The chickens have escaped!

Just a couple of lines to introduce our other websites (my brother, who is some kind of computer genius, has told me I have to do this to improve my goggle factor, or some such techno-jargon)

SmellySmallholding.com is the natural extension to this blog, but I prefer to make up my own pages than use the wordpress thingy which is too rigid for me, so I’ve set it up as a stand alone site. Here you will find many photos, infos, ideas, articles showing you how NOT to do things, eventually we’ll put some movies, seed-swaps, (spouse-swaps, anyone??), etc etc etc… you get the idea…

Les Rayers is the website for our B&B. We know none of you have the money to stay in paying accommodation (you are smallholders, after all!) but if you have any rich friends planning a trip to France, let them know about us. Anyone coming recommended by our readers gets a 5 euro discount.

Back with something abit more interesting soon!

Well, to follow on the story from last week about the rats (and thanks to Jo, Tony and co. for their comment last night), we did a quick bit of internet-based research on rats and soon realised that having rats in our compost was just not an option. So I’ve been putting down the poison for the last week to get rid of them - being careful not to put it within reach of the cat!

Apparently one pair of rats can produce 2000 descendants in just one year! That’s worse than rabbits! They are also making a mess of my beautiful compost heap and stealing valuable organic matter from it; so they must go. We’ve already found one dead on the lawn, overcome on it’s way home, and I guess the others are dying underground.

It’s not nice poisoning animals and I do feel really horrible; but needs must.

This is an old engine we found in our barn when we moved in. It is a TRAIN JT 175 2 stroke all aluminium alloy engine made by E Train et Cie Constructeurs, Paris, and dates from the 50s. Plans are afoot to restore the engine and get it working so that we can use it once more to get water out of our well. The well, as you can see, has an interesting mechanism on it which draws water - it can be turned by hand but this could cause a heart-attack and we don’t want to get sued by the loving parents of wwoofers!! Thanks go to the Sandstone Heritage Trust in SA, who have published an article on their website about how they restored an identical engine - it’s full of technical information that I don’t understand at all, but I’m certain will come in handy once the work starts!

If you know of an engine like this being used in a similar situation, please send me a photo – or if you own one that you’ve managed to restore and have some tips, please let me know… any help will be gratefully received.

Whilst digging the other day in the veg patch, we thought we would let the chickens out of their yard and let them scratch around where they liked. Of course, the place they most liked to be was wherever we were digging, as we were turning up large numbers of worms, so constant shooing away was the order of the day.Our oldest chicken, Big Mama, had her own idea of fast food, however… Twice, while she was near the compost heap, we heard a loud, mousey squeak and looked up to see her with a mouse (or vole, possibly) in her beak, which she then proceeded to eat!

I have never seen a chicken catch its own mice! I tried to take a photo, but she thought I was after her mouse and kept turning away from me, so I’m afraid it’s a little blurred.

We have finished digging out weeds from a corner of the new veg patch and have planted five rows of strawberries – a total of 100 plants. Our wwoofer Breony has painted this beautiful sign, so lovely that it merits its own posting on the blog!

Yes, it’s really me. I am renaming this blog “Unrealiable blogger”, and you will all get a refund.

The main reason I haven’t written anything recently is because I won the lottery in August and have since been on a world cruise…. No, you’re not going to fall for that, are you!! In fact, it has been very quiet here on the garden front and I have been spending my time catching up on other stuff. I’m also useless.

Let’s just clear up the one thing you really want to know and about which you have so kindly filled up my inbox in recent weeks…

The chickens DID, honestly, lay quite a few eggs in August. I even had enough to SELL some to Richard, our local bee expert, and I made around TEN euros to buy more grain!!! Yes, indeed, great news. However, as soon as August ended and the days grew cooler, they slowed right down to none a day. So I am now back to square one.

Anyway, another wwoofer has arrived to give me a hand sorting everything out for autumn. We spent the whole of yesterday digging couch grass roots out of the future strawberry patch, and when we decided to turn the compost heap next to it we found a rat’s nest in the bottom of the heap and six little baby rats snuggling in it (the big rats had taken off, of course!) Here’s our wwoofer B with three of the cute babies, who haven’t even opened their eyes yet.

I couldn’t bring myself to kill babies, so we’ve put them back in their burrow, but now the question is what to do about a family of rats (albeit country rats) living in (and eating!) the compost…