Manure!!

We all have something in life that is really important to us; well with me it is manure. As you know, in the Autumn I began to mark out the new beds in the garden and it soon became evident that we have very little soil. Apart from that, I am a firm believer in the basic philosophy that if you set the beds up right initially, they are productive and easy to maintain. So I was a woman on a mission to try and track down a supply of manure. There are numerous piles locally and I tried to deduce whose they were. I soon realised that they belonged to farmers who also had no soil and that they were saving them to put on their land!

On the main Cahors road about a quarter of an hour from us I noticed that someone had recently moved into a house and that they had several horses.

My antennae shot up and I had them focussed on this potential source for several weeks. However I never saw anyone and the gate had a big chain across it. Finally, one day I saw a lady in the field and we screached to a halt. I stood at the end of the drive shouting at her in my best French - could I buy some manure. Yes the vision you have is correct.

Well after some negotiating she agreed to start saving the manure for me and it would be FREE.

I rang her before Christmas as I was worried that, having found this source, she might think I had forgotten her and didnt really want this "gold dust". This was not the case and today we went to collect the manure. I thought it was diplomatic to go bearing gifts so this very nice lady was presented with a jar of John's chutney and a bottle of wine. As it turned out this was a stroke of genius and got us off to a very good start.

We ended up collecting three trailer loads and then spreading them on the front garden.

However we need at least another three loads just to do the "serpentine bed", so we'll be back in a few weeks having secured our own regular source.