The first day of Autumn and the last week

What a difference a day can make, the first day of Autumn has been glorious, far different than last week when it was damp and wet for most of it. Enough girolle mushrooms were found while walking in the woods along with a bag of blackberries. Hopefully if the warm weather stays ceps will soon appear. Apples and pears are ripening and a second crop of raspberries were picked today.

The week was spent with snippets of days when the rain had stopped cutting docks and seed heads of weeds in one of the hay fields before the seeds fall. It is a job that needed to be done otherwise the hay field next year will be a dock field and no animal eats a dock leaf round here.

 Our young sow has gone off for a holiday with Champion, the boar Sandy visited a while back. She is such a gentle pig, hopefully he is being a charming male.

Sandy's piglets are filling out now starting to eat cereal. As they get more adventurous they (or Sandy being bored) have pulled away the plastic mesh keeping the piglets away from our black sow. Piglets have been running under the electric fence to say hello to said sow who seems to be very fond of them.

Two more pigs went off to the local abattoir Tuesday. The carcases came back on Thursday with the day and Friday being spent in the butchery, a lot of pig to process. Boxes of mixed cuts and sausages have been packed and sold with bacon curing, pate made   ham hocks brinning and confit pig cheeks slowly cooked in fat, probably not very healthy but very tasty and once confit they stay preserved in fat for ages.

Franklin spent another day with Huggie the vet to asses his blood sugar levels, which are still way to high. Insulin dose has now been upped and booked in for another 10 days. An injecting pen has been ordered as his getting weary of the needle and giving a grumble. Milo's visit to the ophthalmologist the week before left my payment card lighter, I've asked for a designated parking as I seem to be spending a bit of time (and money) there recently.

Our gites still have guests in, the last week for our second gite as unlike our first one which has a log burner it has no heating. We have a lovely Australian couple staying until the end of October so they will really get a feel for the area and rural life. As the tourists season is nearly over Najac gets a lot quieter. The Sunday market is now back to a few stalls and will stop altogether in a couple of weeks,shops will be closing including the little grocery which can't afford  to stay open as there just isn't enough people to use it for half the year, as will the hotels and a few of the restaurants. Even the post office will only be open in the mornings.