My life, or most of it, in a van.

I have been busy saying good bye and packing boxes. I have thrown away so much stuff!

Rainy day.

It has been raining since last night, a bit of a disaster in central Italy. Peps is sleeping on his bed and I am trying to figure out what to pack first. I have sorted out a few issues like the expiring driving licence and speaking with the boss, getting rid of an old motorbike I had and posting ads for things I don't really want to carry to Ireland...
Packing your stuff is a little bit like going through your life. You come across long forgotten items and it can be quite emotional at times. That is a picture of my first dog. Never forgotten. It was taken by a friend visiting me in Scotland with a film camera. He was my only constant point of reference for many years. He would have been an excellent sheep dog.

The last few touches

So there she is, all pretty and fenced off from the fierce cattle that will be there in a few days.
There is also a sad note today, just when I thought everything went alright with my supervision of the farm, I lost a chicken. It was actually pretty early when I put them in but the fox has been around this past week and I'm afraid she got me. The only hope is that she is roosting somewhere. I have been finding them up in the trees recently but I have little hope.
With all the people cutting hay in the past few days, the foxes have been pretty active, perhaps because they don't have their usual hunting grounds.

Delivery day!

The mobile home arrived on Thursday!! We did need the tractor in the end but it all went pretty smooth and apart from a bit of gutter, the light on top of the door and a piece of water pipe, it was all ok. I doubt I'll manage to sleep in it before I leave for Italy though, I'm leaving the day after tomorrow and I could sleep there tonight but I guess I'll just stick with Whizzie's cabin for the last 2 days :)
I have been on my own on the land for the past couple of weeks and I have been very lucky with the weather, the ducks have started laying and the new Mr. Rooster, who still has no name, has been behaving very well. I guess he just needed some time to settle down and he's not as nervous and mean as he was when he arrived. The bees are very happy too, for what I can gather with my limited knowledge, and are taking full advantage of this spectacular end of a very wet and cold summer.
I will leave with sadness and cannot wait to be back. I hope I will resume to a more constant flow of posts and pictures in october.
Ciao!

Getting smaller

In the end I had to choose a smaller mobile home. The guys from the place in Cork came and checked out the place, they were pretty much happy about everything, the width of the lane and the access to it but they were not happy about the slope of the ramp to access the field. Too steep for a 30 ft long monster, with tiny wheels in the middle it would have got caught and stuck.
At this point the alternative was to either get the digger in again and try to sort out the ramp, with the risk of fucking it up again and delaying the delivery, or to choose a shorter and narrower mobile home. I went for the second choice. I called another guy from Shanagarry because the smaller mobile homes in Cork sucked. He had a very nice one from an old couple who had it for 20 years or so. It is quite smaller than the first choice, it's 10 by 26 ft while the first one I had put my eyes on was 11 by 30 ft. A difference of almost 5 sq meters. Oh well, at least it will be here next Wednesday. I got delivered an extra load of 4 inches rocks and the site will be ready by the weekend.
I've been left to look after the few ducks and chickens, the hedgehog and all the rest because Whizzie, Sir Linux and Tom went for a trip to the UK.
First night has been a bit strange but cozy. Peps was a bit sick but he's fine today and all the animals are too.
The situation with the computer and access to internet has improved a lot, first of all because I'm on my own, secondly because Whizzie got a satellite connection. Nifty!
Some more pics soon.