The Motoculture arrivee

Ah, so there it was. Hidden away amongst stuff. Rusty. Mucky. Forlorn. Lester's dream! Well not quite, because it wasn't a lovely shiny red Kubota tractor which he has been lusting after since Labartere came into our lives. It is his intention to go onto the fields and till the soil, preferably with something which makes a noise and needs fuel.

Myself, I have a trusty wheelbarrow, a spade, a rake, and a three pronged thingy which I don't know the name of, but which is probably French because it doesn't have a handle. English garden tools have handles at the top of them, but the French ones are one very long straight pole minus the handle at the top. Don't know why this should be. It just is!

Anyway, I make do with hand tools. Lester will use a fork, but mumbles for most of the time he is using it: "I need a tractor" being his most used form of mumble. Of late that has changed. Due to the need to sometime soon put a roof on our house, financial need dictates that he changes his requirements for motorized help with his digging. I meanwhile plod on with my barrow, and three digging implements, the only fuel they use being the calories which are being burnt up from my body!

So, Cherry, our English neighbour, pops in for a chat. "Can you come and help me..." she said.

So off we went to do our neighbourly duty, and she opens up her barn which is full of stuff, and hidden away in the corner is this contraption which Lester immediately hurries towards, stumbling over this and that to get to it in his haste. He lets out a yelp of joy! His hands leap all over the contraption, fiddling about with this nob and that nob, meanwhile enthusing his delight at this treasure which has come his way.

It is a rotovator, or in French: 'motoculture' which is a far posher word. And I kid you not, it was in a hell of a state. Why do men enthuse over oily, mucky engines? Must be a man-thing!

Anyway, after a battle over price, Cherry wanting less that Lester was offering (Isn't it the other way round normally when one is purchasing something?) with pride he gently placed it in the car, with a beam on his face a mile wide! This was made wider still when he spotted an old set of concrete rabbit hutches. It is another one of his intentions to get us totally self sufficient, and that includes meat.

A few days later, and we are the proud owners of a rusty old rotovator and a pile of rabbit-hutch pieces.

The rototovator needs sorting out, the rabbit hutches need assembling, I, meanwhile, carry on with my wheelbarrow, spade, rake and other thingy! And my weight keeps dropping off. Hooray!!!