Three days off and then back to the hunt

Breton working horse - who actually DOES work.

We stayed at a friends farm earlier this week and got some exercise at long last. O and J's place is fantastic: they bought an old dairy farm 15 years ago and have spent their considerable energies doing the place up, running organic veg to the co-op, farming comfrey for their patent fertilisers, wrestling their two kids, heading up an internet organic community of growers, playing in a band, hosting people with learning difficulties, and -I guess- occasionally sleeping. When they moved there, the place was still occupied by ancient Breton types in shawls and clogs, who hand milked their (30) cows, got their wives to dig boulders out of fields after ploughing, etc. Looked a bit more progressive now, but not much!

K sporting a fetching hat in the rhubarb

We repaid their boundless hospitality by weeding and hoeing the rhubarb and drinking all their beer. I was glad to be getting some exercise in the sunshine (in the morning before it got too hot anyway), and have realised that I am completely unfit and will have to suffer some sore muscles while getting up to speed on our own place.

Honey monsters getting ready

We left on the Thursday and then went and looked at 6 houses, all in one day. Must have drove 100 miles all in. All were disappointing, but for me, especially one which was advertised as an old farm with 13 hectares, for E170k. Some prat in the 70s had added a brieze block storey onto an old stone cottage and put the stairs up the outside (imagine going to the loo in the night in winter?), then extended the old stone barns with bare concrete blocks right across the front of the house. Then there was a gigantic steel hangar literally falling down opposite, and the next door neighbour had a shed in the middle of the complex for some reason. What did my head in was the land: absolutely beautiful rolling meadows and woodland that hadn't had a drop of fertiliser or pesticide on them for a decade. If I could take the land and build a wee house on it, it would be perfect. C'est la vie...

O & J's rather nice garden in the early morning

Off to see a smallholder from Pigs in France today to see what she does and doesn't do, then back to the hunt on Monday with another wad of houses to look over. 21 so far and counting...

Day off walking along the Blavet.