natural imperatives

There was a small skein of cranes flying over the fields as I went for a late afternoon walk this Sunday. They were seemingly heading north. Obviously they had not seen the same weather forecast for nothern Europe that I had on Saturday night. Perhaps they had been left behind, for in previous days, the more usual massive migratory skeins had been heard and seen, noisily going north. There is a perfectly nice, protected, reserve in the Landes where they could stay. But go they must, and so they went.

This last week our day time temperatures have been in double figures, the mid-teens. Overnight temperatures have stayed comfortably above zero. We have not felt it necessary to close the window-shutters to keep our house warm. So those ewes who had not yet lambed were allowed out into in the woods earlier and to stay for longer. Long enough, in fact, for one of them, apparently, to find herself a hiding place behind a wood pile. Her friends rushed in for supper and it was assumed – sheep being moderately greedy – that everyone had come in. (Counting sheep damages even more brain matter than counting ducks.) Her overnight absence was only noticed the following morning. There she stood by the electric fence, with twin lambs, an indignant expression on her face and doubtless a demand for breakfast – now. Those twins are doing well.

The slight increase in the number of twins has somewhat made up for the earlier mortality. Clun Forest sheep are thought of as having a high twin rate – somewhere between 1.2 and 1.4 lambs per ewe, we had quads, once – and being very maternal. But the maternal instinct needs practice and it seems that first time mothers often need help to 'bond' one would say if they were human. This is why we put make separate pens for ewes with lambs. I have seen it written that Clun Forest lambs are more than usually vigorous which, in my experience, is very true omce past those first few difficult days.

Also, Clun Forest lambs are particularly inquisitive (not that I have any personal experience of other breeds, just hearsay). They are particularly good at getting out of wherever they are confined, whether with their mother or with their half-siblings. They are totally hopeless at getting back in, proceed to bawl (and the ewes join in) until some human puts them back. Another favourite past-time is to put their heads through any aperture, whether a rectangle in the wire fencing, or a slit between boards. Then they panic. There is no talking sense to a panicked lamb, brute human force is the only answer. Struggling with 20 kilos that kicks is not fun. This is why they do not get a full sized ear tag until they have grown out of the habit, or are about to go on their final journey. It makes for too many torn ears. Clun Forest sheep have small ears, pointy and upright which gives them a (deceptive?) air of intelligence.

Of course, just as one is feeling quietly a little more confident, nature happens. The lambless ewes went outside, one hesitating a little, looking a bit confused. Then out she went. And there was a dead lamb in the barn straw. To be truthful, one forgets there are good years when lambing is relatively straightforward, but 2012 will not be one of them.

new life - with difficulty

A brief respite in the cold, just the afternoon sun projecting deceptive warmth. Then we saw the full extent of damage to the road surfaces: the French for pothole is nid-de-poule or chicken nest. What we saw were turkey nests. Overnight, of course, the temperatures dropped below zero again and the snow melt froze, creating invisible patches of black ice which, inevitably caused accidents.

Deceived by the afternoon warmth, the sheep started to give birth. Unfortunately the nights are still cold and some lambs born way before daylight, way before Arnold arrived to bring them into the lambing pens under the infra-red warming lamp. Sometimes it is possible to spot which ewe is likely to lamb in the next six hours or so and to get her into a sheltered pen before the lamb is due. But the sheep are hardly co-operative. As you try to study their rear-ends (you really don't want the detail here) they turn round to face you again. For the first couple of years we had sheep, I did go down to the shed before midnight, and back again at five a.m. - to no effect. Birthing is not a spectator sport. But I did lose weight.

It looks as though we shall have a higher than usual mortality rate this year – two lambs lost already, one through birth problems, another through cold, one on the danger list. Each death makes one feel a failure, feel guilty. No amount of saying 'they'd be worse off in the wild' brings comfort. All one can do is to give the homeopathic granules to help the milk dry up and wonder if the sheep is saddened. There is no way of knowing.

A sheep's eyes are not particularly expressive, probably something to do with the effect of slit pupils. There is a blankness when they look at you, perhaps, if you are imaginative enough, you can see a judgemental look: what is this two legged thing doing there, just standing, not bringing Me food? Certainly, after the ewe has successfully lambed, whether with twins or just a singleton, at the back of the eyes one can detect a certain look of triumph, 'look what I have done' or 'its all your fault'. Enough with the anthropomorphism, already.

Yet, I wonder. There was one occasion when a lamb had to be bottle fed as it was one of triplets (ewes only have two teats). After some stamping of her front right foot,

after I had politely expressed fear, I managed to get third lamb to take the bottle. The second day, as the lamb was busy with the bottle, its mother came to inspect me. I was hanging over the barrier of the pen. The mother faced me; lifted her nose to mine and breathed at me; I breathed back. She sniffed her lamb. Then she backed off a little, still looking at me. The ritual was repeated a second time.

Then – I'll swear – she imperceptibly nodded; perhaps there was approval in her eyes. Certainly I was hired. I fed that lamb for nearly three months.

if winning is not an option, losing happens all the time

So, my friend Jean-Paul's gut feeling was right. The precocious spring was blanketed in snow and ice before we had even had time to stock up on candles and cold remedies. Fortunately every serious country household has its reserves of firewood, confit de poule, patés, and various dried, bottled or canned edibles. Why not frozen goods you may ask? Well, there will be some frozen produce but experience shows that Electricité de France will occasionally be short of its main product, especially when branches of dead and frozen trees fall on its supply lines. It does its best, but its best is sometimes not enough.

One should never ignore a countryman's gut feeling on any subject, even if it only indicates the nearness of a meal. But I chose to discount Jean-Paul's grumble because he said he had just been rear-ended by a Czech registered 40 tonner at a stop light east of Perigueux. The light was on orange. This, he said, had caused serious damage to his car and rattled his brains until they rang – 'j'étais un peu sonné'. The Czech driver was, as far as Jean-Paul could ascertain, monolingual. Certainly he had no French and, as Jean-Paul had never claimed to know more than the politesses in English, a traffic snarl up was inevitable. Perhaps the Brussels bureaucrats could abandon improving farm regulations and concentrate on a Europe wide definition of what an orange light means.

The February cold snap should have put a temporary stop to the heavy lorry traffic. Probably to all traffic came to a halt until the authorities cleared those roads it could and domestic drivers regained their courage and put on their chains. Some even had the foresight to put on winter tyres way before Christmas. These were the well-armed people whose memories went back to the early eighties, the last serious period of cold in the Dordogne. This was when we had a few days of night temperatures down to – 22C and I bought the last electric resistance heater in town for the wine cellar. It looked rather like the Jodrell Bank telescope and managed to keep the cellar temperature at zero. I was terrified lest it set the whole place on fire.

This cold snap we are spoilt. Not only do we have partial central heating, courtesy of the wonderful wood-fired Rayburn, but we also have a 24 kilowatt electricity

supply which means we can use some electric radiators for basic heat in various rooms. In the eighties one we only had about 9 kwh, the open fireplaces and cumbersome moveable gas heaters. On the positive side then we could drain down the Farmhouse and Shepherd's Cottage and not worry; a little anti-freeze or alcohol in the lavatory pans, a fan heater under the vulnerable points of water pipes, et voilà!

This time – and since the nineties – over winter, we have 28 sheep in the barn, most about to lamb. So the water supply points down the farm have to be kept unfrozen and the electricity must be confined to this task, along with lighting. The sheep need water - looking for new-born lambs by torch light is neither efficient, nor fun. Nor is stumbling around the mezzanine, chucking down bales of hay. Obviously the ewes have instinct to guide them, aeons of experience without man's help. But if there is a death, it is man who has the guilty conscience whilst the ewes mourn.

This cold snap could not have come at a worse time. Already the summer drought created a shortage of hay and straw. Extra time inside will make greater demands on the feed stocks. Professional magazines tried to persuade farmers of the virtues of letting sheep graze for longer, in the woods, wherever. Recently a couple of neighbours suffered from a pyromaniac (still at large) who set fire to their hay stores. Emergency support from other farmers in the region helped them out – but that was before the roads were frozen. The moon is waning, perhaps the cold will wane with it. The next full moon, with possible strong change of weather, is not until 8^th March, ages away.

A waste of trees

It is a truth, universally believed, that French bureaucracy is the worst of all European administrative systems, created and run by overly clever, under employed people.

Some early examples: some thirty years ago an official wanted to know how many books we had brought into France – do you know how many books you own? But he insisted on a figure. So, with gestures, I indicated the length and height of our bookcases. We looked at each other and then compromised on a figure. Rule one: answer the question even if the answer does not bear much relation to reality. A box ticked, is a box forgotten.

Then I was in the driving licence issuing offices of the Perigueux Prefecture for about the third time, getting yet another driving licence for my dearly beloved but document careless husband. After some while I was received at the counter where I duly handed over the dossier, copies of passport, birth certificate, utility bill, cheque (and probably a few papers). The lady recognised me from previous visits. Listen, she said, when you get the new driving licence photocopy it, we can issue new licences upon presentation of photocopies. Rule two: keep a photocopy of all possible forms of identity document.

We wanted to build a half way decent stable for Clea's retired horse Diva Bella, as temperamental as her name would indicate, and friend. Unfortunately the square metres involved meant we had to apply for planning permission. The latest planning permission rules demanded that new constructions be within x metres of existing ones because local utilities would have to supply water and electricity – at their cost. It was no use screeching that we were not offering showers or TV's to the horses, a rule is a rule. In desperation I went to the Mairie with my problem. The Maire's attitude was quite simple: if you won't get planning permission, don't ask for it, if anyone bothers you, refer them to me. Rule three: make sure the town hall is OK with what you are doing.

The upper layers of the French administration have an obsession with micro-managing the country and the firm conviction that they are clever enough to

envisage every possible situation and eventuality. One size fits all. Fortunately

for France, the lower, rural layers of its civil service are essentially pragmatic. It is they who make the perfect systems work, tie a knot and get on with it.

An excellent example was the simplification of postal addresses for rural areas. It was decided that each village or hamlet would depend upon the post-code of its nearest large post office. So our village, St Aquilin, would carry the post-code of St Astier and addresses were simply: - name, street or hamlet, village and post-code of St Astier. (Compare that to English rural addresses.) All admin computers were duly re-programmed. However, actually on the road, a few of the St Aquilin houses (including ours) were served by another post distributing office with a different post-code, an affair of logistics. It has taken years to get flexibility into the admin computer systems. Meanwhile our post was shuffled between the two distributing offices, passing our gate each time.

Max Weber (1864-1920) the German sociologist and highly reputed scholar of all matters administrative has been quoted as saying that bureaucratic administration is 'domination through knowledge.' He also saw bureaucracy – though the most efficient way of running a country – as a possible threat to individual freedoms. And a threat to our freedom is what we are experiencing now. Some young civil servant, in the labour service, is trying to make our loss making small holding , with its one employee, conform to all the rules and regulations created for larger entities. One size fits all. Our opinions, ways of doing things, don't matter. The rules do. I had better go visit the Maire again and cry for help.

the strangeness of spiders in winter

As I opened the curtains to let in the early morning light, peripheral vision registered the re-occurrence of Great-Grandfather Edward's spider web. Attached to the right hand side of his portrait frame, it stretches towards the window. Every few days I remove this visually offending yet innocuous construction, sometimes with the feather duster, sometimes with the vacuum cleaner or a brush. This time was different for the probable creator was there.

It was quite a large spider, with thickish, hairy legs and I sympathised for it an indignant expression where its face might be – not that I went close enough to check.

After a brief stand-off, it conceded and scuttled back behind Great-Grandfather Edward, where it knew, I assume, I could not reach. The ancestors' images are framed in heavy wood with plaster mouldings, gilded and fragile. All always have a light tracery of spider web which shows up the dust and which can be removed by the gentle plumeau. All weigh a metaphorical ton and the frames can be damaged by the metaphorical sneeze. It is only G-G Edward who attracts a noticeable spread, his portrait is the lightest but still too heavy to lift.

There is no understanding spiders. Why would this one – if there is only one - persist in re-creating its short lived web and at a time of year when there are very few insects inside the house? Except for the one remaining fly of winter, of course. Is it doing this just to annoy? And what does it do for drink, given there is no dew inside the house? Presumably it is that ubiquitous spider in the bath. Scaredy cats leave a trail of loo-paper for it to climb out, the impatient swipe it out with a face cloth or, if truly hardy, with their hand.

Another example: there was the tunnel spider this summer: it made an impressive tunnel web in the box bush with a net spreading wide into the neighbouring acanthus plants, neatly hung from its spikes. Apparently tunnel spiders are very fast at catching their prey, the lightest touch on the net and it darts out, overcomes the unfortunate and drags it back down the tunnel. Only this construction was very low down near the ground, the acanthus was not in flower, nor were the roses near it, there was very little to entice insects to wander across the web. A few leaves and petals were caught in the web.

Perhaps it was forced to become vegetarian. Apparently there is a vegetarian spider, named 'Bagheera kiplingi' but, although we had a thorn tree, still have some (French definition) acacia trees, possibly a laburnam,and unless it came in with a bunch of bananas, this Bagheera is most likely still confined to Latin America.

winning is not an option

So I met Jean-Paul in the hardware store, looking his usual cheerful, chubby self so, like a fool, I ventured to ask if he was pleased with the gentle rain that has fallen since the frost. Never, ever ask a country man if he is happy with the present weather. The answer will be long.

Jean-Paul's grumble was difficult to interpret as he mostly speaks patois, in this case 'occitan' and mumbles. I gathered that the weather was now too soft, the vegetation was too advanced; I was instructed to look at the hazel bushes. Well, I have duly looked at the hazels and, yes, the catkins are hanging bedraggled from the twigs when they should not really have appeared until February...which is the week after next. More importantly, at the end of each twig there is a minute leaf bud, glossy brown and sharp as a spear point. The willow catkins are still waiting. What happens, he asked, if another frost comes?

This is a rhetorical country question that runs and runs all spring through, sometimes even during early summer, though hard rain is then substituted for frost, until the fruits are there. Even then rot and mildew threatens or, in the case of hard fruits such as hazel nuts, squirrels and other nut-cracking animals. Last year we did not get any hazel nuts from the various bushes scattered around. Our own fault because we always leave it too late to harvest them, a squirrel's definition of ripeness seems to be in advance that of a human.

Another sign of early spring is that the worms and the moles are already taking advantage of the softness of the soil to do their work. Worm casts are less visible than mole hills and fortunately it is not grass mowing time so gardeners have no reason to curse about the blade blunting effects of either. I am quite happy to see mole hills as the soil supplied is just right for potting bulbs which I have bought for my indoor bowls, much less effort to collect than soil and cheaper than commercial compost. I might even change my window boxes, the pansies are looking a little sad, though I have not consciously seen any commercial primulas yet.

My own personal sign of an earlier than usual spring is the clump of very small wild daffodils near the ruined bread oven. The leaves are about 20 cms high and there two small, rather battered yellow buds. The daffodils have come up in the same place as always. Normally I do not see them until March. Obviously daffodils are one of the few flowers not attractive to sheep - animals usually quite undiscriminating about flowers. They will not eat daisies or dandelions but they are very partial to all forms of wild orchid. So am I. Every year it is the same race between us: will I get there before they have eaten the orchids?

of reindeer and frosts

As promised, the full moon of January 9^th introduced a change in the weather. Out went the wet, damp and stormy, in came the bright, clear cold which, despite the random early morning or late evening patch of fog, is still with us. We are all deeply grateful, not least the animals, for a few degrees of frost will kill ticks and other bloodsuckers though it will not deal with the over-wintering eggs of other pests. For that we need frost in double figures.

A curious feature of the early winter frosts – they only come with daylight. (Doubtless there is a good scientific explanation of which I am not aware). Anyone (i.e. me) who gets up at about 6 a.m when it is still dark, because wakeful, and decides to get logs for the stove, will notice that the ground is damp and green. Filling the log basket a second time a couple of hours later, the sun just above the horizon, the grass is crisp with hoar frost and slippers get damp. Today there was no hoar frost but the branches and twigs of trees were highlit by frost. If well wrapped up, this winter beauty compensates for its cold.

And talking of cold, I wonder if Santa has not left some of his reindeer behind at La Chaise. A few days ago I walked down to the lower irrigation pond in bright sunshine and then turned to look at the slope above. This stretch of hillside faces roughly south-west, is garnished with juniper, scrub pines, scrub oak, dying elms and grass being strangled by lichen. We refer to it as 'Greece'.

A great expanse of lichen – probably 'cladonia portentosa' * had been broken off, was even drier than usual, it crumbled between my fingers. Now, somewhere at the back of my mind is the information that reindeer eat lichen when their habitat is covered by snow. Only we have not yet had snow, this was not eaten, just pulled up and left in place, no marks of tusks, hooves or teeth – but insofar as one can tell with a plant that is both and algae and fungus, it seemed most definitely dead. Also, as far as we know, there are no reindeer in the Dordogne.

The branches, twigs, stones and fence posts at La Chaise are covered with a most wonderful range of lichens. My mother collected some to take home and turn into vegetable dyes (wonder what the UK customs thought) with which she was very pleased. Should I get a sudden attack of flower arranging, lichen adds that wonderful 'ikebana' touch – and it lasts longer than cut flowers. Everyone around agrees that the presence of lichens means we have exceptionally pure air – how they reconcile this with the lichens on London grave stones is another matter. But lichens are a very complicated subject and probably beyond all except the most enthusiastic scientist.

Years ago I picked up some beautifully produced booklets on lichens, probably from the Natural History Museum, including the one by Jack R. Laundon* which shows a picture of the lichen that appears to be 'uprooted' on our heathland. Everytime I look into one, I feel stupid – but the photos are wonderful. Lichen is a totally otherworldly form, right here on earth.

The new moon is due on the 23^rd of January, the weather is supposed to warm up. I am distrustful. Memo to self: buy gas mantles for the camping gas lights, more wicks and petrol for the petrol lamps; a few more candles would not come amiss. Perhaps I should polish the brass petrol lamps, check their glass chimneys. It's called 'country insurance'.