La Darnoire

This week LSS bought some packets of lamb chops in the supermarket, because they were on a special offer. I remember that when we were in Britain, we found it very difficult to find British lamb; instead it was always from New Zealand. Unless one goes to a proper butcher, of course, but those were becoming rare. Well, we’ve discovered where all the British lamb goes. It’s in France! I wouldn’t be surprised if the only lamb available for sale in New Zealand turned out to be French.

I have been busy constructing a framework for a poly-tunnel, using some thick-walled polyethylene water pipe to form four large hoops. It’s four metres wide and five metres long. We were waiting for a non-windy day so that we could cover the frame with the plastic sheeting. As yesterday was, for once, not windy, we took advantage of these conditions. The sides have been tacked into place with battens, but the ends still need to be fixed. It’s not an easy task, folding a semi-circular end neatly.

Yesterday evening we opened a bottle of our home-brewed pea-pod wine. Did you know you could make wine out of pea-pods? Well, you can. And as we had lots of garden peas this summer, I just had to make some. Once it has finished fermenting, it is bottled, and then needs to be kept for six months before it is ready to drink. Well, the waiting period was finally over.

It had a lovely white-wine colour.

It had a slight taste of wine.

But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it had a very strong flavour of pea-pods. Actually, it wasn’t that nice at all. We tried diluting it with some pink grapefruit cordial, and whilst this made it slightly more palatable, it then tasted like pea-pod flavoured pink grapefruit cordial wine. We won’t be making it again! Thank goodness I only made four bottles.

Mr and Mrs Duck have returned to the pond. We’re not sure if it’s the same female as last year, but in all likelihood it is. After all, last year’s duck successfully raised a brood of eleven ducklings.

The kitchen woodstove has started smoking whenever there’s a gust of wind; in between showers of rain, I fetched the double ladder, leaned it against the kitchen wall, and climbed up to the top to have a look at the rotating cowl on top of the chimney. It appears to be home-made, and the problem is that the support bracket has rusted and sagged, so the cowl itself is now off-centre and no longer rotates fully. It is binding on the side of the chimney pipe. I removed it, and this seems to have cured the smoking problem. I’ll need to make another support bracket; one more item for the “To Do” list.

We had a storm yesterday, which deposited a layer of hail; this blocked one of the gutters so I had to go out in the downpour to clear it. I was not a happy bunny. Google also started annoying me; they deleted my other blog yesterday because their automated system considered it to be spam. I requested a review, they apologised, and re-instated it. This morning they deleted it again. So I have now given up on Blogger and instead moved that one to self-hosted WordPress as well.

Wildlife diary: A pair of blue tits have decided they want to come into the house, presumably wanting to make a nest somewhere dry after all this rain. They fly onto the window sill, or cling precariously to the wall at the side of the window, then flutter around in front of the glass. Getting tired of this, they perch on the bottom of the PVC window frame and peck hopefully at the glass as though they’re knocking to come in. Taptaptaptaptap. Taptaptaptaptap. But irritatingly, when you go over to open the window and say “Yes? Who is it?” they fly away. The down-side of this charming behaviour is that we now have muddy kitty paw-prints all over the inside of the window glass, as Cat could not fail to notice their behaviour. “Ooooh, yes, come in, do. Home Food Delivery, now that’s what I call service.”

Yesterday was beer bottling day! As mentioned in the post of 2nd November, our neighbours T&M have become converts to home brewing. He modified a couple of old stainless steel beer kegs into a mash tun and wort kettle, and not a month goes by without our being invited to a degustation. I must admit, although I have tried full-grain brewing, even BIB (brew-in-a-bag), I prefer the liquid malt extract kits in a tin. It’s much less work, and you can still modify the taste and strength of the final result as you desire. However, last year I ordered a couple of kits from Brewferm which I had mistakenly thought were the usual liquid malt-in-a-tin type. It turned out they weren’t; instead being bags of malted barley. The thing is, our largest saucepan is only capable of holding 12 litres of liquid, so the first kit had to be cooked up in two batches. It turned out fine though.

A week ago I decided to finally use the second kit. This time I borrowed T&M’s mash tun, and brewed the full 20 litres of beer (still using the BIB method). Yesterday it had finished fermenting, and is now bottled.

I also extracted the two demijohns of perry (pear cider) from the outbuilding where they had been fermenting quietly since October last year. I racked them to remove the sediment, and have just finished bottling it. I haven’t forgotten about putting up a page on the apple press and scratter for the manufacture of cider. It will happen!

Next on the list is the bottling of the blackberry wine. After that, the demijohns will be empty, so we intend filling them again by brewing another batch of parsnip wine as we still have some parsnips in the garden. We’ve found it to be really good. It was supposed to have an aftertaste of whisky, and actually, it does!

M&O also paid us a visit yesterday, delivering a large, heavy, black plastic dustbin-bag. They had had the last hunt of the season on the property last Sunday, and had bagged yet another wild boar. This was our share of the spoils. It included the boar’s head (which LSS will turn into pate. Both she and the aged aunt like it, I give it a miss). Our freezer is now practically full. As the aged FIL does not like the taste of game, in previous years the hunters learned not to give him a share of their results. However, they seemed delighted to discover that we do like the taste of game, so they appear to be making up for lost time. We’re certainly not complaining; it’s saving us a fortune in shopping bills.

We had a visit from neighbour J’s cousin. He hadn’t seen LSS since 1985, had heard she was back in town, and wanted to catch up. He’s really into genealogy, and gave LSS an unexpected present: his research on her family name which he had managed to trace back as far as 1655. This is not as strange as it sounds, as their families are related.

He’s also somewhat of a buff regarding local history, and gave us some interesting photocopies. During WW2 there was apparently a German radar station based on the farm next to neighbour J. The electricity supply came all the way from Lamotte Beuvron, some 8km away, and was installed by Russian prisoners of war. It crossed La Darnoire and the farm of the aged FIL. Of course no trace is left today; I suspect it was carried on wooden posts.

Then in July 1944, the electricity supply line was bombed and destroyed by two RAF De Havilland Mosquitos. They also jettisoned their long-range tanks, and this chap’s father promptly took one of them for use on his farm.

The radar station itself had a 7.5 metre dish, and was blown up by the departing Germans on 20 August 1944. The radar dish was made of aluminium, and this was rapidly scavenged by the locals. There are bits of it still in use here today as handy carrying baskets. The aluminium is of good quality, and quite thick.

The concrete base of the radar station is apparently still there, overgrown with trees. We must go and have a look, one of these days. I know there were the ruins of a German-constructed building in a field next to the road approaching the aged FIL, probably about 200 metres from the site of the radar. It can still be seen on Google Earth, but not for long; the remains were removed last year by the farmer so that he could have unrestricted access with his plough.

Oooh, look. A new layout!

As it’s been raining rather a lot recently, I’ve had to postpone the construction of LSS’s polytunnel. Instead, I enjoyed being inside, in front of the computer.

As a result, the whole website has now been redesigned, and is now suitable for viewing on a mobile device. Unfortunately, this meant that the blog was looking a bit odd, and despite lots of testing, I just couldn’t get Blogger to play nicely. So I have installed WordPress, and with a bit of tweaking, here it is. I hope you like the new look.

Several pages have been added to the main website too. You’ll find them under the “Heating” and “Bathroom Facilities” menus. More will be added soon!

So, what else is new? Well, our chickens have finally paid for themselves. Breakeven point was reached on the 11th February, at egg number 541. From now on, free eggs!

The next project when the weather improves (apart from the aforementioned polytunnel!) is the construction of a solid base behind my workshop. This is where the rabbit cages will be located.

Oh yes, and we were given a coypu by our neighbours. The meat was turned into a paté, and I have tanned the skin.

I intend making a hat…

Happy New Year!

Yes, it’s a bit late, but I’ve been busy. We recently had a problem with the upstairs thermal store. This has now been fixed, and all that remains is a stained patch on the lounge ceiling. However, this made me realise that I had not really finished the website section on “Heating”. So I have spent the last couple of days writing more pages for this section. You can read about the leak on the new Thermal Store Insulation page.

I have also tweaked the display of photos on these pages, as it was apparently not obvious to everyone that the little thumbnail images were clickable to reveal larger photos. I thus used some javascript to improve the lightbox-style gallery. Obviously if you have javascript turned off in your browser you won’t benefit from the full experience!

The menu on the left-hand side at the top of the page has also been redesigned incorporating a new flyout menu for the “Heating” section. No javascript was used here; but if you’re using an older browser like IE6 you’ll probably be out of luck! The subsections are still accessible through links on the main “Heating” page though.

Merry Christmas!

I just thought I’d take the opportunity to post a Christmassy-type photo. Our Christmas tree finally came out of the barn a couple of weeks ago, and LSS spent an enjoyable afternoon decorating it.

You can also see the sandy-orange walls of the lounge which I mentioned in my last post.

We have sampled the cider; it tastes great although it’s not quite as effervescent as I had hoped it would be. I also brewed a new batch of beer (Victorian bitter this time) which will be ready for tasting in the New Year.

Last night we tested the Rumtopf. Oh my goodness. It smells wonderful, but I’m not too sure if we’ll do it again. All the fruit tastes the same. Plums: taste like rum. Strawberries: taste like rum. Blackberries: taste like rum. Pears… well, you get the idea. I think it needs to be served with cream. In a small glass. Not a soup bowl like we did last night. It’s a good job we both like rum!

Taking advantage of the dormancy of the trees, I made a start at clearing the brush and brambles around three of our apple trees, and pruning off dead and unwanted branches. There are another four trees which I still need to tackle. I cut some of the branches into short lengths and have stored them in old wooden fruit-boxes in the workshop.

I plan to use the wood to create apple-smoked meat at a later date. There is one article of farm equipment which would come in very handy; perhaps we’ll keep an eye on the sales. It’s a branch chipper and shredder! Any recommendations on make and model? A petrol-powered one would be ideal; although I have access to a tractor I don’t really want to go the whole hog by getting a PTO-powered wood chipper.

An update on the progress in the La Darnoire household…

The reedbed is finally complete; we fetched three trailer loads of fine gravel (totalling over 1500kg) to spread on top of the coarser gravel. In total we’ve moved some 12 tonnes of gravel.
By hand.
With a shovel.

We looked at the prices of reeds (Phragmites australis) from garden centres and online, but at a price of €4 per plant (minimum) we opted for plan B. LSS collected some reeds instead, carefully digging them up from some roadside ditches on her way to various locations to give English lessons. These have now been planted in the gravel, and the greywater piping has finally been connected up. No more emptying buckets from the kitchen sink!
The reed planting is a bit of an experiment because we’re heading into winter. I have some other reeds installed in plant-pots in the pond, ready for installation in the reedbed in spring. If the current reeds in the reedbed don’t survive the winter, we’ll just replace them. It’s difficult to identify the type of reed at this stage; I doubt they’re Phragmites – in fact some may be Typha – but I don’t think it should matter too much. After all, the purpose of the plant is to take oxygen down to the roots where it can be made available to the bacteria which do the actual cleaning of the water. We’ll see how they do. It’s only grey water that they have to clean, so there is no concern about pathogens. In fact we’re also using ecological dishwasher detergent. No chlorine bleach allowed!

LSS came into the house the other day to inform me that we had a new hen, and to bring the camera. Puzzled, I followed her to the chicken coop. Unfortunately because I’d brought the camera, the subject of the intended photograph had moved. (Which is usually the case).
The new hen in question had been curled up comfortably in one of the nests, and had been studiously ignored by the other hens. As we entered the chicken coop, the hen stretched, yawned, and jumped down to come and greet us, purring.
Yes, it was our cat Pixie. She wasn’t interested in the hens, so we can only assume she’s done this before. She had probably asked herself the usual question: “Ooh, it moves. Can I eat it?” followed by second thoughts: “Hmm, no… it’s too big. And there are four of them. Right, I’ll ignore them instead.”

The lounge painting is progressing nicely – we’ve opted for a sandy-textured paint to cover the many imperfections in the original plaster-of-paris wall surfaces. It’s a bright orange colour and certainly warms up the room, looking especially attractive when the boiler stove fire is going.

Because of this year’s shortage of apples on the property, we had resigned ourselves to not having any cider this year. However, our neighbours T&M informed us that T’s grandmother had an apple orchard which still had quite a lot of fruit, so after an apple-picking session we had about 50kg of apples!
The scratter did its job, although with a few hiccups (this winter during the long dark evenings I’ll put up a web page about all of this!) and the new cider press also had a design flaw.
However, T has a friend who is a whizz with engineering, so we ended up with a modified press using an article of modified scrap metal which one is absolutely not allowed to modify. I can’t divulge too many details in order to protect innocent parties (viz. me); but suffice it to say the article in question was originally cylindrical and capable of holding contents at high pressure. We now have just over 20 litres of apple juice quietly fermenting away in a corner of the kitchen. Neighbour T became fascinated with the whole home-brewing concept and purchased a tin of malt extract, borrowing one of my fermentation bins in order to make his first batch of beer. I think the home-brewing community has another convert!

I’ve installed a new central heating radiator in the bedroom; I still need to connect up the piping to the thermal store and construct a control panel which will house the timer, thermostat and temperature gauges (all of which run on 12 volts DC – planning ahead for when we install a solar electric panel.) The central heating system will contain a simple electrical logic circuit which I’ve designed so that if the temperature in the thermal store goes over 70° C, the 12V pump will switch on, thus using the bedroom radiator as a heat dump. The pump will also switch on between certain times of day. More on the construction of this later.

I’ve also made a start on the upgrading of the electric circuit in the bedroom. I’ve removed all the old wiring, and at the moment we are running a temporary extension lead from the lounge!

The computers have finally been unpacked from their cardboard boxes in the barn and installed in the lounge. However, this was not a simple process. A year and a half of storage in what was, let’s face it, less than ideal conditions, had the expected consequences. I connected up LSS’s computer and switched on, to discover that the power supply had died. As I used to build computers, I have a small stock of spare parts, so installed another power supply. I then discovered the motherboard had died.
So, I ordered a new power supply.
And motherboard.
And because technology has moved on, this meant a new processor as well.
And new memory modules.
When all the bits had arrived (it’s now a 2.6GHz dual-core processor, 4Gb RAM) I reinstalled the operating system.
Then the hard disk died.

Fortunately I had a couple of spare hard disks too, but this meant I had to reinstall everything again. (Yes, I do keep disk images on backup, but as the operating system was also being upgraded these were of no use. Rest assured once everything was installed, I did do another disk image – if LSS’s hard disk fails again it will be a 15-minute job to change the disk and re-image it.)

Once LSS’s computer was up and running, I turned my attention to my own pc. Yes, you’ve guessed it. My power supply had died too. And the motherboard. So I’ve ordered a new power supply, motherboard, processor and RAM (the same types as LSS’s computer in order to simplify driver installation). I’m sure once they arrive I’ll discover that my hard disk has died too. But this should not be such an issue – as I’m not upgrading my own operating system I’ll be able to use my backup disk image.

And I now have unrestricted access to the laptop! But I can’t promise that the frequency of blog posts will increase…

LSS went to visit neighbour J today, delivering some leafy vegetable scraps for neighbour J’s rabbits. LSS returned with not only a promise that next spring we would be given a live bunny (in order to start our own rabbit-rearing program), but also with a new addition to the family.

Meet Hubert:

He’s taken up residence in the compost heap. Hopefully we can get a few more of these, as they are great at keeping the garden free from pests. Neighbour J said she’d keep an eye out for more (they tend to wander into her cow shed).

And as for the rabbits, a pair of bunny-skin moccasins are on the drawing board…

Those of you with smallholdings (or even large gardens!) will know that summer – especially late summer – is actually a fairly busy time of year. So I’m offering that as an excuse for the lack of recent posts!

The lounge electric work has finally been completed, and the replastering is well under way; I only have one wall left to do and then LSS can get busy painting.

The reedbed has been dug and lined with a layer of geotextile, followed by a pvc pond liner, and we are well on the way to filling it with the twelve tons of gravel we had delivered. We’re doing it by hand, with a wheelbarrow, so you can imagine it’s a lot of work!

I have also finished excavating the soil next to the North wall of the house to expose the crumbling brickwork, and have repaired most of this; the trench will be filled with gravel so that it acts like a French drain (rather apt, considering we’re in France!) This gravel will also contain the greywater waste pipe – leading to the reedbed – and rainwater overflow pipe leading to the pond. I’ve also poured a (lime) concrete base for the future firewood cupboard which will be accessible from inside the kitchen through a hatchway.

Progress on the construction of a rainwater drainage system is also well under way. Rainwater from the house roof goes into the six 510-litre drums for use in the garden; but rainwater from the garage roof needs to be led away to the closest ditch, a distance of some 30 metres, via a buried pipe.

The hens settled in very quickly; we’ve trained them to perch on the proper hen-perch which I constructed instead of nesting on the floor – obviously where they were raised there were not such luxuries as proper perches. They’ve also been trained to drink from a suspended plastic 2 litre bottle, with a chicken watering nipple fitted. Sounds sexy, but isn’t. The problem with giving water to chickens in a bowl, is that the water becomes fowl very quickly indeed (pun intended). Egg production has been impressive – we’ve now had 104 eggs. Obviously we don’t eat them all ourselves!

The pear tree near the pond has been making up for the dearth of fruit last year, by producing buckets and buckets of pears. LSS has made several pear tarts, we have pears for pudding most days, and I have the food dryer up and running with two trays of pear slices slowly desiccating. We have a brewing bin containing 18 litres of blackberry wine bubbling away, next to it is another brewing bin with 18 litres of elderberry wine, and once we have room the production of perry will commence, soon to be followed by a batch of cider. I constructed a steel-framed cider press so we’re ready to go! We have also been recycling a lot of the old bottles which were lying abandoned in one of the outbuildings. The labels tend to soak off rather easily, as the bottles are at least 30 years old. Cleaning the inside is carried out by soaking with a solution of sodium percarbonate (which produces hydrogen peroxide, a sterilizing agent) and then scrubbing them with a bottlebrush. Yes, it’s a lot of work but it saves us having to buy new bottles!

Hopefully this winter I’ll be able to do some long-overdue work on the website, including photos of various projects. Of course once the lounge replastering has been completed I’ll be able to get our computers out of cardboard boxes and we’ll no longer have to fight over who gets to use the laptop!