As the rain continued to pour yesterday evening, Holly and Zach arrived for dinner with Reggie's new playmate in tow. We settled into an evening of music and chat punctuated with one of our house specialities - a simple mushroom risotto, simple but very satisfying on a damp cold evening like this.
After dinner we ended up getting quite philosophical and so the evening went, putting the world to rights and tossing around ideas until the yawning started and we all retired around 11pm.
This morning, I was suddenly awoken by Helen running full speed up the stairs into the bedroom. She's never done this before, so my mind quickly ran various scenarios through my head - it must be one of the animals hurt or missing, or dead even, but before I could decide what to ready myself for, she blurted out at me... 'WE HAVE AN EGG!!!' I couldn't quite believe my ears, it reminded me of being a child again and being woken by my brother saying 'SANTA'S BEEN' this is how exciting a solitary egg was for us today as we'd all but given up with the goose laying anything and had even been talking about having goose this next Christmas (if not before then), but for now it seems that a stay of execution is in order!
After quickly getting dressed I ran outside to find Helen now pedalling away on the turbo trainer, 'where's the egg!?' I asked, 'still in the nest' was the reply, so I went up armed with a bit of lettuce for distraction purposes, opened the rear nest side door and there it was, a huge white goose egg!
It wasn't long though before I was the one distracted as the gander appeared from behind their house and charged at me from the terrace above. I took an evasive step back but he just kept coming, went splat on the terrace at my feet and then quickly latched his beak onto my calf as I tried to escape, dragging him down a further terrace before he let go.
I managed to circumnavigate him and steal the egg without him biting again and left the enclosure to ask why Helen had left it there, 'I felt mean taking it after she'd been sitting on it' was her reply, which was exactly how I had felt- it felt a bit wrong taking her egg like that, but the feeling didn't last and excitement returned as I went indoors to compare it to a chicken egg.
After tooling Zach and Holly up and setting them loose on the terraces beneath the house to make a start on raking up all the cut bramble on the lower terraces into piles that can later be burned, I turned my attention to finishing the flight of woodland-style steps up the terraces near the house.
We had our mid-morning coffee break on the patio in warm sunshine... bliss!
We had our mid-morning coffee break on the patio in warm sunshine... bliss!
After coffee break we resumed work and by lunchtime the first two of the lower terraces were starting to look amazingly clear of everything except soil - stones found in the process were systematically being piled up and a huge mound of bramble was being collected ready for burning.
After lunch, which was also served on the patio in the glorious sunshine, both Helen and I went down onto the lower terraces with our respective sets of hedge trimmers to continue the clearing work - we are now determined to get the lower terraces completely cleared and subsequently ready for some vegetable planting (once fenced off and protected from the deer and boar that is).
Holly and Zach clocked off at 3.30pm having done their allotted hours and went for a siesta, and Helen and I finished our respective tanks of fuel and packed up for the day at around 4.15pm - with me having broken another flexible drive shaft on yet another hidden piece of metal in the undergrowth (I know where I'll be going in the morning!).
Helen left to go and collect Sue for her Italian lesson shortly afterwards, so I took Reggie into the woods for an hour's run around before heading back home to collect firewood and nurse a beer while writing the blog.
After only a day's worth of work It looks like we're going to make some great strides with the help of Zach and Holly, and we're excited to see how much we get done before their time with us is up - which will take us exactly to the official start of spring, although with the weather the way it has been today and the hundreds of crocuses along the driveway and in the woods, you'd be forgiven for thinking that spring was already well under way!
Watch this space for tasting notes on the goose egg - we plan to cook it and share it this evening!
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