Septic tanks, stray goat and dreadful weather

Easter Sunday fell last weekend and my daughter bought a mould for Easter eggs and made my grandson's egg herself this year.  Here he is enjoying it.

Yesterday Le Vidangeur Breton arrived to empty my fosse – septic tank.  The huge red vehicle he came in wouldn’t fit to go round the corner into my garden by the conventional route, so he finally agreed to go down the – strangely smaller but easier to negotiate – far drive to the other end of the garden.

He was a little surprised when lifting the lid to find that the aromatic contents were only inches from the top – it had been seven years all but three months since it was installed and this was the first emptying.  He suggested that next time should be in five years and I have noted it in the part of this year’s diary which gets transferred to the following year.  He was lucky that some English neighbours with a holiday home here were in residence and they collared him to have their fosse emptied at the same time, so a profitable morning for him.  He was a charming, young chap and I would recommend him.

The weather continues to be very cold.  Yesterday I awoke to a white world which disappeared fairly quickly once the rain washed the snow away.  This morning it is making a pathetic attempt at snowing but not getting very far with the business of settling as it’s so wet underfoot.

On Tuesday morning when I went to the field to do the animals a goat stuck his head in the feed bucket.  This may not seem unusual but my goats do not like to come near me and this one was very friendly.  I suddenly realised that he was not Basil.  Basil has only one horn after too much head butting with a ram a couple of years ago and this intruder had two large horns.  Photo quality not good I'm afraid.

Within moments he was not only in the barn but in Betsy.  Now, I had Basil neutered, partly to stop the smell of an entire goat which is something that has to be experienced to be believed, but also to stop more kids arriving.  I am not happy that now there is every chance that Betsy is pregnant and would be due to kid at the very end of August.  I called the local farmer who has 7 or 8 goats but it was not one of his.  He told me to call the vet.  I did, but the vet can apparently do nothing if the goat doesn’t have ear tags and this one doesn’t.  The vet told me to call the Mairie – town hall – so I did.  They said they would send someone round.  The someone they sent was the other farmer in my hamlet who couldn’t identify the goat and assumed, as I had, that someone who had a goat they didn’t want drove past, saw mine and thought – ah they like goats I’ll pop mine over the fence.  The perimeter fence is secure and too high for a goat to climb over without human help.  So I am, for the moment, stuck with this goat which is a real pain.  It has also affected the hens who tend to be in the barn in this awful weather.  Hens hate change of any sort and this extra goat has, unfortunately, diminished the egg laying from the hens who use the barn.

I succumbed to some plants for the garden yesterday while in the supermarket - two osteospermum.  They are very small at the moment but will soon take off when they are planted and the good weather arrives.

These plants used to be called dimorpotheca and I sometimes still forget the change of name.  I had a health visitor years ago who used to call them osteomyelitis and when the name change came she referred to them as dihydrostreptomycin - mad eh?  I really like any daisy-shaped flower and have missed having these in my garden here.

I also bought an entrecote steak - I cut it in half and saved half for tomorrow.  I cooked it rare and had it with chips, mushrooms and salad.  I rarely cook chips at home and really enjoyed my lunch today.

My worker has just been round and loaded me up with logs for the woodburner to take me through the weekend.   It looks as if I have almost a whole tree ready here - but at least I definitely won't be cold.

Three things I like:

1.   Being warm in my house when it's such horrible weather outside.
2.   Hearing from an old friend who I hadn't been in touch with for ages.
3.   Sitting down with a box of chocolate cherry liqueurs.