Christmas and a few other things.

We've had a very lovely quiet Christmas with L and enjoyed various days doing things other than vineyard work. We went to Chateau Montpazilliac which was beautiful and I saw several things that I'd like to do here. Although P is muttering about not having to make a curious Teepee made of latts.

We also went to St Emillion as it was the first time for Lorna, I do love it there although it is a wee bit Stepford.

We cooked the boxing day ham over the fire in the sitting room using A and S's giant pot, it was delicious and I do love using our own wood to cook with.

We ate the "Festive Lemon" which I've been saving for the occasion from the lemon tree that B gave me several years ago.  B it tasted delicious!

It was pretty frosty over Christmas and it looked so beautiful in the mornings.

The last couple of days we have been concentrating on arraching the parcelle out the front from us. Today saw the cutting down of the vines and the stacking of them elsewhere. I have plans for the ones out the back that involve a sort of barbeque area but alot of strimming needs to happen first.

Today has been pretty traumatic with the return of the cats cystitus, or at least that's what the vet thinks it is. Poor girl has been in a lot of pain, and was clearly not loving the vet, which she demonstrated by wee-ing everywhere! She's now on a really expensive diet and some more antibiotics and is feeling a little bit sorry for herself. Poor love.

Lets hope tomorrow is less dramatic but equally as productive!

Best wishes for a fabulous 2012 to you all, where ever you are.

Happy Christmas

Well, this will be our first Christmas here and I'm looking forward to it immensely! L is here and helping us pull out the last of the piquets before P starts making flapjacks and then the festive over-eating begins.

Christmas always slightly induces a need to eat lettuce leaves in me!

We're off to midnight mass tonight at a local 12th century church, which worryingly starts at 10.30... hmm just how long is this going to go on for. Must put the thermals on!

Merry Christmas to you all and I hope you are all having Bergerac wine with your festive meals! Or at the very least, French wine.

Thank you all for reading (and commenting on) my blog and have a fabulous time one and all.

xxx

December flowers...

On exhaustion...

I am exhausted, I think piquets wrestling must be the single most tiring job on the vineyard. It's astonishing how quickly one runs out of steam when waggling a 6ft post in the mud.

I managed about 80% of the posts in the 18 rows out the front that we're pulling out and Pete came and did the rest (considerably faster!). Now only the end posts need doing and the 10 (massive) rows out the back.

The vines all  look a little sad without their supports and I do feel for them, they have, after all, been there for the best past of 70 odd years and then we come add replace them with a younger looking model. I'll be taking the strimmer to them at the end of the week, that's if I have any strength left in my arm muscles.

P has wrestled 2 of the 4 lovely new barn doors up with W's assistance this afternoon and is justifiably proud of them... he's gone to get some bolts to bolt them in place before they fall over.

Because the original sliding doors are still there, we do look like we are preparing for invasion of some sort.

Right, as A and S left us half a bottle of bubble bath, amongst other goodies, I'm off to have a bath before doing my homework.

Wire winding 2 ways...

Today, after a very nice lunch and a successfull visit to the insurance people, we commenced the wire winding-in which last year was a job that resulted in a lot of muttering and hand feeding wire in pairs, known affectionately as "The Maguire method", I'd say it took about 15 mins per wire and the resulting loop of wire was a mishappen bundle of birdsnest-ness. (No offence ladies!)

This year the very lovely Robin lent us his winding in piece of kit (which we learnt about the existence of last year just after we'd completed the last row!).

Ah what bliss, 2 hrs and 8 rows done which is, count them ladies and gents, 32 wires! Better still it is now possible to do it single handedly. Tomorrow we'll have them all done and we can go off for the second of this weeks lunches feeling smug.

I do love it when we accomplish things.

And then there are those moments in life when the outcome is inevitable...

Pruning again.

I've started the pruning for the vines we are going to arrache this year. It basically just involves a brutal haircut and is quite therapeutic. I love being outside with the leaves and the silence... or a nice audio book on the ipod (at the moment it's Jamaica Inn, for the second time).

However it has decided me that I will be starting the pruning proper, earlier, this year. Last year we started in Feb and it was a rush with 8 hrs of pruning a day and sore, wrists and hands and leaking vines. This year I want to plod along without panic and do maybe 4 hrs a day and not feeling obliged to go out in a torrential downpour.

The only thing that is concerning me slightly, is that it's still pretty warm and I've found a couple of vines trying to put out new growth already... maybe pruning will give them the hint to put their heads down again till spring.

Meanwhile I guess the fact it's still pretty warm hasn't reached the cat yet...

New Words for this week....

This week has been one of those weeks where my french is tested to it's not particularly large limits. I went to:

The Tresor Publique: Tax and Credit d'impots stuff.
Agri Mer: Grants for pulling up and replanting vines
The vets: The cat has worms
Phoned... arghh, Yannick the Mechanique: The starter motor is playing up.

So my vocab has grown to include intestinal worms and starter motor.... I sincerely hope that neither will become a regular part of my daily discussions.

AgriMer involved a lot of sighing, on both sides and a gathering of three employees trying to count rows of vines from a very sunny satellite photo. I could quite clearly see what was vine and what was shadow, but hey I'm not to be believed.

The vets cost money but she's now a worm-free-zone.

And the verdict from the mechanique, out tractor is "un peu fatigue"...... arn't we all.

Tombola!

We went to the Movember night at the bar last night. Which raised over €400 for mens health charities and had a room full of men sporting a variety of worrying facial hair. P was robbed of the trophy by someone who looked like a cross between Freddie Mercury and one of the village people.

I won second in the tombola, which is the only thing I've won since I made my aunt carry the enormous pink panther round Rye after a similar lucky event. I won, wait for it, 6 bottles of wine....because that's what's missing from our lives!

It's posh wine mind!

It was an excellent night even if I can still taste the garlic from someone's lethal humus, right then, must do my homework, right after I've brushed my teeth again.

A crane-cow, coalition?

There's something odd going on round here. I drove past a field of cows earlier and next to each upright cow there were at least 2 cranes stood next to them. None of  the ones lying down had little friends and the bull had about 12!

I have no idea what's occurring and I suspect the cows are none the wiser either.

Talking about having no idea what's going on, we're off to some sort of "Movember" event.

It's only taken 14 months but....

We have our first statement for our first payment for last years harvest... ! It'll be winging it's way to our account at the start of December. WHOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO.

And breathe out a little bit.....

I feel like doing a curious little dance!

Right then, on with the complex paperwork for replanting and pulling up of more vines!

x

admin mondays

Not a lot has happened really, plodding along. The weather is still really mild and it's till pretty sunny. We are trying to stick to a proper routine or it's just too easy to not do anything.

I've also re-instated admin Monday's to keep on top of the piles of crud that build up and wrestle the paperwork under control. Boring but it does stop me sobbing over the accounts later in the year.

P almost has the doors finished and I'm on wall number 3 in the gite, which is proving far more obstinate than the other two, typical.

I've started using the lathe and have to say love it, although it can be a little scary...

All much the same really.

Wow it's all doom and gloom.

The whole Euro situation is making me more than a little bit nervous,not helped by my not fully understanding it all. I especially don't understand how the exchange rate is continuing to rise in the face of such disaster!

Politics and economics have never been my strong point.

P is back and suffering from flu, poor thing, Madame did make me laugh this week when she heard he was unwell and I implied that he is male and therefore etc etc and she stated simply "they are fragile!".

Probably best if I make no further comment.

I'm busy exposing more stonework in the gite and may even paint a radiator, it's all plodding along.

On a more exciting note we now have a lathe and I've had a go on it... pictures to follow. x

Linda's on the Telly!

My lovely friend Linda is going to be on "Kirsty's handmade Britain" tonight at 8pm on channel 4. I am so excited, I just know I'm going to spend a lot of time squeaking at the T.V.

She really works so hard and travels all over the place and I really hope this sends her lots of lovely extra business and purchases.

Have a look at her website here.

I miss our "crotchet and complain" evenings with Jill.....

Hope it all goes well Linda! xxxx

The neighbours gardening services..

I love our neighbours, I've been gardening the last two days, removing all kinds of weeds and strimming our ditches, although I had to stop that when the strimmer became embarassingly loud. I'd had a brief conversation with madame (they are all brief!) and had explained that our lawnmower is still broken and bless her she offered to do my front garden and not only that she'd roped David into strimming down the road as well. She came, she mowed, instructed me where to put weedkiller and where to rake..

She's going to finish it tomorrow.

I have no idea how old she is but she's un-stoppable. The lovely David offered me one of their cars if I needed it as well.

I just wish I could fully express my gratitude in their own language...

And then there were those that supervised.

Pretty

It appears to be getting colder.

This week, as we do most weeks (with varying degrees of success) we have a list on the wall of things to do. This week, my half of the list comprises most of my least favourite things... forms, phone calls and accounts oh joy. It also includes this weeks study section for me, French wiring!

People, do you still want to come and stay in the gîte when it's finished?

P is mowing between the vines for the last time this year and generally putting the vineyard to bed for the winter.

It's  noticeably colder here now, I've ramonaged the kitchen chimney and think I might have to light the fire for our french lesson this afternoon.

Y.U seems to think it's colder too, bulking up for winter has already started. Not to mention more of this kind of activity......

Compost spreading...

A week of accomplishments...

We have this week, with J and T's help (once again thank you so much!)
1: put in 3 veluxs,
2: weeded the veg garden and relocated the cabbages,
3: fished out large bits of wood from the lake,
4: fixed the mowing attachment for the tractor
5: ripped out more of the kitchen of the gite
6: cleaned nearly all the radiators
7: P has nearly finished his shelter for the equipment
8: treated the peach trees.
9: visited numerous DIY stores!

Also drunk a fair bit, run and swum lots and generally had a good time.

Here's some proof....

Blind Tasting

Tonight we had a blind tasting, dressing 5 bottles of wine in my socks (and a leg-warmer!) and tried to guess correctly which they were!

P got 3 out of 5 and the rest of us managed 1 each. J can come again having decided that our own home-brew was the expensive St-Emillion.

All a lot of fun but a little dispiriting, but definitely one for future guests... possibly with a more sophisticated disguise for the bottles..

The vendage is finished... whoop whoop.

Which means we can concentrate on the gitê at last. I've started, with K's help this week, to strip the old cast iron radiators and its taking quite a while but I am enjoying it.

We just need to pick a colour to re-do them in...

Any suggestions?

It's pretty here in the morning...

Exercise and the whys and wherefores

We've had C and K with us this week and I think they are trying to kill us off. I've been running twice this week, which is two times more than the last ten years and have swam (much more acceptable) every other day. We've also discovered a sort of fitness/ obstacle/ assult course around the lake which K and I partook of last night with a lot of giggling and falling off monkey bars.

I'm exhausted, mind you, I have so far  have managed to avoid the threatened "pyramid of pain"... we do know how to have fun in these parts....

Jean-Jean Le Gendarme

I'm exhausted, I spent a large part of yesterday making madeleines for the Moto-fete and set off at, what can only be described, as sparrow-fart this morning.

I've spent all day hoping no one asked me anything more taxing than "Un verre de vin Rouge" and instead got embroiled in a long and some what convaluted conversation with a 6ft 7 Gendarme whose name for reasons which escaped me, is, Jean-Jean.

The high point of the day though, at the extremely matcho bike-fair, was watching the same said policeman, complete with firearm, persuade the owner of a ridicuolusly small Papillon dog, to pose it on the petrol tank of his enormous Police bike, so he could take a photo of it!

Its astonishing to me now how much I took being able to understand and converse without concentrating for granted... roll on that stage in French, which is sadly still a long way off.

Someone's been stealing my mushrooms

I don't even know why I care as I  detest the things, but I do.

We were told when we brought the place that we had Cep mushrooms in our woods, we were also told that the problem was that everyone knew we had them.

Yesterday when off for a walk J spotted people in our woods, when asked what they were doing they looked shifty but carried on helping themselves!

I went into the woods later and gathered a variety of different sorts and sauntered off to the pharmacy where Serge and his Big Book of Mushrooms reliably informed me they were all "pas bon, pas commestible." Excellent, someone else has run off with all our highly prized mushrooms which are currently  €7/ kilo in the market. That's rather dependent on my being able to find them mind you..

Maybe I'll let P have a shotgun after all....

It's that time again!

Melon... yes really!

Its Vendage Time again.

I cant believe where this year has gone, the vendage has arrived again (the earliest for 12 years or so) and the air is filled with the sound of harvest machines and tractors.

P and I went to the vendage meeting on our own, without translator, and came away feeling like we understood very little and we're both finding it quite frustrating. I feel like I'm back at school and "must try harder".

We've had a never ending stream of visitors which has been lovely but has also meant that we've been easily distracted and are not as far along with things as we should be! Again must try harder.

Having said that James helped/ showed P how to make one of the four lovely new barn doors...and he's going to have to come back as I cant lift it!

I'm also feeling pleased as we are edging ever closer to sorting out the ceiling beams in the gite. I've been to see the wood man who is going to give us a quote or two and has said that he'll come and have a look, with someone who might be able to collect our wood if we cut some of our trees down, and he cut them to shape for us. However he's not ultra reliable in that department so we'll wait and see!

I want the vendage finished, the new vines planted and the ones that are not looking too brilliant to not have anything terminal... those are my three wishes for the end of this year....!

Everyone keep your fingers crossed.

x

Fete Cantonale

Well this week by comparison has been relatively un-dramatic. We have had a succession of visitors with our first camper-van lot arriving this afternoon in the drizzle.

Yesterday was the Fete Cantonale which was as always a curious and fantastic day. Every village in the region decorates a float for their resident oldest tractor to drag around the square...this year there seemed to be an inordinate number of young men wearing womens clothing.

Also there were stalls selling anything from ceramic mushrooms (why?) to candyfloss and wooden bowls not to mention the roving still which looked exceptionally Heath Robinson esque and appeared to be churning out moonshine all day.

Lunch was the best bit though..it's the first time we've been. They had banda (marching LOUD band) which had apparently just won the prize for the best in france and between courses everyone lept onto their chairs, danced like maniacs and as the day progressed used the tables as well. I still cant hear properly.

Staggered home before the end as we had no torch and there was no sign of a moon.

Who wants to come next year?

He's a lumberjack and he's ok....

Its been one of those weeks (or two). Lorna came to visit last week and it all kicked off the day she arrived.

Having resigned ourselves to not being able to replant this year due to the lack of rain... the technical director of the coop came and said we could after all... so P decided to cut down some of the trees that shade the plot.

So we felled trees, went in a hurry to Bordeaux as our Mac power leads had died and P pulled some tourists out of a ditch with the tractor... and then to a french birthday party, where my french and head were pushed to the limit... and then we had a phone call.

The trees it appears to our neighbour are not ours! We went round armed with satellite pictures etc, terrified and ashamed.

1 hr later we staggered back to Lorna, pissed and bearing sausages and bacon.. and the name of the man in the village whose trees they were.

After lengthy conversations it seems like this happens pretty often and is "pas grave" thank god.

Fingers crossed it stays that way...

Then the technical director returns and lo and behold we cant replant this year after all... the pepineristes are furious and our grants will have to be re-applyied for.

And thats all just this week...

The swallows have had more babies though...

So all is as it should be.

The temperature it is a-rising...

Well I've been in the uk for the past 10 days and it was a mixed bag of emotions.

I had a unexpected funeral to go to, and did the Great North Swim for the 3rd time... closer ever closer to the elusive sub 30 mins!

It was lovely to spend time with the crotchet girls and actually it was nice to experience the great british weather as well.

Back here Mavis has laid her first (curiously small for such a big chicken) white egg and they are now spending a lot of time sitting in the shade.

Tomorrow we are off to the beach... as the weather forecast is muttering darkly about it reaching 36-39 degrees. (Tig I know you're secretly thrilled by this information!).

I dug up two rows of spuds this morning... and despite the plants looking sickly we do have some potatoes... admittedly not very big or plentiful but we do have them!

Also I have roasted some beetroot and salted the first batch of cornichons... all good and exciting!

Mirabelles here we come.

Lifting wires...

Well we've started the levage and its harder work than we initially thought. Or rather what I thought. Almost everything is!

We are also having an ongoing saga with the sprayer, just at the point when it looks like we might need it soon as maybe (just maybe) it might rain.

All standard for us.

We've had a very lovely week with friends all round. We went to Bordeaux and rode on the boris-bikes there.

This is very disjointed and I've just noticed that it is both 11.30pm and that my laptop battery has about 2 mins left.

Will write more soon.

Oeuf-off...

Having talked to madame, it seems like one of my chickens has been laying for a while and I've just found the result...

Spot the coypu

Things I've accomplished today...

Well it was a moderately successful day. I managed to inform the chemist that my husband is constipated (sorry P for sharing) and for how long AND understood the instructions with the drugs.

I then went to the supermarket, where a tiny women asked me to get cat food down off the top shelf. For those of you who know me will know that this doesn't happen very often as I am not particularly tall. We then had a moderately successful conversation about what was in each packet and how her cat prefers the meat in sauce to the fish in sauce...I offered to change the fish one and she said no, it was good for the cat to have some fish... and bless her she didn't bat an eyelid at my french... then again she might have been deaf! It's been my weak for tiny aged women asking me questions at the supermarket... the last one, who was wearing more make-up than I've ever seen on one person, seemed to think that, despite the fact I'd told her I didn't work there, I might know where to find patterned scotch tape.!!!! I didn't know you could buy such a thing let alone where to find it.

And then I painted the sitting room...

Tomorrow the VAT return... altogether less fun.

Rain, or the lack of it.

We are desperate for the rain now. It's not rained here properly for about 6 weeks or so.

I went to talk to the man about the plough, who was, in fact, lovely and came straight over to look at the land. The only problem is he cannot plough whilst the ground is like a rock and our new vines have to be in the ground by the 31st July.

Between the ploughing and that date, there also needs to be:

fertilising

rotovating

marking out

marquants put in

holes made

plants delivered

plants in and watered.

and there are going to be 4600 plants....

The french weather forecasters, I suspect, spend a lot of time in a pub and just put up whatever they fancy as we have yet to encounter any kind of forecast that resembles anything even close to what actually happens.

There is a rumor of rain this weekend, but then again there have been rumors before...

Everyone please go out and do you best rain-dances and general wafting of rain this way please....

Flowers...

Lovely..

Everything here is much further along than in the UK.

Yesterday I went to the local may 1st fete and brought all my

tomato plants and cucumbers and a melon.

Also a climbing rose for the back of the house.

Dad and L have been over for the weekend and we had a lovely time, eating outside, gardening and (poor Dad) rolling out wire.

Tomorrow I have to go and talk to a man about a plough... a man who is apparently not keen on the english...

Deep breath...

Easter Weekend.

Have had a lovely weekend with friends...

We now have 4 chickens, Mavis, Ethel, Bertha and Clara... most of whom are still sulking in their home and not coming out!

We also built and used our fire pit.

All good.

sheepy visitor

Yesterday P found a lamb under the pile of piquets, obviously very young and seeing as the sheep had left the neighbouring field on the Sat, very hungry.

We brought him up to the house, he was pathetically light and skinny and still appeared to have him umbilical cord.

P tried to get some milk down him using a rubber glove that didn't work but then we found a technique involving a pipette and a choice of fingers.

Bless him was very shaky and fell asleep in my arms several times but perked up and followed me around the house. We drove him over to Robin's to try and find the shepherd.. who wasn't there. It was the most astonishing house though with loads of dogs, puppys with their eyes still shut, the bigest pig I've ever seen and a stupendously ugly turkey. I wasn't going to leave him there with no sign of his mother so he came home again.

To cut the story short I managed to call the shepherd and they turned up to collect him at 11pm.

We called him Norbert, and we hope he's ok and his mother has welcomed him back!

Walking and fed up

We went with our randonnage group this afternoon and had a lovely walk around a village near St Emillion. The whole area reeks of money and backache, all the vines are really really low to the ground and all those working them must have rubbish backs and knees.

Fed up because we placed an order with our currency guys over 10 days ago and the money left our account the same day and has failed to make it to our french account yet... so much for buying an oven tomorrow... and will have to spend the morning arguing with the poncy tossers. Its not the first time this has happened with them and we'll be be charged lots by our bank for being overdrawn... I hate money problems it makes me feel miserable.

Ho hum.

L'hirondelle

They're back and busy nest negotiating and shouting at each other. I love the swallows and will have to remind Y.U that there is to be NO snacking on them.

We are busy tidying up the latts and piquets before arraching the vines hopefully next week. I've had the hammock up for the past couple of days and the view up through the cherry blossom might just be the best in the world.

We are going to have to get a second hammock soon to put an end to the unsightly scramble for it after lunch and the fighting...

Done pruning

Well it's done and we are now worried or rather we have been for the last week. Despite having finished quicker than last year it has been warmer this year and the vines are bleeding or rather crying as they say in french.

We now have our fingers and toes crossed that it wont affect them too badly.

Next year we will be starting early to avoid this and to ensure that we dont have to do three weeks hard manual labour at 9 hrs a day to get it done.

I feel like I've been steamrollered!

On the plus side I now feel like I can enjoy the springtime fuzzyness.

The Cranes are back, in all their noisyness...

Pete does pruning...

Some photos of pruning & springtime!

Well here it is, much like those government instructional videos...

When I am old....I will....

I hope than when I am as old as Madame is next door (not sure but over bus pass age) that I too can stand on the back of the tractor lifting gear, like Boudicea, whilst my husband drives somewhere in his best pink jumper and then drive it home again with the wind in my hair.

Until then I will continue remorselessly pruning until my hands and shoulders ache. We hope and aspire to have it finished before the ski-ing, even now P is doing calculations that will no doubt result in his driving the whip more and the abolition of tea breaks; suddenly electric pruners seem much more appealing, then again P has cut himself twice already with the regular types having left his fingers in the way... think it best if I say nothing more now.....

Tomorrow though we might try and find Sarlat again...

Then more more more pruning.

To the tune of Dory... "Just keep pruning... pruning pruning"

3 meetings and a lesson...

My head is ready to explode, three meetings yesterday morning... one of which was with a woman who waited until near the end of the hour before launching into faultless english.

The man at the Tresor public is helping with our tax and lord only knows when we'll here from the people at Agri-Mer. Ho-hum am off to talk to the vines as I prune them...at least they don't answer me or worse look at me blankly after I've attempted to ask them something!

New Windows, taille et apperos..

Well they have started the windows this week and hopefully they'll be finished this week. They look very new and shiny and are lovely and warm... I have to confess to missing the wobbly view through the very old glass. The gite is starting to look like it could be lovely.

Serge came and gave us a master-class in the Taille which means that we now know what we are doing and are setting about rectifying years of not-so-good pruning. Which translates in a lot of sawing with the pruning saw. I spend the days doing a curious dance of gripping the secateurs in both hands, using the long secateurs against my stomach and sawing madly bent over and muttering. I'm going to need to get myself a small anchor tattoed onto my Popeye-esqe forearms soon. It's all very brutal and looks a little like a massacre out there!

On Friday evening we had our french friends round for apperos and we were extremely nervous with P instructing me that I was not to go the toilet at all and leave him with them. It went really well and after 2 G&T's my french had improved massively, or rather I suspect I just cared less... it was a lovely evening and was just what I wanted when we moved here to be able to socialise and be part of French life and not live just as an expat.

Yesterday P and I decided to have a proper Saturday and we set off to go to Sarlat and the market, unfortunately I programmed the wrong Sarlat into the sat-nav and we arrived somewhere considerably further away with very little to occupy a visitor! Sneeze and you miss it. We did however then go to the medieval city of Uzetche which was lovely and worth the visit, we'll try Sarlat in a couple of weeks..!!