Zen and the Art of Fence-post Carrying.

Oh gosh! It's more than a week since our last posting. How remiss of us. Our only excuse is busy business and constant hard work. Last week we bought another 110 fence posts (1.8m length, mostly 6 - 7.5 cm diameter, for those of you who care about such things) and a kilometre of wire (25kg) and began the relentless task of fencing our next area for the llamas, which has come to be known as The Rough Land.

As I believe I may have mentioned earlier, the land is steep, and access to it is not easy. We have to drive the land rover up country tracks, around the edge of some vineyards, and park at the edge of a wheat field, which we then have to walk round/through, before even reaching the boundary of our land. Then Simon has had to create a track through a long thin wedge of flattish, but overgrown land to reach the hilly area, where the boundaries of the land open out to create what could loosely be called a field. This steep 'field' is also heavily overgrown, but has a few clearings full of long grass, and other small vegetation.

The remoteness of the spot has its attractions (SO nice not to have to keep explaining what we are doing to passers-by), but it doesn't make getting 110 fence posts on to it very easy.



As usual, we arrived at a consistent division of labour. Simon did all the 'skilled' work of deciding where to put the posts, and then banging them in with big muscles and the post-banger. I did most of the 'gofer' work, moving the posts from the car to the land, and then up the hill to wherever they were needed. That meant five trips in the car with 20 plus posts each time, with each lot of 20 divided by the number of posts I could carry at one go, (which pretty much averaged out at three).

Now if you're keeping up with me, you'll have realised this meant around 36 return walking/carrying trips between the car and the beginning of the area to be fenced. Of course, we chose the hottest days of the week (of the year so far actually) to do the work, and the splinters on the posts meant substantial arm-covering clothing and gloves had to be worn.

Why, oh why are we doing this? Whose damned stupid idea was it to keep llamas in the first place! On a hot, sunny, Spring day in the South of France, any sane person would be sitting in the shade admiring the view from the terrace with a cold beer, a bowl of peanuts and a good book.

Still, such repetitive and hard tasks are always good for inspiring a bit of zen thinking. Of course, sweeping sand has gotta be a whole lot easier, but the notion is the same. Just be aware of this moment now. Don't let your mind fill with the horror of what is yet to come. Just take this step now. And another one. And another one. "The greatest things in the world must be accomplished through the smallest"; "A thousand-mile journey begins with a single step", (some nuggets of wisdom from the Tao Te Ching).

When one is concentrating only on This Step, it is very hard not to start counting them. Obviously, I'm not yet very good at concentrating on This Step. During the 36 return trips between the car and the 'post-depository' on the land, I counted 199 steps on the way in, and 177 on the way back. Clearly I take bigger steps when unladen. If my maths is accurate (ha!) that makes a total of 13,536 steps, more than 50% of which involved a heavy burden of splintered and unwieldy wood. And then the posts of evil had to be dragged up hill through the narrow, prickly, stumpy, steep pathways (that Simon had created specially for the purpose with his Big Strimmer), and laid out at appropriate intervals ready for the Banging-In.

Actually, during this last part of the process. my ability to concentrate on just This Step improved considerably. It took all my mental and physical powers just to stay upright and keep moving. But I swear at some points I was 'in the zone'. Just doing it, and doing it some more. It would be wonderful to be able to live all of life like that. Being aware of the detail of the present moment without passing judgement on it, or slipping into thinking about some undetermined point in the future when Things will be Better.

Suffice it to say, over the course of the hottest days of April, all the posts got put where they should be and banged into place. And despite a little bit of (slightly sneering, I think) health advice from our French neighbour (" You have a lot of colour! You don't want to work in the middle of the day. If you want to live long, you must start at 8.00am, stop at 11.30, eat and rest till 4.00pm, then work again till 7.00pm. And if it is too hot, you just don't work."), we were pleased with having accomplished a Great Thing.

Today, we started the next task of attaching the wire to the posts. Another big-heavy-pig-of-a-thing to get up to the top of a hill. Another learning experience. Allusions to the Myth of Sysiphus spring to mind. I don't like to hope too much, but at the moment we are feeling optimistic that the field will be secure and ready for the llamas by the end of this week. And yet, even as I write that, I sort of know that something will happen to confound such positive expectations.

What's in a name? (part 3)

Well, the baby is now two weeks old, and she has to be named . . .

As always, we've agonised over this, and given it the systematic overkill. We thought that we should establish some sort of 'theme', so that future babies would have names that linked them together. So, Val has gone through all the lists of French girls' names she can find. The internet has been trawled for ideas. I guess we knew that when we hit on the right one we would know it (perhaps our approach to all of this new life is really just systematic stumbling?).

We've chosen a name which has French and Peruvian connections: Capucine. This is pronounced ca-poo-seen, and is the French word for Nasturtium. Our trusty French dictionary tells us that the nasturtium was introduced to France from Peru. Neat? Or just a little obsessive?

So the theme is to be flower names, although Val has pointed out that this would be a bit wimpy for the males, so we might have to have something more macho for any potential studs. But then what if they are castrated? Sexism gets much more complicated in the world of the gelded . . . . .

An uneasy peace

Things seem to have settled down. We now have two separate herds.

Duc (front) and Valentine are facing away from Pedro, which suggests that they are being submissive. Pedro, meanwhile, paces up and down the fence line, with a "you looking at me?" expression. And young Ana is just mystified that everyone is no longer friendly . . .










When Duc or Valentine approach the dividing line - which they are still doing a lot, albeit tentatively - Pedro instantly adopts an aggressive stance. with ears back. Valentine has his forward, which in this case shows non-aggression. Duc has not yet managed to get so close, no doubt because he can't be so placatory. Valentine is really just a nice wimp! Fatma, the cause of all the problem, smirks in the background.

Things can't carry on like this, if only because Valentine and Duc now only have a very small area which is pretty grass-free. Now we have to get a load more fence posts and start work on some of the 'rough' land which we have agreed to buy.

Roll on the wheat harvest, when we can take over all the nice flat land. Shame it will have only stubble on it, rather than fresh grass to eat!

Nothing much happens

A few days have passed since the Bad Day.

The hurdle of obtaining hay has been surmounted, (Remotely Interesting Fact: thirty two bales fit in our horse trailer, and weigh around a ton). The guttering has been installed on the field shelter, so the rain water collects in the llamas drinking bucket. Neat. The vegetable garden is taking shape – tomatoes, lettuces, courgettes and leeks in the ground; tomato, red pepper and basil seeds in pots. Despite all the Fuss and Bother of last Wednesday, no mating has yet taken place in llama land. As far as we know.

April continues to shower. Warm and sunny one minute. Heavy rain the next. The field is muddy. The track up to the top gate is muddier. The drive up it in the land rover is scary. More adrenalin bursts, as the road tyres get slick with mud and the only possible movement is a sideways slide towards the edge of a wooded precipice. Eventually back on the safety of the rutted tarmac, we laugh at the muddy trails we leave in the road, just like Real Farmers (and contemplate, with a guilty shudder, the possible consequences for unsuspecting bikers).

We take the dog for a walk, and have a good look at the next bit of rough land we intend to fence. It’s steep in many places and brim-full of prickly stuff. While I stand in a ‘clearing’ of Very Long Grass, Simon ventures off to explore the possible boundaries, leaving me alone in the silence. Strange, low grunting noises from close-by make me jump, and send Max the Lionheart whimpering to my side. The sun is hot, the sky a beautiful expanse of rolling silver and grey clouds bundling around in patches of blue. The joy of yet another moment in a magic place is only slightly marred by the fear of whatever tusked creature might come rushing out of the undergrowth at any second.

There is no easy access to the land – the most obvious way-in being across a field of wheat. Simon cheerfully comments that it will be easy to clear a line around the edges for erecting a fence. I consider the work involved and question his use of the term ‘easy’. I guess it’s all relative. The prospect of carrying fence posts from the nearest driveable point to the highest part of the land makes me feel tired. The thought of removing metres and metres of blackthorn makes me feel sore. The thought of paying someone else to do all the work makes its way into my head. But we can’t afford it and anyway it probably couldn’t be done quickly enough. Plus we’d have to have some more of those dreaded French phone conversations to arrange it.

We walk back home via the llama field and Duc and Valentine sniff at Max through the gate. Nobody runs away. As we head back down towards the village, the clouds empty. Max and Simon both make it home wet, and I straggle in behind utterly drenched. It seems hard to believe that in a couple of months all the land around here will be rock hard and bone dry, when the summer drought kicks in.

After the Storm

The next morning came – just a little too soon for us weary things. However, our worries about our four-legged family had us out of bed and up to the field at the crack of dawn (well, maybe a few minutes later).

Duc and Valentine both came to greet us at the gate, although Valentine was still limping. After sharing a few happy breakfast moments with them, we decided to let Duc out of the catch-pen, and watched anxiously as he strutted straight towards the new fence dividing the field. Immediately Pedro responded, heading towards his side of the fence, head and tail up, ears back.

We waited. We watched. We held out breath.

Lots of posturing and posing by both protagonists. Duc moved one way, Pedro followed him. Duc turned back. So did Pedro. Up and down the fence line the two marched, hurling silent taunts across the wire, each trying to look taller and more threatening than his rival. Oh, if only we had a video camera!

Meanwhile Valentine, showing only a passing interest in the spectacle, remained happily in the catch-pen, munching hay. Since he did not seem in the least bit keen to join Duc in their allotted part of the field, and showed no anxiety at being on his own in the catch-pen, (an animal with a bit of sense!) we thought we’d leave him in there for a little longer, to ensure he didn’t move around too much, and hopefully give his foot a chance to heal.

Valentine spent the day either kushed or eating. Duc spent the day either posing or eating. Pedro spent all day ‘on guard’ at the fence line, apparently unable to relax at all. By the end of the day, my sympathies had transferred from the victims of the massacre, to poor uptight Pedro, driven by instinct, a slave to his hormones, bearing the lonely burden of being The Stud Male.

Deciding that overt hostilities had ceased (albeit temporarily), and that the new fence was doing its job, we turned our minds to the next immediate problem of getting some more hay from somewhere. We were down to the last of the bales that Mike and Sue had kindly given us to ‘keep the llamas going until we got sorted’ (ha!) and there was very little grass left in Duc and Valentine’s side of the field.

Simon groaned. Another delightful challenge of our new life lay ahead – telephone conversations in French, as he tried to find someone, somewhere who could sell us a load of hay immediately. I really ought to do something about improving my French language skills, so Simon doesn’t have to do all the communicating. But then if I did, it would be me having to make these phone calls….

Bad Day at Black Rock

This is a strange life. Just when you think you’ve got it sussed, fate steps in to wipe that smug smile of your face.

Wednesday morning dawned sunny and clear. A good day for our first llama walk we thought. Having created a marvellous contraption for enclosing individual llamas in a small space, so as to make haltering easier (nay – even possible!), we thought we’d try out its effectiveness.

Things went quite well to start with. Between Simon and myself, a long piece of rope, and a big piece of wood (designed to be a kitchen unit worktop, but adapted by us cheapskates to become a sort of gate) we managed to persuade Duc into the small space, where he kindly stood calmly while Simon put on his halter and lead. Next up – Valentine. Well, he’d twigged as to what was going on, and was not quite so easy to catch, but still I found myself in a small space with him, and easily got his halter on. Piece of cake. Until I tried to attach the lead to it.

Maybe he didn’t like the colour we’d chosen for his lead (pastel shades for the girls, bold primaries for the boys – bright red for Valentine). Maybe he didn’t feel like a walk. Whatever the reason, he decided to test our catch-pen enclosure design at its most obvious weak point, putting his head underneath the ‘gate’ and spectacularly lifting it off its hinges. Yeah, well, I’d actually seen that one coming in my imagination as we were constructing it, but Simon, ever the optimist, had thought they’d be unlikely to try it.

So, Valentine, all shaken up (and a little bit pleased with himself, no doubt) was not in the least bit inclined to let me attach a lead to him, and we decided just to take out Duc for a short wander on his own. Which he seemed to enjoy, particularly since he managed to get his gob round some lush, sweet grass – a rare commodity in his over-grazed field.

On our return, Simon went ahead to open the gate, and Duc took the opportunity to try to pull my arm out of its shoulder socket. I think he was trying to get away, back to the lovely grass, but I had learned my llama-walking lessons well, and with a very from grip on the lead, there was no way I was gonna let go, and, triumphant at last, I led him back into the field. However, with hindsight, I wonder now if Duc had a premonition about what was about to happen next.

And what happened next was not a pretty sight.


The moment Duc got back into the field, Pedro, our ‘stud’ male, who up until this point had been a bit of a gentle (if aloof) giant, went on the attack. Head down, biting Duc’s legs; head up, spitting and neck-wrestling Duc to the ground; all the while making the most amazingly unattractive noises. This was a Pedro we had never seen before and suddenly his huge size and weight became overtly apparent. All I could do was stand transfixed in horror, calling to Duc to run away and come back to the catch pen. But would he submit? Would he hell! He was not behaving as a gelded male should. He was behaving like a sex-crazed football supporter after 10 pints of Best. Strutting, and posing and spitting and hanging around Fatma (the obvious cause of it all – on heat again, following the birth of her baby). He was getting a hammering, but he just couldn’t back down.

Eventually, god only knows how, we managed to steer the rumbling herd (yes they were all in there somehow, as if the girls were trying to break it up or something) towards the catch pen, and Duc, briefly distracted by the attraction of his other great love (food) ran in through the gate, with enough of a space between him and Pedro for us to slam it shut and break them up. Peace did not return though.

Duc tested out our fencing and gate construction, trying to jump over the gate, and when that failed, trying to push his way through the fencing. For once, we felt justified in having done such an OTT job on the fencing. It held, and Duc resorted to anxious pacing along the fence line, posing and snorting, and making a sort of “you’re lucky I can’t get over this fence” sound to Pedro.

After examining the blood on Duc’s legs, and deciding the wounds were probably superficial, we stood (shaking) at the fence between the rivals and contemplated What the Bloody Hell to Do Now? Fencing the other bit of rough land would take days. Keeping Duc in the small catch-pen on his own seemed an unlikely option – he was SO uptight, I thought he might explode or have a heart attack or something. The only possible solution was to split the field and make a new (very strong) fence down the middle.

Luckily we still had some fence posts and some wire netting left over from our earlier work, and Simon set to, banging in fence posts (with a speed and strength I had never thought possible – it’s amazing how useful adrenalin can be sometimes) while I stayed (very nervously) in the catch pen with Duc, trying to calm him down, and discourage him from trying to get out - his hot, snorting breath in my face suddenly seeming more scary than endearing.

“OK. Ok… It’s all under control. We have a plan. We have the necessary materials and know-how. It’ll all be fine.” Simon heads back to the house to man-handle the evil, heavy roll of wire into the land rover to bring up to the field. I stay between Duc and Pedro, to keep Pedro away from the catch-pen fence, literally out of spitting distance.

But then…Oh bloody crap! Pedro is attacking Valentine! Poor, sweet, submissive Valentine is getting the macho treatment, and even though he is kushing with his tail up over his back in an obvious, “You win, mate!” pose, Pedro is not leaving him alone. Much screaming – some of it Pedro’s, some of it Valentine’s, most of it mine. Visions of carnage. Visions of trampled llama babies, and lifeless, bloodied llama corpses. “Come on Valentine! Run for it! This way!”

Simon, fresh from his restful 15 minutes humping a massive roll of heavy wire uphill, plunges into the mayhem. Shouting manfully, with much arm-waving and probably unconsidered bravado, Simon approaches the fray as if it were a dog-fight – intent on establishing his position as the Alpha male. My visions of carnage expand to include lifeless, bloodied husband bodies, while my brain whirrs wildly searching for the French words to explain to the Emergency Services (Damn, what IS the French Emergency Number???) that my husband has been attacked by a rampant llama stud.

Amazingly, it works. Valentine, sensing impending mortality, stampedes down the hill, in my general direction, with Pedro in hot pursuit, and the rest of the gang close behind. Before he has the chance to veer off in an unhelpful direction, Simon grabs his halter and hurtles towards the catch pen. With my body between Duc and the drama in front of me, I get the gate open just wide enough for Simon to shove Valentine through the gap. Then Simon, expanding to the proportions of a Super Hero, turns to face-off Pedro, while Valentine, bloody and panting, collapses into a kushed position in front of the hay, and starts chomping. Comfort eating, I think.

What a day! What a life! Simon returns to join us in the sanctuary of the catch pen, and asks casually if I’m still happy that we’re following this dream. A moment’s consideration. “Would you rather be dealing with this, or asbestos in a primary school?” I retort. Discussion over, we wipe the sweat from our collective brow, and return to the Task In Hand.

Duc is a little happier now that he has a buddy with him in the pen. Valentine is a little happier that he is still alive. Pedro is a little happier that he has all the women and most of the field to himself. Fatma is chewing grass and pretending it is all nothing at all to do with her.

The rest of the day (which I think must have been nice and sunny as we both got sun burnt faces) passes in the concentrated effort of constructing a separating fence, whilst monitoring Pedro’s whereabouts, and trying to be polite to the endless stream of naïve passers-by who come to look at the lovely llamas and ask inane questions. In French.

When the fence is finished (no way through – it’s a good job we made two entrances, one at each end of the field) we review the situation. Duc and Valentine have been penned up all day, and Duc has been pacing the boundary endlessly, looking for a way out. We decide it is safe to let them into their newly enclosed third of the field. Out they come.

But Valentine is limping, and as he puts weight on his front, left foot, it oozes blood from a nasty hole on the outside. Wish we had some antiseptic. Wish we had any idea at all what to do. We decide in the end that Valentine should be kept in a small space to stop him walking about, and he seems happy to come back into the pen and lie down. But we don’t want to leave him alone, and we’re not convinced that Pedro and Duc won’t have a go at each other over or through our new fence, so Duc has to come back into the pen for the night as well.

As it gets dark, we return to the house suffering the after effects of adrenalin overdoses, tension and sheer hard work. Am I still glad we pursued this dream? Ask me in the morning.

Ahh!

A picture is worth a thousand words . . . .


Young llamas - one of eight months, one of eight days

No it's not a bus shelter

By popular request (!) here is a picture of the field shelter.

Yes, it might be slightly wonky, but the llamas don't seem to mind. And, in our defence, the land is very sloping and uneven. And we have never built anything like it before . . .

Let's hope the wind doesn't huff and puff and blow our house down.

Lama poo - servez-vous!

Apparently, llama poo is excellent fertiliser . . . So, we are likely to grow the biggest vegetables in the village, as we have something of an excess available to us. True to form, Val is the poo collector, and as you can see, she loves the work!

Now all we need is to put a big bucket outside the house, with a sign inviting villagers to help themselves . . . . .

Interestingly (or at least I think it's interesting, so what does that say about me?) llamas are very social about their toilet habits. They establish one or two areas in the field where they will all go to poo and wee. Often the females go off the toilet together - showing many similarities with humans. Even the baby has adopted this social convention of using the communal latrine. What a sophisticated breed of animals they are!

Deforestation - llama style.

Here's a short video of Anastasia and then Valentine destroying the remnants of a little pine tree, (and also of the baby getting a drink from Mum). We still haven't named the little one yet, She is a now a week old. I think it's time we stopped calling her 'Baby'.

Having seen how much the llamas enjoy eating trees, we realize we won't need to work so hard to clear the next bit of overgrown land we intend to fence for them. Maybe the Peruvian altiplano was actually a forest before the llamas got to it.

And here's another video, which shows the extent of Fatma's maternal concern. Is it the baby she wants to get to, or something else . . . .?

Helter Shelter....

Over the last couple of days, we have completed the erection and roofing of the heath robinson architectural folly henceforth to be known as 'The Field Shelter'.

After a beautifully warm and sunny Sunday, we decided not to bother putting the sides on the field shelter, thinking that the llamas could benefit from the shade of the roof, and enjoy the cooling breeze from the side.

Mistake.

Sunday night, we had the Mother of All Storms, with torrential rain, sideways hail, and cold westerly winds. After 30 minutes of imagining a sodden baby llama dying from windchill on her 5th day, we drove up to the field in the dark, with a Very Big Torch, to check the llamas were all safe and sound, and somehow kushed down out of the worst of the weather.

Of course they were. We returned (colder and wetter than the llamas) to a fitful night of further worry, and determined to fix the back and sides on the field shelter the next day.

In the morning, the llamas were all looking rather bedraggled (and a bit muddy) but fine, and although the baby wasn't looking white and fluffy, she was clearly as healthy and bouncy as ever.

The day progressed with occasional sunny spells overwhelmed by frequent cumulonimbus downpours, as we struggled manfully to fit the feather-edge boards to the slightly wonky structure. Every time the clouds opened, the llamas ran for shelter against the tall vegetation at the side of the field, and observed us from their superior position, while we continued to work under the waterfall sheeting down from the roof (note to selves: next job is to install some guttering).

At 8.30pm we stood back proudly to admire the finished article, and despite chattering teeth and purple fingers (mine from the cold, Simon's from the misplaced hammer blows) stood around in the dimming light to watch our family tuck in to a fresh bale of hay within the cosy results of our day's labours. Now this is what I call 'job satisfaction'.

And each time we tried to pull ourselves away, the baby decided to do something funny and endearing or just outright crazy, making it so, so hard to turn our backs and leave. This is such a great life!

Breakfast time

Click on the picture below to see an album from this morning

Latest photos

What's in a name? (part 2)

Having just read Simon’s post about our choice of a name for our llama herd (and incidentally for our entire ‘farm’ or business), I feel a little more explanation is needed about how we came up with this name in the first place.

During our many (and very long and tedious) trips up and down through France over the last few weeks, I have frequently occupied my mind by trying to think of possible names for our farm-to-be. The list has been very long, ranging from the almost sublime to the utterly ridiculous.

I thought at one point I’d hit on a good one when I suggested naming it after an area of land on which most of our pasture will be based. Unfortunately, a Google search of the proposed name of la Ferme des Bouzigues, turned up a farm/zoo of that name in the Herault region, which could easily be confused with ours. (It also gave me some more ideas for future activities though – they have a petting zoo, with rabbits, ferrets, pygmy goats etc). We didn’t want to be presumptuous and call it la Ferme du Roquetaillade, thus laying claims to be the only farm in the village (although we will be the only one with animals!), or la Ferme du Chateau (after our road name) which might have upset the person who actually owns the village castle.

Many of my other suggestions were considered to be too twee (La Ferme des Feys du Bois was one I liked – meaning Fairywood farm. My daughter snorted, “you CAN’T call it THAT!”), or too hackneyed (La Ferme Verte – meaning Green Farm, yawn). None of the translations of suggestions like Haven Farm, Destiny Farm, Good Luck Farm really worked. At one point I wanted to call it Home Farm, like in The Archers, but Home doesn’t translate well into French, (Chez Nous – how trite can you get?!)

Getting desperate, I thought I needed inspiration. And feeling that this whole experience so far has been rather magical and fortuitous, it didn’t seem unreasonable to ask for a bit of help from the fairies.

Having installed the fairy-door (which was so thoughtfully given to me, as a leaving-work present… “It’s lovely…er, what is it exactly?” “It’s a fairy door, stupid! To invite the fairies into your house”) next to the outside of our front door, I picked up one of my embarrassing collection of fairy books (most of which are ridiculous rubbish, but a couple of which are actually quite reasonable, within the whole scheme of things) and started flicking through, hoping for inspiration.

My eyes lit upon the word ‘dawn’, and thinking of new beginnings, and magical times of day, I wondered what the French word for ‘dawn’ was. Out came the massive French-English dictionary. Having found that dawn in French is ‘aube’, I then looked up aube in the other end, to do a bit of cross-referencing (you have to be sure you’ve got the right meaning of things sometimes). After managing to ignore the distractions of those really interesting words that always seem to appear at the top of each dictionary page (such as gringalet (puny), godemiche (dildo), dodeliner (to nod off) – obviously I was working backwards to the ‘A’s), I got to the entry for aube, and just above it saw the completely unfamiliar word ‘aubaine’ defined as “unhoped for good luck, godsend”, with ‘profiter d’une aubaine’ meaning “to make the most of an opportunity”.

Perfect.

After sharing the idea with Simon, we did a bit of internet research and thus discovered the history of the word and its other meanings, (including the interesting fact that it is another name for the Chardonnay grape, which is also prevalent in these parts).

So, as far as the fairies and I are concerned, our venture will henceforth be known as La Ferme de l’Aubaine, and our llama herd will be Les Lamas de l’Aubaine.

Maktub (and if you don't know what that means - try this link)

What's in a name?

Well, we've yet to decide on a name for the new baby, but that's not what this is about.

"What shall we call the herd?" is the question we keep coming back to. After chewing over all sorts of sensible and daft names, searching for that magic 'something' that would work for both of us, we've pretty well decided on 'Les Lamas de l'Aubaine'.

If you've not reacted immediately positively to this, then either it works better in the French, or we've not chosen well. Let me explain the meaning, and then you can react again!

First of all, we decided the name should be in French - because being in France is a very important part of our new life - but should be pronounceable in English (les lamas de l'aubaine = lay lama de l'o-ben).

This meant that llamas would become lamas, as for some reason the French don't accept either the pronunciation or the spelling of the Spanish word llama. In English, as is so often the case, we keep the spelling of a foreign word, but pronounce it as if it were English. Hence the rhyme which my daughter Nikita drew to my attention:

The one-l lama,
He's a priest.
The two-l llama,
He's a beast.
And I will bet
A silk pajama
There isn't any
Three-l lllama.*

-Ogden Nash

*The author's attention has been called to a type of conflagration known
as a three-alarmer. Pooh.

So, our llamas (English) become lamas (French), but with a nice Buddhist sub-text . . . .

Then 'aubaine'. In old French, around 1200, an aubaine was a foreigner. Foreigners came under the protection of the king, and part of this meant that if a foreigner died, then their possessions were inherited by the king - a system known as 'droit d'aubaine'. This was not abolished till 1819, well after the Revolution. By the end of the 18th Century, the term 'aubaine' had moved to a wider use than the droit d'aubaine, now meaning anything that was an unexpected gain, a godsend, a windfall. So, the word includes two relevant senses for us - 'foreign' and 'pleasant surprise'.

What do you think? Comments welcome . . . . Nothing is fixed until we register the new baby or formally create the business.

And then there were seven . . . . .

Today has been a very significant day in the life of the Lamas de l’Aubaine.

We woke up this morning at the usual tardy hour of 7.30 am, and, as has become our accustomed routine, I picked up the binoculars, opened the bedroom curtains and proceeded to do the usual llama count. “There’s one….two, three, four….five, six…seven. Seven?!!!!”

Yes indeed. Despite all our careful monitoring over the last week, and endless watching for signs of Fatma’s impending delivery, we managed to miss the birth. Of course, on the plus side, this means we managed to miss all the stress and worry that would no doubt have been associated with observing the process. Instead, we just awoke to find it had all happened, and that mother and baby were doing well.

Of course, we got dressed and headed straight up to the field, Simon checking he had enough charged batteries for his camera, and me stuffing my pockets with Sainsbury’s carrier bags, so that I could remove the placenta, which I knew would be hanging around somewhere. Funny how I get all the nicest jobs! (Note from Simon: see the full fun of this task here!)

It is truly amazing to see something so small and defenceless stumbling around on such long and wobbly legs. The slope of the field was clearly proving something of a challenge for the somewhat unstable creature, but all the other llamas showed such an interest in the new arrival, that it was unlikely that they would allow any harm to come to it.

We failed miserably to get a good enough look at the baby’s rear end to be able to tell for sure whether it was a boy or a girl. However, after closer inspections of some of the photos, and a detailed phone conversation with our llamas’ previous owners, we are reasonably certain that it is a girl. When Simon asked me how I knew, I had to reply that of course it must be a female, because that’s how the plan goes. Since the day we decided to focus on llama breeding, rather than trekking, we’ve always hoped that both pregnant females would give birth to girls.

So, all is well with the Universe and we are happy bunnies (and llamas). And to cap it all, we are off to the notaire this afternoon to sign the promesse de vente for the eight hectares of land we are buying to accommodate our growing herd.

More pictures can be found by clicking here

Here come the llamas!

We always knew this moment would come. Although, to be honest, even during today when we knew Mike had set off on the six hour drive south with the llamas loaded in the trailer, we hadn't really taken it on board.

I had planned to take lots of pictures of the arrival, and moving the animals into our field, but it all proved too hectic and demanding. The track to the top of the field proved a bit too difficult for Mike to back the trailer up, so he had to stop some 60 metres short. This then meant that we had to take the llamas in two batches up a strange track to an unknown destination. OK, probably, for the males who were used to going for walks . . . . but how would the pregnant females react?

Mike climbed into the trailer and we waited, slightly worried by the crashes and bangs from inside. It seems that as Mike fixed leads to some llamas, the others got tangled up in them. Eventually all went quiet and Mike asked us to open the rear trailer door. There he was, smiling and cheerful as usual, and we were off.

The first batch went quite smoothly - one of the males used to walking (Valentine), the young female (Anastasia), and the less pregnant female (Elif). With quite a lot of persuasion, we eventually managed to get them up the track and down to the field. They all set off to explore, while we went back to the trailer.

Of course, the remaining three were by now pretty agitated. One of them was a trained male (Duc), but the other two were the stud male (Pedro) and the very heavily pregnant female, Fatma. I think we might have hesitated - but realistically there was no point, because there was no alternative. It probably only took two or three minutes, but it felt a lot longer! No injuries, although both Mike and Fatma took fairly dramatic falls as they came down the path to the field.

The trauma seemed very rapidly forgotten - and the llamas behaved exactly as Mike had predicted, walking round the perimeter of the field to check it out, and then getting down to some eating and drinking.

Duc seems pretty relaxed

All three of the females check out some of the trees on the perimeter

All welcome some grass and a snack of hard food

Sad news

So here we are at last. At home in Roquetaillade.

The first day of our journey through France was thankfully uneventful. However, the events of the second day reminded us what a roller-coaster of a ride this thing called Life is.

About three hours into our journey from Orleans we received a phone call from Sue (the llama-selling lady). “Hello, Val? I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. Some really bad news. Emine is dead.”

Emine was one of the two pregnant females we had bought, and was the mother of the 8 month old Anastasia, who we had also bought, and who had not yet been fully weaned. A definite “Oh My God!” moment.

Sue went on to explain that they had returned from a shopping trip to find that Emine had somehow got her head stuck in the hay-feeder, in the barn, where all our llamas had been put ready for loading on to the trailer the next morning. They thought that maybe Albert, their huge Clydesdale stud horse, who was in the barn on the other side of the feeder, may have nudged it when Emine was eating, so she couldn’t get out, and that as she struggled to free herself she got weak, and then suffocated as the weight of her body pulled her down.

Of course poor Mike and Sue kept going over and over it. They couldn’t understand what had happened, and felt that it could have been avoided if they’d done something differently. When they found her, little Anastasia was still trying to suckle from her dead mother. Although it was of course upsetting for us, our sadness could in no way compare to theirs. After all, we had only seen Emine for a little while on our last visit to their farm, whilst they had lived with her for years, and seen all her babies born and weaned.

Despite their huge loss, Mike and Sue were keen to agree with us a ‘replacement’, suggesting that we could have one of the other pregnant females, or perhaps a couple more male llamas for trekking. They needed to know within the next couple of hours, as Mike would need to catch the llama(s) we wanted, to make sure they were in the barn ready for loading into the trailer at first light, for the trip to us.

It was at this point that the direction of our future in llama activities became clear. Whilst I would dearly have loved to have had Felix (a young male we had met whilst doing our training at Mike and Sue’s, and who I could imagine training into a really good and friendly trekker), and Diablo (the old grandfather figure who has ‘looked after’ Felix since he was weaned last year), there was suddenly no doubt in our minds that breeding rather than trekking is what we really want to do.

We had chosen Fatma and Emine from all the available pregnant females, as they were both pregnant by Mike and Sue’s stud male Yoda, which meant that, should either or both of their offspring be female, they could eventually be mated with Pedro - the stud male we had bought. However all the other females were pregnant by Pedro, so any female born to one of those could not be mated with Pedro (their father) without leading to possible genetic defects caused by inbreeding. Deciding to take one of these in place of Emine would therefore mean that we would need to look at getting ourselves another stud male in future, and splitting the herd (which of course means we would need to get more llamas to make each group a reasonable size, so they can be happy and not lonely).

Well, here we were with three days successful llama training under our belt, a good new trailer ready for transporting llamas here, there, and everywhere, and a newly discovered interest in the long term possibilities of breeding and selling well-bred, pedigree llamas. It didn’t take long to reach a decision, and within half an hour I rang Sue to say that, if it was ok with them, we would like to take Elif in place of Emine. We also checked whether Anastasia would still be able to come, or whether the trauma of her mother’s death, and the sudden enforced weaning, would cause an issue. Sue assured me that she would be fine, so we agreed that we’d call again when we arrived home just to confirm arrangements for tomorrow.

Death is a strange thing. Life is even stranger. There may not be a purpose to any of it, but I’m sure there is a meaning.

The final journey

It’s a long time since either of us wrote anything on this blog. Time just flies when you’re really busy, and we have indeed been really busy. So, sorry, this is a really long (but exciting!) update . . . . .

The Derby house is now on the market, and looking better than it ever did when we were living there. The final touches of paint were applied about 30 minutes before the estate agent arrived to take the photos, and the remaining boxes of ‘stuff going to France’ had been crammed into the trailer about 10 minutes before. It all felt very much like one of those ridiculous garden/house make-over programmes, where the pressure is really on in the last half hour before the final deadline, and the last-minute rush is filmed at double speed.

The next day, after a few final arrangements and one last Sainsbury’s shopping trip (to stock up on those hard-to-come-by essentials such as Marmite, baked beans and Echinacea tea) we made our tearful departure from Derby within an hour of our planned set-off time (which was quite unusual for us!) After a momentary panic 200 yards along the road when we thought the land rover had broken down – it had just randomly slipped into neutral – we were on our way.

The sense of relief that we were making our final heavily-laden, 17 hour journey along the delightful motorways of England and France was huge, and only marred by my sense of loss (and no small measure of guilt) at leaving my children to fend for themselves in the big bad world. We had made this relentless, two-day journey four times in the last month, and each time I had my metaphorical fingers crossed so that nothing would go wrong. (I am a terrible passenger, visualizing horrendous car crash scenarios at every bend in the road).

So, in some ways, it was not much of a surprise to me when a couple in a motor caravan overtaking us on the M25 (my favourite of all roads – not) gestured frantically for us to pull over. Thinking maybe we were losing some of our possessions out of the back of the horse-trailer, Simon got out to inspect the load, and returned to the car with the news that we were “really in the shit”. It seems that somewhere along the journey, we had lost a wheel off the trailer, and were actually damned lucky that the whole thing hadn’t collapsed sideways causing a massive accident. God only knows where the sheared-off wheel went, (I listened to the news for days afterwards expecting to hear of un unfortunate fatal accident caused by a loose wheel in the carriageway of the M25).

Now, canny Simon, being the good boy-scout that he is, had ‘been prepared’ and arranged breakdown recovery insurance before the trip. So we crawled along the hard shoulder (“Three wheels on my wagon, and I’m still rolling along”) to the next exit, and parked up outside a salubrious row of shops on a main road in Enfield. Unfortunately, the rescue service were a bit at a loss when it came to dealing with the broken down trailer, and with it being Saturday evening when all possible repair centres were closed, it was agreed that they would do a two-part recovery for us. Eventually a lorry arrived to take the trailer down to our overnight destination at Simon’s parents’ house in Dover, with the agreement that on Monday the rescue service would then take it to whoever we could find nearby who could fix the thing.

So Sunday morning arrived. The day of our intended departure from this Fair Island. After cancelling the 10.00am ferry (which was made difficult by the fact that the ferry company apparently forgotten that the clocks had gone forward overnight, and so weren’t contactable by phone at 9.00am as advertised), and cancelling the hotel of our planned overnight stop at Orleans, we decided to take the dog for a long walk in the woods, and consider our situation.

The llamas were due to be arriving at our house in France on Wednesday. It would take us two days to get to our house from the point of getting the ferry. The arrival of the llamas could not be delayed by very long, owing to the impending birth of Fatma’s cria (due anytime after the early part of April). We had no idea if the trailer was repairable, and if so, how long it would take – or how much it would cost. We couldn’t do anything about it until Monday because all the remotely possible repair places wouldn’t be open until then. The whole remainder of Sunday yawned before us like a chasm of inaction.

Still…we were safe, Simon’s parents were clearly overjoyed at the prospect of our extended stay with them, and the woods were beautiful. Full of wood anemones, early bluebells (East Kent is much sunnier than I’d realised) and tall, gnarled trees, undoubtedly housing lucky fairies who could help us with our dilemma. With the immortal words of my erstwhile boss ringing in my ears, I found myself irrevocably drawn to the notion of a SWOT analysis of the situation. Well, actually only the S and O parts of it. The Weaknesses were bloody obvious, the Threats something only paranoid people would think about. But, Opportunity! Now there is one of my favourite words.

Of course, being believers in the benevolence of the Universe, and having many times experienced the unexpected turning of apparent clouds into pots of gold (to mix a few weather-related metaphors), we started to look for the possible good reasons why This Might Have Happened. And the obvious answer - apart from the fact that it was a good thing to spend more time with Simon’s parents – was that it was a final opportunity to buy a really good trailer in England (they are ridiculously more expensive in France) so that we would be properly equipped for running our llama-breeding business in the future. We had already discovered that our current, old trailer couldn’t be registered in France, and therefore could not be legally used for transporting llamas to prospective purchasers, but had thought we’d worry about that later, depending on how things with the llamas progressed.

So out of the ashes of Plan A, arose Plan B. We would unload all our worldly possessions into The Parents’ garage, arrange the purchase of a new (second-hand) trailer immediately, collect it on Monday when the banks would be open to let us get our hands on some cash, load it up with all our stuff, and leave on a rebooked ferry crossing on Tuesday morning. Then, delaying the arrival of the llamas by only one day, we could get to our house Wednesday evening, unload the trailer and unpack our stuff, and finish off the final touches to the fencing and field preparation on Thursday morning before the llamas arrived after lunchtime.

A good plan. We just needed to find a suitable trailer to buy, and find a way of dealing with the old one.

Sunday afternoon passed in a haze of frantic activity. We unloaded the trailer and somehow squeezed its contents into the available garage space – being sure to leave enough room for the dog, who was also having to spend the daytime in the garage because his bounceability posed a serious hazard to the health and safety of Simon’s aged parents. After endless internet searching, and many unsuccessful phone calls re trailers for sale within a 100 mile range (“Sorry, I think it’s sold, but can I take your number in case it doesn’t work out…”), we decided our only option for Plan B to work within the prescribed timescale, was to bid on Ebay for an Ifor Williams trailer in Milton Keynes. We watched it all afternoon - the auction was due to end at 7.15pm - feeling optimistic as by 6.00pm there had still been no bids. It had a high starting price, but was only 18 months old and in as-new condition.

As the bidding deadline approached, we all sat glued to the computer, and after deciding on the highest price we would be willing to pay (oh! the self-discipline! the maturity!), Simon placed our one-and-only automatic bid 3 minutes from the end. Two other bidders came in at that point, and one tried within the available time to beat our bid, but in the final second, our highest bid just held and we GOT IT! When the palm-sweating and heart-pumping had subsided, we reviewed with some trepidation the tasks ahead of us the following morning.

Monday morning. After a wistful contemplation of the possibility of getting poor old trailer ‘number One’ fixed and then stored for collection from England at a later date, Simon hot-footed it to the bank to pick up the necessary dosh, and then headed back up the M2, M25 and M1 to pick up the shiny trailer ‘number Two’, leaving me to ring round possible trailer repairers or find a way to scrap the beast. Another short woodland walk with the dog giving me the opportunity to heed the fairies’ advice, I returned convinced that the trailer being possibly fixed and stored in England would be a veritable albatross around the neck of our new life in France. Besides, it had only cost 300 quid on Ebay, and had done one return trip to France already. Nodding a farewell to pointless sentimentality, I got back to the house and straight on to the phone to a scrap-yard in Aylesham. “Yes”, they could take the trailer; “No”, they wouldn’t give me anything for it, and “No”, they couldn’t collect it, so we’d have to get it there ourselves.

Time for another cunning plan. The vehicle-rescue service still owed us the second part of the recovery, to a repairer of our choice. Why not say we wanted it recovered to the address of the scrap yard? It was a bit of a tense moment as I tried to convince the recovery call-centre operator that Carlos Scrap was indeed a Repair Centre (them not having an identifiable address in the post-code directory didn’t help matters), prompting another call to Carlos himself, to enlist his participation in the deception (“if anyone asks, can you say you have agreed to fix it with parts you have in your yard?”).

It was an even tenser moment when the lorry arrived to pick it up, but for very different reasons. The driver was not exactly skilled in the art of loading three-wheeled trailers onto lorries. There were some very hairy moments as the trailer hung precariously off one corner of the ramp while he tried manually to bounce it into place, and I had to point out that maybe he should be fixing it to the tow-ball on the moveable thingy at the front to secure it. His exact words were “ Hmmm, maybe it would’ve been better if I’d thought about that first. You can tell I don’t do this for a living, can’t you?” Still, eventually it was relatively secure, and he drove off happily to find the elusive Carlos repair centre, with all the paperwork duly completed and signed.

At 5.00pm Simon returned from his Milton Keynes jaunt towing the neatest, loveliest little trailer in the world. With proper, water-tight doors, and locks and keys and everything. What a good buy! How lucky were we?!

The Trailer is dead. Long live the Trailer.

A quick dinner, then back out to load up before it got too dark and damp (how do those boxes manage to get heavier every time you move them?). Phone calls to rebook the ferry and rearrange llama delivery for Thursday, and that was it. Plan B sorted.

Tuesday morning. Reload frozen gooseberries from Parents’ freezer into coolbox. Reload luggage and dog into car. More tearful farewells, and off we go again.

After the hectic events of the last few days, the fact that we were actually leaving England for good hadn’t really hit us. We watched the white cliffs of Dover fade away into the hazy sunlight. “Somehow, it seems as if this should feel more significant,” said Simon. “Yeah…” I replied. “D’ya fancy a coffee?” “Yeah…and a croissant, maybe.”

And so we left England behind us forever.