More from rural France.....

France 2009 042.jpg
see all photos »

Thierry and Olga are the second (very friendly) farmer and wife I've had the pleasure of meeting, (the first, Jean Michelle and Josie allowed us to watch the evening milking of their 40+ cows and gave us 3 litres of milk in 2 large coke bottles to take away still lovely and warm from the udder!) Thierry has only 4 cows as his main interest is his 30 large goats which are milked twice a day and Olga runs the cheesemaking operation. She's Russian and despite struggling to understand her heavy accent we watched the whole fascinating process of how those beautiful and delicious individual goats cheeses are hand made. She starts work between 4 and 5am 7 days a week to make the cheeses for a weekly sale at one particular cheese market an hour's drive away.  She's a cheerful lady but makes it plainly clear that she hates the work and the early starts - her real passion is working with wool. Julie brought her a present of the whole wool fleece of our sheep (which we took to a local and watched being shawn 2 days ago) aswell as the ubiquitous gift of a courgette! In return, we left laden with almost 2Kgs of cheese and some homemade butter.With coffee and cakes mid-morning in the farmhouse, this was one of the most enjoyable mornings of the trip.

Perfect cycling country...
see all photos »

Meanwhile, at breakfast yesterday morning an 'announcement' was made to confirm that a decision had been made about the Young family's future and La Gare is to be sold with immediate effect as Julie wants to move to their other (idyllic) smaller cottage property asap as it's easier to keep on top of. They bought "Windmill" cottage in a 'no brainer' instant decision when it came on to the market after the old lady died there. The extensive gardens there are the classic "Secret Garden" type with endless fruit trees, grape vines, a large crop field, ancient windmill, a cave, cellars, old barn etc. In need of considerable modernisation, they snapped it up for £43,000. The workload of maintaining a big old station with 6000 sq metres of land and animals, together with renovating an old cottage with 4000 sq metres of 5 feet high jungle, with a 3 year old in tow...even with the enthusiasm of HelpXers, is proving too much. I've been given 1st refusal to buy as they know how much i like La Gare. This old station (and it's full length platform which cannot be seen for weeds) is crying out for a bit of tlc and historic restoration....and would make a very successful holiday let for large families.

Wild flowers outside a typical old walled village
see all photos »

The daily manual labour seems to be having a gradual cumulative fatigue effect......in other words, I'm knackered!! However, the variety of things I've done has been fantastic. Just so far I've done lots of weeding, winter wood pile building, rock pile building, chainsawing, cheesemaking, hay stack making, fruit picking, veg garden mgmt, carpentry, scything, egg collecting, jam making, trench digging, path clearing, cooking, chicken coup restoration, chicken plucking, male modelling, baking, lots of washing up and.......chauxing which is learning how to apply traditional French lime interior plaster to old stone walls. It allows the wall to breathe and creates a warm, rustic finish....and i have to claim to being quite skilled at it!

All limbs still intact....
see all photos »

This is the type of sleepy village environment where you half expect to pull open a creaky old garage door and find a classic old sportscar covered in dust and cardboard boxes.... well guess what!? In the old garage here at La Gare, next to the old urinals block, i pulled open the door to find this!....a 1940's classic Triumph roadster owned by Douglas for the last 20 years but hasn'tseen the light of day this year so far, "the brakes are refusing to bleed" apparently.

My one other Helper colleague here has been Nea, a 21 year old girl from Finland who I've spent a lot of time with and got on with very well. She's fluent in English (as all Scandinavians?) and I've had her out cycling to nearby towns for coffees, pastriesand al fresco picnics on our days off which she seems to have enjoyed very much.

A classic amongst the garage junk
see all photos »

This is one of the very few times ever that I've not missed having access to TV - and I've hardly even given it a thought. The satellite signal here is blocked in summer by the leaves on the tall trees outside (for some reason they can get Channel 4!). In the winter with no leaves, they get a full signal and all the channels!