Dreams of better times ahead

We are now well into our first winter in France and it is just as miserable an experience as it ever was back in England. The gloomy days with cold and wet weather just make me yearn for that first spring-like day when the sun starts to feel warm on your face and nature starts to awake from its winter hibernation.

There is an old saying that I will probably misquote here but it is something along the lines of “You can only appreciate the summer after you have lived through the winter”. It is so true and one of the reasons why I don’t think I would like to live much closer to the equator where the differences in the seasons are much less marked.

I came back home ridiculously excited last week - whilst out walking with Rolo I spotted some hazel catkins and read it as a sign of better weather to come. Sure enough, a few days later and we had our first dose of snow!

Le Clos des Chênes 'sous la neige'

Snow is not uncommon in this part of France but neither is it such a regular occurrence nor so heavy that they are particularly well geared up for it. In our rural corner there are no gritting teams working through the night so the roads had a good covering when I ventured out to view a property for my clients from New Zealand (more of this in a moment).

Wintry landscape in Busserolles

The answer the French seem to have to snowy weather is to just do nothing – literally, do nothing. Stay in by the log burner, don’t go to work, relax and wait until the snow has gone. This approach was best evidenced by the market traders at Piegut market this week. We arrived expecting a jolly winter wonderland of a market scene with stalls jammed with shoppers eager to stock up their winter store cupboards. Normally there would be 70 or 80 stalls in Piegut on a Wednesday – this week we counted 8. I’m not sure even the market manager turned out as the few stalls were scattered through the town rather than gathered together in one place.

It was cold and it was snowing, so why go out and freeze your brass monkeys off on your market stall – particularly if your customers are going to be thinking the same. We decided to reward the entrepreneurial courage of the hardy few traders who had made the effort and we bought something from nearly all of them. The one we struggled with was the stall that sells outsize undergarments and nylon housecoats to the doughty French madames. I suggested Nikki might find some of the underwear nice and warm for the winter – I won’t tell you what her reply was!

Back to the house I went to visit. It sounded too good to be true; it had the location, the interior space, the barn and the land size that my clients had specified and it was well below their budget. 

It has been used as a holiday home so I met the lady who was acting as the key holder and she kindly opened the place up for me. As she went on ahead to open up the shutters I heard her groan, “Oh dear, what a mess”. I followed her through to the rear and found the lounge floor littered with broken plasterboard – we looked up the stairs to see a large hole in the landing ceiling. Further inspection revealed damp and mold in the front bedroom as well. Unfortunately the barn, which adjoins the property, has not had a roof for the last 18 months, having had it removed before it collapsed. 

The property with its roofless barn

 The owners had decided to leave it in that condition because they never used the barn. Looking at the jagged edge of the tile roof on the house and the stone wall between the house and the barn that was now completely exposed to the elements, my guess is that the frost and rain have done their work over the last two winters and now the house is suffering badly with water ingress. 

The end result!

What a shame for the property; what a shame for me who still has to unearth the perfect property for my clients!

In the meantime, I am continuing my efforts to develop a more self-sufficient approach to daily living. Three or four times a week I try and spend an hour in the woods with my chainsaw, cutting up fallen trees and carrying the logs back up the slope in my wheelbarrow. It is back breaking work but my log pile for next winter’s use is growing nicely.

Rolo inspects the newly dug vegetable patch

I have also dug over two 15m2 patches of our field to create a vegetable patch. Over the next month or so I want the rain and the frost to work on the exposed soil (beneficially this time) and with the addition of some more spade work and some nicely rotted manure from a local farmer, I hope we will be ready to start planting in the spring.

The patches I have dug over are close by the ends of two drainpipes that I discovered take the rainwater from the house roof and currently just drain it into a muddy soak away. My next project therefore is to install a water collection system (“rainwater harvesting” I think is the eco warrior word for it) so that we have a ready supply of free water with which to water the vegetables with in the summer.

Ah, the summer……….