Things That Have(n’t) Happened.

Posted on 26 September, 2008 by Val

I am currently in the process of writing a review of our first six months in the Land of the Free Fruit and Vegetables. However, as I launched into the third wordy paragraph (of the introduction!), I realised it would be some time before the undertaking would be complete, and that, if it was to include any incidental detail of the daily funandhilarity of our present existence, it would end up being so long that no one would ever bother to read it. So I thought I’d better do a short update just to let y’all know we’re still here, and we still care.

Things that have happened recently:

  • Naughty Chicken has started laying eggs (at last!) and yesterday was our first ever Four Egg Day. I am already going off scrambled eggs on toast.
  • Naughty Chicken has got into the vegetable garden, necessitating the hasty construction of a chicken-proof barrier above the garden wall. At the time this happened, I was convinced she was terrorising me, as she flew/jumped over the wall after chasing (well, hastily following) me all around the garden and up to the gate. Simon manfully dragged himself out of his Sunday morning lie-in to catch her and return her to the main garden. As he turned his back to walk away, congratulating himself on a chicken-catching job well done, she promptly flew/jumped back over the wall again, trumpeting smugly to herself, as she headed for those delicious baby lettuces, laid out in neat little breakfast-shaped rows. Naughty and Persistent Chicken.
  • Naughty Chicken has escaped from the garden, and was found today browsing contentedly in the adjacent overgrown land of a neighbour, in the company of a large black and white cat. Having so far failed to clarify her exact escape route, we have not yet sealed the breach. Instead we are trying to make the home garden a more compelling place-to-be, through the provision of tasty bowls of leak and potato soup (of which we can – and do – make vast quantities). Naughty, Persistent and Greedy Chicken.
  • Pedro has become happily accustomed to having his halter fitted, and is getting used to being led around inside the field on his lead, in preparation for stepping out with us into the big, bad world. He seems more like a big, soft, woolly teddy-bear every day.
  • Capucine has eaten some carrot-peel from the ground in the catch-pen. Not a big deal I hear you mutter – but the implication of this is that we can now start encouraging her to eat pieces of carrot from our hands, and then we will be able to use hand-fed treats to reinforce any behaviours we want her to learn. Bring on the burning hoops!
  • Pedro and Fatma are still mating with a depressing degree of regularlty. Nice for Pedro, I’m sure. Not so good for us, the ever-hopeful owners of a llama-breeding business. Unless Fatma happens to be one of those unusual females that continue to tolerate mating even when pregnant, there will not be any more little ones running around their feet within the next twelve months at least.
  • We have conducted our first fully French, non-family visit to the llamas. Following a phone call last Monday from a french lady asking if she could bring a group of school children to feed the llamas, we duly escorted 7 small children, between 3 and 6 years of age (5 french, one belgian and one german) and 2 staff members of their out-of-school club, to see and feed both groups of our llamas. We even rounded off the event by walking Valentine part of the way back to the village with them. Cue lots of photo opportunities of cute little children with bemused llamas. Unfortunately, it wasn’t our camera! (Next time….)
  • Simon has signed up for a proper French Conversation course, through the AVF (Accueil des Villes de France) and in doing so has managed to volunteer his services as an IT know-it-all to assist with their computer classes, and to volunteer our llamas as a venue for outings organised by the AVF for the many and varied groups of newcomers to the area, who avail themselves of the organisation’s services.

Things that haven’t happened recently:

  • Elif has not had her baby. We had expected her to give birth some time in August. She is getting bigger and bigger, but shows no signs of popping just yet. Given what is going on with Fatma and Pedro, we can see how easy it is to be mistaken about when a llama has become pregnant. We are hoping that Mike and Suzanne were just a bit out with the dates. I am hoping that Elif’s huge belly is not simply the result of the extra rations of concentrate food I’ve been giving her for the last couple of months in the belief that she was pregnant and in need of more protein. Pregnant or obese? Only time will tell.
  • We have not bought any land. The long saga of the 8 hectares we were going to buy, and the wine & cereal-growing farmer who also wanted the land, and all the bureaucratic shenanegans with SAFER, has finally reached a conclusion. Having frantically put in a last-minute (literally), official, all-in-french, (slogged-over for 10 hours and proof-read by a french neighbour) request to be considered as candidates for the purchase of the land through SAFER, we ended up coming to an amicable agreement with the farmer. We agreed to withdraw our application, thus leaving him free to buy it all and to continue to develop his cereal-growing business, on the understanding that we could continue to keep our llamas on the Rough Land for at least two years, while he helps us to find a suitable alternative. He has also agreed that, when we find some land, he will clear the space for the fencing for us, using his tractor and various other items of heavy-and-very-useful-machinery. So he gets his land, the previous owner gets his money, and we get to continue to live (cost-free) on the goodwill of others.
  • I have not signed up for anything. No French lessons for me. No opening-my-mouth and getting-roped-in for helping in social or work-type activities (except of course to assist Simon when his preemptive folly bears fruit). No meeting groups of other English immigrants for afternoons stumbling though woefully inadequate conversations in something-like-french-with-terrible-accents. I will stay at home with the Internet and a french dictionary, and teach myself enough to get by in all the social contact I want. Which isn’t much.
  • I have not overcome my feather phobia. But it’s getting better. And I have stopped running away from Naughty Chicken.
  • I have not finished the Pooh Corner map of Llamaland. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.

PS This is a little note to Mike in response to his comment on our blog of 21 August.
“Sorry mate, Duc and Valentine are not for sale (to you or to anyone). They’re part of the family, and we need them to teach all the young-llamas-to-come everything they know. You can’t have custody, but you can have visiting rights whenever you want!”

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What day is it?

Posted on 13 September, 2008 by Simon

It really struck me this week, that days have lost their importance. Val said something about a “Monday morning feeling”, and my first reaction was “Is it Monday then?”

The routine of our life centres around the various animals – and in some senses they are more demanding than work ever was. Although the breeding llamas would wait for a few hours for their morning feed, there’s no way we could miss out a day. The chickens are impatient to be let out when it gets light – and I feel absolutely obliged to get up, put on wellies and go down to them. And at the end of the day, they need to be closed in when the sun sets . . . . .

I never miss a day going to the walking llamas, although I do allow myself the ‘luxury’ of sometimes not going till the afternoon. I guess they would be fine without a visit one day, and they do have plenty of food so they aren’t dependent in the same way as the breeders. But I know that llamas are very much creatures of routine (going to the same position for their food bucket, pausing each time at the same point on a walk because they can see back to the ‘home’ field, using a fixed toilet area) and we get drawn into the same patterns.

In fact, I am coming to the conclusion that humans and other animals are most comfortable when life has routines. We now are ‘closer to nature’ in that our routines are determined by the rising and setting of the sun, and in the longer term by the seasons, rather than by the ‘artificial’ constructs of work etc. I suppose that perhaps I am happier now because it’s not the arbitrary decision of someone else that rules my life . . . . but the equally arbitrary patterns of the universe.

Days of the week have nothing to do with nature. I’m rather glad I don’t have to think differently about Mondays. Mind you, it would be nice sometimes to just have a day off.

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Hunting chickens!

Posted on 5 September, 2008 by Simon

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Each, Peach, Pear, Plum….

Posted on 27 August, 2008 by Val

This is a blog about plums.

Plum is a nice-sounding word. Like ‘plump’, round and cosy without being fat. And if you say it lots of times quite fast, it sounds like a small, naughty elephant running down a mossy corridor.

I like plums. Red ones, yellow ones, big ones, small ones, sweet ones. Even sour ones. They are a happy, easy-going sort of fruit. They grow in cool wet countries (we had some random damson trees in the garden in Derby), and they grow especially well in the countryside around here. At this time of year, every time you go for a walk, you will find some smiling at you from the hedgerows and laughing heartily as they perlump onto the road in front of you.

Our plum story started quite early this year, when the scarey cherry tree on the Rough Land, that we thought would poison our llamas, turned out to be an inoffensive, and actually quite likeable plum tree.

Strange plums to be sure – the size of a large cherry, with very dark red skin, and yellow inside, ripening too late to be a cherry, and yet too early to be a plum.

However, to go back to the beginning….

Being responsible (and inexperienced) llama keepers, we made it our business to read up on all the possible hazards to llamas that the land we are using might hold. The list seemed endless.

Our initial fears about poisoning from broom pods led us into weeks of back-breaking work trying to rid our first lot of land of the broom in which it was enveloped. However, it turns out that llamas are not the least bit interested in broom, even when there is absolutely nothing else around to eat.

Then we worried about buttercups and acorns. I think we’ve seen one buttercup in our field, and there won’t be any acorns – the llamas have eaten all the oak trees!

No sign so far of any ragwort (although it’s surprising how many other yellow weeds, with daisy-like flowers and lobed leaves, hang around in the wild pretending to be the paranoia-inducing culprit).

And then we came upon the big cherry tree on the Rough Land.

Now the sight of the cherry tree filled us with mixed feelings. With the hottest part of the year on the horizon, the llamas were sorely in need of a big tree to provide a decent amount of shade from the 36 degree sun. But the thought that one mouthful of wilting cherry leaf at the end of the summer could kill a full-grown llama like (actually, very like) a cyanide pill, gave us serious cause for concern.

We decided to lop off the lowest branches which I figured were within easy llama-chomping reach (very carefully disposing of the wilting off-cuts, way away, out of llama browsing range), and postpone any serious tree-felling, until we knew whether the llamas would actually show any interest in eating the remaining bits of reachable tree. Apparently, all parts of the tree could be poisonous, but the stones, and the wilted leaves would be the deadliest.

We waited and watched. And although initially all the llamas seemed quite oblivious to it, we noticed Duc’s interest in the lowest branches growing, along with the small round fruits which were developing in profuse clusters throughout the tree.

By the end of June, Duc was up to his old standing-on-hind-legs-like-a-circus-horse tricks, and deftly removing the ripening fruits for a crunchy snack between grass-and-blackthorn meals.

I began to panic – imagining we would return the following day to find Duc an inert heap below the deadly cherry tree. Simon simply refused to accept that this could possibly be an issue, and willed the tree to just NOT BE A CHERRY TREE. He found a very red, juicy-looking little specimen and bit into it. “This is a plum”, he stated triumphantly, in that ‘I’m always right’ sort of voice he has. “But it looks like a cherry”, I countered, “It has cherry bark, and cherry leaves, and those small red things look like cherries to me”. “That may be so, my dear, but it tastes like a plum.”

And so it did. But, unable to identify the species, I figured it was probably some weird freaky plum-cherry, that would still cause serious illness if not death. And now, Duc’s antics were beginning to bring down tasty morsels for Valentine and Ana to snuffle up from the ground. For my own peace of mind we needed to act.

Which is how Simon came to be up a ladder, surrounded by greedy llamas, picking cherryplums, while I stood below holding the ladder and trying to catch the errant fruits that escaped Simon’s grasp, before vast quantities were gobbled up by the four-legged vacuum cleaners.


It is also how we managed to fill our freezer with many kilos of small, (and very hard to stone) plums for a rainy November’s day making jam, and how we discovered, in the end, that llamas do not die from eating plum stones.


And so to August….when the REAL plum harvest begins.

There is a lovely orchard just off a track in the hillside near us, that is bursting with a profusion of fruits, and which we have never yet seen tended by anyone. Which is to say that, although we see that the ground below the trees is hoed and cleared of weeds, and we see CDs hung in the branches (presumably to keep away the birds), and lately we have seen bags of garlic hung like talismanic garlands around the necks of some of the smaller trees, we have never yet, in all our six years of visiting the orchard in our walks, seen anyone there. And no one ever seems to pick the fruit – which grows beautifully, (even in the years when early weather conditions result in a poor harvest across the region of particular fruits like apricots or cherries), and which simply falls to the ground in untouched pools of abundance.

We have never taken any of this fruit because, although it seems that much, if not all of it will be simply left to rot, taking it without being able to ask someone’s permission to do so just feels plain wrong. And of course, I always feel as if someone (probably very tiny and ethereal) is watching us from the covered darkness of the wild land that surrounds the orchard. But while the fruit did not find its way into our mouths, it certainly found its way into our dreams.

So when we first thought that we would be buying 8 hectares of land, we fantasized about using an acre of it to plant an orchard of our own. We debated which fruit we would grow, and researched which varieties would grow best in this climate. We checked out the price of young trees for planting, and the price of the necessary tools to prepare the land. And when we realised we would not be getting the land after all (more details to follow….), I had a real sense of disappointment that we would have nowhere to create our own orchard, to provide the sweeter elements of our self-sufficient life-style. Tomatoes, lettuces and peppers are easy to grow in a little back-garden plot, but fruit trees need so much more space.

But now I understand what it means to let the Universe provide. We do not need to grow our own orchard because we are actually living in the middle of a very big one.

Walking down the tracks and lanes that radiate into the hills from the village, there is fruit for free wherever you look. The cherries are all finished, as are most of the apricots , but there are apples, pears, (and apples that taste like pears) figs, medlars, blackberries, elderberries, grapes (from wild, escaped vines) almonds, walnuts and plums, plums, PLUMS. The hardest thing to learn is how to walk past a wild tree, overflowing with fruit, and NOT stop to pick a few bag-loads to take home.

Last week, when we had family visitors here to assist, we netted a trawl of more than 10 kilos of big, fat, purple plums from one track-side tree. But since we already have loads ready for jam-making, these have been turned into a delicious stewed-fruit desert, frozen in meal-sized portions, to be eaten at our leisure with ice cream or creme fraiche. And there are still more out there, calling to us from the hedgerows…”Pick me. Eat me…” This all brings to mind a book I used to read my children in the late eighties (by Margaret Mahy, I think) called JAM. I am sure we could easily end up with more than enough plums to fill our bellies (and our dreams) between now and the beginning of next year’s harvest. When we can of course start all over again.

And I am also pleased to report that llamas suffer no ill effects whatsoever from plum-munching, and that Duc, having a very particular liking for for the juicy treats, can sniff one out at 20 metres. When out for a little ramble as part of his walking training, he has learnt where all the plums trees are along the various routes, and he starts scanning the ground for fallen bounty as soon as we approach the spot. I wondered whether there could be a special use for a plum-hunting llama, along the lines of those truffle-hunting pigs. I guess not. Nevertheless, it is a joy to behold him using his dextrous lips to gently pick up a full, ripe plum from the ground, squish it resolutely between his teeth and hard palate exactly as his head draws level with Simon’s, and to smugly crunch the stone to nothingness as Simon wipes the sprayed juice from his hair.

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Walking with llamas

Posted on 21 August, 2008 by Simon

Llama walking is a strange art. You can read loads about the principles in books and on the web. However, there seems to be no real substitute for trying to be ‘in tune’ with your own llamas.

When you are out with a single llama, this is much easier than when you have a group. The lone llama and you form a pair – and to walk successfully you must communicate with each other. I find this means I must watch and listen to the llama, and I also speak to him/her. As a result, I often go for quite long walks without seeing very much of the landscape. I tend to scan the area ahead, trying to anticipate anything that might alarm the llama.

Then I spend a lot of time actually looking at the llama, watching where they are watching, and taking note of how they are holding their ears. I’m really not sure that their hearing is very acute (and I have sometimes had to make quite a lot of noise to attract their attention from 40 or 50 metres) but if their ears are forward and erect it’s a good sign that the walk is stimulating without being frightening!

Their eyesight is certainly pretty good – and if they are staring into the distance, you can almost always spot something of significance if you look carefully in the same direction. Of course, ‘significant’ to a llama is not the same as to a human, and it sometimes takes a bit of working out to decide what it is that’s holding their attention.


Llamas are generally very cooperative. The lead is there mostly as a guide – and generally is not used to restrain the animal. There are, of course, times when the llama tries to pull away – almost invariably when they are scared. You know you are succeeding in keeping your llama calm, and in communicating with them, when you can walk along with the lead hanging down in a slack curve between you and the llama. Adam shows this well with Valentine, who tends to be rather over-enthusiastic when walking. We are still working on getting him to stay in the correct position that Adam has achieved here (i.e. head alongside the leader, with body behind).

Of course, things get more complicated when you walk llamas in a group. Over the last week, we’ve had a chance to practice this as Claire and Adam have provided two extra pairs of (very capable) hands.

We had previously been walking no more than two llamas at once. As Ana is the least experienced, we’ve tended to take her out with either Duc or Valentine. And, because Ana is the youngest, and lowest status, she has always been following her older companion

Now we’ve had a chance to experiment with different combinations of people and llamas. And among other things, we’ve learned:

  • Duc doesn’t like having people walking behind him. Presumably, he finds it hard to keep an eye on where the possible threat might be?
  • Despite this, Duc – as the most ‘senior’ of the three – likes to lead when there are other llamas out walking. This might explain why he was rather a handful at first when he was being led by Pete the other week.

Get it right, and it all goes very smoothly

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Fear and Loathing in Las Chickenas

Posted on 9 August, 2008 by Val

Is it possible that, after all these years of carefully avoiding feather-contact situations, I might be able to overcome my phobia?

As a psychologist, I would of course have to say yes. Desensitization; Flooding. Different approaches to the same goal, proffered as obvious solutions by well-meaning psych-professionals, and cashed in on as entertaining TV by programme-makers, none of whom have the faintest inkling of what it actually feels like to be disablingly in the grip of a completely irrational feeling which surpasses common fear.

I am (was) a psychologist. I am also a phobic. Many’s the time I have wished that I could swap my phobia for a more commonly acceptable one, like spiders, snakes or rats (none of which bother me in the least). Being ‘scared of feathers’ seems just plain ridiculous. Of course I know they ‘won’t hurt me’. Of course I understand my response to the sight, nay, even the thought of the sight of one is utterly unreasonable. But I CAN’T HELP IT.

Since it has been a long-held part of Simon’s dream that we should have chickens, I began my preparation for this moment way before we moved to France. Those much-missed visits to the lake at Markeaton Park to watch the ducklings required daily walks across expanses of feather-strewn grass, where the feather-covered geese hung out in huge, threatening gangs. I gradually became accustomed to accomplishing this monstrous feat, motivated by my interest in bird-watching (a strange hobby for a feather phobic perhaps, but I really do like birds), and achieved by not looking down, and focussing my attention on the faces and behaviour of the geese, rather than their attire. But still, one flap from a shore-side swan, or friendly approach from a bread-seeking duck, would have me shuddering and moving hastily away from the scene of the horror.

So how is it that after only a few days of back-yard chicken ownership, I find myself able to sit calmly next to the chickens scratching for seeds a few feet away, able to look (hopefully) in the nesting box for eggs, and able to put my hand inside the chicken house to remove the water-bottle for refilling?

It seems to me that something all those psycho-pros may have missed is the powerful effect of the nurturing instinct. Whilst I am not yet at the stage where I can even contemplate the thought of picking up a chicken, or even touching one with bare hands (well, I can contemplate it but only with a sense of utter revulsion), my interest in them as individual living creatures, and my desire to make sure that they are safe and happy, is enabling me to suppress my aversive reaction to their feathers to a bigger extent than I might have imagined. So long as they don’t surprise me, that is.

And they are indeed individuals. Luckily their plumage patterns (a nice name for the indescribable) are just about distinctive enough for us to be able to tell them apart. But as is the case with all living creatures that so often appear to look identical at first glance, it is the differences in behaviour -both the obvious things like actions, habits and movements, and the subtler behaviours amounting to manner and attitude, that really makes them distinguishable. It’s those things that make it possible for me to identify whether that white llama on the hill 300 metres away is Duc or Valentine.

As individuals, the chickens have already attracted names. (Good job we’re not planning to eat them).

After Naughty Chicken, there is Big Chicken, Pretty Chicken and Other Chicken. (Other Chicken has yet to do anything notable to identify herself in a positive way). Big Chicken is…well…big, and has certainly laid us one egg, if not two (I actually caught her in the act on one occasion). She is nearly always next in line to follow wherever Naughty Chicken goes. Pretty Chicken has come close to being called Blonde or Essex Chicken, because as well as having lighter colouring than the others, and a more attractive general appearance, she is also the most stupid, and lowest in the pecking order. Naughty Chicken is the smallest of the bunch, and I suspect a Bonaparte complex might be the source of her bravado.

At this moment, three of them are huddled, sheltering under the leylandii trees. Naughty Chicken is on her own, checking out the nearest bit of fencing, and looking wistfully into the distance beyond. Sooner or later, one or more of these ladies will go AWOL. Any bets on who is likely to be the first escapee? (Blog comments gratefully accepted, and betting odds will be published in the near future).

So for the time being, all is lovely in the chicken-garden. And perhaps by the time the moulting season comes around, the sight of tumble-weed balls of scraggy brown feathers rolling erratically around my feet will no longer fill me with the gut-wrenching, cardiac-arrest-inducing anxiety levels of a virtual-reality horror movie.

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