Self-sufficiency = simplicity and freedom? Sort of...

Ah yes, the simple country life.  No mortgage, no boss (almost!), no "nine to five", no twitching curtains, no sitting in traffic, no stress, no money worries, etc, etc.

Reading list includes "On Walden Pond", "How to be Free", "Hovel in the Hills", etc, to give you an idea of how it could all be, which are read on the bus to work.

Then you bite the bullet, put her money where your mouth is and get a field and a house and start digging.

Then it gets head-burstingly complicated and staggeringly easy at the same time.  I'm not including K's work here, which ain't easy by a long shot.  I'm just waffling on about self-sufficiency.  Again.

To eat a good variety of food, you have to grow a good variety of plants and rear a good variety of animals.  Each one is different and you have to know everything about each one, like why the sprouts have blown even though the soil's compact, and why brandling worms are living in them and what to do about it.  On the Island, with it's mere handful of fruit bushes, a few wee trees, a veg plot and 4 chickens, that amounts to fifty things to keep in my head all the time, and this is winter when everything's slow and bare.  Then there are the buildings and what is within them: the house, the gite, the hangar.  All with their own problems, structures, daily tasks.  Then there are the things you need to do now for the following year, like fencing, which occupies another slice of my brain and is a lot more complicated than it looks (have a look at the BTCV handbooks on-line - no, sorry, they've had the funding taken away and now sell them).  Then there are the things to do now for the following 17 years, like setting out a hedge and tree nursery round the back of the polytunnel, to be planted in their final positions in 2 year's time and pollarded and laid in 15 year's time.

It's a bit like a game of 3-D chess with a hundred pieces played out over the next two generations.  You're on one side of the board and slugs are on the other.

It is complex beyond anyone's reckoning.  I think the reason the stereotypical country yokel is depicted as talking slowly and looking a bit glazed is because there is so much brain power being used up just keeping everything he/she needs to do in focus, there are no cells left for communication with Gore-Texed townies.

Where's the easy bit, then, you northern gobshite?  Well, all you have to do is walk around with a spade, hammer, or paintbrush and use them where they're needed.  Water what needs water, feed what needs food.  Dig what needs digging.  Repair what needs repairing.  Wise Sifu say "when you start learning a martial art, a kick is a kick and a punch is a punch.  Then you progress and learn the hundred variations of kicking and punching.  Then when you become a master you realise that a kick is just a kick and a punch is just a punch."  Tao of Jeet Kune Do: a good gardening book, surprisingly.

It's anything but simple and anything but hard.

I'm off to fix something.

More gite progress

 Gable end wall lime and hemp plastered.  Looks just like tuna mayo!

 It makes the place look a lot brighter - couldn't get any darker though!

 New ceiling framed out in the kitchen.  Is to be plasterboarded and insulated as soon as the electrician's sciatic nerve heals up and he can finish!

...and a ladle I carved during my coffee breaks.

Late autumn veg plot piccies.

Got a good frost this morning, with ice on the chicken houses.  I'd better get on and mulch the beds with compost, then I can forget about the beds until double digging time in the spring.

 The view from the pond to the chemin looks great now there are fewer leaves and more depth.

 View of the veg plot with leeks lazing about in the sun.

 Winter broad beans in on top of a trench full of compost.  Spring beans to go in on the left, and brussels down the centre next summer.

 Garlic waiting to go in.

 Savoys looking good (well, these two are).

 Romanesco looking too pretty to eat.

 New Chook looking a lot better.  Just need to give her some more room, somehow.

Winter salads all done in the polytunnel.

Very busy indeed.

Autumn's finally here properly with gale force winds, rain and cold.  The non-textbook chickens are carrying on like it's summer, laying 2-3 eggs a day and not even blinking at the dismal weather, but the cock is getting a bit aggressive in the mornings which might be his age, or the fact that he's not getting breakfast at 7am any more (too dark!).  The veggies are all leaning at 45 degrees from the high winds, but look fine.  What I am amazed at is the polytunnel - it bears the brunt of any weather as it's at the top of the field and I expected it to do a Wizard of Oz impression the other week -after all, it's just a big placcy bag- but didn't budge.

We have both been run off our feet these past few weeks - K had websites, reports, talks and travel to sort out, and has been joining me filling and sanding plasterboard in the gite.  I have been making plenty of mess with tile backs in the gite kitchen, filling in endless holes where there shouldn't be any (the previous owner needed a drainpipe to go from the washing machine to the outside world so just knocked a foot square hole in the wall), watching rising damp in action, and the usual round of chopping wood, getting some winter salads going, etc.  We were getting a bit depressed with it all, and the endless damp and mould problems from a house that had been closed up for 10 winters, but some friends came over for lunch this weekend and their very kind comments have cheered us right up.  They were last here at the beginning of the year and were impressed with the amount of work we had done, which was a real uplifter: when you work at something constantly it's often hard to stand back and see the difference you've made, and I think it often takes an outsider to see what we're too close to see ourselves.  So thankyou P & P for reminding us that we live in a wonderful place and our dream is coming true - albeit slowly at times!

Hell, this is the view from our front door!  Nothing to be grumpy about.

Harvesting and massive teas.

"Dinner" is what posh people eat instead of tea.

Dinner = things with "dash of", "foam of", etc, in the description.  You have everything set on the table, with a "serviette" or something, nibbled, with chit-chat.
Tea = lumps of meat with some small vegetables quivering in awe of it, with cutlery banged down by plate, red and brown sauce on standby, shovelled in, in silence.

Went to Strasbourg and ate a massive tea.
The black lump is more meat!















Plot update:

Polytunnel green manured and some winter salads sown up the top.

 Cat on a hot tin roof!  Walnuts and beans drying under the roof.

"We come in peace, Earthlings."
 Squashes harvested.  All 40 of 'em.

 Carrots in before the first frost.  Bit on the chunky side, like.  Deep bed worked, then!

Turkey for christmas? Nope, just the biggest chicken in France - he's about 10lbs, and a right cock.

Autumn Veg Report

We're one less chicken thanks to the farmer's dog who got into the chicken run, but he did replace it so apart from having to get her into lay there's no harm done, but I think his son-in-law who was walking them has now taken a dislike to me because I threatened him with the muck fork.  Good job I wasn't laying hedges at the time because I might have had something else to hand...  Just waiting on a hospital bill for my tetanus shot now...  Country life, eh?

Anyway, here's a veggie report and some pictures - which is what all this is about, really.  Also an insect found in the polytunnel.  No idea what it is!

Tomatoes
Gardener's Delight - small and very tasty but susceptible to botrytis.
Lily of the Valley - prolific but tasteless in my opinion.  Like little plum toms.
Yellow Pear - very prolific and grows like a magic beanstalk but not much taste.
Tamina - outdoor variety which went apeshit in the tunnel and made a joke-amount of tomatoes!
Red Alert - an very early outdoor variety which did nothing in the tunnel - too hot maybe.
Gigante Liscio - lovely sweet semi-beefsteak tomato which took a while to get going but worth it.
Peppers
California Wonder - the only wonder is why it took so long to make nice peppers.  Could have walked to California in less time.
Antohi Romanian - too thin and tough.
Golden Bell - sweet and fleshy yellow one.  Started slow but went on to make loads.
Early Jalapeno - early for what?!  Took forever but is now a nice sturdy bush which made a few warmish chillies.
Cucumber
White Wonder - crap.
Cornichon de Paris - made one cornichon and then surrendered to the mould.
Melon
Petit Gris de Rennes - 'cking belters melons.  Delicious and hardy.
Cucurbits
All your dandy courgettes are not worth bothering with.  Get a green one and grow it.  We tried yellow ones, white ones, and patty pans and they all taste like... courgettes.
Spaghetti Squash - take ages to ripen but are delicious roasted.
Burgess Buttercup - floury, lots of flesh, taste quite nice but not as good as butternut.
Becky F1 pumpkin - see photo.
Ghostrider pumpkin - cool wee pumpkins which taste like pumpkins.
Sweet Dumpling - tiny single-serving squashes still maturing so no idea of the taste.
Butternut - I thought this was a goner but made a late recovery and we now have about 8 fruits going yellow in the sun-rain-sun-wind.
Radish
French Breakfast - I thought a French breakfast would be a cup of microwaved coffee and a tab, but apparently "they" eat these wee prolific crunchy things...
Hilds Blauder Herbst und Winter!  You have to shout the name to get it right.  Big purple winter radish still growing.  I can guess what they taste like...
Brussels Sprouts
Dakmar 2 - purple leaf veins which look quite pretty, and lots of nice sprouts coming along.  Bit of a slow grower.
Bedford Fillbasket - bigger than above, but lots of blown sprouts for some reason.  Can't be loose soil - it's like concrete!
Turnip
Purple Top Milan - worked in the UK, crap here.  Flea beetle ate the lot.
Khol Rabi
Azur Star - cool purple ones that you peel to get green normal uncool ones.  Worked quite well if you like yet another cabbagy crunchy thing...
Modrava F1 - as above.  Yawn.
Cabbage
Rouge Tete Noir - Very successful for once!  Huge tight purple heads, easy to grow, taste great.
Nantais Hatif - winter cabbage looking perfect in autumn.  Smaller than I thought though, so might add more manure next year.
Piachenza Savoy - just starting to heart up after being almost murdered by caterpillars, so will get a crap yield.  Lucky I planted out some Emergency Cabbages a few weeks ago so might be alright.  Always good to have a reserve force...
Wintergreen - just went in the ground for next spring.  Should be ok...
Minicole F1- nice wee inbred.
Kale
Nero di Toscana - nice black kale, seems to be holding up well against the insect onslaught.  Grows well.
Broccoli
Fiesta F1 - was tasty and very early but got ravaged by you-know-whats.  A good sacrificial plant to keep bugs from the rest of the brassicas!
Purple Sprouting Early - growing away nicely, and getting huge.
Autumn Spear - was also nice but got destroyed.
Claret - as with P.S.B. - growing huge so looking promising for spring.
Peas
Cavalier - grew ok but needed more water.  Nice biggish pods full of sweet peas.
Annonay - small and prolific but peas were also a bit small.  Not as good as Cavalier.
Champion of England (!) - big tasty peas off a massive plant.  Needed more water though...
Bijou Mange Tout - huge tasty pods but a bit wobbly in the heat.  Died early.
Beans
Aiguillon - worked well, taste good but a pain to harvest being a dwarf.
Slendrette - as above.
Minidor - as above, but yellow pods.  Bit less taste.
Cosse Violette - a cracking climbing bean that makes purple pods.  Delicious as pods and beans, and seems to be drying well.
Scarlet Emperor Runner - huge long pods, the record being a foot long, with lots of nice beans to eat if you let them grow on.
Desiree Runner - white beans, like the above.
Express Broad - grew well, tasted ok.
Bunyard's Exhibition Broad - ditto.
Masterpiece Green Longpod - a winter variety just poking through in the seed plugs.
Super Aquadulce Broad - ditto.  Better bloody work!
Onions
Long Red Florence - like a giant spring onion with a red bulb.  Worked well for salads but doesn't store.
Giant Zittau - needed more muck and water so crop was poor.
Alisa Craig - same as Zittau.
Roscoff Rose - we'll plant these as sets next year for our main crop as next door swear by them.  Planted late  but worked ok considering drought and poor soil.
Leek
Pandora - looking good.
Long de Meziers - also looking good.
Beets
Rainbow Chard - grows faster than I can eat it!  My favourite leaf for the winter.
Burpee's Golden Beetroot - Very slow to grow, but tasty.
Bolivar Beetroot - ditto.
Aubergine
Thai Long Green - nice but small.  Will go for muckle purple ones next year.
Potatoes
Charlotte Early - crap due to crap method and no watering.
Desiree Main - Marvellous!  Got a decent crop bearing in mind the rock-hard, infertile, dry soil.
Maize
Thought I'd have some token maize in the field to try and fit in around here.  Bi-colour open pollinated organic seed though, so came to nowt.  Should have sown that one with the systemic insecticides in like the farmers around these parts, and killed all next door's bees...

Things that went badly were either eaten by bugs, not watered, planted out at the wrong time or the soil was too poor for them.

Next year:
Water more: water butts at the ends of the beds connected to hosepipes so there's no excuse.
Trenches lined with paper and filled with muck for peas and beans.
Brassicas interplanted with legumes.
Lazy beds for spuds.
More muck on "greedies."
Sow beetroot in May and parsnip in March under cloches.

Each of these is as big as a beach ball, and there are only the two of us to eat them!

The deep bed works wonders for Long Lisse de Meiux carrots.

Rouge Tete Noir cabbages looking like real cabbages!

Nice leeks, but I think we're going to run out pretty quickly due to the lack of onions.

Saw this guy asleep in the polytunnel and thought it best not to wake him up.  It's as big as my thumb!

Hand tools give you back your life. Honest.

Working as I am with no power tools, everyone asks the question 'why are you not using a so-and-so, then you'd save time/effort/etc?'

Hah!  Time is relative, you know.  You might think you're saving time, but in fact you're just spending the same time on doing more stuff.  Being busy, fitting more in to the day, rushing about, multi-tasking, clock-watching, and all the stuff that makes people have ulcers.  Not that you can spend or save time like it's a commodity - it's just a way of measuring movement between objects and is an abstract concept.  Time I shut up and got on with the rant.

Erm, anyway...

Hand tools make you slow down.  You have to work slowly because there isn't an engine buzzing away at 5000rpm.  You have to think more about what you're doing, and you gain more appreciation of the task, the materials worked upon, and gain a more sympathetic eye.  You have to or you bugger it up and have to start again, which'll probably happen anyway if you're like me.  And as cultivating an certain attitude towards one aspect of you life rubs off on other aspects, in theory, hand tools make you more appreciative, reflective, sympathetic, relaxed, and all the other things you get from years of practising Tai Chi without paying for classes at the local leisure centre and having to make insipid chit-chat after class.  Including cramping up a lot.

Why do people think that power tools are better then?  Because with a power tool, you can finish a job quickly.  Sort of.  At least, that what I was taught to think until I started using proper hand tools.  Jobs have become things to get done so you can then spend time doing something you enjoy, like watching telly.  Rush, rush, rush.

Problem is, in order to do more, you need a machine to help.  Machines as we know them (like powered drills, strimmers, etc) have only been around for 150 years or so at a push, and have not had the time to evolve like hand tools have over millennia, and this means the materials worked upon have had to be altered to fit the machine.  Hand tools have been altered to fit the person using them and the materials worked upon.  So instead of local green wood for example, carefully seasoned and worked sympathetically, you get dry-as-a-bone pine timber that warps, splits, goes rotten overnight, and has to be treated with God knows what to be able to last.  This is because someone invented a combine harvester for trees, which could chop a lot of trees down, as long as they resemble pencils.  To saw loads of timber very quickly, it has to be dry because tools working at high speed get clogged with anything resembling green wood.  Result? B&Q (or Gedimat over here) and all it's bollox.

So why all the rush?

I think that the reason this is so nowadays is that people have had their time divided into "work" and "leisure" for them, with "work" being the unpleasant bit you do to be able to enjoy "leisure".  Bit like working overtime to be able to afford a holiday.  All well and good, apart from the fact that the time spent working is a hell of a lot more than the leisure time, and if you spend most of the time looking forward to something else, you don't live in the present and you have no life.  Better to find leisure in work, or make them the same thing.  Get a decent hand tool that fits your hand and body, and work on materials as you should do, without rushing, and you have no work or leisure, just life.  'So he says sitting in front of a computer drinking home brew', I hear you cry.  Well, all things in balance - I scythed the field (a wee bit, anyway - horses do most of the work) today and have sawn and split a load of logs as well, so there.  The home brew's a bit stronger than normal as well.

Bloody industrial revolution started this all off with it's manufactories, silly tea sets with frogs on and steam whistles.  It became more profitable to make standard items in huge quantities by machines and people were convinced that the methods and materials that had evolved over thousands of years were no good.  Why spend all your time scything when these new combine harvesters mean the field gets mown in a tenth of the time and then you can have the time off?  Pity that there was no time off because to pay for the combine harvester you have to work longer hours and all those people who did the mowing are now call-centre gimps trying desperately to sell you a bag o'shite to meet a pointless target to win an extra five minutes break time which they then spend on trying to wrestle an extra KitKat out of a dispensing machine, setting off the tilt alarm, alerting Security and getting an Official Verbal Warning ('I have to tell you that if we have to give you another Verbal Warning, we will have to step up to a Written Warning, Mr B, all over a 60p chocolate bar.  Also, what do you do that takes so long in the toilets?' 'Digging a hole to freedom, boss.'), or on the dole saving up for that once-a-week 8 tins of Viborg Pils for four quid.  Bit Thoreau-ist, this.  Sort of.

Here's a relatively lucid example: we're chopping our firewood in a woodland with hand tools.  'Pourquoi are you not using a chainsaw?' people ask.  Say that I did use a chainsaw.  I'd get a lot more work done, and then could have the rest of the day off to do... what?  Sit in a sunny woodland and have a picnic?  What do you think we're doing now?  If I used a chainsaw, I'd not be able to hear the birds, the wind in the trees, be able to chat to my wife, look out at the view, or anything that would be a pleasure.  I'd be hot and sweaty in the massive nylon padded chainsaw pants, deafened by the engine, blinded by the fumes, my nerves would be in jitters from the vibrations, I'd end up cutting wood that was too big or cut too much of it because I could, I'd be risking serious injury, and it would be too much like work.  Use a hand saw and suddenly you're back in the woodland with all the nice things associated with it, getting bigger arm muscles and an appetite for a massive tea as an added bonus.  I'd also have to work to earn money to pay for the chainsaw and all it's accoutrements, the fuel, etc, and get a bad back in return.  A decent 3ft saw costs £60, chainsaw costs £470. The chainsaw is a machine, the saw is a tool.

Machines increase your work, tools enhance your life (as long as they're decent ones, that is).

I should reply "why the hell do you use a chainsaw?"

Better than chainsaws here.

How to keep warm and fit in 9 easy steps.

1. Post a message on-line asking if anyone has wood to chop on a 50:50 share.
2. Get a reply from a lady who says "yes, but you might want to have a look at it first."
3. Go to the woodland to see 6 acres of devastation where various contractors have clear-felled pine, bulldozed it into huge piles and left it to rot.  There is also a lot of dead oak standing about looking precarious.  The wood is on a steep hillside.
4. Turn up with a handsaw and a billhook and start work sawing down trees and sawing up trees.
5. Get a "bit tired" and decide to call it a day, then spend another half hour carrying the metre long 10 inch thick oak logs to the car.
6. Ask the time and discover you've been working at it for 4 hours non-stop, which explains why your arms ache a bit.  This is one of many advantages of refusing to have a clock - you get more done and you turn up on time for everything*.
7. Split the sawn wood 50:50 with the lady who is surprised you didn't use a chainsaw.
8. Come back with a mere metre cubed of logs.
9. Eat a whole packet of pasta, finish the wine and go to bed.

Yes, it's Mount St Helens, but it gives you an idea.  Just add a goat or two.

It would take us about 2 hours to chop the wood down the chemin (see earlier post), which yielded about a metre cubed, so taking travel time out of it and having to give half away, it works out the same.  It would be better, of course, if we could just chop wood in the huge woodland at the bottom of our field but the owner has a reputation for being a bit of an arse...

Oh well, still beats a gym subscription any day of the week.  Except when it's raining.

*Not having a watch means I always over-estimate how long I will take to get somewhere and end up on time, whereas if I had a watch, apart from constantly looking at it for no reason, I would think I could leave and get somewhere in half an hour and would be late because something would inevitably cause a delay, like a bus driver having one of those mystery tea breaks exactly half-way to your destination where he stops and reads his paper for 15 minutes while being perfectly aware that everyone on the bus is wanting to get to work/is bursting for a pee/is trying to catch a plane/etc.  I got the earlier bus and am now having a cup of tea with plenty of time in hand in a mock-Italian/American cafe with loud upbeat music, quiet downbeat clientele, drinks in paper buckets and pastries for giant people.

A new hobby

I have to repoint the gite, shift the rubble from the gite wall and sort the drainage out, plaster inside the gite, clear the sweetcorn and cucumbers, dig over the potato bed and sow green manure, build rabbit hutches, go to a sawmill and get wood for the gite staircase, paint our bedroom, finish the loft insulation, skim the beer, and collect haws and berries for jam and sauces.

So what did I do today? Sat in the hangar and carved a spoon of course!

Split a small log of lime (I think) wood and trimmed it with an axe, then spent all afternoon carving it with a spoon knife and a sloyd knife from here.

Very hard work, so it was!  The wood was very hard due to being dry as a bone - my hands kept cramping up and I am sporting a few more blisters.  Will do green wood next time.  Even a fancy anthropometric grip and a hook on the end.  Rubbed down with fine sandpaper (not too much though, as you can see) and soaked in sunflower oil.

Back to the (Y)UK to stock up on...

Scythes, spoon knives, dried foods, seeds, TEA (thank GOD), socks, billhooks, hand drills, paint that works, beer, stodgy food, and hangovers.

Great to see friends and be able to talk without sounding like Borat ("Hello, I am English, sorry, I not speaking French good, I desire to purchase a wood with no treatment please thankyou"), but the busy-ness and crowds did me in.  And the endless upbeat music everywhere.

Portsmouth sucks.  Nice Thames barge just out of view though.

Gluts

Mushrooms everywhere - K's cooking pate as I write this.

Tomatoes like you would not believe - this is the third picking this week!

Melons!  Now you see it...

...now you don't!

Belch.

Gite progress!

We got back from the UK to find a nice new floor!

New walls going up upstairs* as well:

Also new oak lintels as the old ones were rotten:

Last but not least, the wall's done!  I deliberately made it wobbly so it matched...

Next is clearing away rubble, digging French drains, making the run-off go away, repointing and then seeing if cracks re-appear.  Decided not to do underpinning yet - it might cause more trouble and if it does need it then we can always do it later on.

* As soon as I have made the stairs... chunky, so they will be.

Reasons to buy only things made from coppice.

Here are some quotes I pulled from t'internet sites to cheer you all up:

An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually with more than 80 per cent of the world's farming land "moderately or severely eroded"

Soil is being lost in China 57 times faster than it can be replaced through natural processes, in Europe 17 times faster and in America 10 times faster.

The UN Food and Agriculture Programme believes food production must rise by 70 per cent on 2005-7 levels to cope with a world population forecast to hit nine billion in 2050

Britain's population by 2060 will increase by 25% from the current figure of just over 61 million to almost 77 million.  It currently has to import 40% of it's food.

There are now 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre of the world's oceans, killing a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals each year.

A study of fulmar carcases that washed up on North Sea coastlines found that 95 per cent had plastic in their stomachs – an average of 45 pieces per bird.

40% of the world's plankton is now dead, and is dying off at the rate of 1% per year.  This will be a bugger for carbon dioxide levels.

206,000 out of 210,000 tons of shrimp caught every year in the NE Atlantic is chucked away.

That'll do.  Every time I buy something from now on, unless it's from a sustainable source and not made from placcy, I will think very hard indeed about whether it's really needed at all.

A preserving food thought.

I have an irritating habit of rambling on about things not worth talking about over meals, which I suspect is causing my wife to wish she'd kept her earplugs in from the night before, permanently.

Typically, I say nothing to start with and just stare blankly at a random spot on the wall while bovinely chewing mouthfuls of what the packet describes as "museli" but which looks a lot like chicken mash to me.  Same ingredients, minus peas and grit.  After half a pint of tea I then feel a caffeine kick and my mouth just starts up on it's own accord without any connection to a brain, and K's eyes glaze over ten seconds later.

Anyway, I had the idea to make pickled cucumbers and had them steeping in a brine on the table.  I was to drain them and put them into vinegar with some dill, etc, and suddenly it occurred to me that after a whole summer of eating cucumbers, it would be very nice indeed to spend some time without seeing one of the bitter, tough, seedy, tasteless buggers again.  These days there are enough varieties of veg to have something fresh every day of the year, so why preserve something you've been eating for months so you can keep eating it when it's not in season?  Why not have a few special preserves of very nice things (like habanero chilli  chutney) to add to a meal of seasonal items as a condiment instead of eating another bag of frozen beans?  That way you come to appreciate new season's veg, having not had it for months from a freezer bag or something.

It is thoughts like these that make K go to work very early indeed, and work late into the night.

Veg plot progress.

Things are coming along nicely and we are finally not buying any veggies.  Chooks are laying two a day, with the third chicken coming into lay soon (her wattles are dropping!).  Got our first "cock a doodle doo" from the rooster, which made me roar with laughter as it sounded like a teenager whose voice is breaking!  Will have to call him "Kevin" a la Harry Enfield.

Pics:

Brussels Sprouts under runner beans.  This combo has worked really well and will be repeating this next year.  They seem to like each other!

French beans, kale and a rouge squash that snuck into the bean seed tray.

Melons!  Must have a dozen this size.  It's resting on a yoghurt pot to keep it off the damp soil.

Red cabbage under two sewn together scaffold nets to keep butterflies off.  Almost works...  They're growing well - almost a metre across.  Flea beetle ravaged khol rabi in the foreground.

Peppers, aubergines and a happy Pachypodium in the polytunnel.  The green-ish covering is my favourite thing, scaffold netting.  Also a monster orach on the left being grown for seed.  8ft tall, so it is!

Tomatoes at last!  A nice Gigante Liscio in the foreground with my name on it.

Muckle squashes for winter.  Dozens of these hiding under the jungle that is the squash patch.  Wish I'd remembered to write down what varieties they are...

Calabrese coming through a bit early...

Chooks scoffing patty pans - I'm glad some use can be found for them because they're tasteless and there's millions of them!

Fruit coming along nicely - apart from the redcurrants which are dying after the caterpillar blitz.











Rabbits coming up as soon as the gite's underpinned and I can get on with something that doesn't involve cement!

Always a bright side to the Island!

Got an egg at last!

Funny colour for a Maran - should be brown...

Double yolker though!  I think a neighbour is having a laugh and put it in the nest box to cheer me up, but "owt for nowt" as we say...

Tastes like an egg.  Belters.

Gite renovation so far.

The surveyor found some problems with the gite when we bought it, which amounted to a bit of death watch beetle (DWB from now on) and a bulging wall, both easily remedied.  We then discovered that the DWB had in fact eaten everything and all the wood was as hollow as a sponge, so we decided to rip the lot out, olde worlde beams included, and start again, then let it commercially to recoup costs.  The walls have turned out to be made from loose rubble, full of gaps so not at all stable.  To save money, I am cutting grooves for the new electric cables (the whole thing is being re-wired as it was done by a proper bodge-jobber originally) and rebuilding the wall.  Below are some photos for y'all:

This is the corner, at the front of the gite.  The rainwater from the road and the downpipe have washed the soil out from the bottom of the wall in the corner, and now it needs underpinning.  I am going to dig under it, and someone with a bit more knowledge is going to pour a concrete slab in the hole, and make a proper drain.

This is the gable end, where water from the adjoining barn has been pouring down our wall for centuries, causing a wee damp problem.  I fixed it by digging out the soil along the bottom of the wall (which now needs underpinning - see above) and making a gutter.

Here is a bulging wall, full of cracks, needing underpinning at the bottom left.  See below for what happened next.

Cracks all over...

Cracking and sagging above rotten lintels at the front.

More cracks, due to end wall wanting to fall down and sagging lintels.

Inside, with the window to the left just out of photo.

..."I want to break free-ee, I want too breeaaak freeee...."

Bulging wall gone!  It's on the floor, and I am now putting it back (reasonably) straight.

That soggy corner is at the bottom of this wall, which is made from loose soil and bits of brittle stone.  Someone has made a bodged repair at the top - see the cement?  I reckon the roof has been replaced at some point - by Steven Hawking.

 The wall is made from two skins, with sh-te in the middle, and not tied in.  You can see the outside skin on the left parting company with the inside - there's a dark line down the centre of the photo, which is a biiiiig hole.








Inside we have:

A big space upstairs...

No upstairs!

Top quality floor levelling - the wedges are not attached.  Hmm... those beams look a bit erm, semi-composted...

Bit rotten, like.  This was in the wall and we would have found out that it's rotten when a guest fell through it if we had left it.

"No presence of infestation" said the seller's surveyor.

Illegal wiring, buried in the wall.

The bottom of the A-frame holding the roof up is balancing on it's end (actually the strongboy, which shouldn't take the load anyway) on this wee bit of wood stretched across two rotten beams.

The other end of the A-frame, above the door.  There's a theory that it was moved so a Velux could be put in above the stairs, when the roof was re-done.

I want a drink.

Got one.

And finally... not a crack - my chasing!  By hand!  Through granite!
I'm also mixing the cement by hand, wheelbarrowing it to site and carrying it up the scaffold in wee buckets.  I must be thick.

Top tip: DO NOT BUY A CONVERSION!  Buy a ruin and start with a clean slate!