April fools for punishment

16 April 2017

It's been a while, a frantically-busy while, if I'm frank...but La Fromagerie is never far from our thoughts.

Our two weeks there in Feb/March were wonderful but, well, about two weeks too short. We went armed with several books and a mandolin, determined to discover new, heretofore unexplored indolent aspects of ourselves. We imagined rainy days curled on the sofa, the only pressure the hours of opening of the Huit à Huit up the road and the all-important choice of 'which cheese?' to buy. We could see ourselves, on sunny days, walking the paths - marked and unmarked - which criss-cross the countryside.  We clearly envisaged cosy evenings, with a glass of red, a book, a mandolin, and thou (well, when I say thou, what I really mean is 'us and only us').

But you know what they say. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. And we were both there, with bells on.

So, our days - rainy or otherwise - were spent compiling lists of things that we wanted to achieve, then addressing them with all the efficiency that, given décalage d'horaire and life deep in the French countryside (you are just about ready to launch yourself at the world when the world shuts for a 2.5-hour siesta, and you, if you're anything like us, never learn), we could muster. That would be an efficiency of about 20%.

Told you I'd post a photo of the porte-manteau that I made out of the original dépendance window

Two modern reading lamps contrast with the old prie-dieu bedside tables

Evenings were indeed cosy, and vino did make an appearance (we have now discovered a couple of favourites, which is a worry). It turns out that our books and the mandolin were lugged across the world (not to mention airports, and Paris) to serve only as (pretentious?) props.

Location shot - local shop window

Grandmother's Day coincided with my mother's birthday and was a good excuse to buy a bunch of daffs in honour of Mabel and Nettie, without whom, of course, none of this would have been possible

Did we walk? Yes, we walked and walked, discovering villages, hamlets, two derelict mills and views to gasp at, all within a couple of hours' radius of home. We walked in the early morning, during the day, and in the evening, rain or shine, past donkeys, cattle, fallow fields, and within staring competition-distance of raptors - just to challenge ourselves to that little frisson of excitement when completing the entering-Australia customs form. You know the question: 'Have you had any contact with farms?'

No. Of course not. Do we look like people who love a little piece of France deep in the countryside, surrounded by working farms; where tractors trundle up and down outside and a sign with Attention - troupeau lies between us and the village? :)

The car was a great bonus - it started first time and gave us freedom and anonymity. It's totally in keeping with our French lifestyle - a little old silver Renault Clio. So much better than the shiny bright hire cars of our previous visits, which screamed 'Étrangers - des gens de la ville!' We like to think that we blend in with the Clio; indeed, like the VW in it's early days in Germany, it seems that a silver-grey Renault Clio is the 'people's car' of France: every other person seems to drive one.

The heating was a major focus. Benoît, plumber #6 and possibly the friendliest plumber in Christendom, came over twice to help commission it and deal with minor Chas-issues, but overall, we couldn't have been more delighted. The wood-pellet boiler gave off masses of heat - more than we needed - and we remained immune to the excesses of winter. Wet, miserable, chilly days were no challenge - we were snug as bugs.

A new coffee machine was pressed into service every morning 

We watched from our secure and cosy refuge as storms came and went...

...and we enjoyed bursts of glorious sunshine in between

No blog post complete without photo of the view

The garden and verger were dozing through the last days of Winter, and yet, before we left, Spring was taking her first tentative footsteps and breathing her green haze over the hillsides. Almost before our eyes, the emerging green buds on the tips of branches unfurled into brilliant-green leaves, and flowers appeared on the cherry trees.

Daughter C spent a precious weekend with us, and we took the opportunity to show her Donzenac, a long-time favourite medieval town. G and I went there 6 years ago, almost to the day, to celebrate over deux chocolats ('très chaud svp') when we'd heard that our offer had been accepted and the barn would soon be ours. We were naïve young things back then. We were yet to learn that 'soon' is not a word in the 'buying a French property' lexicon.

Wintry Donzenac

Donzenac's Chapelle des Pénitents (only, that's not them)

David Attenborough voiceover: 'When observed in his natural habitat, the lesser-known bearded homeowner hugs himself with pleasure'  

Friend M surprised us again - this time with a pencil sketch of the dépendance pre-renovation. Talented man!

 PS Our overnight stay near Gare de Lyon in Paris en route to the barn was a pleasant interlude with the bonus of a breakfast catchup with friend C.

Gare de Lyon all a-sparkle

And then, the soporific train journey to Brive, where this gentle scene across the aisle caught my attention...

The little guy played quietly and then slept for hours in his father's arms

So, a very brief holiday proved that the end of Winter is a magical time to be at La Fromagerie - all is quiet, but nevertheless, the place is aquiver with life.

Le noyer et les pommiers qui dorment - Winter 2017

15 January 2017

We received a very special gift recently: an original ink and watercolour of La Fromagerie done with meticulous care by our friend M, (he of window-washing enthusiasm, kitchen skirting board prowess and fellow survivor of the Paddling Pool Summer of 2016). The barn is depicted circa 2015 (sans porch extension), but every detail is carefully represented: the blue and white chair/table set, the staircase that can just be glimpsed through the open French doors, the grape vine... We were thrilled and touched, as you will understand.

Ink and watercolour by M Kelleher

It's been a wild few days, weather-wise, and one of the shutters from the upstairs window was ripped off the wall in a particularly vicious gust of wind. It's heavy, so it hit the ground with a crash. Luckily, C was indoors, and not sunning himself on the terrace...I sound flippant, but actually, I feel pretty freaked out about what might have happened.

Looking pretty naked. Check the reflection of the sky in the window, and the colour of the sky overhead. 

The shutter fixing has been torn and rotated clockwise about 120 degrees...

...and the shutter didn't get away without damage, either.

Gregg and Tom will survey the damage, ensure that the the shutter is re-mounted securely (and will hopefully ascertain whether the other shutters are OK)...

So, after what he assures me (despite wayward heating and shutter dramas) has been a pleasant and peaceful time dans la France profonde, C is coming to the pointy end of his sojourn at the barn. These are his latest photos...:

Objat market one wintry Sunday morning

C's caption: 'The beast is hungry...'

The beast

Local residents

The fallen apples are still delicious, and those that are damaged are perfect for stewing.

C's caption: 'Beautiful sleeping trees' - Le noyer et les pommiers qui dorment

And 'Different time different mood' - (le noyer again, in all its glory)

This one is taken from the road; a better view of the barn itself.

We are starting to rev our engines for our next visit, 5.5 weeks away now. Between now and then, Tom is hoping to point the long wall that faces the orchard (assuming the really cold weather gives way to slightly milder temperatures), and Brian should be able to finalise the electrics (i.e. hide the junction box) in the dépendance, so that we can set up a study/office in there.

Working from home has never looked so inviting.

In the deep midwinter

5 January 2017

The barn welcomed its first independent visitor just before New Year; independent, that is, in the sense that we were not there to welcome him ourselves.

It's a very good thing that he is a good friend of very long standing, as he is not just visitor #1 (family doesn't count), but guinea pig #1. As luck would have it, it has fallen to him to test the heating for the first time, and let's just say it has not been a walk in the park.

Fortunately, for heating commissioning purposes, the daytime temperatures have been very low this last week - it was -6 yesterday morning - yet friend C has been sweltering in tropical, clothes-optional heat, with doors and windows flung open to enhance the sauna effect. You see, the thermostat seems to be ineffective, or the pump, or, oh, who cares? - the bottom line is that the boiler is massively powerful and needs to be reigned in a little. A lottle.

I guess it's better than feeble heating, huh?

So C has been liaising valiantly between us and Benoit the plumber, keeping notes and delivering heating bulletins, all the time enslaved by the pellet-hungry boiler which has yet to learn who's boss.

In between saunas, he has managed to find time to go for long walks, cycle to the village, and even drive to Objat (the car started for him!). He has also managed to take some rather lovely photos, so, without further ado, feast your eyes on these images of the Barn in Winter:

Freezing fog 

Frozen rain chains

Local spiders have mastered the art of slow - very, very slow - crochet

Brunch

View from upstairs

Lakes of mist at dawn

We are squirming that C has had to pioneer his way through his visit. G is particularly frustrated to be so far away while all this pipes/valves/thermostat blahblah is going on: he'd like to be commissioning it himself. Me? I just want it to work at the touch of a button. Please hide all those dials and manifolds from my tender gaze.

Tom has been in to tweak the rain chains (hands up all who noticed the double lengths of chain in the photo above - that's OK, I did not expect a forest of hands; truly, I am not disappointed at all) and bury an electrical conduit to the dépendance to replace the original one, which was somehow, er, lost during driveway construction...There's been a lot of head scratching about that, I can tell you.

Our next visit will be at the end of February, which coincides neatly with the sixth anniversary of our first sight of La Fromagerie in Feb 2011. This time, we are planning to do Absolutely Nothing, but we shall see. One thing written in indelible ink in the diary is 'Collect daughter C from Limoges'... :)

Pre-winter garden blitz

4 November 2016

John was over last week, doing the last blitz before the cold weather hits. The growing season is over, and he won't need to be back until April.

The garden is looking pretty good, despite the months of neglect. Even the plants I put in at the end of August around the base of the new covered porch are looking OK, if a little heat stressed in places.

The wooden posts lying on the ground were from the original barn roof structure. G and I laid them to mark the plantings - hard to believe now!

The pile of stones (from the renovation) is getting smaller...

John gathered up most of the windfall of apples. You can see quite clearly the 'meadow' to the left.

The new plants put in at the end of August; the weed mat not pretty but very effective.

The perimeter plants are really coming along. 

Daughter C and boyfriend A stained the little lean-to and it looks much better.

The new, white gaura in the middle ground has a bit of catching up to do, but it's alive! And isn't that the happiest rosemary bush (right of the white gaura) you've seen in a while?

I demarcated the 'meadow' areas to help John. Next visit, I would like to put in more substantial stakes...

La petite voiture que nous avons acheté :)

More new plantings - ground cover roses and hydrangeas.

The plant grovelling at the foot of the post is a glycine, or wisteria. It could do with support, non?

Appley dappley shaded orchard

In other news, our new (French) plombier (#6) sent his assistant, the bilingual Benôit, to work on the heating and (wonders will never cease), we have had a series of updates from him, the latest of which made us so very happy:

"J'ai fait les travaux à la Fromagerie, le plancher chauffant fonctionne."

Roll on February, when we can do adjustments and pad around in our socks.

Dear little dépendance

15 September 2016

It warrants its own entry because it's remarkably cute and gives us disproportionate pleasure. So indulge me, dear reader. Or skip this overlong post.

It used to be a chicken house and then a goat shed.

View of the barn and dépendance from the road

View of dépendance and resident walnut tree from the roadside

And it was a ruin overwhelmed with lierre when we bought the barn, the removal of which accelerated its downfall. (A deadly combo of new-owner enthusiasm and rookie error.) But had we not investigated, we would never have known the delights that lay under all that vegetation...

Anyone seen where I left the goat shed? View from the driveway.

Ooh, a door! And the mature walnut tree growing at an awkward angle from the base of the building

Once exposed, we could see that the stone structure had an almost decorative, oak 'exo-skeleton' and a roof made of hand-cut local ardoise, graded in size from large at the eaves to tiny at the apex of the roof. Many were now lying about the base of the tiny building, having loosened and scattered in countless storms.

Removing the lierre on the barn-side gable end, we discovered two windows...

...and disturbed two bird's nests, one (almost invisible here) above the horizontal oak beam, and one just to the right of the lower window

View from the garden, showing the sorry state of the roof

The door was nothing more than a distant memory in ancient wood and fresh air, but still hinged loyally to the frame.

The door. First impressions are everything in real estate, am I right?

The windows were 3 small holes in the walls; two on the lower level, one higher up, on the gable end facing the barn. There was also a fourth, random hole in the wall at floor level. A makeshift miniature (chicken) ladder rose from the uneven dirt floor to the largest of the window, which featured a square of chicken mesh stretched over a frame.

Mood interior shot showing Portuguese bricks, ladder leading up to frame with mesh, various iron objets d' mystère and an old carriage seat (green) 

Dévitalisant in foreground a hint that the errant walnut's days were numbered

The doorway

Stooping to enter through the collapsed doorway, you had to stay low to avoid hitting your head on the wooden floor of the 'attic' above. In the gloomy interior, there were enough Portuguese bricks to be a nuisance, and a lot of spider webs at face-frenzy height. The lower part of the dépendance housed all manner of iron bits and pieces, broken implements mostly, as well as iron shutter straps and hinges, the metal hoops for wooden cartwheels in a range of sizes, and a bunch of things we could not name.

These were used on cart wheels

All manner of iron bits and pieces, some recognisable; some not.

Your guess is as good as ours

Access to the attic area was through a small window in the gable end. Nestled in the ancient, dusty straw we found a couple of mismatched handmade leather boots.

Nice, innit?

Told you it was exciting in the attic

Once upon a time, there were two maidens named Cinderella and Cinderella1, who were invited to the ball...

 It was a perfectly average storage place for our tent, chairs and table and garden implements for several years. Perfect if you considered its location location location and charm; average if you considered its weather proofing specs (similar to that of a top-end colander).

Getting ready to do some serious planting

 But every time we saw it, it had crept closer to sudden collapse into a pile of rubble.  One year we connected several heavy-duty webbing straps to make a single long one, and cinched it tight around the outside walls. Fixing it to the building, and pulling it tight as possible, we had to dodge tiles that would loosen and fall from overhead...

Turns out, the lierre was holding everything together (I'm tempted at this point to launch into an analogy, and an erstwhile uni friend's idea of a joke, involving spirochaetes and neurones, but will refrain in the interests of decorum).

Fetching orange ceinture sets off the new green post box to great effect, n'est pas?

Cute but damaged - always a dangerous combination, huh?

Arty shot showing much the same

The following year, during the brief holiday over Pâques that we spent there, G cut down the walnut tree.

OK, now for a spot of that dévitalisant...

Then we managed, somehow, and with J-M's long-suffering help, to get a large tarp over the top, which we then fixed in place with another strap, less fetching this time, being black and boring.

Comme un grand cadeau de Noël. 

Along the way, I had a go at creating some stone steps so that access would no longer involve scrambling goat-like (or chicken-style) up a mound of earth...

That red conduit pipe is there for future electrical power cables. We like to plan ahead, we MacGregors, when we're done with inter-clan warfare and the evenings are long

Rough, but it'll do...;)

But it was always going to need remedial work. And we finally bit the bullet last year, as those of you who read this blog might recall. Well, if one of you remembers, perhaps you could remind the other?

The roof comes off, and things start to get a little hairy

Ulp

Spot the crack that threatens to split off the gable end

Door frame, such as it was, comes away

Is it worth saving?

Oak exo-skeleton gone, and looking fragile

The crack that could bring it all crashing down

Phew

The shuttering in place for the new, remedial concrete U beam

Noo roof beams and King truss

And again

Tom's tiling and Gregg's pointing never cease to delight

Inside, all pointed and plastered, and electrics under way 

Looking into the dépendance and out through the doorway - this was the chicken-mesh window, remember?

Original window, glazed

 Last summer, our friend M experienced the monastic delights of a newly renovated dépendance that enjoyed beautiful height, light and a concrete floor, but lacked a door and glazing in the large A-frame window.

















After he left, work began on the mezzanine...

A very awkward space to work in

Tom had been keeping this chestnut board for something special

...and a seasoned chestnut board was placed on the concrete sill below the A-frame.

This year, we arrived to find a freshly painted interior (thanks to Laurie); a new front door - commissioned specially because of the unique size - that shuts firmly and sweetly; a glazed A-frame on the barn side; and an oak floor. Since Tom worked his magic and managed to raise the height of the new roof by a foot or so, happily the mezzanine is now higher by a head than its attic floor predecessor, so even the tallest visitor need not stoop. And there's power, people!

Door and floor and skirting...très civilisée

The dépendance still had Handy Storage Area Potential written all over it (and indeed housed paint tins and other decorating detritus), but we had Other Plans.

We'd designed the mezzanine to be a bed platform, but to maximise head room up there, we chose an extra-thick, bamboo and memory foam mattress protector instead of a mattress. There's a sweet little milking stool for a bedside lamp, and the view out of the A-frame makes the ladder access worthwhile. (We want to organise a wooden stepladder down the track.)

Downstairs, a bit of cleaning was all that stood between us and the fun task of furnishing the space. We bought a couple of deceptively comfortable traditional chairs from Troc and a lamp from Leroy M.,  and brought over a rug and a blanket box from the barn.

Mignonne, n'est pas? This is the AFTER view...

Et voila! C'est fini...

...and this is the BEFORE view

Carriage seat

PS I cleaned up and varnished the chicken-mesh window frame, and added a row of double hooks with ceramic knobs on the lower edge. It makes a great porte-manteau for the barn...and the miniature ladder, somewhere outlandish to hang the car and house keys. Unfortunately, the photo of of the porte-manteau will have to wait until next time and this one of the ladder doesn't do it justice.

But you know you want one. (Orders not taken.)