Not so fantastic Mr Fox

And in the blink of an eye another fortnight has passed. We are still experiencing cold overnight temperatures (and indeed, as I write this, there is a promise of very cold daytime temperatures, arctic overnight temperatures, and even snow in the 10-day period to come), but there have been some definite spring-time scents in the air, there are all manner of different little bursts of colour dotted around the hillsides in the form of early spring flowers, and the days are lengthening, well, by the day. We can now stay outdoors with enough light to continue working until a little after 6pm.

Our hillside from a different perspective.

The last fortnight has seen a mish-mash of activities, ranging from the usual routine to the completely out of routine last week when I headed to the UK to visit family for 5 days while Stuart entertained our friend Dave from the UK here, along with his 5-year-old son Ollie.

The first week of the fortnight saw us "hosting" (I'm not sure that's really the right word - Emanuele, who runs the circolo in Pietrabuona, was the real host - perhaps we were more the "facilitators", although that sounds a little too much like corporate-speak for comfort!) the next in our series of fortnightly English evenings at the local village club. Although still only the third such event, the evenings seem to have evolved into a case of sitting and chatting with people whose English is maybe a little rusty but overall very good indeed - good enough for really quite wide ranging conversation. The conversations do inevitably switch to Italian a lot of the time, of course - which means that Stuart and I are getting plenty of Italian practice too(!). We have really enjoyed meeting some interesting people through these evenings - this time we spoke with the lovely Stefano from Medicina, who honed his English when he spent time in India (and who, this week, played us his didgeridoo and his Tibetan bells - and let us have a go at playing his Tibetan bells too), Luca, who is involved with the agricultural college in Pescia, and Roberto, from Borgo a Buggiano, who learned English as a waiter at the Savoy 50 years ago (and doesn't look anywhere near old enough to have been in his early 20s that long ago) and who revealed that, amongst others, he had waited on the Queen, Tom Jones and Petula Clark (although not all at the same time). Conversations ranged from Mr Bean (arghh) to immigration and national anthems, and by the end of the evening we were left feeling exhausted, but happy to be in the process of making new friends.

Perhaps the major event of the week was the one alluded to in the title of this blog post. Regrettably we had another visit from Mr (or Mrs) Fox, and once again we lost all of our chickens (yes, all nine of them) to the blood-thirsty creature.

We were quite flabbergasted by the fact that the fox visited not in the dead of night, nor in the shadows of twilight but in broad daylight - right in the middle of the afternoon. And we didn't hear a thing. At the time, we were in the middle of an Italian lesson with Samantha and Reggie was snoozing on the sofa. The lesson came to its end, Samantha left, and a couple of minutes later I was alerted to something unusual by the fact that Reggie was making a racket outside - not that Reggie making a noise is unusual in itself, but I could tell from the pitch and excitement of his barking and whining that there must be something on the terraces that he wanted to get to. On opening the door I realised he was looking towards the chicken enclosure, and on following his gaze I spotted the tell-tale sign of feathers everywhere. The deed had already been done, and it seems Reggie had spied the fox as it was leaving and running off across the terraces.

With heavy hearts we went to assess the situation. It turns out that the anti-dig defences that we put in around the perimeter fence (and that our friend Allison had put blood and sweat, if not tears, into helping us finish) had held brilliantly. In fact, they had held so well that the fox had been unable to dig its way out of the enclosure (it had tried about 4 times) and had exited the same way it had come in: through a small hole between the top of the fence and the netting that forms the roof of the enclosure. Having been unable to dig its way out, the fox had been forced to leave empty-handed, leaving us with nine chicken corpses (two of which were headless - the fox had clearly snacked while he went about his business).

Spot the hole.

A fox-sized gap.

The anti-dig defences held.

Unable to face doing anything with the chickens there and then (and knowing that the night was going to be cold), Stuart gathered them all up and shut them inside their house for one last time, and we tried to put them to the backs of our minds until the next day.

So Saturday was mainly spent plucking and butchering chickens. With Reggie having recently begun a raw meat diet, we felt as if the lives of the chickens hadn't entirely been lost in vain and after a messy, sticky, smelly few hours practising our butchery skills, we had half a freezer full of chickens all portioned up ready for Reggie to tuck into in the future.

So long Arthur.

Sad face.

A carpet of feathers.

Sunday was an altogether cleaner day, and we spent the afternoon making a start on building a tractor and tool shelter - a job that has long been on the to-do list: for far too long the tractor has sat under the temporary shelter of a piece of tarpaulin anchored down against the wind (at times less successfully than others) with a few large pieces of stone, and our various tools (spades, forks, rakes, hoes, splitting axes, shovels, saws - you get the idea) have been piled up behind the house and exposed to the elements. As if in demonstration of exactly how long this job has been in coming, the first shovel that Stuart picked up and thrust into the ground disintegrated in his very hands, the wooden handle parting company with the business end at a weak spot where the wood had rotted through. Thankfully there were alternative digging implements though, and between us, we dug a set of holes 40cm deep into the ground and found some long and straight tree trunks (which handily had already been felled for some months) to cut into 2.5m lengths and strip of bark to be used as posts.

After having attempted to be clever about dismantling the guest pergola a few months back (thinking that we might simply be able to lift the whole structure out of the ground in one piece), and having found the legs firmly anchored in the ground purely by force of gravel, Stuart had the idea of using gravel to hold the new tractor park posts in place rather than going to the expense and trouble of mixing up and pouring concrete. So, once each hole had been dug, one of us held the freshly stripped post in place while the other poured in a bucket of gravel around the base (the gravel having been robbed from the guest pergola area, where handily we'd had an excess). We then tamped down the gravel, poured in a little more, tamped that down and, very satisfyingly, we had a post firmly held in the ground.

By the end of the day we had put in place the first four posts - it doesn't quite look like a tractor/tool park yet, but it's a good start!

The planned tractor park site.

Stripping off the bark.

Digging post holes.

Four posts in place.

So we spent the following week separately - while I headed to the UK for some long overdue family time, Stuart spent the week playing host to Dave and Ollie, finding a range of activities to keep them both suitably entertained, from tractor riding and bonfire burning to a trip to Lucca, a round of necci (chestnut pancakes) on pancake day, and plenty of tramping through the woods.

Tractor rides.

More tractor rides.

Burning the last of the fir tree clippings.

Rules at a restaurant in Lucca. "Things you must not ask the staff: 1. A discount; 2. To change table; 3. The recipes for the dishes on the menu; 4. Meals that are not on the menu; 5. Honey for the cheeses; 6. Fennel salumi and pizza; 7. New season's oil for free; 8. The phone number of the waitresses or the chef; 9. If he is Pisan, (NO!); 10. Limoncello (we serve Frulloncello with lemons from Villa Frullo); 11. WiFi (we have it, but won't give it to you); 12. There is no mobile signal (thank God!);13. Don't reply 'everything's fine' when it's not, tell us so and we'll fix it; 14. Separate bills." 

On my return from the UK, just as we pulled up and got out of the car back at the house, we looked up and what should we spot in the chicken enclosure above us but the fox, paying a return visit (exactly a week after the murderous deed, almost to the hour!). This time we were able to witness the difficulty it experienced in getting out of the enclosure and we watched it jump at the fence, scrabble its way up and fall back down again a couple of times before it finally succeeded in gaining enough purchase to haul itself over the top and through the gap. The video below isn't the best quality, but keep your eye on the fence about halfway along the right-hand side of the enclosure.

Having seemingly taken the rain over to Bristol with me, it seems I brought it right back here to Italy again and Saturday was a complete washout - any hopes we'd had of making progress on the tractor park, or indeed any other outdoor job, were dashed. Since Stuart was also suffering somewhat badly with a cold that he'd managed to catch from Dave during the week, we decided to surrender ourselves to the sofa and in a compromise between complete switch-off and feeling as if we were doing something useful and keeping our brains active, we chose to start watching the series of Harry Potter films in Italian - a nice, gentle way to ease back into things after a week of being surrounded by English.

With the weather somewhat improved on Sunday we managed to get outside for a little fresh air, although we weren't quite up to doing anything as demanding as work on the tractor park - here's hoping for dry weather over the coming weekends to help move us on.

(This blog post covers the period 5-18 February 2018.)