I’ve been busy harvesting the last of our crops and so are
the local farmers. The Vendange (grape harvest) started last week which is much
later than last year and I understand that this year’s crop is not good; what
effect that will have on this years Cognac production (and prices) remains to be seen. Our
grapevines were much less productive this year, about a quarter of last year’s
yield and lots of undersized grapes. I’ve made most of ours into grape juice as
we still have wine to bottle from last years grapes.
The walnuts are now falling off the tree and again not as
many as last year and lots of black ones, probably just as well as we still
have some left from last year.
Most of the veggies are now finished but we did well with
tomatoes, onions, peppers, sweetcorn and carrots. Not a brilliant yield from
the potatoes, peas and green beans but OK and 3 melons from our melon plant.
The weather was all wrong this year, a late cold snap in April, then a lot of
rain but then no rain at all from the middle of July until the end of
September. The farmers’ cereal harvest was in early July – very much sooner
than Britain – but the sunflowers were late and the sweetcorn even later, and
there are some fields of both still not done.
We gave up taking in French students after suffering a
really bad experience with an older student which is a shame as the young
students were great. This last one had so many issues that we ended up counting
down the hours until she left and I was so traumatised we cancelled the rest of
out bookings! However the agency got in touch the other day to see if we were
available for half term, I’m not sure which bit of “we’re not doing this again”
they didn’t understand.
Most of the barn is now down to garden wall height and we
are keeping two of the walls as we are going to make it into a walled garden.
We had a 6-day bonfire burning a lot of rotten and worm-eaten wood. We want to re-use the good
stone but we’ve still got a lot of rubble to take to the tip so we decided to
buy a trailer to do this. However this is where you get into French
bureaucracy, if you buy a large trailer (ie. over 500 kgs capacity) then it has to have
its own registration document (carte gris), it’s own number plate and its own
insurance. If you have a French driving licence you also have to go and take a
special driving test. Needless to say
we’re having a 500kg trailer. I went to the Mercedes garage in Cognac to ask
the price of having a tow bar fitted and they quoted me 1,600 euros! I’m going
to a local garage where they will fit a genuine Mercedes tow bar for just over
600 euros.
We’ve also just demolished the old blue bathroom on the
ground floor, behind the hall. The hall
looks much bigger and brighter now, and putting the staircase into it looks
even more the right thing to do. A lot more rubble to take to the tip though!
Then we need the builder to get to work on it.
Wood burning stoves
We had a cheminée firm in to give us a quote for a new
fireplace and wood burning stove in our new salon, and while he was here we got
him to look at our existing wood burner in the other room. He told us that what we’ve got was condemned
in 1993! However we had the chimney from
it swept and the ramonage guy didn’t seem bothered, and gave us the necessary
insurance certificate to prove it had been done.
We’re
waiting for the log man to turn up with this year’s new supply of logs, all oak
this time. We’ve already got about a
year’s supply but you’re supposed to have at least 3 years supply in, no idea
why it just seems to be the done thing. I rang up to see when the delivery was
scheduled for and all the told me was “after the 10th”. Firewood
comes in ‘steres’, which is one cubic metre when the wood is a metre long, we
have ours in half metre lengths so that it will fit in the fire and apparently
when it’s been cut in half a stere is no longer a cubic metre but is a bit less.
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