Vive La France!

After the initial wonder of getting to France, we rapidly set about the task of getting ready for our Llamas to be delivered. As well as a list of emergency supplies, brushes, poo picker uppers and hay, we also had to get the land fully fenced, so that we didn’t have any Llama Dramas.

With recommendations from newly made friends, we found the most amazing, caring vet. Being both a farm vet as well as a domestic animal vet we felt confident that all our animals would be in safe hands.

Next up was hay bales…. now honestly we are very rural and literally surrounded by countless fields full of lovely fresh bales, but could we lay our hands on just two? It would seem not. Our poor French language skills (we are working on it) were proving a big issue as even when we managed (with google translate) to be understood by the local farmer, we couldn’t understand his reply. Hay went on the backburner whilst we tried to work out how we were going to get some.

Next up gates, mineral blocks, salt blocks, poo shovels…. Off we went to the local Agricultural store. We are based just outside the small village of Lavernat and our local town is Chateau-du-Loir. I don’t think we have mentioned before but part of the appeal of this area is how friendly the French are, show a bit of effort and they really go out of their way to help. We have even experienced a lady behind us in a queue, chase after us out of a shop as she overheard us talking about finding the La Poste, and then walked us there. So following on from this, at the agricultural store we were talking to the lady at the till and asked her if she knew a store where we could get big bales of hay, explaining our problem communicating with the local farmers. She informed us that she had a friend who sold hay and she would take our phone number and arrange it all for us. We left with our fingers crossed that this would happen but doubting that we would hear further. Well, a couple of hours later, our phone rings and I hear French down the line…. Now we barely manage to communicate face to face, but find the phone impossible at the moment, so I tentatively asked “parlez vous anglais?” “oh yes! would you like me to speak English” was the reply. We cannot believe how lucky we have been with the people we have met and the help we have received. This young lady farmer, Pauline, sold us some beautifully fresh hay and has also become a friend joining us at the farm for Apero’s.

We then set about fencing, we found so many rolls of fence in outbuildings, stables and the garage that we managed to get most of the fencing done for free and completed the final stretch just in time, the day before the Llamas arrival on July 28th. Fingers crossed we are ready and haven;y forgotten anything!