Ok, not normal for me to blog twice in two days but I did say that I would try and get some pics of the reclaimed wood work I've done. I haven't got a camera, as I said before but I thought I'd have a go with the camera on the computer. It's not the best so apologies for the quality. I just thought I'd put some on so you can see what we've done.

Kitchen-diner

3 views of the pallet table and dog!

Pallet WC complete with mad toddler!

Pallet work top. The surface to the right (At right angle to the pallet work top) is made from reclaimed shelving.

 Pallet WC sans toddler

Pallet mirror frame and shelf. The mirror itself is from a charity reclamation shop in Eymoutiers called Le monde allant vers. http://www.lemondeallantvers.org/ Mrs Powell made the hearts from left over fabric.

Spring into Action

So, winter officially stops the day after tomorrow. It was cold, as foretold, but we managed. It did look like it was all over last week (We actually had lunch outside one day) but Winter had one more trick up his sleeve and dumped about a foot and half of snow on the region in two days. Forecasts say it’s getting warmer so once the snow has gone digging is back on the agenda. Not the greatest news as I managed to hurt my back lifting 1 metre pieces of oak! It’s getting better and perhaps the exercise will do it good. Here’s hoping.

 On the agenda this spring are, duck/geese enclosure, build a poly tunnel, finish digging, set up a permiculture garden (With some help from my friend whose blog I’m going to attempt to put a link to on this page, watch this space) and plant lots of fodder crops for the piggies. The Millevache Plateau have given us more work to do. Our septic tank “does not comply” Well cheers for telling us that now instead of in June when we bought the place. Apparently they couldn’t confirm it because no one was living here. Having seen what it actually was they needed to find why they couldn’t tell us then is a mystery. Poke a stick down it to find the drainage pipe, it’s not there, it doesn’t comply. What a joke! So two options, re place/upgrade it or change the system to not needing one. Composting toilets and grey water treatment are our preferred options but knowing this place it will be difficult as it’s different, but let’s see.

Mrs Powell finally has a Carte Vitale and the request for photos came through today for mine. This means I can hurt myself and get treated! Won’t be celebrating a la Joey from Friends, mind. Still waiting for my social security number though. I can’t imagine the rugby result will speed things up!

In the house, the upstairs toilet is now finished (Just in time to be changed again if we go for the eco friendly version!!) Built nearly everything using pallet wood so only had to buy a new sink. Downstairs the main kitchen diner is a couple of steps closer to being finished. I’ve made a worktop and a table from pallets. The table has a wobble but it adds charm. How many French restaurants have you been to with bits of card holding up the table legs. I’ve also put in another worktop made from some reclaimed wood that we actually found in the outbuildings. As of yet everything in the kitchen is second hand or reclaimed so keeping towards our goal of sustainable renovating.

All the animals are doing well. Poor old Bob² (The Cockerel) got a bit of frostbite on his comb but serviced his ladies to make up for it! It also turns out a snow covered pig ark is really quite warm, not that I’ve slept in it, but I have got in with them to see!

So, with one of the best times of year  for the garden coming up we should be back on with lots of time outdoors which is why we did this in the first place. Must finish True Blood season 5 before the good weather kicks in. Is Bill a goodie or a baddie? A couple of episodes to find out! We sort of managed to play the game Carcassonne with Little Powell (he teamed up with mummy) expecting him to be beating us at it soon! I will endeavour to blog more often but without a camera (But we get some when friends with cameras come to visit!) there is often not a lot to share especially during the frozen winter. When we eventually get one I will try to get some shots of the handiwork on.

Happy New Year

Christmas (or as I like to call it the hijacked pagan winter festival) has been and gone, just like the New Years hangover. Friends have come to stay and we’ve all eaten and drunk too much. No one made a fool of themselves and a good time was had by all. Back to “work” then. We’ve had two new arrivals at the house....don’t get too excited its pigs. Two girls named sausage and bacon. Ironically they are Gloucester Old Spot crosses. Crossed with what we’re not sure but it looks pretty certain to be wild boar. They are very hairy and the one of them has the distinctive flat face of a boar. Having once acquired the result of a similar “accident” at Stroud market we are very excited to taste the result next autumn.

For reasons best known to the continental winds we are experiencing a warm spell. Therefore, we are not yet experiencing the harsh end of a Correzienne winter. We had a small taster at the start of December when everyone shot out to put the winter tyres on the car and got to try them out on some real snow surfaces. On the whole the roads get cleared pretty quickly, a far cry from our experiences back in ol’ Blighty. However, don’t plan on doing anything between Saturday lunchtime and Monday morning if it’s snowing. This is the only time the ploughs don’t come out. Sundays off being as sacred as the two hour lunch break! The big upside to our warm winter is that after a month off, the chickens are laying again and the ground is soft enough to dig so my winter break off digging is no more. However, this does mean I have more time to do it. Taking John Seymour’s advice I’m going for 30min a day rather than a mad rush in the Spring to get them ready for planting. Wood processing is also back on the agenda. Frequent trips back and forth to our lay-by and we should have it all back home by February. Experimentation with the chainsaw has begun. Two mushrooms down, perhaps I’ll try an eagle next!

Yet again we also find ourselves waiting for French paperwork to sort it’s self out. Still no social security numbers, don’t worry France we only asked for them in JULY! Even our French friends are now rolling their eyes about it (rather than the usual bof). That must mean it’s taking a long time, even by French standards! Then there’s the guy at the equivalent of the CSA who doesn’t understand that we can’t give him Jan-Jan salary P60s because we do it April-April in England. Despite explaining this he just keeps asking for the same thing, which doesn’t exist! Ah France. We were warned about this sort of thing so we were expecting it, just need to learn to bof!

We’ve finished Buffy. Game of Thrones next. We’re over halfway through series one and Sean Bean isn’t dead yet. NO spoilers please. New game as well, Shear Panic. Move around sheep and try to get to Roger the Ram (boom boom). More fun fuelled evenings ahead.

.......Winter is Coming!

Brrrrrr

I currently sit in a living room, in November, at 800m alt, whilst it hammers down with rain that has a 1m² hole in the wall! Why? Today I knocked a hole in it for the flue of your new log burner. Which means that at last we might actually be able to heat our home with wood this week! It will mark the end of a saga worthy of Tolkein, full of waiting and far flung conflict. We ordered our wood and burner way back in July but due to unforeseen circumstances we are only now getting it in. Wood is from just up the road so 2-3 times a week we go up, chainsaw it up and carry it back in our newly acquired citron xsara (a result of the accident in the Landy Grrrrrrrrr) It will take a while but we’ve think we’ve bought enough to last us well into next winter. The installation of the burners will mark a turning point at Chez Powell as we will now be able to make the downsairs of the house look less like a building site and more like a home.

It’s been slow progress here, hence the delay in the post, despite the fact we haven’t stopped. However the eventual B&B rooms are now decorated and “with bed” and we’ve learned how to hand rear baby rabbits. This is because mummy rabbit died a week into their lives and to give them the best chance we’ve bottle fed them. However at such a young age the odds it seems are really stacked against you and despite starting with 10 we now only have 3 living quite happily in the kitchen (Their eventual resting place!) They get infections, drown in milk and just generally struggle with being alive. Hopefully next years litters/mums will fair better.

Playing rugby in France is a different experience a far cry from the physicality I’ve grown used to in Gloucestershire(where training is just as dangerous, if not more so than a game) but there is a lot more support from the town in both numbers and investment. People pay to come and watch and both teams (firsts and reserves) play one after the other with a sizable crowd turning up to watch. I am starting to get used to complex backs move and watching ball get kicked backwards and forwards but I still like to resort to stick it up your jumper and go forwards until you score or someone stops you! Old habits die hard (Oh and Die Hard 5, really?)

Board games and DVD box sets feature heavily in an evening’s entertainment here and we are racking up some heavy scores in Agricola (A farming based very complex game). Buffy the Vampire Slayer is into season 3, so we’re getting dark! It is nice not to have telly (as in “live” or access to iplayer and 4OD). Removes the temptation to just sit and channel hop.

So, here’s to warm evenings, cooking with wood, watching teen horror based comedies and bracing ourselves for “the coldest place on Earth” or “little Russia” as the occupying Germans called la Correze during the war.

 

Back to the land of the information super highway we return. Two months since our last entry. Takes that long to set up internet in the Correze! But, it arrives via microwaves so we can also thaw out our dinner at the same time as surfing the net!! What a two months it has been. Lots done here and even more still to do. Thought the best way to keep you the devoted reader in the know with this entry is to keep things simple and write a list of things that have been done. I will endeavour to expand, for those of you who are interested at a later date but for now......... In no particular order.

o   Painted rooms white (Mostly done by in laws on their visit)

o   Built two rabbit houses, obtained two rabbits, one at market one from friend, both escaped, both came back, mated rabbits, awaiting results.

o   Learned how to despatch, skin and gut rabbits.

o   Built chicken house and enclosure, got 5 chickens (4 girls 1 cockerel), cockerel escaped and came back, reoccurring theme here?

o   Found traditional fireplace in kitchen, boarded up and, as with most French houses, very “tastefully” decorated.

o   Demolished not so traditional fireplace in living room.

o   Built fence round dog and human garden.

o   Double dug 3 large veg beds and single dug 2 small fruit beds. 3 more veg beds to go but I’m on digging strike until the weather cools down. Digging in 30^oC is not fun.

o   Been given two ovens, one electric one wood fuelled (For the traditional fireplace in the kitchen.

o   Written off the Land Rover. Discovered that the garage owner had sent wrong paperwork to DVLA. AAARRRGGGHHHHH!!

o   Drove the mayor’s car for a week.

o   Bought a French car.

o   Filled out ALOT of French paperwork.

o   Discovered a new unit of time. The Correzian Moment.

o   Played my French debut performance. Went down a lot better than my Belgian debut (No jazz just Nick Drake, didn’t go down well but that’s a different story)

o   Destroyed a drill bit trying to drill through Granite walls.

o   Met a lot of very nice people who have been very helpful.

o   Signed up for the local rugby team and have discovered that the ERFU haven’t changed since 1900.

o   Eaten a lot of cheese, bread and some strange sausages but despite this am losing weight, happy happy days!

o   Broken countless glasses and things on the tiled unbreakable floor.

Well not all plain sailing but we are now eating eggs and veg from the garden and enjoyed the good weather so we are now finally on the way to achieving the goal of self sufficiency en France. I hope that you will keep reading as our adventures surely will get harder as the year progresses . And finally as promised............

Start Spreading the News.........

The scenery changes as you leave Eymoutiers and climb uphill into la Correze. It changes from rolling hills, fields and little woods into dark forests, little meadows and soaring buzzards. Despite the fact they are both in the Limousin they could be in completely different ends of the country. The only clue to the fact that they are in the same Region is the ever present Limousin cow, a sort of tidier version of its Scottish highland cousin.

Tomorrow, when we cross the departmental boarder we will be doing it as full time French residents. It will be the second time we’ve done it this week. Last week we set off from Portsmouth (An SO postcode but everyone in Hampshire knows that Locks Heath is in Portsmouth really!)  with a tail lift van packed to the rafters with all our worldly possessions. Overnight on the cheap and cheerful LD lines ferry and seven hour drive across what feels like the entire length of France, but in reality only half of it, and we arrived in Bugeat. Bugeat is our closest town and despite the fact it is only the size of a small Cotswold village has a butchers, bakers (No candlestick makers) a newsagent, a small supermarket, a vet, a doctors, a school and college, 3 restaurants, 3 garages and a train station. We stayed overnight in a B&B ran by some fellow ex-pats. Great place with a friendly dog and even friendlier owners. Within 2 hours of staying there we were given an old wood fuelled oven to install at chez Powell and an introduction to Correze generosity. This sort of thing happens all the time apparently, one story tells of a couple who took their aged Labrador to the vet for its final visit and came away with a stay Alsatian cross as compensation! The next day involved signing the deeds, translated for us with another expat from the town. By 6.30pm we were unpacked and settled into our electric-less, waterless house that is now, home.

A winter where temperatures reached -27^oC led to pipes freezing and bursting all over the region so to find two in a house where no one has lived for two years wasn’t really a surprise, but a broken meter demonstrated how damaging these low temperatures can be. It did give us an opportunity to experience a French DIY store which was all we hoped it would be. Eyed with suspicion as soon as we spoke English to one another and it took nearly half an hour for the shop worker to collect the lawnmower from the back that we decided to get at the same time. However this was all done with a friendliness seldom seen in the English counterparts. Whilst we waited everyone who walked past us nodded and said “Bonjour” and we ended up with some free copper pipe to fix our burst pipes because it was the last one left and had a very slight bend in it.

So, tomorrow we leave for France for the final time. The new old car (a second hand r reg Land Rover Discovery with rusty wheel arches and a leaky sunroof) is packed with what is left of our stuff, clothes, some food, a couple of board games and 8 tomato plants. The boy is in bed and the dogs wish they were. All ready for the final long drive through the ever changing scenery of France. The new life starts here. The house won’t have electrics until next week so we will be effectively camping in our own home. We have to mow the lawn because vipers are a real danger in the region and put up a fence because our stupid dog will simply run off into the forests if we don’t. I thought I would be nervous or having regrets but I am neither. The move can’t come soon enough and, other than friends and relatives (some of them!) I can’t think of anything I will miss about England. I’ve even got a rugby team to play for, although the picture in the bar in Bugeat makes them look very young and fit so back to second team rugby I go after reliving the first team dream in Hampshire for four months. I am looking forward to producing my own food, hearing nothing but animals for hours on end, owning a house outright with no mortgage at 32, sending my son to an education system where excellence is encouraged and mediocrity and poor behaviour are treated with contempt and generally living a more meaningful life. It will be a while until there is another blog as there is no telephone or internet currently at the house so until it’s connected. A bientot.

Soap Box Time

OK, time to write again. Unfortunately there is not a lot to report on the Great Correzian Adventure as we are still waiting for the Notaire to do their thing, although apparently all the land they said there is is ours and not François’s from No. 43 Viam high street! Now we need to find out if there is a footpath running through it.

So, in the first blog I promised some reasons for the move and some strong opinions about stuff (I have been told that I’m fairly opinionated so this bit could be fun) Feel free to agree/disagree and comment, I like a good debate. Anyone who tells me to die in various horrible ways, as I have observed happens whenever anyone ventures an opinion on the internet, can consider themselves to be told to “perform sexual intercourse somewhere else” (Quote form Ken Haslam my old biology teacher) until such a time that they grow up and can debate in a more civilised manner.

Why are we leaving Britain? There are a number of reasons.

 To be quite frank one of them is money. There isn’t a cat in hells chance we could buy some where to do what we want to do in Britain so we looked elsewhere. Bavaria was an option for a while but German house prices are similar to Britain’s so no joy there. You simply cannot live a self sufficient lifestyle in Britain without a large sum of capital behind you to get started which kind of defeats the object. If you can get an allotment you’re on the way but they are so few and far between these days as well. Probably because successive governments in this country keep building more and more houses instead of looking at why there are so many of us over breeding.

One of the other biggest reasons is that Britain is no longer a place I want my son to live in. Something is wrong with Britain. We have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. The highest suicide rate of men aged 16-25. Our cultural icons include people like;

·         Premiership footballers - who sleep with their team mate’s partners, can’t shake hands at the start of games, cheat on their partners with prostitutes and glamour models, let off fireworks in their bathrooms, don’t respect the referees and get sent down for rape and still get chosen for an international side they don’t seem bothered to play for.

·         Reality TV/talent show stars whose only claim to fame is appearing on some crap TV show and behaving like an arse or being so painfully thick that you start to worry about how they actually don’t just fall down all the time.

·         People ‘ho is street, like. (Sorry for the attempt at youth speak) We seem to be going down a line where people who act or pretend to act like “gangsters” (for want of a better term) are cool and their antics celebrated and laughed at despite the fact that when the real thing happens people are bullied, intimidated, stabbed, shot and killed.

There are many others but I don’t get why unintelligence, idiotic behaviour and criminal activity seem to be celebrated by certain sectors of the British media (Mind you we all know about their lack of moral fibre) and quite frankly I don’t want my children growing up in a country where this seems to be the overriding influence on youth culture.

If you’re still reading, thanks. Now, I have a theory about what is wrong with Britain. We seem to have developed an “I want it and I want it now” coupled with an “It’s my right to have it” mentality. What I mean by this I think can be demonstrated by two points. Firstly the “Pay nothing for a year credit deal” that you find on things like TVs and sofas. So it goes like this-I want the latest 3D HD surround sound TV. Fine, save up and get it. But no, I want it now and I don’t care if I can’t afford it, so I get it on a deal, no one gets paid for a year and I have my must- have material goods. Secondly, the talent(less) show. I want to be famous/have a record deal. OK, slog away in the underground clubs, send lots of demos to important people, build up a fan base, get discovered, have a difficult third album and you’re done. But, no I want it now, so I go on TV and I get instant exposure. Wham bam, FAME. It applies to fans as well. Not a lot of people seem to be prepared to put the time in to see an act develop from underground club to success on a global scale. We want our music stars fully formed and getting a number 1 albums first try and move to a new one next year. I could go on and list other ways to back up my theory. I think it started in the eighties with the Tories and greed is good culture. Want and buy expensive, beautiful things with your money. Then Blair came along and allowed anyone to “buy” beautiful things even if they didn’t have money. Hence we have a society where people seem more concerned with getting hold of material goods we want, than getting what you need and can afford.

So that’s it, why we are leaving this once green and pleasant land. Add to this people who buy Staffies as status symbols, crap weather, even worse public transport, high taxes, no incentive to try, over inflated prices (We’re called rip off Britain for a reason), inability to function as a multicultural society, (We should be really good at this when you consider our history) people who insist on driving in the middle lane of the motorway even when the inside lane is empty and probably loads more and you’ve got it. I have to get out before go even madder than I already am.