Livestock and bathtubs

Those of you who grew up in the country might not think this unusual but it's a curiosity to me. Many of the small farms around us have found a great way to recycle bathtubs: they use them as drinking troughs for their animals. Other large receptacles can be found as well: what looks like old oil drums split in half, and maybe even large water heaters. On second thought, they're probably not water heaters because the water heaters around here tend to be small. Electricity is expensive so you don't want to use too much of it at one time.

A few other tidbits on the farm theme:

- We watched close up as one of the locals used his tractor (and some kind of attachment) to roll his cut and raked hay into large balls.

- The captive deer families next door and on our walking route are enjoying a population explosion (and who is surprised about that???). The daddy next door has an impressive set of antlers.

- The sheep, the new crop, are getting fatter - either because their wool is growing or because they're eating so well or maybe for both reasons.

- We will unfortunately miss the local draft horse competition this weekend. But a couple nights ago we saw two large draft horses - one exceedingly large and actually unmatched size-wise to his partner - pulling a wagon, bells tinkling gently, through the streets of Hautrage. All we were missing was the snow.

So now we've witnessed planting the crops. They've harvested the hay. The corn is still standing, not quite mature. We will follow the farm seasons with interest as we work our way through the rest of this year and into the next.