Spring Cleaning

It may still be a week until spring oficially arrives, but yesterday, for the first time this year, we had signs that winter will not last forever. This is a good thing, allowing me into the garden to do stuff. First stuff to do was play with my new powerwasher to find out what it will do.

Are you allowed to power wash a
power washer?? Thought not...

The good news is that it does an awful lot. I started by cleaning Célestine's rubber mat (quite good fun) and the trailer (also good fun) , then I decided to experiment. Out came the shutters I didn't finish sanding last year, and I had a blast at them most sucessfully, saving me about a week's work.

Shutters, ready to paint.

Then I started on the green slime that covered the walls of the old long drop (I'm not sure - or at least, unwilling to guess what caused that) and the stone steps at the back of the graineterie.

After lunch Célestine had her first wash of the year. Her underneath was sprayed to remove salt and mud, then she was shampooed and chamoised dry.

Cleaning: big time blokey stylee

Simon

Making a Spectacle

I wear (or rather should wear) reading glasses. They are only a recent thing for me, my first pair having been bought at the beginning of 2009. I didn't want to have to try get used to bi-focals, but neither my nose nor my arms long enough for me to be able to continue just using one pair of glasses.

To be honest, I do find having two pairs of glasses a bit of a bind (as, I imagine, does anyone) but towards the end of last year I started to persevere with them and was getting better at remembering to use them. I didn't bother having them on a string around my neck because whatever I was doing they would dangle in the way, so if I though I was going to be using them they were put in a shirt pocket. Until the beginning of February, when they suddenly disappeared. We turned the house upside down looking for them, before deciding that they had probably worked their way into the recycling bag with some "pub" (advertising) and we had seen the last of them.

On Saturday, Susan was getting some wood in, and lo and behold!

They had obviously fallen out of my shirt pocket and been well and truly trampled into the dust and dirt on the garage floor.

Not that they will work very well. I hope I can go to the local optometrists and get a frame that will fit the (luckily) still intact lenses. The current frames are really cheap ones from Tescos, so getting a fit may be difficult. It could be cheaper to fly to London and buy another set of Tescos frames than buy here (which really is just plain wrong).

On Another note: Our internet connect has been a bit weird that past day or so. I could get a Google search page and results of a search, but only about half of the pages would load - the computer would just sit there with a blank screen. Likewise, I could get our blog to show, but not Ken or Walt's. The Guardian newspaper would load, but Yahoo Mail wouldn't go past letting me put my password in. Statcounter, likewise, would load the front page really quickly, but Firefox would hang up when I tried to look at my stats.

Our emails have been a bit odd, as well. We have 5 email accounts we check using Outlook (I know...). One but not both of the business email accounts would connect (and they are both on the same mail server) but each time I connected a different one would load. Of our London email accounts (also both on the same mail server) one or another (but not both) would download. Our French email account may (but then again may not) connect.

This is also just plain wrong. And Frustrating.

I just hope this loads and I haven't lost this typing!

_________________________________________________

Since I wrote that last paragraph (about our internet connection) I have had a play (a long, frustrating play) with our computer and fixed it.

The problem seems to be an update to AVG antivirus that caused conflicts with the firewall. I have since deleted AVG (temporarily leaving me with no antivirus) but my internet does now work. Question is, do I want the internet with no checking of viruses, or do I want virus checker and no internet, and no chance of catching a virus anyway.

Simon

Scuties

Anyone who lives in an old stone French house is undoubtedly living with scuties. Or as they are more properly known, Scutigera coleptera, the Common House Centipede.

They are fearsome looking beasts, with 15 pairs of very long banded legs and an even longer pair of antennae. They live in the dark, humid crevices, coming out at night to hunt spiders, silverfish, cockroaches and fly larvae. They are venomous, with the first pair of legs modified into fangs. If they manage to bite you, it is painful and the flesh surrounding the wound swells and goes purple, like some spider bites do.

Immature scuties have fewer legs, starting off with just 4 pairs. As they grow they moult their exoskeleton, and each time, they gain a few more pairs of legs until they are adult, after the fifth moult. They move very fast. The hindlegs are twice as long as the front legs, which allows them to cross over and beyond, preventing the scutie from ending up in a tangled ball of legs.


Susan

Kiwi Fruit

A few days ago, my friend Valérie gave me a dozen or so little kiwi fruits. They had been given to her by a farmer friend who grows them organically further to the south. They don't look much, but they are good.

Organic mini kiwi fruits.

Kiwi fruit will grow in Preuilly (I've seen them in someone's garden, and there is a local producer who only sells kiwi fruit and asparagus on his stall in early spring), so I have bought a self fertile plant to run up the new trellis. From what I know about how rampant kiwi fruit plants are, it should compete more than adequately with the old red table grape vine that is also to be trained across the trellis (rather than 20m up the catalpa tree, which is useless).

You can tell this is a kiwi fruit plant - the stems are
covered in brown fur just like the fruits.

Unknown in France 30 years ago, today the kiwi fruit is a winter favourite in a season when not much good local fruit is available. From May to the end of the year, they are imported from the southern hemisphere, then the European crop takes over. A variety called Adour, grown in les Landes since the 1960s is registered as Label Rouge. 'Red Label' produce is high quality, organic and must be produced along strict traditional methods within a designated area.

Kiwi fruit will continue to ripen after they are harvested, and can be kept in the fridge in a pierced box for up to 4 weeks. For the best flavour, take them out of the fridge and put them in the fruit bowl a few days before you want to eat them. They have few calories (47 kcal/100g) and a single fruit supplies your daily Vitamin C requirement.

In French, the skin is described as duveteuse ('downy', pronounced 'doov-terz'). This protective layer means that they require very little in the way of chemical treatments to grow or for storage, even when not produced organically. Also, the skin protects the flesh from the oxygen in the air and stops the destruction of the Vitamin C in the flesh after harvest.

Kiwi fruit contains an enzyme, actinidine, which breaks up proteins. It makes an excellent ingredient in a marinade for pork, or can be slipped inside a chicken to make the meat more moist. The fruit themselves don't survive cooking very well and are better eaten raw. They can be puréed to make a coulis, but it's better to do this in a hand operated food mill rather than in an electric food processor, because if the seeds get crushed they are a little bitter.

Susan

PS Kiwi Fruit - just think of them as Claudia Schiffer in a brown cardigan...

Rubbish

The other day I was in the Mairie asking about something and I picked up a slip of paper that said:

Exceptionnellement, les personnes absentes lors de la 1ère distribution de sacs pubelles pourront venir le jeudi 11 mars de 8h30 à 12h00 à la Salle des Fêtes.

Last chance! Those absent at the 1st distribution of bin bags can come on Thursday, 11 March from 8:30 to 12:00 at the Village Hall.

In Preuilly we don't have to buy our rubbish sacks in the supermarket. They are distributed by the commune on behalf of the local waste collection company, SMICTOM. Our division of SMICTOM services the Sud Lochois, or the area around and to the south of Loches. Their head quarters are in Descartes, and their motto is au pays de Descartes, je pense donc je trie ('in the country of Descartes, I think, therefore I sort'). SMICTOM stands for Syndicat Mixte de Collecte et de Traitement des Ordures Ménagères (Joint Syndicate for the Collection and Treatment of Household Waste). Anything that has the Green Dot symbol to show that the manufacture is a member of a scheme to recover the packaging under the European Waste Management Directive should be put in the yellow sack, as should anything with the triangle of three arrows which is the international recyclable symbol.

At the Salle des Fêtes the deputy mayor, Monsieur Thoreau, and Jean-Paul Charrier, one of the senior councillors, and a couple of assistants were handing out rubbish sacks. My name was ticked on the list of residents, the deputy mayor double checked that we lived here all year now and that there was just the two of us in the household. He asked me how I was (in English, to practice), to which my response (in French, to practice), was 'très froid', then he commented on my fingerless gloves and we all discussed items of clothing that we found particularly practical in the cold weather (les vêtements de chasse found favour with everyone as hard wearing, warm and practical, whether one hunted or not). Jean-Paul asked after Célestine. Collecting one's rubbish sacks is clearly one of the many communal networking opportunities.

Our rubbish bag allocation is 5 rolls of black bags for general rubbish, and 3 rolls of sacs jaunes (yellow bags) for anything that can be recycled, except glass, which is too heavy to go in the bags and must be disposed of by the householder in the special bins placed in several locations around town. I think we've been given a total of 100 black bags and 60 recycling bags. French rubbish sacks have an integrated string for tying them up when full. It's a really clever design. A flat plastic thread runs down the length of the bags, perforated like the bags are so they can be separated for use. Each bag has its own piece of string, attached at the bottom, ready to be snapped off and tied round the top.

Our rubbish is put out in the street on Wednesday night for collection at about 5am on Thursday morning. We don't put a bin out - the rubbish goes out just in its colour coded bags and sits on the corner of the driveway along with two of our neighbours' - an arrangement to save the garbage men time. We could have a wheelie bin if we wanted to, but there is no requirement to do so here, and the streets are so narrow they would be rather a hazard. Some people leave their rubbish bags on their front window sill, so the garbage man riding shotgun doesn't even have to get down from the truck to pick it up.

Susan

It's Snowed Again !

It snowed lightly most of yesterday, somewhat to our surprise. It has been cold, not getting much above 0°C for the last few days, and it snowed quite heavily in the south of France a couple of days ago (very unusual for this time of year).

I've put the pots in their summer positions in the courtyard. The rose and the wake robin (Trillium erectum) in the corner will be completely untroubled by this snow, as they rest against the back of the permanently warm chimney. No snow settled on them at all.

Apparently, according to our friend Stéphane, this is the longest winter since the early '80s in the Touraine. I assume he got this information from the news or something. It isn't the coldest winter though. Last winter had significantly lower temperatures, getting down to -17°C, but for a much shorter period. Our neighbour Edouard says that in 1956 the temperature remained below 0°C from the first to the 19th of February, and the winter wheat crop failed as a result.

Perhaps not ideal for flourishing growth (below)? I made these coldframes from kits a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't sowed any vegetable seeds yet. Edouard says he has sown tomatoes, but his polytunnel isn't sufficient to keep them from freezing. At the moment I have a lot of seedling foxgloves and alpine pinks in the coldframes, protecting them from the wind rather than the frost, as they are completely frost hardy.


Susan

Can We Have Spring Now?

Please??

It has been a bit cool of late: yesterday, although the temperature got to a whole 4°C, the wind gave a it a real feel of about -5°C. This meant that I spent the whole day inside: all the little jobs I have to do are outside, and I am not quite ready to start the big jobs yet.

The little jobs include finishing the bracing of the grape vine trellis in the orchard, digging a hole for the clothes line post, washing Célestine, pigeon proofing the ex-window above our front door, painting the garden gate, painting the storeroom shutter, sanding back the shutters for the bathroom window, and a dozen other things that need doing - outside.

The grape vine trellis is only half stressed.
Compare this to how it was after the storm

The big jobs are too numerous to list, but include putting framing and reinforcement for the single skin brick walls in the guest bedroom and bathroom, and sorting out both bathroom floors. You will notice that these are all inside jobs. All are jobs that are almost but not quite ready for me to start; we have Stéphane coming over this evening to have a look at the walls, and hopefully he will be helping me fix them sometime soon. He has restored houses before, has worked in the hardware industry, and is a furniture maker by training. This should make him very useful!

The street at the top of the Place des Halles is still
closed after the storm (which was over a week ago)
damaged the buildings lining it.

Until then I am still struggling with PHP scripts (let me assure you, if you don't know what they are, you really REALLY don't want to know) for the website, planning a publicity campaign for the business, and trying to chose a handbasin unit for the bathroom. And learning French whilst trying to stay warm.

Which is just about where we came in...

Simon

Edit: 15 minutes after this blog entry appeared it started to snow. I guess this means I will not be working outside again!

It's a Long Way to the Top

I wrote a couple of days ago about the château being scaffolded, but it wasn't until yesterday afternoon I wandered up the road to have a look.

It is an impressively tall piece of scaffolding, but it doesn't wrap the château up nearly as much as I thought it would: in fact as scaffolding goes, it is pretty discreet. Not that you would get me up there, especially in the breeze we are currently experiencing.

Although yesterday wasn't particularly windy, the wind was coming in from the north, where according to Bengt (who rang while I was visiting Jill and John), Sweden is suffering the worst winter for many years. He had just come in from shovelling 70cm of snow, and wasn't terribly impressed with me commenting how cold it was here.

It was nice and sunny though, and if you were able to find a spot in the sun but out of the wind (not easy) it was a lovely day.

It does feel like spring can't be too far away though - if the wind drops but the sun stays around we will soon forget about winter and have the opportunity to start moaning about how hot it is! Roll on summer...

Simon

Digging in the Garden

Below, Lesser Celandine Ranunculus ficaria (or le ficaire in French), always one of the first spring flowers, and so glossy it looks like it's been lacquered. It's growing on the steep bank of the little stream that runs down the front of our orchard. (Yes, it's flowing again, after good winter rains, but who knows for how long?)

Yesterday being another fine but chilly day, I went down to dig the vegetable garden in preparation for planting potatoes. Edouard, our neighbour with the most impressive potager, tells me I should wait a fortnight (une quinzaine) before planting.

A viola, volunteering in the vegetable patch.
They will flower until late into the autumn
and are the most gorgeous rich purple blue.

I am not an experienced vegetable grower, but I've read a lot of the theory, and I am hoping this will be the first and last year I need to dig extensively. The soil is 50% clay and I have to wait until it is at just the right moisture level before I can dig. At the moment it is just dry enough to dig, but it will be easier after another couple of days for the wind to dry it out some more. At this time of year wind is far more effective than the sun at reducing the moisture content in the top few centimetres of soil. This year I will mulch heavily with old straw to add vegetable matter and keep the soil from developing a crust.

A goldfinch Carduelis carduelis (Chardonneret élégant in French),

one of many in the more densely twiggy trees.

Although the wind was perishingly cold, from the north, there was considerable small bird activity and noise, and some brightly coloured early flowers. Some of the carrots have survived the winter and we ate them a couple of days ago, along with a baby cabbage that the big storm had knocked over.

The dark patch of soil is the result of about an hour's digging.

Susan

PS Those of you interested in botany might like to take a look at Loire Valley Nature, where I now have a useful section on wild orchids, with a complete species list for the area and a page for each of the species you are likely to see without too much expertise or experience required. I've included lots of tips for correctly identifying any orchids you see, and lots of photos. In time I will add more photos and map references.

Le Pavé de Betz

Last night we had our friends and neighbours Sylvie and Pierre-Yves over for dinner. I am writing this before they arrived, so I can't actually report on the proceedings, but I can tell you what the menu is.

I am making snacks to go with a pre-dinner glass of sparkling rosé from the Simoneau vineyard near Saint-Georges-sur-Cher. We are having some of our homegrown hazelnuts and walnuts, lightly toasted in the oven, and slices of hardboiled egg on crackers, dressed with Swedish caviar paste or aioli. Then there will be crême de choufleur au bleu (cream of cauliflower soup with blue cheese - in this case bleu d'Auvergne), followed by roast leg of lamb with Cumberland sauce, and steamed potatoes and peas and accompagnied by a 2003 cabernet franc from Chinon. Dessert is Persian Love Cake, served with a dollop of homemade cherry topping.

Pavé de Betz, purchased from the laitière (dairy producer)
who calls at the house.

The cheese course, in between the lamb and the dessert, is pavé de Betz, from Betz le Château, (the town name is pronounced by some locals as "Be'l'château") only a few kilometres away. Pavé de Betz is so called because it is the size and shape of a small paving tile, or paver. It is a soft goat cheese, with quite an assertive flavour. How creamy it is depends on the season, and it takes 1.4 litres of milk to make a 170g cheese.

Susan

Orchard Lizards

Yesterday was a bright clear day, with quite strong sunshine which felt warm if you were out in it. The temperature was below 10°C, but all the same, there was little breeze and it felt warm in the sun.

An adult male.

The lizard family at the orchard were certainly taking advantage of it. We watched about 8 Common Wall Lizards Podarcis muralis (le lézard des murailles in French). As is to be expected for early spring, they were quite frisky. We witnessed some athletic leaping from log to branch, a fight between two males and plenty of submissive arm waving by females and juveniles.

From left to right, a juvenile, an adult male and an adult female.

Common Wall Lizards vary quite a bit in markings and colour, but in this family, females seem to be a reddish brown with dark brown and cream spots; whilst males are greyer, with fewer spots, but including a row of bright blue spots along each side.


Susan

The House of the Lyre

This attractive balcony is in rue de l'Horloge (Clock Street) in Preuilly, but I don't know what the significance of the decorative motif is. The building was once a shop, with residence above.

Roger Lezeau tells a story about Ludovic Marteau, who was the occupant of this house in 1920. Marteau was a tinsmith, and in his youth, had been part of the team who built the new tower on the abbey after its collapse in 1873. He made a cock for the finial and when he put it in position, left a red sash draped over it. The next day he was asked to go and retrieve it.

Susan

Les Grues sont arrivées !

This morning, up from the south-west, came not a tempest like Xynthia, but an entirely different, and entirely welcome phenomenon.

The cranes* are on the move, from their winter homes in Spain, and they are now flying over central France on their way to their staging post lakes on the French-German border where they will rest up before heading to Scandinavia and nearby countries to breed in the summer.

I was just about to start the washing up when I heard the unmistakable racuous calls. I picked up the camera and rushed outside. Simon, who had been down at the orchard putting stay wires on the trellis, came roaring up the driveway at well over the speed limit, beeping the horn. They had flown right over him and he was worried I would miss them. Also, the batteries in his camera had gone flat just at the most inappropriate moment and he was looking for a fresh set.

This first flock was close to 200 birds and had flown quite low over the orchard. Simon had been hearing the calls for about thirty minutes as they approached, but assumed it was crows mucking about in the poplar plantation, because he couldn't see anything. Luckily they then spent quite some time over Preuilly, wheeling and milling about as they rose on a slight thermal. I was so excited all my photographs are rubbish but fortunately, a second, smaller flock came over later in the day and I got some shots which are presentable. They fly so high it is impossible to get really outstanding photos without a proper professional camera (I just have a Fuji Finepix, which I love, but I must accept I will never win wildlife photographer of the year with it).

I told the baker when I went to buy bread at lunchtime that the cranes were here and she said 'Super!' (and then asked me what the English word for zéro was). Then I ran into Mme C. in the street and told her. She said 'Ah, une bonne signe! It means winter is over!'

It's true. The cranes are the very best harbingers of spring, and everyone looks forward to their arrival. Preuilly is on the fringes of their migratory route, so a couple of hundred is good. Places which are squarely underneath the main traffic will see (or hear) thousands go through. To emphasis the coming of spring, Simon saw the first butterfly (a yellow Brimstone) and I saw the first Violet Carpenter Bee.

Susan

*Eurasian (or Common) Crane Grus grus (la Grue cendrée in French)

Unfinished Work

After not having any internet access for two days, service was resumed last night. Last time Susan and I were affected by a big storm, the internet was a novelty rather than an essential and we are only just properly realising how much we now rely on having world wide access.

Preuilly sur Claise's Rue de l'Horloge has some fine house frontages, even though for many years the buildings housed businesses in what must be said was a pretty unimportant small town almost in the middle of nowhere. A lot of the buildings have classic decoration, including neo-classical Greek pilasters. One house, however, has a slightly strange look - a fine column with a corinthian capital on one side, and a lump of stone on the other.

The local story is that the house was meant to have fine matching columns on either side, but the stone mason fell from the scaffold and died before he could start work on the second column.

Thus, what the house is left with on one side is the blank out of which the column and capital were meant to have been carved.

As I always say - you must look up occasionally!

Simon

Better late than Never!

Susan wrote yesterday about the damage caused by the storm Xynthia on Saturday night. As she said, we lost one slate off the roof, but the chateau fared far worse.

The Chateau in January

It wasn't until I was looking through some photos I realised how much the chateau had lost from its roof. The carved gable finial has completely detached and fallen, presumably onto their terrace.

Sunday Afternoon. As I type this, the chateau
is being encased in scaffolding

Although we are OK, there is a distinct lack of electricity around the area: Of the people in the area who read the blog regularly, we know that Alex and Nicole are sans barn roof, sans power, sans phone and all their rechargeabale stuff has run out of juice (we've lent them our generator), Tim had no power all day Sunday (and we assume is still without power), Rosemary kept losing power all Sunday , and Ken and Walt were without eletricity last time we spoke to them AND had suffered storm damage as well. We, on the other hand, only lost our internet. It disappeared at 10.00 on Sunday evening, and we didn't get reconnected until 19.06 on Tuesday, which is why this is so late.

Simon

Xynthia Strikes !

During the early hours of Sunday morning a wild storm called Xynthia hit Preuilly. It had come up off the Atlantic through Portugal, through south-west France and went on to hit the north of France, Belgium, and up into Denmark. At least 15 people have been killed in France, and friends of ours to the south, north and west had no electricity, along with a million others.

Our one missing slate.

Luckily, Preuilly seems to have come out of it relatively lightly. We have lost a single ardoise (roof slate) but many houses have lost roofing material, which crashed down into the streets. After a long cold winter, wind gusts of over 100kph was the last straw for some old buildings. There is stone, tile, slate, glass and timber lying in the street. I met the pompiers (fire brigade) this morning blocking off a street because the state of one of the roofs was clearly dangerous. They spent the morning cruising around town assessing the damage and cleaning up where necessary. Many places with big barn doors look like they've had an explosion inside, with the doors straining outwards on metal bars.

The half finished trellis at our verger / potager, looking
distinctly drunken. The only other casualties at the orchard
were a few overwintering cabbages, which have all been beheaded.

A street lamp that has snapped its moorings.

This roof is now so dangerous that
the street below has been blocked off.

The stone apex of the gable on this place
has broken off, taking some slates and a
crenellation with it. Further along the
roof ridge the zinc is lifting.

Susan

Vigilance!!

Phénomènes dangereux.

At least, that's what the weather forecast says. It's been a bit windy here the past couple of days: the wind has been whistling through the telephone lines, and the leylandii trees visible when I turn away from the computer desk have been rocking and rolling.

This was todays official forecast, yesterday evening.
Since then the forecast gust speed has been increased.

Today we are being vigilant for even greater wind, with gusts up to 140kmh forecast. We are in an orange vigilance area, but the red zone starts only 10km away.

Last night at 10.00pm it was very quiet - no wind, a little rain, but some very ominous clouds. At midnight there was still no sign of anything out of the ordinary, but by 3.00am the wires were whistling again. At 5.00 Susan and I got up and did a patrol of the house, which was just as well because one of our barn doors had blown open.

By that stage wind had joined the rain, and sticking one's head out of the door was rewarded with the sound of someone's garden shed in trouble, and the occasional roofing tile hitting the ground. Once it all quietens down I will have a wander around town to see what sort of damage the wind has caused. Growing up in an area where most houses were wooden with tin roofs, I will be interested to see what high winds do to stone houses with tile or slate roofs.

This wall, however, was not the victim of the wind, but either someone cut the corner just a little too fine, or it was just feeling its age and fell down of its own accord. These wall are often made like a sandwich, with the outsides of the walls being mortared in place, then the gap between them filled with rubble and earth (our garage wall was the same). Over time water gets into the wall and washes out the filling, and that's when the wall collapses. It has been down for about 6 months, and apart from the witch's hats, nothing has happened to it since.

Anyhow, tin hats on, and hope for the best!

Simon

Le Gymnase

When we were in Paris at the end of last year we asked the receptionist at our hotel if he knew of anywhere in the area we could get a meal - inexpensive and close by. He suggested a cafe near the metro called le Gymnase, a suggestion we followed and are glad to have done so. That evening we had a great pot au feu for €8.50 each, which for a evening meal in Paris is really good value.

He said it was close:
le Gymnase from our bedroom window

When we were in Paris for Retromobile we dined at le Gymnase again, this time with Liselle. We had the cheap menu (from memory €16.50 for three courses) and a bottle of wine. The main course of magret de canard was lovely - tender, juicy, and tasty, and the dessert was tiramisu (so no complaints there!)

There are thousands of places like this in Paris: quiet, unpretentious, used by locals as a meeting place, serving good food at prices that most people can afford. Don't all head to le Gymnase - next time you're in Paris get out there and find your own little bargain eatery!

Simon

All Change on the Plumbing Front

It has been a while since bathrooms were last mentioned on this blog. This is mainly because plumbing brings out the more colourful aspect of my Anglo Saxon linguistic skills, and these days you can't have bathrooms without plumbing.

We think we have reached our final decision about bathrooms and plumbing and associated excitements. Monseiur Bertucelli (yup, no less than the Maire himself, but wearing his other hat) came last week to listen to our plans, and then sent us a devis for plumbing we feel we can live with. We have decided that the old bathroom, the floor of which I so skilfully replaced last year with the intention of it becoming a shower room, will instead be an enlarged landing for the staircase. This means we will not have a wall at the top of the stairs blocking all the light.

The small room adjoining the guest bedroom, which was to have had a bath, toilet and handbasin, will instead have a shower, toilet and handbasin. The bath will go into a soon to be newly amenaged attic, along with a second handbasin and a huge airing/drying cupboard. We don't get a lot of guests so not having access to the shower won't be a problem most for of the year. (Maybe having bathing facilities will encourage guests to visit. We will wait and see.)

One day all this will be bathroom

Over the last couple of weeks we seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time looking at bathroom furniture and fittings, both online and in various shops. On Wednesday it was the turn of bathroom showrooms and the like in the Poitiers area, Tours having been visited two weeks ago.

Simon

Pressed Beef

Recently I've become a fan of French cook and food writer Sonia Ezgulian. Her little book 'Petits Ricochets de Cuisine' focuses on ideas for getting the most out of a dish or set of ingredients, by getting more than one meal from every cooking session. She deliberately cooks with leftovers in mind.

This pressed beef was created with the leftovers from a daube.

Sonia suggests preparing boeuf bourguignon, being particularly generous with the red wine and stock. Then, with the leftovers, you can make un pressé de boeuf, persillade aux anchois.

Shred the cooked meat, then mix with a ladleful of cooking liquor. Don't strain out the pieces of mushrooms and carrot because they give flavour and colour to the terrine. Heat up some fortified wine like muscat-de-rivesaltes or banyuls and dissolve some softened gelatine in it. Add it to the meat mixture.

Make a hash of parsley, garlic and anchovies in olive oil. Line a terrine with clingfilm and put in half the beef mixture, followed by the persillade, topped off with the rest of the beef. Press it lightly and put in the refrigerator for a few hours to set.

Susan

The Over-Engineered Grape Trellis

Last year our grape vine produced a lot of grapes, most of which were out of reach, 10 metres up a Catalpa tree. This year we have determined that the grapes should come to us rather than the birds, and to this end we have built a grape trellis.

We started the process quite a long time ago (those long dark evenings of winter, don't you know), and soon I had what I thought was a workable plan: the idea being to have a grape trellis that also has a section of roofing from which we can catch water. I drew up a shopping list and we hired a truck from SuperU with which to collect the stuff. That worked out more expensive (€44) than having it delivered (€19), but the advantage was that we didn't have to try explain where it was we wanted the stuff delivered to. It also worked to our advantage as the track up to the jardin was waterlogged where the snow was melting, so we could park on the road and take our time unloading and carrying everything the 100 metres or so.

Truck!!

Last Wednesday Alex met us down at the garden, and we started by measuring where the posts would go. This process was long and involved usage of calculators, bits of string, and setsquares. After a few false starts we dug some holes, mixed some cement and put the pied poteau (metal post saddles) in place.

Using a solar powered calculator in winter.
No wonder it took us ages to get things square!

The saddles were left for almost a week, then yesterday morning we all rolled up - and just after lunchtime: voila! an almost complete grape vine trellis. It still wobbles a bit - we need to brace the corners, but all the basics (with the exception of the roof) are in place. Apart from Alex dropping a 50mmx150mm 4 metres long (and very heavy) beam on his own head, it was quite painless.

Almost there

I was really surprised that we had managed to remember to take all the tools we were going to need, the generator fired up and worked faultlessly (even though it hadn't been started since September 2007) and even though it rained, it wasn't cold (in fact it was mild and even warm at times).

Later this week we will "pop down there and just finish it off" then I can fit up the plumbing for the water tanks. This should reduce the amount of water carrying we have to do to water the potager this summer, something that Susan and I will both be most grateful for.

Simon

Le Safran en Touraine

This is a translation of the text on the table mats used for the Repas Tout Safran.

Preuilly-sur-Claise, saffron fair the 3rd Saturday of February, sale of saffron strands, producers stalls, demonstrations, tastings, Tourangelle Gastronomy. Specialities and saffron menus at our artisans': bakers, delicatessens, butchers and restaurateurs.

Since we thought you might be getting bored with saffron
by now, here is a picture of a goat...

The first Saturday of July sale of bulbs.

The flowers (one to three per bulb) have pale to deep violet corollas, veined with red. Inside are three bright orange stamins on a yellowish style. They surround a scarlet stigma of around three centimetres, branched into three orange red strands which thicken and curl towards the tips. It's this part, once dried, that constitutes the spice.

Planted from mid-July to mid-September, each bulb only flowers once. It is then replaced by one or several bulbs which develop on the upper part. The top dries up, disappearing at the end of the first year, making way for the new bulbs or cloves.

...and a hen with a rooster...

The pale violet flower lasts 48 hours. Harvesting must be done by hand, after a dew, so that the flowers are moist. The flower is then removed. The three scarlet stigmas must be delicately separated from the flower by pinching with a fingernail, just where they join the style.

Then the stigmas are gathered together, and dried to retain the full flavour. Drying methods world wide are different (in the sun in Iran; in an oven or on a silk screen over a charcoal braisier in other places) but the result is the same – the stigmas lose four fifths of their volume.

...and another hen.

In the region of 120 000 to 150 000 flowers are needed to obtain one kilo of dried stigmas, which gives you one kilo of saffron. This represents between 370 and 470 hours of work.

Cultivated from the Middle Ages in France, particularly in the Gâtinais, Rouerge, Quercy, Lot and Touraine, its culture and trade reached its peak in the 19th century. The kings of France published edicts to protect the growing and selling of saffron, which was a source of revenue through taxes for them. In Touraine, a large fair was held in Preuilly-sur-Claise on Saint Luc's Day (17 February). It is referred to at the beginning of the 17th century – 'One can buy there, on that day, quantities of saffron, outside the walls of the town.'

So it was that Paul Mériguet, saffron and truffle enthusiast, who, on the friendly advice of Monsieur and Madame Monnier and Gisèle and Jacques Manreza, started growing saffron in his garden. With the village fête committee in 1999, he resurrected two fairs: one on the 3rd Saturday of February (the closest date to Saint Luc's Day, which is no longer celebrated today) for the sale of stigmas, and the second, the first Saturday in July for the sale of bulbs.

Susan

Repas Tout Safran

The Saffron Feast menu at l'Image this year was:

Duo of salmon and Broccoli with cumin in aspic
Lemon and saffron mayonnaise

***

Navarin of Lamb (a lamb stew with seasonal vegetables) with star anise and saffron strands
Buttered Rice

***

'Red Gold' Crème Brûlée and candied orange peel

Both the navarin of lamb and the crème brûlée were outstanding. Saffron combines particularly well with orange zest and the textures and tastes were beautifully balanced in both dishes. I think this is Jean-Michel's best feast yet.

A Crocus - saffron is the dried stigmas of
the flower - the dark orange bits

The table mats, although just A3 sheets of printed paper, were very attractive and informative. The photographs were taken by our friend Ed Buziak, who lives near Preuilly, and the printing was funded by regional and local government. I will translate the text and post it another day, as it is a most interesting read.

As we were walking home we ran into Stéphane and Valérie, so we went over to their place for a tisane and a chat. They live in the street behind us - in fact, their house is directly behind ours, but we don't have a common boundary. Their house is large and rambling, every room on a different level, and needs as much work as ours (maybe more - it's certainly more complicated than our house).

Stéphane and Valérie are local people who, like many, went away to Paris once they left school, so they could continue their education and/or find work. In their case, they later went even further, and emigrated to Canada. Valérie had trained as a therapist working with very disabled people, teaching them physical co-ordination and spatial awareness, but she couldn't find work in this field in Montreal. When she first arrived she didn't speak English either. She got a job in a psychiatric hospital as an administrator, and learnt English over the next few years. Stéphane trained as a cabinetmaker (ébéniste). He showed us a beautiful hall table he had made out of Australian bloodwood.

Now they have chosen to come back to Preuilly, with their two young sons. Neither is working full time at their profession, although they want to, but the jobs just aren't there in rural France. To help make ends meet Valérie has a second job at the state school. Like many French people of their age and background, they have a very clear idea of what they want their life to be and work very hard to ensure they can live in a place they feel connected to and in a house they love and are determined to save.

They don't get to practice their English much, and feel they are starting to lose it. We pointed out that this wasn't much good for our French, and we need to practice even more than they do. As usual, a lively melange of the two languages was used throughout. I admire their (and Sylvie and Pierre-Yves' and Alex and Nicole's) focus and energy tremendously, but at a decade older, it does make me feel tired sometimes, and a bit worried about my own stamina and determination in similar circumstances.

Susan

The 11ième Renaissance de la Foire au Safran

And the 4th for us yesterday.

The day started with a little snow. I looked out the window when I got up and thought it looked like there was a faint sprinkling on what will become the lawn. Our neighbour Edouard, who gets up much earlier than us, confirmed that it had snowed earlier.

Some snowdrops Galanthus nivalis photographed on Friday in the woods near Humeau. These are doubtless garden escapees, as although snowdrops (called perce-neige in French - 'snow piercer') occur naturally in France, it is only in the mountains, and at less than 100m above sea level, we are definitely lowland.
Simon had only just got up when Pierre-Yves knocked on the door. Could Simon come and help move a piano? I asked if they needed me too, but Pierre-Yves replied that he had les deux jeunes this weekend, so I was not needed. The two young men he referred to are Congolese refugees (known as sans papiers in French). They and their classmates, many with similar backgrounds, live during the week at the Château de Verneuil, getting an academic and vocational education, but whenever they can, these quiet and polite teenagers, who have no family in France, stay with local families.

While Simon was off learning a new word (bosser = work, slog, slave), I went to the boulangerie. Once back at home, we grabbed a cup of coffee and went down to the Salles des Fêtes which was the venue for the Foire au Safran. We chatted with various people, sampled various saffron flavoured foods.

Produce from the fair.

We bought a pain d'épices from Josette Cerniaut. She makes them from organic rye and wheat flour, honey from her own hives and a mixture of spices, which for Preuilly's saffron fair, includes some local saffron. This particular one is also flavoured with preserved oranges. Because this is the third year in a row I have bought something from her, she very kindly gave me a little Christmas tree shaped pain d'épices too.

From Les Délices du Berry we got a jar of pâte à tartiner made from chocolate, milk and cream, sugar and orange rind. We also bought a 'Black Lady' from Fréderic Guillemain. He is the producer from Betz-le-Château who supplies the nearby Michelin starred restaurant. La Dame Noire chickens, also known as La Géline de Touraine, are a local breed, highly regarded for their flavour. They have Label Rouge certification, which guarantees that the chicken is purebred, feed on whole wheat, raised in small flocks of no more than 1000 birds, housed in small traditional sheds and given an outdoor grassy and / or wooded run amounting to at least 4.2 m² per bird. At the time of slaughter the birds are a minimum of 120 days old. These traditional breeds grow more slowly, and never get as big as intensively farmed modern chickens, which are killed at about 80 days.

Susan