Deck the Halles: Next Christmas at the Little French Llama Farm

By Stephanie Dagg

It’s nearly Christmas at the little French llama farm. Nick and Noelle are looking forward to a quiet, romantic Christmas together, but at the last moment Noelle is asked to book the local agricultural 'halles' for the imminent national llama show. The original venue went up in smoke.
Noelle does as asked, thinking that’s all she’ll have to do. She couldn’t be more wrong! On top of all the extra work this good deed makes for her, various friends and relatives start turning up on the doorstep as the result of assorted crises. The farmhouse is about to burst at the seams! Add in a few other events, such as playing the part of a pixie at a Christmas fête, Nick’s book launch, training a non-cooperative llama for the agility class in the show and catering for more and more mouths, and Noelle is pushed ever closer to the end of her tether.
Can she hold it together and stay as calm as a llama? Or will she be the next member of her family to make a bolt for it?
This festive, feel-good and fun novel is the sequel to ‘Fa-La-Llama-La: Christmas at the Little French Llama Farm’ but can be read as a standalone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephanie Dagg
• Release date: Nov 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215236857

Stephanie Dagg

I'm an English ex-pat living in France with my family and a lot of animals, including llamas and carp. I was a bestselling author in Ireland, where we lived for 15 years before we moved to our new home here. I've recently relaunched my writing career, but this time as an indie ebook author and publisher. It's the twenty-first century after all!

Book preview

Deck The Halles: Next Christmas At The Little French Llama Farm

A fun, festive novel featuring the odd llama or two…

Stephanie Dagg

Deck The Halles: Next Christmas At The Little French Llama Farm

Book 2 in the Little French Llama Farm series

Book 1 in the series is Fa-La-Llama-La: Christmas at the little French llama farm

© 2018 Stephanie Dagg

Cover design by Caitlin of editing.zone using illustration ‘Alpaca llama Santa Claus’ by © Robot100 / Dreamstime.com

Editing and proofreading by editing.zone

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book but didn’t purchase it, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or format without prior consent of the author, apart from short quotations (<100 words) in book reviews.

And before the action starts, a quick mention of some other books by Stephanie Dagg… and what people say about them

‘Fa-La-Llama-La: Christmas at the Little French Llama Farm’ – book 1 in the Little French Llama Farm series

"I'm LOVING Fa-La-Llama-La, a wonderful new festive rom-com." Robert Bryndza, multi-million-selling author of the Erika Foster thrillers and the Coco Pinchard comedies, and other wonderful books

‘A Christmas Hamster’ – Cam’s career and love life take a nose dive once she becomes guardian to her young nephew. However, an encounter with the charming Declan causes her heart to flutter once more. Fate, alas, seems determined to hamper any possibility of them getting together. So what chance does a tiny, naughty hamster have of bringing them happiness this Christmas? A festive, feel-good romcom.

"A million thanks for your superior tale!" Wattpad reviewer

"What a fun read. Yes it is a romance but so very, very understated that even male readers will enjoy it… Funny, action-packed … and a wonderful look at the relationships both our main characters have built with the people around them. Hope there's more." Amazon reviewer

‘Haircuts, Hens and Homicide’ – a lively cosy mystery/romcom with fowl-related foul play at its heart.

"This is part murder, part mystery, and part comedy, with a few edge-of-your-seat moments thrown in for good measure. Every one of the main characters has been beautifully developed, and the plot bubbles along at a steady pace. Cozy mystery fans will love this!" Reader’s Favorite

‘Hate Bale’ – there’s humour, suspense and excitement in this entertaining cosy mystery set in the French countryside and featuring (very) amateur sleuths Martha and Lottie.

"Funny, exciting and wonderfully feel-good, if you enjoy cosy mysteries, you are simply going to love Stephanie Dagg’s latest uplifting tale Hate Bale." Amazon reviewer

‘Dead in Tune’ – it’s nearly Christmas, a time for peace and goodwill. Or maybe not… This sequel to ‘Hate Bale’ is a fast-paced, funny, festive cosy mystery set in rural France.

"Dead In Time is extremely well written. Stephanie has one of those easy going writing styles that is easy to get used to and easy to get along with… In short, I really enjoyed reading the book and I would recommend it to other readers. I will certainly be reading more of Stephanie's work in the future." Amazon reviewer

‘Heads Above Water: Staying Afloat in France’ – an account of our first couple of years as expats in France, with all the fun and frustrations that entailed. This book has been a no. 1 Amazon bestseller in France and Australia.

"Easy read, funny anecdotes, and most of all a great insight into the difficulties and joys of living in France." Amazon reviewer

‘Total Immersion: Ten Years in France’ – a continuation of the ups and downs of running fishing lakes and holiday accommodation whilst bringing up a family and generally grappling with life in a foreign language. This book has also been a no. 1 bestseller in France and Australia.

"I've thoroughly enjoyed my journey with Stephanie and her family from Ireland to rural France with all its ups and downs, the combination of fact and humour have made for a very entertaining and at times (especially if you ever want to move there) educational read." Amazon reviewer

Chapter One: And So It Begins…

Nick shuffled into the living room in his dressing gown and slippers, clutching a cup of tea. He looked like death warmed up, but that was a vast improvement on how he’d looked for most of this last fortnight. The flu epidemic had started early in France this year and claimed us as two of its first victims. I’d bounced back from it a lot faster but I still wasn’t a hundred percent yet.

Very nice, he said, surveying the room before weakly collapsing onto the nearest piece of furniture, which fortunately happened to be the sofa, but isn’t it a bit early to put the Christmas decorations up? It’s still November.

Only just, I reminded him. Well, there was less than half of it left. I thought we needed cheering up. Mind you, this is only a start.

Nick’s eyebrows rose at that. I could see why. As well as lights around every window, there wasn’t an unadorned surface in the room. I’d been quietly stockpiling Christmas decorations all year. It’s amazing how cheaply you can get them off eBay in spring and summer. Added to that I’d been knitting and sewing them too – mini mittens, stockings and jumpers as tree decorations, bunting in festive fabrics, toy snowmen and Santas and reindeer to sit on shelves, and, my pièce de résistance, a Nativity scene with all the usual culprits plus a selection of animals that most definitely wouldn’t have been at that Bethlehem stable, namely llamas, alpacas, an elephant and a blue whale. Because I could.

He smiled. Despite his sunken eyes and hollow cheeks and horrible pallor, as always he lit up the room and my life with that smile.

So this is what you’ve been beavering away at in that craft room of yours. Craft room-cum-spare bedroom, to be precise. It’s beaut. Come here so I can kiss you.

Glowing and grinning like an idiot I straightened up the elephant, which kept insisting on leaning to the left, and went over to snuggle next to Nick on the sofa. He put an arm round me, delivered the promised kiss, and then chuckled.

What? I probed.

You’re a nutcase, he said fondly. A creative, Christmas-crazy nutcase. Still, I suppose you can’t help that with your name.

Which is Noelle, by the way.

I laughed. But we still need a tree, I pointed out. And holly wreaths, and some mistletoe and ivy, and—

And a bigger house!

Nonsense, I replied. There’s tons of room. This house is perfect.

It was. It had changed beyond all recognition from last Christmas, when it was cold, completely bare and without electricity. I’d been recruited at the last minute by my cousin Joseph, who ran a house- and pet-sitting service, to babysit twelve llamas for ten days. In deepest rural France. Shortly after I arrived, in the midst of a snowstorm, Nick had turned up to take possession of his new property, that was meant to contain furniture but not have llamas in the field outside. He’d been messed around by the vendors, Carol and Mel King. It was the third King, Mel’s mother Ivy, now our firm friend, who, once she’d found out what was going on, had arranged for me to come and mind the abandoned animals. Long story short, Nick had decided to keep me and the llamas on. I was his bed-sharing llama-keeper (note the important hyphens there) and editor.

Being a very successful and wealthy author, he had spent a lot of money on the farmhouse and transformed it. From being gloomy and poky it was bright and spacious. He’d taken down a modern stud wall that the Kings had inexplicably put up, and added a large conservatory at the back. We now had a vast, airy room. New, larger windows throughout the building let in as much light as possible, while thick layers of insulation kept out the accompanying heat in summer and cold in winter. I’d helped with painting and furnishing, as in I’d given advice rather than wielded a brush or helped move sofas, since Nick said it was better for the regional economy, and not forgetting his popularity, if he used local businesses as much as possible. And so electricians, heating engineers, painters and decorators, glaziers and builders, all from within a fifteen-kilometre radius, had taken over the farmhouse to do their thing for six months while Nick and I had moved into the tiny cottage behind it. But now everything was finished and we were back in residence.

We were looking forward to our first proper Christmas together. True, we’d both been under the same roof last Christmas, and had each taken a strong dislike to the other on first meeting under decidedly stressful conditions. But we quickly got to know each other, and our joint efforts in unsticking and safely delivering baby llama Sir Winter, and then traipsing through the snow with another llama, Holly, to the living crèche at a local church, where we’d met Nick’s long-lost family, had forged a bond. Nick kissed me for the first time on Christmas Day, and by Twelfth Night I’d left the cottage, which had been assigned to me, and moved in with this fascinating, magnetic man.

Well, who couldn’t love a handsome millionaire, you might be saying. Actually, it was the money that had almost derailed us a couple of times. Nick had quickly got used to throwing cash around, again. He’d been wealthy once before but blown it all on expensive women (their shoes and handbags mainly), and an unfortunate but fortunately temporary cocaine habit. My background was far more normal and had involved plenty of times of belt-tightening and saving-up, as well as the occasional splurge on a holiday or a nice but unnecessary dress. So when suddenly I only had to look at something before becoming its owner, I struggled to adjust. I didn’t like Nick constantly buying me things and I insisted on being independent, funding myself. My income from freelance editing was small but growing. This, however, came over as stubborn and somewhat ungrateful to Nick, but luckily we had the sense to sit and talk about it before either of us stalked off forever in a huff.

We reached a compromise. Nick cut down on the spoiling, and I lightened up a bit. With my encouragement, Nick began to channel his money into philanthropic works, and helped reroof several local churches and generally stop other nearby historic buildings from falling down. He bought computers for the primary school in the village, donated a tractor to the local farmers’ co-operative and sent a large cheque to any charitable organisation that asked for one. In return, he found himself invited to join many and various committees, and, to everyone’s amazement, including his, he accepted these posts and became very active. He went off to at least a couple of meetings every week. I frequently went along for the ride, and to give moral and translation support. Nick’s French was coming along nicely, although he fought hard against what he saw as the illogical business of giving everything a gender. I admit I was secretly a little smug in recognising that he would probably never catch me up in the foreign language expertise stakes.

So. Nick returned me to the present. What are we up to today?

Rest for you, I decided, seeing how tired he still looked.

I’m sick of resting, he grumbled.

Good. Impatient surliness was the first sign of the recovering invalid.

OK, well, how about a stroll around the farm? Come and say hi to the llamas – they’ve missed you.

That last bit was an exaggeration, as we both knew. The llamas only missed us if food and water didn’t arrive promptly. They could take us or leave us the rest of the time. They were friendly but not affectionate, and certainly not bosom buddy material. They tolerated Nick and me, and that’s about as much as you could hope for with a llama.

Nick showered and then overdressed, at my insistence, in way too many warm clothes before we ventured out into the chilly November mid-morning. I’d already done the feeding and watering rounds. As well as the original twelve llamas and one imminent cria that Nick had inherited, we had since accumulated two Berkshire pigs, three Ouessant sheep, one decrepit goat, five cats and lots of chickens.

The pigs had come first. Nick had revealed back in February that he’d always rather liked pigs and had seen pig management courses being advertised by someone with a collection of various rare breeds a few départements away. He duly went off for the weekend, and came back full of enthusiasm and now the owner of a pair of Berkshires, which would be delivered to us in due course. He said these were not only the most handsome, being mainly black with light brown blazes on their faces and matching light brown legs from the knee down, but that they were also the sweetest-natured of the various pig breeds he’d encountered. Now, I’d never associated pigs with sweetness. Apple sauce maybe, but not docility and affability. However, when breeder Dominic delivered four-month-old Anthony and five-month-old Cleopatra to us I discovered how wrong I’d been. They were friendly, very easy to handle and loved nothing more than to have a chat with us a few times a day. We soon found we could reduce both of them to squeaking, gibbering wrecks by massaging their backs. Drooling and with a glazed expression, they’d then roll onto their backs for their tummies to be tickled. They still enjoyed this, now that they were mature, strapping adult pigs. We’d be putting them together in January to do the necessary to provide us with our first litter of piglets three months, three weeks and three days later.

The sheep had turned up one morning in May. I’d gone out to feed my llamas only to find them all standing in a row with their backs to me, staring at something. That something proved to be three small, dark brown sheep quietly grazing in the field as if they’d lived in it all their lives. Nick and I herded them into one of the stables, not that it took much effort. They were well used to people, and as soon as I appeared with a bucket of grain, they happily trotted after me. So did the greedy llamas, so Nick’s shepherding role turned into llama repelling. We contacted the police, all the local farmers we could think of and even advertised in the paper, but no one came forward to claim the untagged and therefore anonymous sheep. Not surprisingly. Apparently this May was the one when all sheep in our département had to be tested for brucellosis, a five-yearly ritual. The person I spoke to at the Chambre d’Agriculture, when I went to add sheep to Nick’s cheptel, i.e. his collection of livestock, reckoned someone had turned out these sheep to wander off and fend for themselves, rather than go legal and get them tagged and tested. We thus took on all these necessities, as well as worming them, and then allowed them to join the llamas again. Everyone got on very well with everyone else.

The goat was another stray. He’d turned up in the nearby village of St Hilaire la Fontaine during the summer and eaten everyone’s roses. The Maire gave us a ring as he knew we had a bit of a soft spot for waifs and strays. It’s hard to refuse a request from a mayor, and probably not a good idea, so we took in Archibald, an ancient, neutered billy goat. Had he been younger and tenderer, he’d have ended up in someone’s freezer before we’d even heard about him. He too was tagged and tested and wormed, and then he too joined the camelid herd.

The cats were all second-hand. One, a handsome black and white female we named Simone, made her way to our doorstep, but all the others we found at the roadside. It seemed that some of our neighbours weren’t that good with felines, choosing to dump kittens rather than have the parents neutered. I found the first little bundle of tortoiseshell fluff while out on a bike ride. The tiny creature was sitting pathetically at the side of the road, mewling. With her tucked under my jacket, I hunted around for any possible mother or siblings but found none, so took my orphan back home. I had to rush to the vet’s to get cat milk as she wasn’t yet weaned, bath her to kill off the droves of ticks and fleas that crawled and hopped on her, and had a week of broken nights getting up to feed her every three hours. Nick tutted and said I was a total softy, and now that we had Simone and this one, Aurelie, emphasised that we were sufficiently catted. However, a few weeks later he sidled in looking sheepish. He’d been to a meeting at a neighbouring commune about restoring its crumbling chapel. I had a tight work deadline to meet so hadn’t gone along with him. I assumed, proudly, that he looked guilty as he’d been persuaded into taking on more of the project financially than he’d initially agreed to, but I was soon disabused.

Um, what would you do if you came across three kittens in the middle of the road? he began. I know I said—

I didn’t let him finish but shrieked with delight and swooped past him out to the car, where I saw three stripy grey bundles asleep on the passenger seat. They were a little older than Aurelie had been so didn’t need cat milk, but they did need a thorough de-parasiting and fattening up.

All five of our cats had now been through the vet’s hands and weren’t going to be contributing to the country’s burgeoning cat population. I’d been briefly tempted to allow Aurelie and one of the three new males, Voltaire, Diderot and Montesquieu, to escape surgery and be permitted to breed. However, when Nick pointed out that, left unchecked, one pair of cats would become twelve thousand after five years, I quickly changed my mind.

The chickens I’d been accumulating slowly but steadily from the weekly market in Broussac. I only meant to get two to start with, since we didn’t need that many eggs, but once I discovered how delightful chickens were, although they could be pretty mean to each other, I was hooked. I now had a dozen, of various breeds, pottering around the garden. The pecking order had been firmly established with Cynthia at the top and poor little Dorothy at the bottom. Small and shy, she was one of life’s victims and resigned to her lot. However, I spoiled her with extra treats, and every night lifted her up onto a high windowsill in their stable so that the others, all larger and heavier, couldn’t get at her.

There was no dog as yet on our farm, but I was working on it. After living with him for eleven months, I knew exactly how to win Nick round to my way of thinking.

Chapter Two: A Phone Call

The tour of the farm had left Nick with rosy cheeks but wiped out. I was steering him towards the sofa again when he rebelled.

I’m bored of sitting in here. Can’t we go out for coffee and buns?

I too was suffering drastically from cabin fever. I’d been making only quick dashes to the nearest tiny supermarket so had been more or less stuck on the farm for the last three weeks. I therefore hurled Nick’s Parka round his shoulders and hustled him towards the car before he could change his mind.

Not this little thing, Nick grumbled, seeing that the car in question was my tiny Fiat, and not his top-of-the-range Audi.

You know I don’t like driving your car. It’s too big, I replied firmly. Now shut up and get in.

Nick sighed but did as told. To be fair, he did only just have enough leg room and barely a couple of centimetres clearance above his head, but all the same, he fitted in. And I was in charge at the moment, therefore I made the rules.

Where are we going? he asked as we rumbled carefully up the drive.

My car had a low wheel base and the track was stony and uneven, which wasn’t the greatest combination. There were a couple of graunches and one clunk, despite my best efforts.

I wish you’d let me buy you a Sandero like Ghislaine has, Nick remarked, wincing at the sound effects beneath us. That’s nice and high. His cousin was very proud of her new, lava-orange car.

No thanks, sweetheart, I replied crisply. This car has years and years left. It was only thirteen years old. In our family we kept cars until they literally fell apart. It never crossed anyone’s mind to even think about replacing a vehicle that was under twenty.

Nick muttered something along the lines of Not if you knock the engine out, but I ignored him.

How about Sainte Séverine? I suggested. There was a lovely salon du thé there. It was small and a bit tatty, but the coffee was excellent and the atmosphere cosy. Another point in its favour was that it was one of the best boulangeries we’d ever come across. Croissants combined a melt-in-the-mouth interior with a crispy, flaky outside. The chocolate in the pains au chocolat was rich and divine, and the pains aux raisins were more succulent raisin than anything. However, the mille-feuilles were to die for. The creamiest custard, the sweetest icing and the most delicate puff pastry. It was one of those I had my thoughts on right now.

Good call, approved Nick, sharing my thought bubble.

We made it to the top of the drive without anything dropping off the car, as far as I could tell from a glance in the rearview mirror, and pottered towards Sainte Séverine. Everywhere was drab grey – the fields, the hedgerows and trees, and the sky. Occasionally there was a sprinkling of green as winter wheat or rape poked through the heavy clay soil, or a particularly stubborn deciduous tree hung onto its last vestiges of green. There was a stand of pine trees to one side, but even they seemed more grey-green than anything today. It was a truly dispiriting late-autumn day. I could sense Nick next to me going into a decline at the starkness around us, so I put my foot down fractionally – it doesn’t do to try and go too fast in my Fiat – and began to prattle brightly and inanely to lift the gloom.

Mum and Dad say ‘hi’ and hope you’re better soon, I told him, when I ran out of other mindless things to say. I’d been on my mobile to Mum last night. We communicated by Facebook mainly, but threw in a couple of phone conversations every month for good measure.

My parents had met Nick a few times now. Because of his ‘rich and famous’ status, it was all we could do to stop Mum bowing and stooping in his presence. This was a new side to my mother. She’d always been dismissive of so-called celebs in the past, saying they were no better than the rest of us and more likely far worse, but having one in such close proximity within the family overwhelmed her. Dad was less sycophantic. He treated Nick the same way he treated my sister Eve’s husband: with that strange mixture of gratitude, for taking a daughter off his hands, and hostility, because he knew jolly well what they were getting up to with his little girls. He didn’t quite walk stiff-legged with his hackles up and his teeth bared, but when he and Nick were together it always reminded me of a pair of male dogs circling each other suspiciously. However, they behaved civilly towards each other and hadn’t yet come to blows.

Pop’s off at another of his living history events, I went on. Mum says he’s hardly ever home these days. Dad’s started going with him too sometimes.

Since Nan’s death over a year ago, Pop had slumped into a deep depression for six months but then become a keen member of a World War II association. He