The chickens have escaped!

Opened the front door yesterday and saw a rabbit in the front garden, bold as you like, wandering around looking for some dinner. Signalled wildly to Ian who was sitting at the table to go and get the gun!

Ian took aim, paused, “I can’t kill it!”
“Shoot the bloody thing before it eats my garden!”
So he did.

Full of anticipation and day-dreaming of rabbit pie; I put on my apron, grabbed the necessary equipment for skinning a rabbit and marched out into the garden, only to find on arrival that the rabbit was skinnier than a super-model and there was scarcely a mouthful of meat on it, and thus no point at all carrying on with any kind of butchery.

I offered the rabbit to Corky, sure that she would be as happy to eat a freshly killed rabbit as she is to steal food off the kitchen table, but she turned her nose up at it and said ‘you must be bloody joking’ before gliding away.

Later on, we were chatting to a friend who does a bit of hunting who told us that Myxomatosis is back in France and there are lots of infected rabbits about. He said we should kill as many as we can to help stop the infection spreading. He also mentioned that some people still eat diseased rabbits - chopping off the head (you’d have thought they’d do that anyway?!) to avoid any ‘contamination’.

Rest assured, that’s all put me right off my rabbit pie! 

So, what’s this? It’s my new garden toy: a weed burner (”desherbeur thermique”, if you’re French). After around nine months of subtle hints, Ian gave in and agreed it was an essential tool in the fight against weeds.

Weed burners are a more ecological way of killing of pesky plant life (i.e. no more need to thow petro-chemical poisons around your plot) although I’m not kidding myself that it’s 100% eco as obviously I am burning gas!

Anyway, I shall give it a go and let you all know how effective it is and whether it’s worth the money (cost was approx. 120 euros, and a full gas bottle is 27 euros (not sure yet how long each one lasts)).

Burn, baby, burn!!

I am sad to report that our oldest hen, Big Mama, died today. I found her peacefully passed away in a straw bed in the chicken shed. We’re very sad as she was the first chicken we ever bought, six years ago, when we first arrived in Normandy.
Here’s a pic of her looking very grumpy!

We’ll raise a poached egg in her memory!

Our wwoofer, Breony, took this photo while she was out working in the garden, and I subsequently forgot about it as my brain has turned into something resembling a sieve. Anyway, it’s a BLUE snail; as you can see it’s very definitely blue all over (except the shell, bien sûr!).

Well, I didn’t know such a thing existed. Do blue snails exist? If so, why? Has anyone else seen such a thing, or is it just another example how weird my garden is? Is it perhaps a GMO?

Answers on a postcard, please.

Just so you don’t get any idea that I’ve been slacking, here’s a cheering image of my no-work permaculture garden!

Instead of a mulch-covered, glorious profusion of herbs and flowers, it has infact become a breeding ground for super-mutant couch grass. The large pile in-front of the bed is just couch grass roots, and the patch I have cleared behind (maybe 5 square metres) has taken about four days to clear - involving plenty of digging, and plenty of work!

Although sheet mulch is wonderful, and I would advocate its use anytime, one curious side-effect on this occasion seems to be that having killed off the weeds the sheet-mulch provided the perfect cover for couch grass nearby to creep into my new beds unobserved and unchecked!

However, a bit more digging, plenty of big annuals in spring (nasturtium, etc) and a little monitoring and it should hopefully be the end of the problem…