If I was an Author ....

Peter Mayle came to France to write a novel - he finally managed to publish his novel Hotel Pastis four years after being distracted by the challenges of living in France and writing A Year in Provence. Michael Wright came to the Limousin in France to keep sheep and ended up writing C'est La Folie see http://www.lafolie.co.uk/ for more information.

I'm didn't come to France to write a book and I'm not planning to write one - but if I did it would probably be called "Plaster - just why Britain and France are so /different".

I've written before in this blog about the differences between French and British plaster and how this seems to be a metaphor for some of the wider cultural differences between the two countries. We've been plastering again but this time using imported British plaster. Getting the contrast between the areas in the building that are new and sharp with the rougher finish of the existing original walls is a challenge. I'm sure that Kevin McCloud  would have a view on this but what we've decided to do is make the new bits smooth and modern and the older original parts of the building will have a more natural look. Going to one extreme or the other would be wrong (risking on one hand a faux vintage look or a modern interior that looks like it's been transplanted into a 250 year old building) so we're walking the tightrope of compromise.

Hence, after doing the old lean-to in French plaster we rumbled back from the UK in August with three quarters of a tonne of British boardfinish plaster on the trailer. This was to plaster the two end walls and the ceilings downstairs so, nearly two years after fitting the ceilings in the house we were back on the board lifter to install the barn ceilings. The boardlifter had also come back on the trailer from the UK and was a special 4.5m high lift version to (hopefully) allow us to install the high ceilings upstairs. Even Gérard, our roofer and increasingly our general building advisor, was impressed when I told him what we'd paid for it.

Barbara, Board lifter and Adam

The ceilings went up pretty well considering the large area we were covering and so to the plastering. Using British plaster requires organisation and timing and so naturally Barbara was in charge of the organisation and prepared her work area carefully:

 Fortunately Adam is pretty good at plastering and manages to cover about three times the area I can and so we managed to complete all the work in just over five (pretty intense) days.

Adam "Laying On" above the fireplace

End wall with first plaster coat applied

Finishing the doorway to the house

Before and after plastering around a beam

The kitchen plastered !

British and French plaster are different, neither one is "better" as they produce (at least in our hands) different finishes. The pink British stuff is smooth and flat, the French white version ends up a bit more rustic (ie: rough). But - the British version is less than half the cost of the French one and, because it goes on much thinner, probably costs about a quarter the price per metre squared.

Not for the first time I find that we are importing things that are available locally but, even allowing for the extra cost of running a trailer back to the UK, are much cheaper than buying the French version. As we want sharp, flat areas in places we can justify this on decorative grounds as well as cost ones but I find myself worrying either:

a) we haven't spent enough time sourcing local materials to find the correct suppliers (but actually I think we have)
b) there's a serious problem of uncompetitiveness in France that will surely cause the economy to stagger even more in the future.

Meanwhile the barn looks good and the word processor remains waiting .....

New resident at La Basse Cour

I got a big surprise when I went upstairs in the barn this afternoon:

A beautiful Barn Owl (L'Effraie des clochers, chouette effraie ou dame blanche) had taken up roost in the A frame. He or she had got in through the post holes that are still open on the gable end and was sleeping the day away quietly.

Aren't we lucky to be able to see such a beautiful animal so close .....

Sunshine at Last!

It's been truly miserable weather over the last three weeks. We've been stuck under a persistent damp front with rain falling at some point nearly every day. Hockey on Sunday on our home pitch was another first for me - a 5m x 5m section of the pitch was under 2 inches of water - it took skill to hit the ball over the pond from restarts!

On a positive note we can work inside the barn now without being particularly disturbed by the weather and the measures we've taken against the damp on the north wall have had a good test.

The sun came out on Sunday and Barbara took some great pictures of the harvest and a cat asleep in the salad box - that's a yellow card with serious punishment for any re-offence!

Some of the courgettes that "got away"

Squashed Salad

Gardening - Challenges and Sucesses

Despite the amount of time that we've spent on the barn the potager has been productive again this year. The weather was cold, wet and extremely challenging through the Spring - as we all agreed at Claudette and Jean's summer garden party - and in July it got worse. We had multiple sowing failures of beans, spinach and parsnips and everything is weeks later than last year. In 2011 we had enough potatoes to get us through to February, this year a devastating attack of blight means that we've just had to buy potatoes again. Some things did very well however, particularly the soft fruit and we had great crops of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.

Blackberry in flower

This Blackberry was originally growing two houses ago in Farnborough, a root was then taken which is growing strongly in Suffolk at Judith and Steve's house and a further rooting made it over to France in 2010 on the removal truck. This one produced nearly 25 pounds of fruit this year and yet another rooting is growing ready to be transferred to the top potager this winter.

Despite the failures and problems we have had some spectacular successes. Last year we couldn't grow courgettes at all - this year they've been brilliant:

 Almost all the root crops have done well; beetroot and celeriac particularly so. The peach tree produced a large crop although about three weeks later than in previous years and the ever reliable walnut is beginning to drop another large crop of walnuts although again it's about three weeks later than last year.

Saving the best to last - our pumpkin and butternut squash crop has been excellent:

Harvest Day

 Nigel Slater has a great recipe for Pumpkin and Butternut Squash: Nigel Slater Recipe

Our New Neigh .... bour

"Where did that horse come from?"

It's a reasonable question, especially at 7:45 when we came back from our morning walk. When we'd gone out it was dark and when we came back there was a horse in the field at the bottom of our garden.

Neighbours are a relative word for us - Lucian lives opposite us and then his son Dominique and Nicole about 400 yards down the road, then Jean and Claudette a bit further along. But really we are tres rurale as the French say. We often have cows in the fields adjoining us - they have much more character than you might imagine - but once you've seen one you've seen them all really. And cows have a nasty habit of escaping into our garden where they are currently the prime suspects for one of our apple trees that seems to have been nibbled.

So a new neighbour is a big thing for us. And horses seem to be quite rare in the area, certainly I've never seen one on the farms next to us. This one (working name "Champion") is a very elegant tan with a blonde mane. He's showing some wear and tear on his flanks - looks like he's spent the summer in a harness somewhere - but Bertrand (Dominique's son) comes down every morning to groom him and dress his worn spots.

Carrots gratefully accepted

Champion

Due to our rather hemitic life at present as we press on with the ceilings I've not got the chance to find out the story (or Champion's real name) from any of the three generations of our neighbours who are involved with the farm. He's enjoying being in the field next to us and loves galloping around the field at full speed - I've never ridden a horse but there's something really majestic about a horse in full flow.

Build Update

It's just over a year since we started work on the Barn - that's an easy sentence to write and a year into the project we have achieved a lot but still have lots more to do. Being so close to the action makes it difficult to keep a sense of perspective so sometimes it takes a visit from someone who's not seen the barn for a while to remind us what's been achieved. A year ago we were installing steel beams into the barn, this week we are installing insulation and plasterboard ceilings hung from the beams. When the barn is complete no-one will see the steel beams but the ceilings will be in full view and, in some ways, that's the big difference today as we increasingly start to work on items that will be seen. It needs a different kind of mindset; work in millimetres rather than metres, kilogrammes rather than tonnes, single screws rather than hundreds.

We now have windows and doors in the main openings

 

and a new fireplace (with carved granite lintel )  

Both the upstairs end wall (which will be in our bedroom) and the downstairs one have been insulated and boarded ready for plastering

And the upstairs floors have been braced, strengthened and completed ready to support the new ceilings

We have a pretty respectable workshop now - here's Barbara on the crosscut saw :

And Adam's been working on building the new windows for the small windows we didn't get done with the main barn glazing 

As I said at the beginning - very different tasks and skills from what we were doing a year ago .....

C'est la Rentrée !

The rhythm of the year is important in France - nothing more so than the Grande Vacances, when everyone goes on holiday for a minimum of three weeks in July or August. After the holidays it's time for La Rentrée, eagerly anticipated in the shops since the week before the summer holidays began in the middle of July. Lots of other things seem to be impossible to do before the summer and absolutely have to be postponed until La Rentrée, we started discussing a date for the fitting of our windows in March to ensure that they were installed before la pause estivale. otherwise (cue intake of breath by the salesman) it couldn't happen until September.

The blog is having its own Rentrée and, after a summer spent at the Olympics and with various visitors the blog will be back and posting on our project progress, the challenges of growing vegetables, the most cunning species of animals that might damage your garden and the daily challenges of living in France.

Speak soon!