Spring Has Arrived

We have been working hard around Camont getting things ready for the coming of spring.

Enormous groups of cranes, hundreds at a time, flew overhead last week. This signifies the beginning of spring much like our Groundhog Day in the U.S.
We could not have been more happy to see them.

It is time for the ducks and chickens to begin sitting on their eggs, so we have to
secure the coop against ferrets, rats and weasels. This darling little chicken is more persistant than the rest and is always the first to run over and see what we are doing.

And it turns out, Bacon will be hatching the ducklings this year...

Nothing is done around Camont without the "help" of the 10 chickens and Henri.
They are constantly under our feet and hands as we work, waiting for the
second we dig up a plump, pink worm or grub.

The garden is turning around from last year's frozen, dead vines to our
newly constructed raised beds for potatoes. The soil here is full of thick, heavy clay,
so planting on top of the earth in raised beds is much easier.

Hiding down on the Garonne Canal, Kate's boat, the Julia Hoyt, is another one of our projects. Kate has lived on the boat for the past 24 years, giving canal tours in the summer between Bordeaux and Toulouse. But it is now time to sell the boat and move on to the next thing.

The boat flooded a few weeks ago, and finally all the water is pumped out from
under the floorboards, the bedrooms and the tool room.

Julia Hoyt will be beautiful and brand new when she's finished being fixed up.
She is an old WWI boat that Kate bought in Holland. The hull is iron, not steel, thus more rust- resistant and strong. Anyone in the market for a boat? She's an absolute gem!

No matter how hard we work throughout the day, we are always rewarded with
a stunning sunest over the farmland to the southwest of us.

Cheers to la belle vie en France