La Darnoire

On Sunday afternoon we visited neighbour J, taking the trailer with us. The reason for this was that she’d offered us a couple of young plum trees which had sprouted underneath their parent. We ended up with five fairly decent young plum trees, and four elder saplings as well. All of these have now been planted in the garden around the pond, or along the fence line.

We also took the opportunity of inspecting the elder trees we’d planted last year, and we were pleased to find they have all survived the winter and have started sprouting new leaves. Unfortunately it will be several years before we can enjoy elderflower champagne and elderberry wine from our own trees.

LSS did some fishing last Friday afternoon, catching 49 gudgeon in under an hour. I think she used a grand total of two earthworms as bait. So we had a fry-up on Saturday evening. There are lots of carp in the pond as well; but I’ve found these taste a bit muddy. We’ll probably need to rescue an old bathtub from the aged FIL’s field and fill it with rainwater. If we put any carp we catch in that water for a day or so, hopefully that will purge some of the muddy taste. I suspect I may have to rig up some sort of aeration mechanism to keep the fish happy for their final hours.

Oh yes – and I’ve updated the header logo!

Day 365 since the shipwreck. The daily ritual of scanning the horizon for a passing ship had the same result; emptiness was again the norm. Sighing, I wandered back up the beach to my crude bamboo shelter, and passed the time by sorting my fish scale collection according to size and colour.

Oops, wrong scene… I think the French countryside is getting to me.

It’s hard to believe we’ve been here a year today. I looked again at my “To Do” list, feeling certain that we hadn’t done that much over the past year. But it’s been reassuring to see that there are a lot of entries with lines scratched through them.

Here are just a few:
Make house less damp by installing gutters – check.
Install a rainwater recovery system for watering the garden in summer – check.
Build a wood shed to store all our firewood – check.
Have a borehole installed – check.
Install a cold water supply to the house to replace the rusty water from the well – check.
Build a thermal store – check.
Install new double-glazed doors and windows to help with keeping the house warm in winter – check.
Upgrade the outdated electricity wiring – well, the kitchen is done. And the lounge. Haven’t started on the bedroom yet, but at least all the antique fuses have been replaced with proper circuit breakers and a proper earth system with lightning protection has been installed. So I think that qualifies as a check.
Cure the problem we experienced with mould – check.
Stop the pond from encroaching into the garden by repairing the erosion at the edges – nearly complete. Unfortunately with all the rain we’ve had, the pond is now full, so it will need to wait until it dries out a bit before I can finalise this job. I did however manage to dig a trench from the pond to one of the property’s drainage ditches so that an overflow pipe could be installed.
Start a website about the project – check.

Of course, like all lists, ours just keeps growing, no matter how many items are crossed out! So it looks like year 2 will be just as busy. Hopefully I can talk LSS into adding a couple of gardening pages to the main site.

Work on various projects is progressing slowly. The thermal store has now been moved to the loft, and placed above a supporting wall (500 litres of water will be heavy!)
The boiler stove has been placed in its final position, and I’ve started fabricating the copper pipe to connect it to the thermal store. Holes have already been drilled in the ceiling!

As the weather was fairly good today, I finally completed the roof of the wood shed, which I constructed using old pallets. It’s now ready to be filled for the next winter. A couple of large branches from last year’s fallen oak tree have already been cut and split into firewood. (I promise I will put up a web page regarding its construction, with some photos of course, as soon as I can get around to it).
I also took the opportunity to get rid of the rubbish in the brazier, and make some more charcoal at the same time.

My collection of bonsai trees, which have been inside the house for the winter, are now once again outdoors, and have been re-potted.

I recently recovered an old 100 litre electric water cylinder from the aged FIL’s barn, and have been dismantling it with a view to turning it into a wood stove to heat my workshop, which is absolutely freezing in the winter (obviously). Much welding and grinding has been taking place.

I’ve also serviced LSS’s Hyundai which has just reached 60,000 miles. I installed a K&N air filter and some Denso Iridium spark plugs.

My motorcycle, The Honda Pan European ST1100, is currently without wheels, as I’ve just had new tyres fitted and am taking the opportunity to replace the clutch and brake hoses with stainless steel ones, as well as installing new stainless steel pistons in the calipers. Once it’s back together again I may be able to go for a ride (presuming the weather improves and the road is passable). Speaking of road, we had a visit this week from the Garde Champêtre, who was inspecting the state of the public road which runs past the property. It seems the road is going to be repaired shortly (and it’s high time it was, it’s a mudbath).

I’ve also noticed that there are now quite a few Facebook fans for La Darnoire, so I’d also like to take this opportunity to say “Welcome. I hope you enjoy the site!”

We’ve been in the habit of buying mandarin oranges over the past few weeks. Well, it has been the season!

Unfortunately the last batch we bought from Carrefour were inedible. Incredibly difficult to peel, and exceedingly bitter.

So I got cooking…

What an improvement! I may have to make some more…

So, we’ve just finished dinner – a courgette and ham quiche with green beans, followed by a pudding of tinned pineapple slices.

But I need to give you some background to today’s meal.

The late MIL was a little girl during the Second World War. France at that time was, of course, occupied; and as her family were tenant farmers, they received a lot of unwanted attention from the Wehrmacht, who confiscated the majority of the food. MIL was the youngest of ten children, and I think this scarcity of food affected her psychologically.

She had the tendency to hide food in the oddest of places. Open a cupboard full of clothes, and there, lurking underneath a moth-eaten shirt, would be a packet of biscuits. Packets of sweets would appear amongst the best china cups, and hidden in the rabbit shed you would find a tin of strawberry jam or a bottle of wine.

After the late MIL passed away, LSS attempted a major clearout of rubbish, and many food items came to light. Unfortunately most of the dry goods like packets of biscuits were either mouldy, or just stale and inedible.

Well, not everything was discovered. Last week LSS found two items which had been exceptionally well-hidden, and we have just finished eating them this evening – to wit, a Kilner jar of green beans harvested soon after Chernobyl (bottled September 1987); and a tin of Kenyan pineapple slices – “consume before December 1988”. Well, the tin was a bit rusty. But only on the outside. The pineapples tasted fine! And the green beans tasted – well, like green beans normally taste. A bit tingly on the tongue though.

Bless her cotton socks!

Well, it’s good we don’t need to go anywhere today. Except for visiting the aged FIL of course, because the carers who normally get him out of bed and feed him are unwilling to risk the trip. So LSS has taken over the job for today.

Today was another wood-cutting day. I had pruned some of the branches of the chestnut trees across the road, and these have now been converted into woodstove-sized logs. They were all dead branches, and as a result are fairly dry, so can be used straight away.

The barn roof insulation is now complete, and I have started the next challenge, building the thermal store. However, I need an oxy-acetylene welder to affix the brass pipe connectors to the 500 litre galvanized steel cylinder I’m using (kindly donated to us by our neighbours T&M). Apparently one of LSS’s cousins has one (I’ve looked into the price of hiring or purchasing a set, but it’s way too expensive) so we have to wait until he has a minute to bring it to us – or for a convenient moment for us to go and fetch it.

I do have a mig welder, and access to the aged FIL’s arc welder, and also a brazing torch, but none of these are suitable for the job!

The kitchen electrical upgrade has also taken another step forward; the lighting circuit is now complete which means we have two new light switches installed. This also means there are no more dangling electric wires in the kitchen! I’ve also installed a new kitchen cupboard which we bought at Brico Depot about a month ago. It’s starting to look more like a kitchen now! Next kitchen job: installing our new sink…

A belated Happy New Year to all our readers! The lack of posts recently has been due to my working on some more pages for the main website. (See “Bathroom Facilities” in the menu on the left).

I’ve also been insulating the roof of the adjoining barn, because that’s where the water supply pipes and pressure vessel reside. We would rather not have the pipes freeze when the temperature dips below zero. The task is nearly complete.

Our festive fare comprised (mainly) wild boar and an assortment of home-grown vegetables – although we did of course have a traditional Christmas pudding which we bought last year before leaving the UK.

We also enjoyed lots of different varieties of cheese! Well, I have to keep my strength up somehow…

Today we had breakfast for lunch. Let me explain.

The aged FIL has quite a bit of old farm equipment, not in very good condition, which neither he nor we will ever use. So he’s agreed that we can try and sell it for him on the French equivalent of Gumtree, viz Leboncoin.fr. There are ploughs, harrows, fertilizer spreaders, seeders…

So LSS took photos of all these items and listed them. Two weeks ago she received a phone call from Hungary, and the person expressed interest in two of the ploughs. Despite promising to call back again, no such call took place.

So yesterday, LSS once again received a phone call from a person with a heavily-accented Eastern European accent.
“Oh no you don’t!” she said. “I’m not reserving the plough for another Hungarian that never calls back.”
“Oh no,” the woman explained. “I’m not Hungarian. I’m Romanian. And I’m just a translator for a couple of blokes that buy old farm equipment in France. They deliver stuff to France, and instead of going back with an empty truck, they buy old farm stuff and sell it here at a profit.”
Fair enough.
LSS was concerned, however, regarding the larger of the two ploughs.
“This thing is heavy. Can the lorry cope with it?”
“Oh yes, not a problem. They’re collecting two small tractors. It’s an articulated 25-tonner. By the way, do you have a forklift truck?” (Pay attention here, the forklift is important. We should have heard alarm bells ringing.)
“No.”
“Not a problem, they’ll find a way to load the plough. I’ll give you a call when they reach your village tomorrow morning.”

So this morning we had lit the wood stove, and just put the porridge on. It did not even have time to reach simmering point when the phone rang. The Romanian lorry had arrived in the village and they wanted to know the way to the aged FIL’s farm.

We dropped everything, took the porridge off the stove, and drove into the village to fetch them.

We led them to the aged FIL’s farmhouse. There were two men in the cab. When they stopped the lorry and climbed down, we discovered that there was a small problem. Neither of them spoke French. Both of them spoke Romanian. Which I suppose is normal if you’re Romanian. Neither LSS nor I speak Romanian.

Neither of them spoke English, and Dutch was a no-go as well. However, one of them (whom I shall call Dimitri for no other reason than it sounds Romanian. The other one I shall call Ivan, because I looked it up and Ivan is a name in Romania) had a smattering of German, and as I had learned German at school, a three-way translation immediately took place. LSS explained which farm equipment was for sale, and how much it was, in English to me. I translated this into German (with many French words thrown in accidentally – hey, I haven’t spoken German for thirty years) to Dimitri, and Dimitri explained it in Romanian to Ivan. (Ivan was the one doing the buying, not Dimitri. Dimitri was the main driver. Ivan was also a driver, but did the buying. I’ve said that already.)

So Ivan selected one of the ploughs. He then asked (through Dimitri) whether we had a forklift. (Were you paying attention earlier?)

Oh dear.

No, we replied.

Dimitri then explained in German that it was too heavy to be lifted onto the lorry without one. I said we knew that.

Ivan said something to Dimitri, and Dimitri repeated it to me in German, and I repeated it to LSS in English. It was along the lines of: “We have to fetch another two tractors this morning about 100km away, and we’ll return this afternoon. We’ll hitch the plough to one of the small tractors, and drive it onto the lorry with ramps.” (The aged FIL’s tractor was too large to be able to put the plough into the lorry).

Fine, we said.

At this stage I should also point out that Dimitri and Ivan had already collected two old tractors, which were in the trailer.

Dimitri and Ivan then jumped into the lorry, drove it forward around a 90 degree left-hand bend in the road, and then started to reverse it into the farm courtyard. Oh dear. Now you’ve probably heard a lot of stories about Romanian truck drivers. Ice Road Truckers they ain’t.

The lorry immediately made its way into the deep ditch on the left of the road where it stuck. I fetched the tractor, but this proved to have insufficient power to extract the lorry from the ditch. Dimitri and Ivan then attempted to unhitch the trailer part, without much success because of the angle of the cab relative to the entire rig.

LSS then called a neighbour who had a larger tractor. He was kind enough to drop everything and bring the four-wheel-drive monster over.

Unfortunately, this proved insufficient as well. We needed a winch. Fortunately the neighbour had a brother in a neighbouring village. This brother had an even larger tractor with a winch. A visit was arranged. It was now 11 a.m. The neighbour’s brother (whom I will call NB for short) turned up at 2 p.m. Well, he had to have lunch first of course, which I suppose was fair enough. We took advantage of the lull in events to scoot off home and have breakfast for lunch. In other words, we had the porridge. The wood stove had of course died out by this time so we finished cooking the porridge on the gas stove.

So when the NB arrived, he attached the winch to the front of the lorry. I asked Dimitri if he was sure the trailer was still properly attached to the cab after their abortive efforts to unhitch it earlier. Yes, he replied.

Well, dear reader, you will by now have realised that something else was waiting to happen. Of course the trailer was not attached properly to the cab. The powerful winch on the NB’s tractor pulled the cab out of the ditch all right. However this was accompanied by a ripping, grinding noise as the trailer separated from the cab, pulling off most of the left-hand rear mudguard, and twisting the trailer so that the front left support leg was now embedded in the ditch, in the hole which was created by the left rear wheel of the cab. The right-hand rear wheels were now in the air.

Dimitri got busy repairing the rear mudguard of the cab, whilst the NB reattached the winch to one of the two tractors inside the trailer in order to redistribute some of the weight to the rear. The tractor was pulled towards the rear doors of the trailer. (No, I know what you’re thinking. It didn’t fall out). The other tractor was also moved towards the rear doors, this one under its own steam.

NB then attached the winch to the side of the front chassis of the trailer, and pulled the front end out of the ditch, aligning it on the roadway again. Dimitri then managed to reattach the cab to the trailer. NB re-coiled his winch wire, and then went over to Dimitri. Despite not speaking Romanian, he made the two of them understand that this had taken up two hours of his time, which he would normally have employed more usefully elsewhere, and as a result the charge for the extraction would be €80. I had to hide a smile – bang goes their profit for the day. He then went inside the farmhouse to say hello to the aged FIL. I stayed to watch.

Of course, Dimitri was now unable to successfully reverse the trailer around the right-angle corner. And before you say “Ah, but it was probably not possible to do so”, I would point out that the aged FIL used to have earthmoving equipment.

We’re talking big Caterpillar-type machines here. On a low-loader. The sort which need to be accompanied on public roads by escort vehicles. The sort of low-loader which was articulated. Which he frequently turned around in the farmyard.

The only option they had was to ask NB to reattach the winch to the side of the trailer, and pull it sideways around the corner. (This was done free of charge actually! I had visions of NB asking them for another €40.)

They then (wisely) decided that the best way to get back to the main road was by reversing. (It’s only about a kilometer away…)

I fetched a shovel and busied myself filling in the monstrous holes left in the farm road by the tractors and lorry.

We’ve decided we’re not going to sell any other large farm equipment unless the buyer either fetches it with a tractor, or loads it themselves onto a smaller lorry.

I wonder if Dimitri and Ivan know Boris and Igor? I doubt we’ll be seeing them again.

WE HAVE WATER!

Yesterday I connected the final section of copper piping leading from the expansion vessel in the loft to the kitchen. This morning I turned on the main tap, and inspected for leaks (there was one where the soldered joint had not been fully sealed, so I re-soldered it).

We now have clean borehole water all the way to the kitchen sink!

Next step is to fabricate a thermal store, and install the boiler stove. We’ll then have hot water too. What luxury!