Living the Dream

That's right, today I embarked on what is most certainly the dream of almost every young child (it was for me anyways)... digging a massive hole. Peter started digging a drainage ditch in one of his fields and discovered that the soil about 1.5ft down was a sort of sandy eroded granite. This was good news for him because he'd been hoping to find some way of making tiles and bricks from a local material, and this would be perfect. With 4 parts soil, 1 part cement and a little water he can make an attractive and serviceable tile, probably for flooring, and who knows what else.

This is where I come in, I get to mine from the quarry! The whole pictured was about half dug by Peter and half dug by me today. He said he dug another drainage ditch that was up to his shoulder, which would just be awesome, but right now it's up to my knee, so I have a lot of work to do. Fortunately, the weather has been absolutely fantastic for the very end of October, sunny and damn close to hot 3 days and counting.
I've also uploaded a ton of photos from the last farm I was at, la Vesvre. This [LINK] should take you there.

Long time

Bear with me this post, it's been a while since I've posted and it feels like loads has happened. Last time on Eric in France I was mercilessly attacking a woodpile. I'm proud to say that I fully accomplished my goal, all of the wood that Anette bought was cut, chopped and stacked, and I was totally exhausted at the end of the project. It took me up to 2 days before I left, then I kind of slacked off for the last of my trip.
There were two new faces, in addition to the 3 people who I already knew. Marcus was an adopted son of Anette, who was pretty cool. He works in a casino and loves techno music, he also had a sweet Audi. The other was a 65 year old woman named Trilby. Trilby was an absolute riot, she's had quite an interesting life, and was celebrating her birthday wwoofing. She was pretty familiar with horses and stable work, and spent some time helping me stack wood. She was also really personable in that way only old people can be. She claimed that the one thing she felt she could really look back on and feel that she had accomplished was forging the signatures of her bosses to double the salaries of every underpaid worker at her job in Jamaica. Pretty rad. She also was a mean Ping Pong player, and when she Marcus and I played, Marcus was the champion, but she still showed me what for in our game. It was all in her killer serve.
I also got to be a little bit closer with Thais and Amaldine. We played card games and watched movies (in french) and had a blast. I think we were partly brought together by Trilby's hilarious nature. Amaldine taught me a game that was classic 13 year old girl, there wasn't realy a point that I can tell, I think I lost though because at the end she was laughing and got to give my hand a strange indian rope burn sort of thing... it was wierd.
Anette was away for 4 days and the internet went down right after she left, which made blogging, and planning my train ride difficult. The french rail system is kind of frustrating if you aren't traveling to or from Paris because it is basically all spokes radiating out from Paris, and getting between the spokes is a real bear. In the end it turned out Anette was going for a long road trip up north (again) so I joined her for the first 3 hours and then took a couple of trains.
I'm happy to be back with Peter and Julie, I have been greeted by Hamish and Willow (their two dogs) everywhere I go, and I started my day with a nice cup of tea and swinging a machete at corn stalks. I've got reliable internet again and afternoons basically free, everything seems right with the world.

Workin' It

So, the game I'm playing right now is called Chop, and the goal is to turn the pile of wood you see to the left, into conveniently sized firewood in as little time as possible. First you cut the 1m logs in half with a huge saw that's run off the back of the tractor, and then you split it all and lay out nice piles. There were two piles of wood like the one pictured, and I'm happy to say that I'm gonna totally dominate this game. I've already cut one of the pile in two, and by tomorrow morning I should be finished splitting it all. Which means, I think I'll be able to finish both of the piles of wood before I leave. I'm pretty tired, but not too tired, and I think I can slow down a little bit and still finish. Anyone reading this should know that I'm having a blast, this kind of project suits me just fine, and if I finish it I'll be one proud (and strong) lumberjack.

Today was my last day of running the farm alone, and while it has overall been perfectly enjoyable, I can safely say that I am glad there will be others to help. This kind of work is just plain exhausting. No single part of it felt particularly tiring, and no one day felt overwhelming, but after 8 days in a row, I'm looking forward to my first full day off since I got here. I plan to sleep as close to 14 hours as I can get, and watch the new James Bond movie I got soon as I wake up.
Today I also had the experience of having a horse rear up on his hind legs while I was trying to walk him to the stable. There was half a moment when I thought I would have to just let go and wait for him to calm down, but it ended up only being half as terrifying as I expected. 3 weeks ago, I'm sure I would've freaked. Horses are big!

Home on the Range

Well, things are going well still, but there is a big ol' adventure to report. One of the paddocks that I drive to each day to feed the horses is a retirement of sorts. There are 4 old horses, ranging from old but mobile, to nearly skeletal. The trick of this specific paddock is that you drive up, get out of the car, open the gate, get in the car, drive through, then get out to close the gate before proceeding to where they're fed. The problem yesterday was that not only where they waiting unusually anxiously near the gate, but I managed to drive the car in on top of the strings that are the gate, so I couldnt' close it without pulling the car futher forward. Now at this point I probably could have come up with any number of genius solutions, but I figured I would just sort of shoo the horses away and try to move the car and close the gate real quick. Next thing I know there are four old geiser horses trotting down the road with me behind them trying not to totally lose it and scare them more. They eventualy walked past another field they liked the look of, wandered in and just started to graze like they did this kind of thing all the time. I'm freaking out and unable to call Anette because I purchased only 5 minutes for my phone and had used them up. Finally I was able to sort of close them in the field and drive all panicky to find Anette to help me. She made sure I felt a little foolish, and understood how serious of a problem it was (horses in the road are worse than deer), but then sort of admitted that these things can happen to anyone. Horses seem to be the sort of animal that is really easy to manage 95% of the time, but that other 5%, you just never know what kind of stunts they'll pull.

Rough night for Funky

Today has been a day I will always remember. Today one of the horses fell ill, apparently he has some sort of stomach problem. When horses get a stomach ache like this they tend to want to lay down, and occasionaly roll around. The solution is the keep them moving. The two girls who have been working here took turns taking Funky, the horse, for walks around his paddock during the day. We put him to bed for the night, thinking that he had started to look better, but still not giving him any food. Later, around 7:30, Annette called me out to help her walk him again, because he had been laying down in his box. So I walked him about for maybe 20 minutes until the vet arrived, and then got to be there while they treated him. There were a few shots, the classic, vet with his hand up a horses butt, and then they tried to put a tube up his nose. I was holding Funky trying to keep him calm, and he was beign a very brave boy, but they still didn't have any luck getting the tube into his stomach. They all decided that he didn't seem to be having as much stomach trouble, so it was best just to leave it be. I started to walk him back towards his box and his nose started to bleed like crazy. I was a little alarmed, but everyone assured me that this was perfectly normal, as was to be expected. What nobody expected was for him to sneeze. Blood went everywhere, which fortunately was mostly directed and my pants and shoes, and not any higher. After spending 5 minutes holding a very heavy horse head up in the air to try and slow the bleeding, I got to clean up and now I'm eating, and on horse watch for the next 2 hours.
This was the last day that Ina, who has been here since i arrived, was here, and tomorrow the two girls are leaving. So starting tomorrow I will be in charge of taking care of all 38 horses solo for a week. Tonight sure seems like an interesting start.

Like and Indian

The latest horseback riding adventure. Bareback. I thought it would be fun to try, and Ina thought that it might help me loosen up my back a little bit. As she says, I look like I swallowed a broom for breakfast when I ride. It certainly did help me relax, riding bareback is all about settling yourself into the horses rhythm. It's totally awesome, you feel just like an indian. We even tried trotting without the saddle, which turned out to be easier, because you just follow along with the horses rhythm, and dont' have to lift yourself up and down like in the saddle. The second time we trotted I did come close to falling off, but I was getting tired.

Helper

This morning chopping wood I had some great help. An Austrian family was visiting Anette, and they had a young boy about 7 or 8. He seemed to be interested in helping yesterday, and today he came up and started by helping me to stack and sort. Then he started to help me with the splitting, while I held the log and wedge, he would go to town with the hatchet. It was pretty amusing, and it was really funny for the two of us to try and communicate, because he only new German. All in all, I think we did a great job, and he even taught me about insects, they have six legs, all in German.
This afternoon I had a great riding lesson. I've been on horses not quite two weeks now, and today I got to try jumping! They weren't very impressive jumps, but at a trot I rode a horse over maybe a 12in. jump. Pretty fun. It was a good day for riding, Eric and I got along well, and it wasn't until the end that we both got tired and confused. It seems to me that when I ride I eventually end up getting fatigued and start talking gibberish to the horse. It's just a matter of how long he and I can keep it together.