The clean up with cattle

Since the beginning of January it has been very wet, now along with the rain we have a fair bit of mud around the place. The cattle have had to stay in the hanger as they would only wreck the track down to the woods where they can hang out during the winter weeks.

Last week the hanger flooded due to mud at the entrance rising higher than the inside. The cause was the digger work a few months ago, the levelling of the earth needed to be a bit lower. This meant a lot of digging out of mud for farmer J and making channels in the hope water would drain away. We then had to get rid of the water inside the hanger which meant shovelling very watery cow poo. This week another challenge as the hanger needed cleaning out with the cattle inside.

The hard standing was cornered off with a line of bailing twine where the cattle stayed one side (apart from Emilie's calf who has no fear of us due to him being handled when he was ill) so the tractor could come in pick up most of the poo, we still need to shovel some of it as well, making for sore backs and arm muscles.

With no escapes it went a lot smoother than we thought this weeks cleaning would go but we did have our cattle supervisor on hand overlooking us all the time (apart from when he felt the need to play with the bailing twine).

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2ENJ093 - FRANKLIN

Eight years ago today Franklin came into our family, a rescue dog from the SPA in Rodez we drove to see if they had a dog to re home. He had been there a month after being left tied to a bin in the town centre, chosen because he didn't bark, he came to us to say hello and was completely different from the dog we had lost days before Christmas. 120 Euros he cost, a young boy still a pup, very thin but with a look of take me home please. A collar put round his neck, forms completed, cheque handed over and a kiss from the manager and he was ours. Five minutes down the road in the car he threw up. Five minutes in the house and he had weed up the settee and collected an assortment of treasures including socks, toilet roll inner tubes, tissues and soft toys all placed in a pile under the table and garded. He ate at an amazing speed, fearing he would loose it to our other dogs. Then he started to bark, he has a fine bark on him. He barks for his tea, when a visitor arrives, the

Parisot lake

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Lavender

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The English Paysanne

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