The move to Tuscany : Overdue update

Yikes. We are running a long way behind on our blog updates! Since we last blogged there has been a trip to the UK, a chicken massacre (at the hands/paws of Murdery Mr Fox), a new strimmer, a brilliant community day's work at Donatella's, the return of hot, summery weather, and the arrival of guests Hugh and Donna.

While I was having a lovely, if brief, trip to the UK - having a lovely time catching up with my family and being reminded of just how beautiful the English countryside is at this time of year - Stuart was 'home on the range'.

Stuart's first morning home alone proved to be both dramatic and distressing: on taking Reggie for a walk on the upper terraces, he made the macabre discovery, first, of a pile of very chicken-y looking feathers on one of the upper terraces. Then, on dropping back down the terraces to the chicken enclosure, he found what can only be described as a chicken massacre.

The killer, which we assume was a fox, had dug under a weak spot in the fence that runs around the chicken enclosure - a very hard-to-secure point on the bank of the very soft terrace that in the end just proved too easy for Mr Fox to dig into. The pile of feathers on the upper terrace proved to be all that remained of the chicken we had named "Limpy Lucy" - who had been residing alone in a segregated area in the top part of the enclosure since she had gone lame several weeks ago (having been kept apart from the others to save her from their bullying and literal hen pecking). It was very sad to realise her fate, but at least we knew she had provided a meal for the hungry predator. The fate of the other chickens was harder to swallow however, as they had all been mercilessly killed and left where they lay - no attempt to eat any of them or take them away to be eaten. We understand that this is fairly typical behaviour of foxes when they gain access to a hen house - to perhaps eat one, but kill everything else in sight regardless. Nature can be very cruel.

Not to let their lives be lost entirely in vain, Stuart braced himself for a morning's plucking and cleaning, with some much appreciated help from our good friend David, and by the end of the morning they had all four remaining hens and poor Colombo, the cockerel, plucked and cleaned and ready for the freezer. Paul & Kathy kindly offered to buy one for their stock pot, and the rest of them went to be stored in David & Sarah's freezer - our freezer being too small to cope with such an influx of bodies. I have yet to decide whether I will be able to bring myself to cook and eat poor Colombo!

Thankfully, that was the only real drama of the week, and Stuart was treated to meals with friends almost every night I was away, thanks to David & Sarah, Paul & Kathy and Mara & Franco - meaning that when I got home the fridge was as full as when I'd left!

Also while I was away, Stuart got to grips with our new strimmer - which is the same as our backpack one, but this one has a two-stroke engine, rather than a four-stroke, making it a fair bit more powerful (and heavier). So, yes, we now have 'his & hers' strimmers!

It will never, ever, look this clean again.

Stuart also finished assembling the scaffold to hold the solar panel in place - leaving just the job of arranging for the plumber to come and connect it all up so that we can finally start taking advantage of the sunny weather to get free hot water!

The last couple of weeks have seen plenty of activity and growth in the orto: we've planted out tomatoes, squash, melons, courgettes and fennel, sown radishes, earthed up the potatoes,.. and harvested more lettuce, mustard lettuce, coriander and rainbow chard.

Experimenting with the best way to keep leaves fresh - a little water in a sealed plastic bag is the winner.

Also food-related, we have constructed cages to protect our fruit trees from visiting deer after both our almond and one of our young cherries suffered some serious bark damage, most likely from deer rubbing their antlers against them.

Deer damage can be seen about halfway down the trunk - but despite the damage, the tree has kept its leaves so far, so we are hopeful it might survive!

Some of our olive trees are starting to show signs of coming into bud, and we are seeing the first signs of grapes on many of the vines that we have growing around the place!

We've had lots of good times with our amazing set of lovely friends over the last couple of weeks as well - not only did they take care of Stuart while he was away, but we also met up with the 'gang' (Donatella, David & Sarah, Paul & Kathy) for a fun evening of aperitivi one evening last week at the newly re-opened Lina's restaurant in Macchino (where they serve craft beers - which definitely wins our vote!), and we all spent the day on Friday at Donatella's putting in a long morning's hard graft (variously strimming, cutting bramble, burning bramble, pruning olives and splitting wood) before sitting down to a delicious spread of food and lazing over a long and relaxing lunch.

Back home over the weekend, despite feeling spent after the hard work on community day, we put our efforts into smartening up the outside areas of our property in preparation for the arrival of our guests Hugh and Donna. We mowed lawns, strimmed the edges of the lawns, put in an outdoor light for the guest pergola for those long warm summer evenings that we hope are to come, and on Sunday we put our his n' hers strimmers to good use, managing to get about two thirds of the terraces above the house nicely strimmed in around 2.5 hours. Two pairs of hands definitely make for quicker stimming!