Sheep eating green grass It is an interesting thing " The peoples right to demontstrate". It is correct that people should have the freedom to speak, although one always has to be mindful whan doing it in someone elses country that you behave in the appropriate fashion. Those who are speaking freely asume and say they are doing it in the best interest of everyone. But sometimes is it only for themselves? Gavin was challenged at the road block on his way home from dropping our youngest at her ballet classes, whilst driving our electric car and told that he should be standing with the protestors because they were there for everyone. He suggested that if they had an electric car then the fuel price would not be a problem for them. Which received some blank and less than amused faces. To diffuse the situation he explained that he had 500 animals to feed, fences to move and wood to chop, and if anyone was willing to help him then he would gladly come and stand with them. Funnily enough no one stepped forward and I think they got a little fed up with his African brain and let him proceed. Ours was not the only car that was stopped and Gavin was in the queue for half an hour.... Irritating when you have things to do.  His irritation was compounded when on my arrival home from the market I informed him that we were 2 and a half tank fulls of fuel short of money this market as so many people stayed away, and I was not the only disappointed market trader..... Hmm very helpful and supportive all those blockaders.  I have to admit to being a little on the fence with the fuel price increase. On the one hand our running costs are increased on the other, burning fossil fuel is not good for the planet. Maybe the problem really is lack of forward planning by governments worldwide. If you want people to stop using their cars then you have to give them viable alternatives with regard to public transport. Living where we are there is a bus from our village 6 km away that can take you all the way to Bordeaux, or to Libourne our closest larger shopping town. I have just been on the Transgironde website and am finding it incredibly difficult to use even though the fare is only 3 euros to Libourne. There are 29 stops on the way to Libourne and it take 44 minutes plus my 9 min car travel time, 20 min by bicycle or 1 hour 10 minute walk to the village. At the beginning it tells me there are 4 buses a day and then I cannot find out when they are. Or in Montpon there is a railway line that can take you to Bordeaux or Perigueux. There are about 9 trains a day that go to Libourne not bad, however the cost is extortionate as soon as you are more than one person. And the car is once again the cheaper option. There are also the logistics of carrying all your shopping from A to B. So the obssesion of town planners creating out of town shopping facilities (not sure if anyone read last weeks blog) so that now all the town folk and all the country folk have to drive to get to the points of shopping because the centres no longer have everything people need. Town planners and also discount stores, and in that term I include all major supermarket chains, have successfully managed to increase the quantity of cars on the road, I don't know tenfold, more, in what 50 years?  Not sure what the solution is really. But I think taking responsibility for your own actions is a starting point, and allowing people to earn a living when and where they need to is another.
Change is a difficult one for people to grasp and to act upon. Maybe rather than attacking and forcing people through financial disincentives (not sure if that is a word), one needs to gently cajole and persuade them into it. Have a lovely day today wherever you are, and however you are travelling. Helen  I wonder if children in general, of this generation, have a different way of looking around themselves, or whether it is just that my children who are so countryfied they don't know any other way of looking at their environment. Alice asked me on the way home tonight what used to be in the field next to Lidl in Montpon. I said, "it was just a field and once a year they grew tulips for everyone to buy to raise money for charity". "Oh" said Alice "that's sad, that it is not a field anymore and that Montpon centre is empty". "Indeed it is", I said. And we then had a chat about why planning committees don't seem to learn anything about town planning, and still persist in allowing large companies to build on green field sites and then wonder why everyone has to use a car to go shopping. And then are flabbergasted when the city centres become dull and lifeless because nothing happens there anymore, so drugs and crime and angry people become the norm. Remarkable that all that training of supposedly intellectual people to endeavour to improve the lives of ordinary folk turns out to be something that is controlled by money and who know who best. In other news Gavin took some pictures of tiny mushrooms....  ...And yes these are sheep poos and the mushrooms were growing there less than 24 hours after they were pooped! Amazing!  Here is our cat whisperer hard at work taming one wild kitten so we can get her spayed. And then lo and behold Mummy cat who had disappeared before we could spay her has turned up with another 2. (Pictures will follow eventually.) I hasten to add that none of these cats were ours and all of ours are spayed, but all you cat whisperers out there will know that it can be a long-winded process cat training. I do wish more people would get their cats fixed. It is looking like this will be an expensive Christmas, knowing my luck the 2 new ones will be girls as well. Below is a more trained of the species. Although I am sure Peaches would deny that vehemently ;)   Hard day at the office Hello there Looks like my husband has been angling for a holiday again. Though he did not quite manage to injure himself enough this time to get a hospital stay. Next time he will have to prime the pig first so it swings its head much harder towards his foot then maybe he can get a few broken bones thrown in for good measure and do a proper job rather than just a bit of blood a swollen foot and some antibiotics. The doctor, who is getting accustomed to Gavins 10 yearly attempt at removing limbs, said "well seeing as it is you we will give you a tetanus jab early just incase". 10 years early no less! Gavin really knows how to celebrate his up and coming zero birthdays, having attacked his own foot with a chainsaw 10 years ago. Piercing by pig tusk is a very creative change from chainsaw massacre, which is soooo very 70's. I hasten to add that pig was playing and not at fault.  Today it rained which is great news for us and the animals. Not sure how much yet and I think the rain gauge is cracked as we always seem to have 9mm in the meauring cylinder. I think the grass has already started to green up a little so this storm should really hurry it along if the temperatures don't drop too much. The market is an interesting place to meet people from all walks of life and countries, sadly I don't always have time to complete a fully rewarding conversation as I am working but I always hope that everyone leaves the stand a little happier and a little more positive about life. My fellow standholders are truly wonderful people always ready to chat and give you some moral support when you're feeling a little down with administration and the weather and a multitude of other things. They are such a happy uplifting crowd. On the other side of this very small world the other day my nephew bought some sausages from a fellow market trader/farmer who spent 3 weeks with us about 2 years ago and is now in Chicago with his young business, growing and selling his own products. Go Hayden!  Gavin has just come in and told us about his encounter with about 25 sanglier in a field by our old house may be he was trying for a real hospital stay. He said he heard them grunting in the dark and as the clouds moved away from the moon he saw them all standing around him. Quite Conan-Doyle I thought. So being the savvy dood that he is, he kept on walking and they all minded their own business. Man at one with nature ;)
See you all soon Helenx Is there a slight dip in the temperature and has the sun moved a little in the sky so that vaguely autumnal feeling is descending upon us? So I will do a bit of preserving whilst I have a small amount of time. A little rain to encourage the grass to grow would be a really good thing right now as by golly it is very brown outside in the fields still, and we have winter to get through with all the animals yet. I suspect it will be a tight winter as far as outdoor grazing is concerned. Funny isn't it how the year can begin soooo wet, that you have to feed hay longer because the animals are not able to go on all the parts of the farm, as some fields are unable to sustain livestock when it is too wet and boggy and because the ground stays colder, the grass takes longer to come through. Once everything warms up and dries out a bit then grass production is just mad. Then at the other end of the year you have to start thinking about feeding hay earlier because the ground is so hard and dry that the grass is not growng at all. When Gavin went out to move fences the other day he had to take his drill with him to make little holes for the metal posts to go into. I know I should not complain and to be honest I am not really complaining about the weather just stating the facts. It has made our entertaining-full summer easier having a long hot dry summer and it has been delightful to properly bake in the sun and not worry about where to dry 4 loads of washing every day . And to be honest there is not a lot anyone can do about what the weather does anyway, so there is no point in compaining about it in the first place.  Guess who? I can feel the year changing as we get back into the rhythm of real life rather than holiday life. Nougat the donkeys winter hair is starting to grow and the cats are suddenly inside the house more curled up on the sofa looking to snuggle up and be warm making more vacuuming work as they leave their hair everywhere. The birds this year are likely to be short of food, in fact they are already really as the brambles and other wild berries did not produce significantly this year. So if are a feed the birds person..."tuppence a bag".... hang some food out early, and if you are not then maybe this is a good year to start. We had a birthday this past week, the big step into teenager-hood again for Gavin and me. I made a cake and was reminded that our cooker needs its thermostat testing....And then I had to be creative.Tasted good though. Other creations were the slow-cooked pork hock dish I made. Very yummy. Very easy. Very filling. Happy cooking, see you all soon, Helen  Apologies for picture quality  Day one. Always ttravel with a map. Google often gets lost. So September comes and with it the dispersal of children to their various educational destinations, the change in the feel of the sunshine on your back and the different colours start to appear in the landscape. The rhythmn of farm lfe changes slightly from the manic checking to see if lambs and Mummys are well and together, to the slow ruminating of ewes that no longer have anything to worry about but eating and lazing in the sun. The lambs are now big and off being teenagers.....need I say more ;)  As some of you may have noticed I have been away and yes I do mean properly away just not for very long. Gavin's mum and sister, number 3 and I swanned our way over and wined and dined ourselves around the capital of Austria. No we didn't, don't be daft. We took ye olde Easyjet, cheapest flight available for the amount of changes and hours we were willing to spend in the air. Found a jolly cheap but amazing arbnb flat not far from the centre and then proceeded to pound the pavement and escalators and try out all the local forms of transport. The biggest spot of luck is that if you travel during school holiday time with a school aged child they are free anywhere within the Vienna city boundary!!!!! I know incredible. And then to buy a ticket for all 4 of us back to the airport which is half an hour, cost......7.70euros. I know if you live in for example Tallinin, Estonia, this is not news and is still too much. But for us it was amazing! So come on Bordeaux if you want to close all the bridges which I know is what you really want to do, how about some free if not super cheap public transport. In a few brief words Vienna was amazing. Brimming full with years and years and years and years of money, history, art, music and culture, and the buildings were quite frankly superb. The Hapsbergs certainly knew how to embellish. The food, well to be honest eating out was quite pricey for us but we did have cake in a coffee house a couple of times. Yum yum yum. I will bore you with some holiday pics now. It is true that in a capital city with so many tourists it is not possible for it all to be moonlight and roses. So if they would like some advice from a visitor ( which I am sure they would love) they need to brush up on their cleanliness around Schonbrunn Palace. And it would be really cool if smoking in some of their bars was a little more delineated or even forbidden as I read that by law it is banned but the law is not strictly adhered to. However maybe I am just spoiled in my smoke free environment surrounded by the fresh country smell of.......... manure ;) We started the summer with 11 people oscilated through the months with 7,8 or 9 people, with one day of 50 something. Today we are 5. Tomorrow we will be 3 again. It has been a happy time for all of us and a little bit sad so see everyone leaving. So all I can say is thank goodness for Strictly Come Dancing then at least Saturday night will be raucous again.:) :)
See you all soon Helen  Returning after 3 weeks away. Hello Everyone The entertaining continues down on the farm, both for our two legged visitors and for our new 4 legged arrivals from The Maine Meunier. The cat freaked out and left home for 3 weeks but we fetched her home from our old house and spoiled her a bit with some homemade paté. Below Paddy and Patricia are just leaving the trailer to accustomise themselves to the new accommodation.....a little larger than their previous residence but a little more noisy. Gavin keeps reminding me that the pigs were in fact my idea, and for once I don't think I can contradict him (don't tell him that though). However we seem to be having a population explosion. Having had about 20 something a few weeks ago we now have 40 something as a couple of our sows have decided to pop at the same time as our new lodgers arrived. I have a feeling this year is going to get extremely busy and I am brushing up on my charcuterie skills. I hope everyone needs a ham for C.......s, or in fact Thanksgiving! ;)  Paddy/Mini bus and Patricia Emily's BF has flown the yard, quite literally, with KLM. I don't think we scared him off.... but he had to do some serious eating and socialising with us, and our friends and family whilst he was here. A whole pile of new experiences as well with all the animals. Sadly though when we visited our local night market at Le Pizou there was no electric accordion man, so we have saved that for next time.  Now that we have finally got ourselves ready for the eartag police, the boys are plodding their way through the shearing with many helpers on hand to pick up wool and load trailers. Hot, hard work but quite satisfying when you look at the end result. All the lambs have been weaned now and we have just got in some lambs to bottle feed from an organic sheep milk producer. Because as we all know Gavin does get bored during the autumn months, and likes to have a few babies around to keep him up till all hours. ;) Now as you all know I like to sit around and drink a lot of tea whilst Gavin is running around labouring. So to stop myself becoming fatigued with life, I will be cooking at a night market in Saint Michel Leparon et L'Ecluse this Saturday 25th August. If anyone fancies a bit of light entertainment and somewhere to take guests for a typical Dordognian evening out in the summer, then it is usually good fun and very children friendly. Occassionally we have an opportunity to sit down with the family and relax for a few hours and here we are below doing exactly that. More family arriving in a few days along with some Scicilians from Holland (!?) don't you just love living in Europe. See you all soon. Helenx   The only rainbow in the district It has been a busy old time down on the farm for the last few weeks. But enjoyably so. We have reconnected with some very dear friends from Zimbabwe, whom we had not seen or spoken to for 20 years. Other than the fact that their children have grown (!), it was as if we had seen each other yesterday. We ate a lot of food, talked a lot of talk and went for a canoe down the river. A marvellous visit. All the children are home now, with attachments, and mother-in-law has also arrived. The house is full, lively and hungry. Number 3 child keeps running off to other peoples houses I am beginning to wonder if she has become unacustomed to living with the general banter of family life as she is so often an only child these days. Well it is either that, or the fact that I keep insisting that she read a book every now and then which can be quite a challenge.  Gavin has been trying to keep up with some repairs and maintainance now that he has some assistance on the farm. And that was all going smoothly until the tyres we had ordered for the trailer 10 days ago did not turn up which meant a trip to Perigueux to visit the warehouse of said deliverers. Shall they remain nameless.....no not today I don't think....GLS. They gave us the round the houses treatment with the telephone numbers and then stopped picking up altogether in Perigueux. On arrival in Perigueux Gavin was confronted with a very full warehouse, with rows and rows of parcels neatly grouped into post code areas for the Dordogne, and an articulated trailers worth of parcels to unload standing outside with another expected that evening. After some rather irritating moments he discovered that the probelm is lack of drivers to deliver all the parcels once they have arrived at the central warehouse for the Dordogne. So if anyone has a parcel coming, check who your delivery service is, and if necessary make alternative arrangements. It does make me wonder why people so often say there is no work in Dordogne. Do people not like driving? After all I would not have called our department a particularly taxing environment for driving....Or are conditions for delivery drivers so appalling that no one wants to do it?.... Or is the "we want it now" generation of purchasers that we have become, begining to finally take its toll on logistics, with its inability to provide the complete service through over demand creating no supply? Who knows.  Recovering after a hard mornings work The animals are hot and the piggies have found the first green acorns so are very excitedly ploughing up their field in an effort to see if in fact acorns actually grow underground. I think they are going to be disappointed. When Gavin or Patrick go to put the pigs away at night time there is one pig that lies down and pretends to be a tree root. As they do so much wallowing at the moment occassionally it manages it and gets left behind. It is a busy month in the butchery as well, with everone else enjoying visits with the family or friends or both. And the markets have hotted up, literally ;) It is looking like it will be a scorcher this coming weekend. Never thought I would be wondering what to wear to a market....What is cool, protective, smart yet casual and resistant to be ripped through carrying heavy items with sharp corners? Answers on a postcard please. See you all soon;
Helenx Hello Everyone Well we finally made it.... to our yearly day trip to the beach. Which btw was awesome. We were lucky enough to have chosen the 3rd July the day before the big storm and we went over-seas, well..... over-estuary as we took the ferry from Blaye to Lamarque then drove to Hourtin Plage. Actually we didn't even drive as our friend shouldered that burden. Many thanks to her. It was a significant day as it was also our 25th wedding anniversary, something we are famous for forgetting amongst our family. Many thanks to Gavins brother who has spent 25 years reminding us. My lovely sister sent us flowers that were a nod to our bouquet all those years ago when we were young and could to go to pilates out of choice rather than as a body repairs and maintenance session.  Another eventful moment this week was having a bath installed in the house. "To compliment your already installed shower" I hear you ask. Not exactly, more a medical requirement for Gavin as we approach shearing time so that his muscles will work once again after a hard day shearing. Ah yes the joys of farming wear and tear. I must say though that the bath is amazing one forgets how easy it is to do things like care for your feet when you have a bath. I am very much enjoying it. Luxury, at its simplest. As I am sharing a photo of our bathroom I would like you to appreciate the quality of our décor. I have decided I don't care about matching, anything goes chez nous. I would add that the tiling in the bathroom of the house we bought is top notch, not to mention the superior plumbing work to improve the facility. And would you kindly appreciate the health and safety feature above the bath that our plumbing friend told us to remove or else.  Down the road, very noisy irrigation in the peaceful countryside ;) I am currently enjoying a cold glass of rosé and some salted almonds whilst I write, listening to the sound of the evening. Which in theory should be the gentle sound of birdsong. But no, not at Franklin Farm. The lambs are shouting for supplies for their tummies and Nougat the donkey is announcing the arrival of anything that is passing by. The flies are incessantly buzzing around my ankles and the chickens are clucking about the fact that it is time to potter off to bed. There is some birdsong but it is more like magpies in attack formation than "a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square". Whoever said the countryside is peaceful has evidently never lived in the country.  Planted this lavendar last year. It is fabulous. As is our photogenic feline. Gavin has been out and about delivering this week as well as me. He went to Villeréal to see some Zimbo clients of ours who funnily enough ordered rather a large quantity of Boerewors. Interestingly there seems to be a French contigent who are rather keen on the Boerewors so I must be doing something right. I am looking forward to an equally busy week next week. With not only a pile of orders coming in but also the arrival of our big children who on pain of bacon withholding, had better not forget the stroopwaffles. It is an easy task to keep Mum happy. :) See you all very soon, I will leave you with some pictures of piggies doing what piggies do best in the heat when your husband forgot to turn the tap off but swears it was the goats. I think I should let him out more. Helen xx   Having a bit of liquid refreshment Well here we are again. It is a Saturday afternoon and the completion of another week down on the farm. Another 500ish sausages made and sold and a considerable amount of bacon of all types. Feedback on the new recipe bacon and sausages is good, so more rosemary and ginger or marjoram and black pepper sausages on the way. The dogs are getting into the swing of the warmer weather we are having, and are sleeping a lot during the afternoon. I think they heard rumours that the workload was decreasing with the beginning of spring. How ill-informed they were as we had a surprise control from the vet department the other day to inform us that our eartags are not up to scratch. Now as anyone who has a flock of sheep knows eartags for sheep are a disposable item. Let the farmer put them in, then go and find the nearest fence, bramble bush, pole, hay bale or blade of grass to get rid of the thing as fast as possible. Anyhow rules are rules and we must endeavour to keep one or two tags depending on the destination of said sheep in their ears at all times. Of course ours are outside most of the time so any sheep handling is a family event requiring muscle, patience and a deaf ear when Gavin is working the dogs. In my humble opinion whistling for sheepgdogs was invented by people who did not wish to have the childrens ears permanently damaged by profanity. Fortunately our delightful dogs don't hear the words just the intonation and thus can deduce that "no the sheep were not meant to be going to eat the neighbours prize roses"  This is Biggy, Alices favourite ram So the other Sunday was spent rounding up, bringing in and writing a list of some 550 sheep so that the missing tags could be ordered and also whether they were microchip tags or ordinary. Gavins system was highly developed and on arrival he said "you write, we will catch and mark and I will shout E for microchip and P for ordinary". After a little confusion, as P and E sound much the same when shouted across a handling pen with sheep baaing and heads buried in sheep wool we developed the system to "electric" and "plain". Oh the glamorous life we lead.  Sheep sorting Franklin Farm style. After this we bought a sorting gate at 230 euros and asked a plumber to put a bath in the house for us!  We have a group of 3 kittens that have just been born in our barn, so once again we will have another massive vet bill to sterilise the little fluff balls so they do not become a nuisance. I do believe this is the only drawback to moving house in the countryside in France, having to be a cat controller at every new destination. It's Sunday and have just finished a spot of painting in our new to be kitchen/dining room. It is remarkably satisfying work to knock down walls and discover wonderful, more usable areas in your home. With the amount of people visiting us during the summer months I will be very happy to have a room where I can finally house my Grandmothers 8 seater table. And finish putting up a kitchen we bought some years ago. I am afraid my husbands desire to buy and store stuff is finally paying off with the only expenditure at the moment being our own time and effort to get everything done... Believe me I never thought I would ever say that! And it was probably a mistake putting the fact in print, I will never hear the end of it now.  So a few days have passed since I started this blog, 10 to be precise and the table is finally in the room we have been organising. Sadly though the dog who could best translate Gavin's profanity is no longer with us. He disappeared to doggie pastures in the sky yesterday and as usual left a huge whole. Ben and I did a lot of sheep work together in the early days some 12 or 13 years ago when Gavin used to go backwards and forwards to Zimbabwe and I stayed in France to be a sheep farmer and look after the kids. He was a bit of a loon as a youngster too eager to help, which didn't always end well. Usually half the flock were at your feet and the rest were high tailing it for the horizon. Later on he turned into a very steady worker. On one of Gavins away days James, our neighbour was lending a hand to put some sheep away which meant he had to stay with the dog and the sheep, whilst I drove to the other side of the property to turn off the electric fence. On my return James said, "Thank goodness for Ben! The sheep started moving around so I looked at him and said, quick do something! And he just did." Happy times. Ben missed by all the family and the other dogs, though probably not by the sheep. Helen  Ben, Skanky and Alice. 2005...ish. |
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August 2025
Helen FranklinI am farming sheep and goats on the Dordogne/Gironde border with my husband and our 3 children. We have an on farm butchery and sell our meat direct to the public via the markets and delivery points in our local area |
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