The farm I am staying at is called ‘Les Broussailles’ which means brushwood in French. It is just outside of Martinville, about 2.5 hours east and slightly north of Montréal, about 1/2 hour from the US border with Vermont and New Hampshire.
It rained most of the night last night. I had my window open as it wasn’t cold and it was lovely to listen to the rain falling on the trees as I drifted off to sleep. The rain had stopped by the time I woke up, which made doing the morning chores easier. I was able to spend a bit of time with the teenage goats (they do not understand the concept of personal space!) and later to nuzzle with the milk goats as Jean-Francois finished milking them. I touched their horns which were smooth and very hard. You can tell the relative age of the goats by how long their horns are. One of the goats I milked by hand today was young, it was her first year being milked, and it was so much harder to get the milk out then it was with the older goats. My hands were really tired at the end!
Safran made hashbrowns for breakfast, just shredded potatoes cooked in oil which are called hashbrowns rustique. Noé made himself crêpes for breakfast because we were out of bread. So he also mixed up bread dough in a huge mixing bowl and mixed the dough with his hands, enough for six loaves which will last about three days. Apparently he learned to make bread when he was four! After breakfast Safran went to the Fromagerie to label more cheese for tomorrow’s farmers market, Chloe and Noé played Catan and Brittany worked on putting more shingles on her house. My job was to vacuum the house. They have a whole house vacuum so all I had to do was hook the hose up and go around the house. It was easy and nice not having to haul around a vacuum, especially on the stairs, though it got a little tricky getting the hose up and over the banister.
I took a walk down by the river in the afternoon and saw some cute little fairy homes, lots of mushrooms and flowers.
In the evening Noé and I milked the goats. When we went to get them from the pasture they were on the far end near the forest and we had to walk quite a way in to get them to come, it was beautiful to see them run together and I loved the swishing sound they made. I managed to get some photos of them while they were being milked.
