Paté de foies et purée de chataignes - Liver Paste and Chestnut Purée

Liver paté is one of the French classic dishes, so when I found 1kg packs of turkey livers on sale for €2.95 I resolved to make a batch. The recipe makes about 2 litres of paté, but you can easily halve the quantities if you don't want to freeze half a dozen pots of paté.

The mixture is very liquid, but run it through a sieve to
prevent weird chewy bits in the paté.

Ingredients:
3 leaves of gelatin
350ml milk
1 large carrot, finely grated
1 can unsweetened chestnut purée
1kg trimmed chicken, duck, turkey or pork liver
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper
A generous pinch of ground allspice
6 egg yolks
5 tbsp cognac or armagnac

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 150C.
2. Soak the gelatin in a small saucepan with 50ml of milk and set aside for 10 minutes to soften.
3. Blend the chestnut purée, livers, salt, pepper and allspice in a food processor.
4. Add the egg yolks and cognac and blend well.
5. Heat the milk and gelatin mixture gently until the gelatin is completely dissolved.
6. Add the gelatin mixture and the rest of the milk to the liver mixture and process until completely smooth.
7. Pour the mixture through a strainer to remove the filmy liver skins and any other lumps or bits. Use a spatula to rub through as much as you can.
8. Stir in the grated carrot. It will almost (but not quite) disappear once the paté is cooked.
9. Pour the mixture into a large terrine dish or several smaller ones.
10.Place them in a baking tray and add enough boiling water to come half way up the sides.
11.Cover loosely with foil and place in the middle of the oven.
12.Bake until set, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The temperature at the centre of the paté should be 60C.
13.Remove from the water bath and allow to cool completely, then refrigerate overnight before serving.

Ready for the oven.

Liver patés traditionally contain pork fat, butter or cream to give them a smooth richness. However Sally Schneider developed a recipe using chestnut purée in paté which gives a similar mouthfeel, so you can avoid unwanted calories without compromising flavour or texture. This is my adaptation of her recipe.

These days there is no need to cover a paté in fat either, especially as many people discard it rather than eat it. It was a way of preserving the paté in the days before refrigeration by sealing the top, thus preventing surface mould growing and spoiling the preparation. Today you can simply pop the paté in the fridge or freezer. The darker colour that develops because it is exposed to the air is merely cosmetic and has no discernible effect on flavour.

Cooked.

Both chestnut purée and grated carrot make excellent paté extenders if you only have a few chicken livers. Two livers with some grated carrot and other ingredients in proportion will make a 300ml pot of paté. The chestnut and the carrot enhance the natural sweetness of the liver and blend in very discreetly. The addition of grated carrot can also work as a way of sneaking some useful fibre and nutrition into any vegephobes or salad dodgers in the household. If you wish, you can substitute natural yoghurt for all or some of the milk, except that in which you soften the gelatin. And remember that the 6 left over egg whites gives you the opportunity to make a small Chocolate Chestnut Soufflé Cake.

Ready to eat.

Serve on thin crustless toast triangles with a rather sweet wine such as Chateau Gaudrelle's Réserve Spéciale.

Susan

500 Year Old Floorboards Reused

These blocks of oak are 500 years old according to Stéphane, and were reclaimed from a floor in a grand old house in Loches that he worked on. They are quarter sawn and show a lovely grain known in French as maille ('chain stitch'). At 40mm, they are twice as thick as modern floorboards. Now, with their age, they are also extraordinarily hard. Stéphane broke several good tools working with this wood.

These particular pieces are two mounts that he fashioned for our staircase lights.

Susan

Tomorrow my mother is back into hospital to have an electronic ignition (known in non-motoring households as a pacemaker) fitted - Simon.

Conjugating the pork products

I photographed this advertisement at Saint Pierre des Corps, the big interchange railway station for Tours where we collect most of our clients, and since then I've seen it on bus shelters and billboards all over - even in Preuilly.

Tours has recently won protected geographical status for one of its local dishes, rillettes de Tours, a type of coarse paté made from shredded pork. The IGP certification means that the food product must be traditionally and (at least partially) processed within a designated geographical area. It looks like the local trade association is having a campaign to encourage people to buy local artisan made rillettes. There are 20 manufacturers of rillettes de Tours allowed to use the certification, so hopefully all of them benefit from this advertising.

The ad is fun for us Tourangelle French learners as it plays on conjugating a (non-existant) verb. Rille is apparently an old French word for a piece of pork, and rillons are bitesized chunks of slow-cooked pork. The joke, or perhaps play on words is a better term, is possible because rillettes and rillons look like plausible verb conjugations for vous (you) and nous (us). Conjugue is also used in the general sense of 'combine' (as for the ingredients in a recipe).

Proper French speakers will no doubt just groan at the silly puns, learners like me will get a little thrill out of thinking they understand the joke and non-French speakers, who only have to access the meaning via my explanation will just go 'well, maybe you had to be there...'

Susan

An Antique Woodworking Plane - un rabot ancien

Grandpa's plane, displayed in the staircase niche.

Just recently my parents sent me a family heirloom. Dad told me it is a plough plane that was owned and used by my mother's father and his father. It was made in England, from Boxwood with a handmade steel blade and nicker blade, brass screws and fittings and dates from sometime in the second half of the 19th century. The nicker blade precedes the main blade and ensures a clean edge to the cut, especially working across the grain. One end is stamped W.G. Mold (my great-grandfather) and W. Beal. At first I thought W. Beal must be the maker, as this name stamp is in the position makers names normally appear, but my parents have another plane stamped with a known manufacturer, Martin & Shaw, and W. Beal, so we think W. Beal must be a previous owner, not a toolmaker. It would have been handmade but most likely in a professional tool making workshop, although many craftsmen made tools for themselves from time to time too. It appears to be in full working order - many of these planes lose their nicker blades over time as they were sometimes a nuisance if you were not cutting across the grain and would be removed and mislaid.

Looking down on the plane.

Plough planes are an early type of router, used to make grooves, but talking to Stéphane and my research on the internet suggests that Grandpa's plane is actually a type of rabbet (rebate) plane, probably used to make the rebates on the edges of doors. Cabinetmakers and joiners such as my grandfather would have had a considerable set of planes with different profiles and for slightly different jobs. According to my father there are about 18 of them left but there may once have been many more. Some we know were destroyed in a bushfire in the 1960s and it was not uncommon for joiners to have had over a hundred planes.

The underside. The blade is showing at bottom centre
and the little nicker blade to its left.

In the 20th century planes like these were made from cast iron rather than wood. Stanley seems to have been the leading brand. In Preuilly there are quite a few collections of woodworking tools, as there was a large furniture factory here, employing many menuisiers (joiners) and ébenistes (cabinetmakers) making high quality pieces that were sold all over the world. After having been the biggest employer in town, fashions and economies changed and the factory laid off virtually all its workers a few years ago. Now the cabinetmakers are pensioners and they and their tools live in retirement. Undoubtedly many of them will have rabots a feuillurer, as rabbet planes are known in French, sitting in workshops and attics.

A side view. You use it from right to left and the blade is
held in place by the wooden wedge top right.

I will need to carefully clean Grandpa's plane. To do this I probably need to take it apart, then gently rub with a barely damp cloth, followed by waxing. It's important I don't get too carried away and damage the patina. It suffered slight damage in transit, so I also need to glue a sliver back on one corner.

Susan

Note the plane appears virtually identical to this wedge stemmed sash fillister plane I found for sale on the internet. Fillisters are a type of rabbet plane, very similar in design to a plough plane. I had hoped that Grandpa's plane would turn out to be what is called a guillaume in French. Since Guillaume is French for William it would be fun if that's what I could call William Mold's plane, but it seems that guillaumes were used to make complex curved mouldings, and Grandpa's plane has a straight blade.

Careful of that Wall!

The new chaux-chanvre (hemp straw lime render) walls on the staircase will take months to fully dry. They are no longer disconcertingly damp to the touch, but they are still soft enough to damage. This makes life a bit difficult when you need to install light fittings and stand on a ladder.

Stéphane decided that padding the top of the ladder would spread the load and prevent any gouging or denting of the render when he fitted the lights. He more or less got away with it.

The padding is an old pinafore of mine, made from a limited edition pure wool cloth woven in Geelong and given to me by my mother. It is one of many of my clothes from the 80s that have ended up in the ragbag because I am now a completely different size and shape. I can't help feeling sad when I see them because I put a lot of creative time and energy into those garments. For more than a decade from my mid-twenties onwards these clothes were a large part of my identity, a signature style unique to me. I sometimes wonder if I should have given in to sentiment and kept them as a sort of archive. Realistically though, they are not museum quality costumes and there is no one after me who will know anything about them or care. And yet... and yet... I am sad to treat them so disrespectfully. I feel they represent someone who no longer exists, but I'm not sure how important that is. Why should they not be put to use in this new life and be valued for that random little nostalgic frisson that comes with suddenly seeing them and remembering their story? Perhaps it is the memories and not the objects that matter in this case, as they are so personal to me.

Susan

It'll Buff Out

A couple of weeks ago we finished work for the year, and the intention was to use the winter layoff to do some decoration at home and some little repair and updating work on Célestine. I even said at the time that "Today I will be sitting in the car park at Chenonceau for the 21st time this year."

What I thought would be happening

Unfortunately, Célestine decided to take matters into her own hands. After day one of the two day tour we left the clients at their hotel and drove to our own hotel to drop off our bags. Having done that, we set off to find something for dinner only for what appeared to be a flat battery causing a failure to progress. I tried all my usual coaxing tricks, but she wasn't having it - until suddenly the starter sprung into life, but not turning the motor over.

It was at this stage Susan noticed smoke coming from the dashboard.

Naturally this provoked a rapid response, but the battery was soon disconnected and the smoke stopped. Although we were puzzled, it did explain the smell of overheated rubber we had been noticing a for a while (For those who aren't au fait with old cars and their habits, new smells are as much a point of interest - but not a real cause for worry - as new noises. You investigate but don't panic.)

After some prodding and poking a wire was discovered trapped between two pieces of metal and a rubber seal. This was soon sorted, but left us with the issue of non-starting. It was at this stage we decided to roll start the car, drive home, and collect Reggie the Renault to complete our second day's work.

A kilometre down the road there was a very disturbing "CRACK" from the front end, followed by a grinding noise. This prompted an illegal but excusable u-turn and a return to the hotel. In desperation we phoned Jean-Louis, Traction Avant expert, mechanical genius and all round good guy, who said he would get a trailer and come and collect Célestine and find out what was the problem.

All we had to do was get to bed (without dinner, I may never recover from the trauma) and hire a car for the second day's work. Luckily the hotel was on a Tours bus route, so at 7.15 we caught the bus into town, hired a car from Avis (very expensive on a walk-in basis) and did our job. This meant that my last visit to the Chenonceau carpark for the year was in a Volkswagen Polo rather than Célestine.

Investigating with Jean-Louis

The next day I was off to London to see my dad, so work really didn't progress. Jean-Louis made some minor repairs to the starter and sorted out some of the wiring issues, but couldn't quite work out what the noise was, apart from thinking it might have been the differential. It was only ater we visited him on Monday, that on rolling Célestine into his garage he heard another crack, looked underneath, and spotted the problem.

It should just buff out...

There was no clue before that this was the problem - we must have lost all of the gearbox oil on the first crack, with the fissure spreading enough to be noticeable only when the steering wheel was turned to put the car in Jean-Louis' garage.

We are now looking for a gearbox, but there are a few knocking around and Jean-Louis doesn't think it's going to be a major problem. There is a bourse on this weekend where we may find exactly what we are looking for. It may even give us the chance to sort out a slightly different set of cogs for a higher cruising speed.

The joys of motoring...

Simon

What's Happening in and Around Preuilly in December?

This time last year we were demolishing
the last of the horrible old kitchen.
It now looks like this.

Friday 2 - Saturday 3 - Téléthon, raising money for muscular dystrophy throughout France.

December last year Jean-Pierre gave me some little ferns.
It was to be the last time I saw him.

Saturday 10 - Café Franco-anglais, 16.00 - 18.00 au Panier d'Alice, la Celle-Guenand.

A 3kg box of oysters at Christmas time is a seasonal treat for us.

Sunday 18 - obviously the most important date of the year - my birthday.

In the Téléthon classic car convoy last year, collecting funds
raised in the villages around Preuilly. It was perishing!

Thursday 20 - the 40th anniversary of the creation of Medecins sans frontières (known in North America as Doctors Without Borders). This remarkable organisation was formed by a small group of French doctors and journalists in reaction to the Biafran famine. Since then they have expanded to services administered from 19 different countries and provided medical aid in times of natural disaster and political upheaval all over the world. The timeline on their website is well worth reading. If you are looking for a charity to support, you can't get much more worthwhile than these guys.

The view from our spare bedroom window this time last year.

Susan

Good Idea, but...

The other day Stéphane brought a trailer load of sand up and parked in our backyard. He spent the morning making concrete. At lunchtime he found he had some concrete left over, so he decided to use it up by filling in some potholes in our driveway.

Good idea, but...he had forgotten that his car and trailer were trapped on the wrong side of the newly filled potholes. Oops...

Fortunately, his lunch was within walking distance, and I set up a red triangle to warn our neighbours when they came home for lunch.

Susan

XYZ

The 2011 XYZ Festival of New Words is held in Le Havre every year. It's a celebration of neologism and is intended to provoke debate on the French language and bring it into the 21st Century (I typed 20th century first time around, but that may be unfair...)

This weekend the festival announced its word of the year:

attachiant(e) – someone you cannot live with but cannot live without. A combination of attachant (captivating, endearing) and the slang word chiant (bloody nuisance).

Second was aigriculteur - a farmer unhappy with his lot in life. A combination of agriculteur (farmer) with aigri (embittered) and with just a hint of aïe! (French for ouch!).

I took this photo last week on the outskirts of London

Other words the festival has thrown up are bête seller, describing a particularly awful literary work that becomes an instant hit, the timely eurogner – euro plus rogner (to cut down) – to suggest making savings in the euro zone, and a verb, textoter (to write SMS messages on a mobile telephone), to compliment last year's winner, a phonard – a pejorative term for someone who is glued to their mobile phone.

Canary Wharf, London. The natural habitat of phonards

Even though I have read a number of bête seller in the past, the only one of these words I can imagine I will use with any frequency is phonard, but it's good to know the other words are available, just in case.

Simon

On a Christmas Theme

We were surprised and delighted; we had not suspected that Loches was so good. I hardly know what is best there: the strange and impressive little collegial church, with its romanesque atrium or narthex, its doorways covered with primitive sculpture of the richest kind, its treasure of a so-called pagan altar, embossed with fighting warriors, its three pyramidal domes, so unexpected, so sinister, which I have not met elsewhere, in church architecture.

Henry James, A Little Tour In France.

Henry James called it correctly: the narthex of St-Ours in Loches is indeed impressive. A narthex, or porch, is traditionally where people who were not communicants of a church could stand outside the church, but still under cover, to hear the sermon. There was usually also a font, so that people could be baptised symbolically on the journey into the church. The doorway into the church proper is surrounded by a fully carved 12th century nativity, with some interesting touches.

The Holy Family: Mary on the left, with the
baby on her knee, and Joseph on the right.

The other major players in the drama which is the door are the Magi, the term used for the priestly caste of the Zoroastrianism religion. Three (out of a possible 12* or so) are shown in adoration (to the left of the Holy Family)...

and also to the right, asleep (under the same blanket!) and being visited by an angel who is warning them not to visit King Herod and also of the coming massacre of the innocents.

The angel is in blue, hovering above the nicely carved blanket which covers the recumbent Magi.

If you're ever in Loches, follow in the footsteps of Henry James (and us) and visit the porch of the church on the hill - don't forget also to call in to see the tomb of Agnes Sorel.

Simon

*Western Christianity assumes three Magi, because they carried three gifts. Eastern Christianity favours a slightly more companionable group of twelve. I assume they all chipped in...

Three Photos of Water

When I was in London last week I took quite a few photos. These are three of my favorites, and all of them are photos of the River Thames.

The first gives a very small idea of what the Thames must have looked like 50 years ago. In those days large boats were still travelling up river to disgorge cargo from around the world, some of them travelling as far as the Pool of London, between Tower Bridge and London Bridge. In its full glory it looked like this, now almost no seagoing vessels venture this far upstream.

The second photo is from the balcony of the apartment my brother rented in Canary Wharf. As much as I do not like Canary Wharf and its associated shopping hell, it has to be said there are some good views to be had.

The third photo was taken at Leigh on Sea, late on Sunday afternoon. Leigh on Sea is famous for cockles, so Uncle Geoff and I decided to be true East Londoners and promenade along the waterfont eating shellfish from a bag.


Simon

The Niche

I wrote about a month ago that we were making a niche in the wall of the staircase. This is to allow us to display some of the stuff we have accumulated over the years.

Now that the walls of the staircase are finished we have installed the lighting, which makes the stairs a bright and attractive place (and safe!), and put the first item in the niche.

This is a late 19th century plough plane - a router for cutting grooves. It was Susan's great-grandfather's and arrived here a week ago.

I am really pleased with the whole thing: walls, niche and lighting. All we need do now is sand and varnish the stairs and that part of the job is finished.

Simon

Getting Wintery

On Tuesday I was in Chatellerault enjoying the sun in shirtsleeves, yesterday I was sitting by the fire avoiding the grey skies. Winter seems to have arrived in a real hurry, although not in as much of a hurry as on Google Maps...

Start here, then click on the arrow to advance one step

For those who don't do interactivity,
here is what you're missing.

This time last year it started snowing, so I guess anything is possible...

Simon

Cinq-Mars-la-Pile

“ …En ceste mesmes saison, Fayoles, quart roy de Numidie, envoya du pays de Africque à Grandgousier une jument la plus énorme et la plus monstreuse […], car elle estoit grande comme six oriflans, et avoit les pieds fenduz en doigtz comme le cheval de Jules Cesear, […]. Mais sus tout avoit la queue horrible, car elle estoit, poy plus poy moins, grosse comme la pile Sainct Mars, auprès de Langès, et ainsi quarrée , avecques les brancars ny plus ny moins ennicrochéz que sont les espicz au bled."*

François Rabelais, Gargantua, XVI

On the Monday before I went to London we were working, and we managed to visit a new place for us, The pile of Cinq Mars.

This is a bit of a mystery: a 2nd century Roman (or at least Gallo-Roman: that is built by locals who wanted to show how Roman they were) tower. No-one is quite sure what it is - or was - although a funerary monument is the current front runner. Made of brick and standing exactly 100 roman feet (29.4 metres) high, it sits overlooking a bend in the river Loire at Cinq-Mars-la-Pile. It contains about 100,000 bricks surrounding an infill of rubble, which can been seen in various places where we assume treasure hunters have been at work.

At the top on the tower and facing the river are twelve decorative panels, patterns of brick and cut stone. These are more commonly found in buildings in Ostia, the port city of Rome, and may give some indication of the background of the person who had the monument built.

Numerous excavations have taken place, the latest being in 2005. During the course of the work a stone built terrace was excavated, as well as a small building. A statue was also found, of Sabazius, an eastern deity very rare especially in Gaul and northern Gaul. Originally Phrygian, Sabazios was worshiped as a god similar to Dionysus. He was the son of Zeus and Persephone. The results of this excavation are here (or machine translated, here)

Simon

*In the same season Fayoles, the fourth King of Numidia, sent out of the
country of Africa to Grangousier the most hideously great mare that ever
was seen, and of the strangest form, for you know well enough how it is
said that Africa always is productive of some new thing. She was as big as
six elephants, and had her feet cloven into fingers, like Julius Caesar's
horse, with slouch-hanging ears, like the goats in Languedoc, and a little
horn on her buttock. She was of a burnt sorrel hue, with a little mixture
of dapple-grey spots, but above all she had a horrible tail; for it was
little more or less than every whit as great as the steeple-pillar of St.
Mark beside Langes: and squared as that is, with tuffs and ennicroches or
hair-plaits wrought within one another, no otherwise than as the beards are
upon the ears of corn.

Quality Dad Time

When I left my parents standing in a queue at Charles de Gaulle airport on the 10th of July 2011, I didn't expect that I would be seeing either of them any time soon.

Sometimes fate takes a hand in matters, and in this case it was not good news. My father's brother had become seriously ill, and on Saturday 5th November he died. Dad immediately said he wanted to attend the funeral (naturally) and so almost a week later he arrived in London, accompanied by my brother and his wife. Susan and I were working and so couldn't attend the funeral, but a couple of days later I caught the train from Tours to London so I could spend some quality time with my Dad.

We did lots of stuff, none of it world changing, but really pleasant and quite relaxing. On Thursday we visited the city of London, calling in to see the collection at the Soane Museum before walking from Lincoln Inn Fields to Aldwych - via Westminster Palace. Along the way we tried to visit the London Transport Museum (placemark B - too expensive, we didn't go in), The Da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery (placemark D - sold out) and the Banqueting Hall (placemark E - closed for a banquet). I did, however, manage to show him Brydges Place (placemark C - London's narrowest street, not marked on google) and the Roman Bath (placemark F, a misnomer). After that, we caught a Routemaster bus back to Tower Hill and then on to our accommodation.

On - and off - the Buses

On Friday night Dad was leaving to return to Australia, but I hired a car and we filled in the day by visiting the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. A great Boys Day Out was had with hundreds of aircraft and lots of photo opportunities. The weather was really pleasant, amazing for November in East Anglia, and it was good to see some of the English countryside with my Dad, something we probably haven't done since I was 7.

Peace and Love and Understanding?

Like a Hurricane

We arrived back at Heathrow in plenty of time to have a coffee and a chat, and then Dad was off on the plane (hadn't he had enough of them by now?). I hope we can have a repeat visit of that kind: short and full-on, blokes doing stuff.

It is to be recommended.

Simon

The 2011 Butterfly Report

Over the past year I have been surveying the butterflies of the area as part of a scheme administered by the MNHN (National Natural History Museum). I have two 2km squares randomly allocated and I walk 5 short routes in each once a month between April and September, counting numbers and species of butterflies.

Violet Fritillary, on a violet.

It has proved to be a fascinating exercise and a great way to get to know the local habitat through the seasons. This year we had an exceptionally dry and warm spring and a warm and somewhat wet summer.

Southern White Admiral.

This has resulted in some winners, mostly woodland species, and some losers, mostly grassland species. Some species have occurred in exceptionally high numbers, such as Orange Tips Anthocharis cardamines (l'Aurore in French) in the spring and White Admirals Limenitis camilla (le Petit Sylvain in French) in the summer. Some species have been shockingly absent - I didn't record a single Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria (le Tircis in French) on any of my transects, yet this is normally a very common woodland butterfly. My beloved Glanville Fritillaries Melitaea cinxia (la Mélitée du plantain in French) seem to have been badly knocked by the dry spring, but their close cousins the Knapweed Fritillaries Melitaea phoebe (le Grand Damier in French) did very well. It seems to be a difference in caterpillar food plants, with the Speedwell that the Glanvilles need in the late spring being greatly reduced by the dry weather.

Purple Hairstreak.

The Lycaenidae (Blues) have mostly had a poor year, with very few Holly Blues Celastrina argiolus (l'Azuré des nerpruns in French) in the spring and low numbers of Common Blues Polyommatus icarus (l'Argus bleu in French) and Provencal Short-Tailed Blues Everes alcetas (l'Azuré de la faucille in French) in the summer. Happily, the rare Large Blue Maculinea arion (l'Azuré du serpolet in French) seems to have had a good year and I observed them on several occasions, including an egg laying female.

Knapweed Fritillary.

I observed 45 species in total and 1417 individual butterflies while surveying. The most abundant species overall was the Meadow Brown Maniola jurtina (le Myrtil in French), which also topped the monthly bills for May and August. The most abundant species in April was the Brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni (le Citron in French), June was heaving with Marbled Whites Melanargia galathea (le Demi-deuil in French), July was the time of the Gatekeeper Pyronia tithonus (l'Amaryllis in French) and in September the Small Whites Pieris rapae (la Piéride de la rave in French) came into their own. There were a number of species that I only saw one each of: Mallow Skipper Carcharodus alceae (la Grisette in French), Large Chequered Skipper Heteropterus morpheus (le Miroir in French), Purple Hairstreak Neozephyrus quercus (la Thécla du chêne in French), Sooty Copper Lycaena tityrus (l'Argus myope in French) and Dark Green Fritillary Argynnis aglaja (le Grand Nacré in French). Sometimes only seeing a single individual in the survey is just bad luck - I saw normal numbers of Purple Hairstreaks and Sooty Coppers in the course of my daily observations outside the restrictions of the survey. I also saw Mallow Skippers, but felt that their numbers might be a bit low this year. I recorded no Scarce Swallowtails at all while surveying, but saw them regularly in the summer. The reason for this is probably because this species is very much a garden (or orchard) butterfly, and my survey sites are cereal crop margins, limestone ridges, natural grasslands and forest rides.

Great Banded Graylings.

If you are interested in the complete species list I have updated the Loire Valley Nature butterfly list to show species seen on the survey in blue, but I have not given any indication of numbers there.

Susan

Five years On

It is five years ago today that this house became ours*, and just over two and a half years since we moved in.

The day we paid for the house we started clearing the garden

Because we bought just before winter kicked in (and Susan had caught a serious cold the day we bought the house anyway) it wasn't until April 2007 that we got around to installing running water and toilet facilities. This meant that we could stay in the house, camping in the salon. It was bitterly cold, but we were excited by the thought of having what was at that time basically a holiday home in France.

In September 2007 work on repairing the hole above the staircase and the graineterie roof started. This was our first major works: previous to that most of the work done was cleaning and demolishing stuff, something I have got really good at over the years.

February 2008 saw the introduction of electricity to the house. When we bought the house there was an electricity supply, but it was extremely feeble and a bit (well, a lot) haphazard. It took EDF 18 months to get around to visiting and changing the supply to single phase power that was usable.

In July 2008 we shifted the old bathtub, which was fun (if a bit scary), then in September we had our first house guests: Susan's sister and b-i-l visited and stayed in the house - all our previous visitors had stayed in either the Hotel l'Image, or in a gite. Or in Adrian's case, a caravan in the back garden.

December 2008 was our first Christmas in Preuilly, and by jingo was it cold!! We survived by wearing every item of clothing we had in France and eating well.

A month later, and my house in Australia was finally sold, which allowed us the freedom to set a date for moving to France.

Sunrise in France, taken at Calais the day we moved here

In June 2009 we had the first signs of bathing in a civilised manner, and July was staircase month. In October the fireplace and chimney went in, and life was really beginning to get comfortable: not only were we no longer living in one room (the salon) we could wash and stay warm!

Since then work on the house has continued more or less non stop. In the past two years we have insulated the whole house, built two bathrooms and a kitchen and put in electricity and proper plumbing. In the garden we have a fence and gates to make it look like a proper garden, and somewhere nice to sit when the weather is good. The house itself has been re-roofed, the walls given a frame to stop them falling down, and varous windows have been replaced.

We have made friends, bought an orchard, Célestine came into our lives, and we started making an income.

All in all, not a bad five years....

Simon

*you can tell how new we were to blogging - even this momentous event took us two months to report.

Progress in Preuilly

A new street goes in.

The local council is developing a parcel of land up on the ridge behind the chateau and close to the road to Loches. Previously the land had been ploughed and the farmer who owned it grew crops such as wheat. Soon it will be housing blocks, including some for supported housing, and a new police station.

Looking towards the new development (far right)
from one of the rural routes.

Susan