Eating from the land...

We have had the most unbelievable weather recently. Our fruit trees are completely covered in blossom and remind me that it won't be long before I'll be fruit picking. I've set myself a challenge to make sure we don't waste any crop from our land this year and we have a number of apple trees as well as pear, plum, cherry, quince, sloe, raspberries and blackberries - so I have quite a lot of work on my hands with jams, pies, drinks - perhaps some gin!

I'm still preparing my veg patch, which I really need to get finished now. I dug in a few tractor loads of old horse manure a few weeks ago and have quite a bit more digging to do! So I will have veg from the garden this summer to add to the fridge.

It's not only fruit and veg though, as I'm sure you know we bought our first pigs in January, which was very exciting. We decided to buy Rare Breed Berkshires - seemed the right thing to do seeing as we used to live in Berkshire! We bought a male pig who was a few weeks off slaughter and two girls with a view to breeding. Our male had already been named Robin and after spending some time with the girls, we named them Pepper and Olive. The pigs have been so much fun, they are really friendly - we scratch them and they drop on to their sides so we'll tickle their tummies. They are also very muddy and very good and turning up any grass, roots, rock, walls around them!

At the end of March the time had come to send Robin to slaughter. We investigated our options of driving him to our local abattoir or having a home kill and eventually decided on a home kill, which was done by a french retired butcher called Christian. We checked that it was going to be done humanely and he confirmed that a quick shot to the head and he wouldn't know anything that went on afterwards. We began to get really nervous as the day approached, I decided to have a couple of glasses of wine at lunch to calm the nerves. He arrived at 3pm on the dot on a friday afternoon, Stu and I had already separated Robin from the girls and put him in one of our barns, we were brushing him and giving him love when Christian arrived. Suddenly before I knew what was going on Christian had walked into the barn with his stun gun, I heard one squeal and they were dragging Robin out - that was it. They had to hang him in a tree to slit his throat and let the blood drain, I was in charge of pulling the tractor forward acting as a winch to pull Robin into the tree. I watched as they worked on him and it wasn't as bad as I thought, once he was truly gone they set about cleaning his insides and taking the hair off. They worked quickly, speaking all the time, most of which passed me by; in 45 minutes they were waving as they pulled off our driveway and we had a pig hanging in our barn. Robin had gone.

He arrived at 6.45am the next morning and we really didn't know what to expect other than he'd asked us to buy garlic, onions, white wine, salt, pepper and parsely - so he was going to cook! He set up in Stu's workshop with lots of vats bubbling away on gas rings, we had crawled out of bed, pulled on some old clothes and were sipping coffee as he took the saw to the first of Robin's legs....he worked fast as the morning went on he was throwing meat at me left right and centre, I was bagging it up as quickly as i could. All the extra bits were being thrown in various vats to be cooked - we still didn't really know what was going on. He handed me a pot of terrine (pate) and told me to go and put it straight in the oven for 3 hours and when he started on the black pudding or Boudin in french he asked me to taste the fresh blood after he's salted it! After 5 hours of cutting and cooking, we had 40 pork chops, 5 huge joints, 2 filet mignons, 80 black pudding, bags of terrine, a pot of 'pate de tete' - for those of you that don't know, that's EVERYTHING from the head - Stu saw an eyeball go in!, bacon, liver....I think that was it. The experience was absolutely amazing and the freezer as planned was full of meat.

It's not just the pigs, we also had 11 hens, 2 cockerels and 4 ducks until last week when we sold 2 hens and a cockerel. We get so many eggs each week, I can't cook them quick enough and we're now ready to eat some chickens. Our beautiful chicks from last summer are still here and laying us stunning blue eggs, we don't really want to eat them just yet- but I think we will eventually. We rescued 6 hens from a lady earlier in the year and we think we're going to start by eating those, although Stu has already killed one, we're going to take them to a local abattoir who do all the horrible work for just a couple of euros - it's a no brainer.

One of our ducks 'Em', is now sitting on lots of eggs and on the 20th April we should have some ducklings, which is very exciting. So, we will also be able to eat some of our own duck later in the year. Needless to say, we also picked up a new freezer on the weekend!

Bring on the house cow and little lambs I say!

I have a Kitchen! Yay!

So, I'll start from the beginning with the plans for our Kitchen. When we bought the house we were lucky enough to have a large amount of old oak left in our hangar. We had always planned to use as much of the resources we already had on the land as possible and so it was obvious to have a real oak floor in our country kitchen. When it came to the crunch and we really looked at the oak, we realised that some of the beams were so huge that we would need to get them to a mill to have them cut down, Stu has some pretty major table saws and stuff but nothing as big as we needed! Also, even if we had got it cut down, Stu would have spent weeks sanding all the wood down and trying to prepare it. It turned out that one of the french people that lives in the next village is a carpenter and so we decided to get a quote. He came and looked at the wood and calculated how much useable stuff we had, it was a perfect amount to do the kitchen area. He said he'd cut all the knots out for us and we were saying 'no!' 'we love the knots', he thought we were weird but agreed to keep them in. The quote was much less than we expected and we had the wood back at our house within a week, it was sanded, tongue & grooved and stunning!

We had spent some time planning the type of adhesive we were going to use, which wasn't simple as we have laid underfloor heating - but we got there in the end and bought it from the uk as we could get better advice and, as always, it was cheaper. So finally by mid February we had everything we needed, Stu's younger brother flew over to us and they laid the floor in a couple of days. The room was transformed! We sanded and treated it overnight for two nights in a row and finally it was done.

Our Kitchen had been sat in our main barn since summer last year, which had been a real stress as we had no idea how the wood was holding up through the winter and really didn't know what we would find when we unwrapped it. So, heart's in our mouth and a little prayer said, we were ready to bring the kitchen in. We were lucky, it was seemingly unharmed by the change in temperature and humidity from summer to autumn to winter and it was definitely as beautiful as I remembered it in the shop. We bought it in unit by unit and started to try and make it fit, I say try because it didn't really fit! I don't know where we got our measurements wrong but let's just say we had to make some adjustments, I don't think you'd know - but we do! It took us a few days to get it really right, levelling it and fitting the cornice etc. all take time but we got there.

The worktop was the final piece of the puzzle but Stu was too scared to cut it, we had two huge lengths of real oak and he said that if he did it wrong there would be no going back! Luckily we have an english friend here who is also a carpenter and he came over for the day and did a fantastic job. By early March we were there, I had not only a lovely kitchen, but my big oven, a beautiful butler sink and a dishwasher! Cooking is a joy again.

We had a few visitors in March, which was great but as always it did mean that the work on the house slowed down a bit, the bathroom upstairs has been finished and looks beautiful and work has started on my larder room, which is where I intend to store all our meat, jams, juices etc.

A busy Winter

Reading my last post really makes me laugh, particularly the 'we should have a Kitchen in the next few weeks' part! It's the 2nd February 2011 and I still don't have the Oak Floor or Kitchen, but it's ok, we're doing it right, no rushing, no bodging, the screed will dry over time and luckily for us time is what we have.

Late Autumn and Winter bought a tonne of challenges for us, on the 20th October our puppy had a horrific car accident and we spent weeks looking after him, changing his bandages and trying to stop him from over doing it.

4 weeks later and we left him with people he didn't know while we whisked ourselves away to New York. We had a fabulous time with my sis and her husband; they introduced us to lots of their friends on Thanksgiving, we skated in Bryant Park and did some Christmas shopping, it was really lovely. We got back on the 29th November and then just 3 days later our beautiful black cat Scamp was also run over, but he didn't survive it. He was the most loving cat with such a funny little personality, he was a daddy's boy and always climbed up Stu and wrapped his two front paws around Stu's neck for a cuddle just as a child would do. We were so upset, but he is now buried next to our beautiful wedding swing, where we often go and chat with him. A week later and his brother Marble seemed so discumbobulated that we decided to go and get a rescue cat to try and cheer him up. So on the 11th December we collected 'Amie' a 5 month old girl beautiful in white and ginger looking for a loving home. She spent a week playing around our house, helping me dress the Christmas tree and snuggling in front of the fire and then just 5 days later she died, and we don't know why. So Marble was left again with just us to keep him company and then we left him to go back to the UK for Christmas. Luckily our neighbour comes to the house twice a day every day and she kept him entertained. We had a fantastic time with all our friends and family over the Christmas period, lots of food, drink, games and laughs. We got back to France on the 2nd January ready to get back down to lots of work and Marble was definitely very pleased to see us. Things have settled down now, Marble seems content sleeping on our bed during the day unless we're outside doing something interesting and then he comes and joins in. He wakes me up at 6.50am every morning, not a minute earlier, not a minute later, and so like the obedient owner that I am, I get up, he runs down the stairs twisting and turning through my legs as though all his christmasses are coming at once and then he sits at the door at the bottom of the stairs looking at the handle, not me - he doesn't look at me, he just stares at the handle as though maybe just maybe he has enough cat superpowers to make it turn quicker if he stares hard enough. Once he's in, he's happy munching on his breakfast and I'm free from the danger of a cat trying to trip you up and can make my cup of tea in peace. We have a routine and he seems to like it.

It is now very cold again, we've had some beautiful sunny days but it's been about -7 most days this week and the garden looks sad. I love it when the sun does break through the clouds and I feel just a little warmth on my face, it reminds me that Spring is just around the corner and not only will that put a smile on my face but the garden will start smiling too. We walk the dog for an hour each morning and feed the chickens as we go, then we'll come back in for a warm cup of tea and I sit in the office for the best part of the day working on the business. That means that Stu is now on his own with the build, but it works well for us. Our carpets were fitted in December, so the bedrooms are looking nice, we completed the underfloor heating & screed downstairs before we came home too. As we've had to wait for the screed to dry in the Kitchen Stu has turned his attentions to the upstairs bathroom and he's doing a great job. All the plumbing & waste has been run, the bath is in and has been well used! He has taken his time over the planning of the room, getting the tiling around the bath just right as well as the plastering. He has handmade and painted our sink unit, which looks beautiful and it's now really coming together. We decided to use our neighbour who is a carpenter to prepare the Oak for our Kitchen floor as he has big machinery and will do it in a matter of days rather than Stu sanding it all for weeks, and that is due back with us this week. So next week Stu will start to prepare the Kitchen floor with a thin layer of self-levelling compound and then those boards can go down....my Kitchen isn't far off now!

Some news & pics on the build

Last time I wrote we couldn't make a decision about the way to heat our house and hot water and that was delaying us massively. We finally made a decision on a Solar Hot Water system that would use a minimal amount of electricity to run and Underfloor Heating to warm our cockles in the winter. We ordered all the kit, which came from the UK and had a 3-4 week delay on it and finally after a lot of waiting we are starting to lay the Underfloor Heating in the morning, this should mean that we'll be laying screed and thinking about an Oak floor in our Kitchen within the next 2-3 weeks.

We've also had our plasterer back so the Kitchen walls are looking more presentable. Stu has been spending his time putting new floors in the bedrooms, upstairs bathroom and landing. This was a mammoth task as the worst floor had a 5 inch difference in it's level from one side of the room to the other! He spent many hours and days levelling the beams and applying wood treatment to every bit of wood in sight! We now have 2 large bedrooms ready for carpet, our bathroom has a beautiful softwood floor and the landing has an Oak floor. Stu's brother came and helped for a couple of weeks, which was fantastic - he's a Carpenter and Stu turned into his labourer for the time that he was here. They worked brilliantly together and all I had to do was keep the food and beer (mainly the beer) flowing!

Stu has also started fitting our beautiful bathroom upstairs, which has been a complicated job with beams dictating where the plumbing and waste can & can't go. The Solar Hot Water system is going in at the beginning of November, so a bath may be possible before December - woo hoo!

We have a very tight schedule between now and Christmas, we're going to New York for 5 days at the end of November and then home to the UK for Christmas on the 20th of December so in terms of actual number of days left to work - there aren't many!

A moment to reflect...

Living here must be the best way in the world to learn about the birds and the bees; I guess that's why so many people say that they'd like to bring their children up in the country. Our chicks being born was an absolutely fantastic thing to watch - no heat lamps or special pens, no human intervention - pure and simply, a mother hen who knew exactly what she was doing. She sat on those eggs for twentyish days, leaving them for the smallest amount of time to get food for herself, she lost out on exercise, she lost out on the run of the farm, she lost out on the first pick of the food, she lost out on interaction with the other hens, time with the cockerel, but in the end she was the winner because after almost a month of total and utter dedication she was blessed with some beautiful little babies and it didn't end there. I have witnessed her showing them how to walk, how to eat & drink, how to forage for worms & grubs, I've seen her protect them by putting herself in the line of fire and all of that was done with pure instinct. Isn't that fantastic; it's so simple. Don't you think that as humans we spend most of the time just really complicating things and sometimes when it comes down to it, we've forgotten how to even trust our instinct. France has given me time and with time I think I'm learning to trust my instinct a little bit more.

My dad built me the most beautiful swing for our wedding, I'm sure you all remember it. That swing now rests under our huge oak tree at the bottom of our fields and I often spend a few moments sat there pondering 'stuff'. Yesterday, I sat there and remembered my beautiful wedding day, the feelings I had getting ready in the morning, all the wonderful people (you) around me all day, helping to make Stu and I happy with all the different bits and pieces that were going on. People who were simply there because they love us and they wanted to share in our happiness in those moments. Some really wonderful things have happened in the last couple of weeks; another extremely important wedding on the other side of the atlantic and news from a very close friend of a little bambino on it's way. These are the beautiful things in life that put a smile on our faces - it's not even necessarily the actual wedding or baby being born, but just the lovely news and how that person is feeling that will lift us for that day. Somehow being here has enabled me to enjoy those little moments more and has definitely made me realise that our friends and family, those that we hold nearest and dearest, no matter where they live in the world are the most important things we have. That swing is a wonderful place to reflect, you'll have to try it when you come and visit.

Our house is evolving

I've just read my last post; it was in June! Gosh how time goes by, we're mid-august now and I can't keep up with each day. The year will be over before we know it; leaves dropping from the trees and light dressings of snow seem to be looming. The scariest bit about all that is that we don't have a Kitchen or heat or hot water...really sort of important things for a winter in the middle of rural France where temperatures can drop to below 20. The chickens are already putting themselves to bed earlier than usual and the nights are colder; what will September and October bring?

We have achieved so much with our build; mum and dad arrived just in time for us to concrete the ground floor level of the house. We made a great team; dad & Stu mixed and barrowed, mum and I layed the floor. The first room was a bit dodgy, the second considerably better and the last room was pure genius - we could definitely take it up as a full time profession, in fact I think I might. So after a week of concreting we have a floor with a damp-proof layer BUT it still needs some underfloor heating before another whole layer of screed will be required....god help us.

Our beams are exposed and there are loads of electrics now running through the beams and down the walls giving us light in all the downstairs rooms and 2 bedrooms upstairs. We even decided to get a plasterer in to sort one of our downstairs rooms out, which now looks almost like an actual room....I could put a sofa in it just to make me feel better, but it would be silly really!

Stu has exposed our beautiful fireplace in the Kitchen, he's pointed the chimney breast which is made from red bring and has laid a hearth from large pieces of granite that we pulled up from the floor, it looks fab. Stu and I also concreted his 60sqm workshop in preparation for hot water and heating tanks. That leads me on to us trying to make decisions on our hot water & heating using renewable energy. It's not simple, 3 quotes and 1 meeting in French later and we still can't decide what to do...it's holding us up; the house is crying out for some heat and a finished floor and we're running out of time. It's the first real pressure we've felt. It's a large investment and we don't want to get it wrong, we need a little shove from behind like a child on it's first day at school, a little 'it's ok - you're doing the right thing' type of encouragement.

When our puppy, Red arrived, our world as we knew it ended! He has eyes that make your heart melt and a tale that wags so excitedly that you can't help but smile, however, even though we had read loads of books and watched Cesar Millan we still weren't prepared for how much time this little bundle was going to need. It was a massive challenge for us to start with, we were so focussed on our build and working so hard each day and all of a sudden we had a routine to put in place and someone or something else to think about, it was really hard. He got wayward and started biting, probably because we gave him too much freedom and not enough boundaries - we needed supernanny! We've had him nearly two months now and after some hard work he is so much better, he loves his cuddles in the morning and has learnt lots of tricks... he loves swimming and chasing chickens! He's growing so quickly but doesn't realise how big he is. People in the street love him, the French are a nation of dog-lovers so when we take him to restaurants he generally gets better treatment than we do! We love him and wouldn't change him for the world; I think we're over the shock now and he's settling in as a very important member of the family.

On the animal front, the most exciting thing over the last 2 weeks has been the arrival of some new chicks. I'll write soon with all the beautiful (and the gory) details!

This & That

It's been a while since I've written and as I type now I am sat in an empty bedroom with pink and white flowery wallpaper, wooden floorboards and a marble fireplace looking out through a flaky old window to a view of lush green scenery out on the horizon and down below some chickens trying to take cover from the rain under a large bush. The cockerel looks 'dampened', is that a word? I'm not sure but his feathers hang low and he doesn't look as regal as he usually does. He could simply go into his house and keep warm and dry but I can only assume that as that is not part of his routine usually, he couldn't work out that perhaps just for today, he could in fact make it part of his routine. And why are all the Hens under the bush but the Cockerel isn't? Is he looking after them, making sure that they have shelter before he does? Or perhaps he's a picnic short of a sandwich; I prefer to think that come what may he will be hunter gatherer for his brood and that hopefully when he comes back to the nest they won't be put off by his sodden & bedraggled looks and that they will let him serve them for his efforts.

It's been wet, very wet for quite some time now. Not every day - we have an interlude of sun and when it does come out it's extremely hot, but the common theme during most weeks seems to be a downpour of magnificent proportions - not just a light shower, this is serious rain. Obviously we do have the rain to thank for all the wonderful lush greenery around but come on - this is June, it's summer isn't it and we decided not to move to Wales or Scotland because it rained too much! Have we made a catastrophic mistake? It would be the law of sod that each time I check the weather forecast for England, there seems to be sun. I'm sure when I lived in England the sun was always in Limoges and the rain was just outside the window. I could be at the British Hearth Foundation now sweltering in a British Summer and chatting to all the old dears buying their Mills & Boon about how Britain has never known a summer like it. Oh well, for now I will enjoy letting the rain do the job of watering the garden and bringing on my lettuces and runner beans and in August I'll gloat that we are in the pool when the British Summer has already come to an end and the beginning of a new school term is just around the corner.

Since I last wrote we've had two sets of visitors. The first was my dad who arrived just before his birthday at the end of May. Seeing as he was filling his retirement with silly little things like racing round Nurburgring in exciting fast cars, doing charity work and having lots of social engagements booked up each weekend I decided to give him a job. He is now Head of Electrics at Muck to Merlot, Chez Watson, France. The job is a grand one and I won't hear anything to the contrary - although he was on site by 8am every morning, didn't leave til around 10pm most nights, worked a 6 day week and had a team that consisted of him, him and him - he was fed and watered impeccably (other than the odd 2 Euro bottle of plonk which didn't really go down that well), he had his washing and ironing done for him and of course the company was great. The electrics have come on leaps and bounds, most importantly the old fuse box with furry little cables, with no earth whatsoever is now pretty much out of action and we have a shiny new plastic fuse board up on the wall with loads of wires going off here there and everywhere - it looks great! I have a washing maching and a fridge which has made my life considerably easier and we even have light - such a simple thing we take for granted, but we can in fact now see which walls we are knocking down and which should be left. Phew!

We celebrated dad's birthday on the 30th with two new arrivals - Kat & Ben. They drove down like the proper townies that they are (& we almost used to be) in their BMW Coupe, armed with posh wellies and an even posher BBQ. They did the journey in record time and arrived early enough for us to cart them off to the local campsite for their first shower in France as we were one nut & bolt away from sorting out our plumbing and all the shops were shut on Sunday - so we had a night of no shower. We baked a cake and had a feast from the barbie and sang Happy Birthday to dad, it was a lovely social evening and our first proper gathering in our new home. Kat & Ben tucked in that night to the tent in our front field, which Kat described as 'Glamping' rather than Camping as they had a full double bed, base, mattress the lot, table & Chairs, kettle, tea and even a heater wired from the house. They said they wouldn't use it as they liked to rough it a little more than that, but I'm pretty sure it was on by night two! They were fantastic, they stripped wallpaper, cut down trees and moved huge boulders from the barn floor - they worked like trojans followed up each night by a meal outside with a fire going next to us. Good friends, good food & good chats; it was over all too quickly as by the Thursday they were back to boring things like work, paying the mortgage..you know - stuff like that. The best bit was that we didn't put them off and they have already booked to come back and we can't wait.

Head of Electrics still had another week before his return home, which was great because there was lots more to do not only with the electrics but he also stepped in to help with other jobs. We put a gate up in preparation for our puppy, and also had to whack out all of the ground level floors with a deadline for the machine hire. Each time Stu and I reached the point of not being able to dig anymore, dad did a stint on the machine - we all spent most of that week still shaking when we went to bed and having to unfold each limb out of bed the next morning. Still we did get the machine back on time and we have kept to our schedule of digging all floors up. By the end of the week we were all pretty shattered, but we needed to find enough energy to collect a beautiful little puppy and go to a local party before dad went home.