It’s over. After around 8 years of work, we finished the
renovation of a barn into a gîte (holiday cottage to rent) with just 30 minutes
to spare before the first holidaymakers arrived. As it got more and more busy
and stressful towards the end, with not a day off for weeks and progressively
longer days, we asked ourselves how we got into this situation. Maybe it had to
be like this as without a deadline, I’m sure other jobs would have intervened
and diverted us from the barn and we’d still be working on it at Christmas.
We now have the opportunity to start catching up with a long
list of things that have been ignored, like separating the sheep from their
winter coats. It’s never a job I look forward to as, with only a few to do each
year, I never become really expert and I’m always wary of cutting them. That’s
easy to do, especially as our pint-sized local breed Ouessant sheep are too
small to hold between the knees, Bowen-method style and, being a rustic breed,
they seem to resent being manhandled and wriggle more than normal. Happily for me and him, the ram was
particularly easy this year as the wool had already detached itself in several
places. The belly neck and legs were already clean and with a quick whizz up
and down both sides, he was shorn for another year.
I’m hoping to have a little more time available now for my
pastimes of writing and photography and shall make an effort to keep this blog
updated much more frequently. I also need to update the “Magazine Articles”
page. My latest forays into print are a couple of articles in the current
edition of Les 4 Saisons du jardin bio about
