La Darnoire

Well, the aged FIL did not come back from Paris. They carried out some more tests, and are not too happy with the results; so they’re keeping him until Thursday at least. Oh I’ll bet he’s not happy.

It was another rainy day , but as luck would have it the new second-hand computer I bought on Ebay arrived in the morning, so I spent most of the day installing and configuring Linux. It is destined to be our new file server; the old one is just too slow, and is causing LSS to use lots of interesting French words whenever she needs to copy-and-paste some documents for her English lessons coursework.

Unfortunately we had some bad news in the evening; T&M are no longer going to be T&M, but separate letters. I’ll leave you to work that one out.

Cat brought another mouse home. The majority of cats will get mice out of a house. Ours brings them in. I think it’s a protest against the brand of catfood we’re giving her recently (Carrefour) as she’s decided she’s not eating that. Well, if she doesn’t eat it, the hens get it. And their reaction to it is gratifying. Actually their reaction is the same no matter what sort of food we give them:
“Pork! This is the Best. Thing. Ever!”

We’re lighting the kitchen range more frequently recently. Well, I suppose it is that time of year. LSS quite enjoys cooking on it. Which is nice. The down side is that I need to refill the wood cupboard more often!

You won’t believe it, but the pumpkin beer is still fermenting. Tomorrow will be the start of the fourth week. Admittedly, I refitted the heating belt last week, which has given the yeast a boost, temperature-wise. But I measured the specific gravity (1.030) and fermentation isn’t quite finished yet. A reading as close to 1.000 as possible is good, although it can be bottled once the reading drops below 1.020. The initial reading before fermentation was 1.065, so the result should be an 8% beer.

The aged FIL is returning from Paris to the hospital in Orleans tomorrow. We expect he’ll be ensconced in the local recuperation centre before the end of next week. The thing is, because the hospital food is not what he is accustomed to eating, he has apparently once again decided he simply won’t eat. This is the very thing which caused him to end up in hospital before we arrived in France.

The weather forecasters were correct, for once. They had predicted rain. And rain we have. So today will be spent indoors as much as possible. This is fine, as there are lots of little jobs to do which don’t involve going outside. Sharpening a chainsaw chain is one example. But as it’s not that warm at the moment, I also lit the boiler stove.

LSS has been giving English lessons to a lady in Chaumont. Hearing that we kept hens, she asked whether she could buy eggs from LSS; so we now have another regular customer. Last week she was saying that she was a bit short of money these days. The conversation turned to growing one’s own food, and the lady asked if LSS would like her kitchen scraps for the hens. “Of course”, she replied. So this week saw the first plastic bucket of kitchen scraps arrive. But we had a surprise when we opened it.

Underneath the empty eggshells and squidgy apple, there was a nearly-complete lettuce, in fairly good condition. As the chickens don’t like lettuce (which apparently is rather strange – normal chickens supposedly love it), we ate it – having washed it first, of course. There were about six carrots. All in good condition. Chickens don’t eat carrots. But we do – and the remaining bunnies get the peelings. And the pièce de résistance – a complete untouched sweet melon. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it unless you count a small brown spot on the skin. The poor old hens didn’t get that either. We did. Mind you, they got some of the seeds (LSS having carefully conserved some to plant in the garden next year).

Short of money? I can see why. We have no qualms about rescuing and eating perfectly good food; after all we used to go bin-diving in the UK. It’s not that we can’t afford groceries, we just hate waste.

I wonder what kitchen scraps we’ll get next week?

Cat didn’t turn up for breakfast. I found that she had spent the entire day in a box on a high shelf in my workshop, which she can access from the roof. It appears she’s had another incident, and has injured one of her back legs. It doesn’t seem too bad, but we’ll keep an eye on her for a few days. She’s due to visit the vet pretty soon anyway for her annual booster. No wonder they say cats have nine lives…

As it was a sunny day, and a reasonably warm one, I spent the day pouring lime concrete. One concrete mixer load fills the wheelbarrow. I mixed and poured 17 loads, which completed another two forms in the first quarter of the barn. Now as long as the temperature stays above freezing in the barn for the next ten days, all should be well!

The aged FIL had his operation yesterday. Surgeons working on Saturdays? What is France coming to? Anyway, apparently all went well.

To take a break from the run-of-the-mill stuff like house renovation or wood-cutting, I decided to do some electrical work on the ST1100. Over a year ago my radio remote control stopped working, and as it is a discontinued item, my only option was to find a different solution. I purchased a diskless head unit which has a USB input, and separated the fascia from the body. The fascia (the bit with the display and buttons) will be mounted on the dash shelf of the bike. The rest of the head unit will go in the tail section under the seat. They will be connected by a long length of FFC (flexible flat cable) sourced from, of course, China. Doing it this way will free up space in the top box. But naturally this meant that all wiring currently stuffed into the tail section needed to be tidied up first. And of course I encountered the usual seized bolts which needed to be drilled out and re-tapped. Nothing ever goes smoothly!

As usual these days, in the afternoon I cycled down the lane to the postbox. The trees are now looking amazing in their autumn colours with the leaves a mix of red, brown and gold.

LSS received a parcel the other day. It was a belated birthday present from a friend in Paris, who stayed with us for a week a while ago. The parcel was rather heavy. Upon opening it, LSS discovered it contained three tins of Heinz baked beans! They’re not readily available here; but supermarkets in Paris obviously have them. So our Sunday breakfast was bacon, eggs, and baked beans!

We’ve done things a bit differently this week. Because Tuesday next week is a bank holiday, LSS’s English lessons have changed around a bit, meaning she won’t have time to do the food shopping in between lessons as is normally the case. So instead, we stocked up on groceries today. And, for once, I went along.

The pumpkin beer is still fermenting. It will have been doing so for three weeks on Monday. This is the longest fermenting beer I’ve ever made – normally it only takes a week!

As predicted, the weather has turned cold, wet and windy. It’s not that it’s too cold to pour the lime concrete; after all, it’s indoors. It’s just that it’s not very pleasant working outside in these conditions. Instead I cleaned out the kitchen woodstove, and lit it. At least it warms the house up a bit. Even the cat (who spends most of her time outside) has decided that indoors is the best place to be.

T&M dropped in yesterday to give us the spent barley from his beer-brewing. The hens love this. In return we gave him some eggs.

Happy Guy Fawkes day! No, we won’t be having a bonfire, unless you count the boiler stove. And as for fireworks, I don’t think individuals can buy fireworks in France. I certainly haven’t seen any places selling them.

I see from my access logs that persons from several different countries are trying to hack into this blog by attempting to log in to the admin account. Fortunately, having worked in IT myself, I know some tricks to make the login quite secure.

The lemon tree (which we’ve grown from seed) has now been moved into the polytunnel for its own good, as the outside temperature has been steadily dropping. It’s several years old now, but has still not produced any lemons.

In the morning I took the trailer to the local quarry, and came back with a load of sand. I can never quite believe their prices. Buying a 20kg bag of sand in a DIY place here would set you back around €5. Well, I came back with 500kg. For €5.58.

With the copious amount of chestnuts available again this year, I decided to try making some chestnut liqueur. I used the same recipe as last year’s hazelnut liqueur. Well, it was ready today. Quite nice, but fairly sweet. So, what to do with the chestnuts which had been removed from the alcohol? I know! Cookies!

LSS loves them. I can’t see them lasting very long.

The latest batch of rabbit pelts were ready for scraping, and as it rained most of the day I did this in my workshop. Now they just need to remain in the pickle solution for another week, then they can be hung up to dry.

Tomorrow I need to go and buy some more bags of lime – I’ll use the Renault 5 because it’s road-legal, unlike the Citroen. Then on Wednesday I’ll need to use LSS’s car (because it has a towbar) to take the trailer to the local quarry for another load of sand. I’m sure as soon as I have all the ingredients, we’ll have a frost, so I probably won’t be able to pour any concrete!

As we have a glut of bunny-meat at the moment, LSS prepared a rabbit stew. Sundays are generally major cooking days; she cooks enough food to last us through until Friday.

Wildlife diary: A day of unusual wildlife. I saw a black woodpecker hammering away at the dead tree near the pond. I initially thought it was a green woodpecker (which we have here in abundance). However this one was much larger. When I rapidly grabbed the binoculars and focussed, it was totally black. I couldn’t quite make out if it had a red cap though, as it flew away shortly after I started looking at it.
In the evening LSS called me into the garden. She’d found a fire salamander . It’s the first one we’ve seen here.

Unfortunately we lost another bunny last night. This one was the runt of the litter, but also happened to be the prettiest. So we rapidly went from having six female bunnies, to only three (excluding the mother, of course). It’s a shame, but this is one of the things which happens when you have livestock. The three remaining bunnies are Not Happy. At the moment we’re just giving them dried hay to eat. So they’re looking at it mournfully, as if to say “Yes, this is all very well, but where’s the nice green stuff?”

Speaking of livestock, we really enjoy keeping hens. Not just because they provide us with eggs, but they are very amusing to watch. Whenever we visit their pen to collect eggs or feed them, they all run towards us at great speed, and their gathering around our feet makes it exceedingly difficult to walk anywhere. And no matter what food we’re giving them – whether it’s the usual bread soaked in water, wheat, kitchen scraps or unwanted bits of rabbit, their reaction is always the same. “This is The. Best. Thing. Ever!” One inevitably grabs a large piece of food, and attempts to run away to eat it in peace. The others then think that this particular piece of food is The Only Thing Worth Eating, and try and steal it. Cries of “MINE! MINE! MINE! MINEMINEMINEMINE!” result.

We had a visit from T&M just before lunch. We haven’t seen them for a couple of weeks, as T had been working in the medical recuperation centre in a nearby town (actually the very place that the aged FIL will be attending after his operation) as a sort of handyman, on a temporary basis. This job has now come to an end, so he’ll be going back to brewing beer. He has an idea that he wants to start a micro-brewery, but we’re not holding our breath.