05/10/2014

LSS paid the taxes last week; the equivalent of the UK Council Tax. There are two; the taxe foncière (a tax paid by the owner of the property) and taxe d’habitation (a tax paid by the person occupying the property). These are still less than 10% of the Council Tax we were paying in the UK. Which was a nice surprise.

In the afternoon it stopped raining, so LSS washed her car. Once she’d finished, I gave it a scheduled service; changing the oil and so on. The solar panel pump did not switch on once today; the panel did not get above 20 degrees.

The first of the bunnies (a male) is now in the freezer. That reminds me, I’d better start tanning again; we now have five rabbit pelts (four courtesy of Neighbour J) and a coypu pelt taking up room in the freezer. One can freeze skins before tanning them, because it’s not really worth going through the tanning process for just one rabbit pelt.

The chestnut trees are now in full production, so there is a bowl full of chestnuts waiting for my attention. Up until now I have struggled with peeling these things, but I saw a video detailing a much easier method. One simply cuts them in half, parboils them for two minutes, and then squeezes them gently with a pair of pliers to separate the nut from the shell. I’m keen on giving that method a try. One can also make beer with them…