A tenner well spent.

Rescue one rusty, dirty ol' saw from a brocante.  Clean off the rust with wet & dry, sand the handle clean and smooth and coat liberally with linseed oil.  Next day, wipe excess oil off hand, sharpen and set teeth with a pair of pliers and a file.

Then do the equivalent of 100 one-arm pressups and slice your log up.  This keeps you warm and gives you a perfect excuse to eat two lunches at once.

Take your surprisingly heavy slices and split 'em up.  Take the time to see where the grain runs to avoid hammering the axe down and getting nowhere and nothing but injury.  Should take little effort (kind of): like everything else done properly with hand tools, keep them super-sharp and use the tool's weight as the driving force.  Also, swing it well and the log just pops open (kind of) to reveal wonderfully-smelling beautiful wood.  Kind of.

Job done!  Off to eat a lot of food.

Last of the Gite-hicans.

Finally, absolutely finished!  Anyone fancy a visit?

Belters.  Now I can get on with the smallholding and waffle about food and stuff!

Cold and wet.

We have got gite bookings rolling in so I have been spending all week in the absolutely freezing hangar making a cupboard to hide the gas bottle for the gite cooker out of crappy scrap I had lying around and a splendid bronze plane.  Absolutely no gardening this week due to howling winds, torrential rain and freezing mud coating everything.  Still a bit to do out there though:

Finish digging (only a metre left but need a dry half hour for it!)
Mulch the beds with horse poo and compost depending on what's going where next year
Dig out a new bigger holding bed
Dig up all the ash and oak trees in the driveway and plant out in the field (have to wait for the Boys to vacate it now)
Cut and trim hedges and boundaries
Cut poles for trellis, beanpoles and pea-sticks
Prune trees and fruit bushes
Take cuttings of trees and bushes
Etc...

Thankfully, I have 5 crates of beer to get me through it - half the usual light fizzy ("mesle yellow") and a new one: a strong, dark, 7%(maybe) battle pop.  Tastes great and I no longer miss the Gardener's (nearly).  Need a name for it: maybe "Bad Santa"...

I'll post some piccies later.

Earthling study final report.

They're all doomed.  Worldwide financial crisis brought on by banking debts and massive consumer debt, so why not turn to bankers and economists to sort it out then.

Bit like a police force manned by burglars.

Hmm, hmm, yes - that is a worry.  Less than 1% growth.  Gosh.  Could be a recession.  Golly.  Nobody's spending any money.  Hmm.  Euro's going tits up.  Shucks.

Venus is scorched with a surface temperature of about 482° C (900° F). This high temperature is primarily due to a runaway greenhouse effect caused by the heavy atmosphere of carbon dioxide. 

Probably some trouble getting seeds to germinate there, and here as well in a few short years...

Proper jobs for November.

 Hedge done!  Proper job, that was!

 Double digging started!  Proper job, this is!

 Stones from hedge line and 1m of spud bed - doing a proper job of it!

 Trees being planted!  A right proper job!

Christmas ale brewing!  Should be a p- oh ok, I'll shut up.

The long view for good stuff.

Rant alert!

We're going to plant a hedge for a windbreak between the veg plot and the field (soon to be woodland).  This involves taking a spade and banging away at the "turf", an aggregate of rubble and woody roots, and carting it down the bottom of the field, a staggeringly heavy wheelbarrow load.  Then a fork is taken and the strip is then broken up (using all my body weight to get the fork in) for K to then come and dig up all the dandelion roots and stones (a barrow full every 3 feet or so).  Then we go over it again, digging in some fertiliser (organic, people), then we plant up the hedge.

Seem like a lot of hard work?  Too bloody right it is, but as with everything here, it seems that the more effort you put in, the better the result is.  And there's no instant satisfaction either: everything is always next year at the shortest.  Going to plant some walnut and mulberry trees so I can have nuts and berries when I'm 60.  Digging this almost unbelievably hard, stony soil now so we can plant tiny saplings in 6 weeks so we can have a hedge in 4 year's time.  We cart manure off the field (thanks Harvey and Gedion) so we can then dig it into the spud beds the year after next.  Etc.  The result is that our place is becoming more fertile and beautiful every day and we are getting very fit!

Compare this to Mr Normal's day: instant everything.  Instant coffee and cereal for breakfast, on the train with his (or her, the mad cow) I-phone type trinket, getting instant messaging, downloads, email, etc.  Then fast food (not really food - ask to see the Long Egg in Subway and you'll get it), then maybe on the computer games in the evening to wind down a bit, where everything is instant, failure is impossible (pause and save), and maybe some sort of short-term instant gratification at the weekend with some new trainers on the credit card.  No long-term view about anything (except pensions of course, which are one of the biggest rip-offs of all time), which is lucky because the long-term result of all this is...

...a world of shit.

Use your hands.
Create for those who come after you.
Always think 'is this better, or just quicker?'

Off to eat more vegetables we planted ages ago.

Plagues and carrots

Being a bit on the hot side for October, we have a plague of flies - thousands of them!  Like something out of a horror story, the other night they were crawling from the loft through into our bedroom through the hole for the ceiling light, so we ran for it and are now sleeping in the gite until things get back to normal.

We're going to the UK on Sunday so while K is working her socks off I am cleaning and harvesting what might go off if we get a frost (which would also hopefully kill some of these bloody flies).

 Spuds, carrots and beetroot all done.

Cabbages ok, with the savoys still in the ground.  Could have done with some more though...

Squashes lurking in the spare room.

Morocco and Scotland

Grow for a wet cold and a hot dry climate to almost guarantee success.
Root veggies (Scotland) looking great, squashes and sunflowers (Morocco) covered in mildew.

 Winter brassicas all netted, and the new hedgeline being dug.

Chooks now in their element in the garden, weeding under the bushes for us.

We have new chooks!  We worked out that if we got another three and sold their eggs, we'd break even with the cost of feed.  Thing is, chickens as well as being chauvinistic, are also racist.  We got one Sussex and two ISA-types and the original greys won't have anything to do with them!  I've just been out to close up the coop and the browns are being kept off the perches because the perches are for Greys, and the shitty floor is for Browns, obviously... One day the browns will come out in a show of solidarity and the greys will respond with wee chicken riot shields and batons, claiming to be keeping civil order.

Also working very hard in the hot sunshine digging a French drain to dry out the kitchen wall, and we're putting in a grey-water system as found here.  It's going to water some of the trees in the orchard (we're putting in some new eating apples this winter for it).  All according my favourite new motto, 'keep it simple and it won't go wrong'.  It's a pipe that ends in a thick bed of wood mulch with a tree downhill of it.  Mulch soaks up water, which cools, and releases it slowly to tree.  Tree drinks water and makes apples for me to eat.

 Some winter stuff (chard, carrots, beetroot) going well in the tunnel and the toms are getting a second wind with this heatwave.  Wee thing centre is turmeric.  Sowing peas, broad beans, salads, and other bits soon.

Although they're being killed off by botrytis or whatever, the squashes are still doing reasonably ok.

So, all in all not bad.  Just need to crack a few more veggies (like the sweetcorn) and dig, dig, dig.  Apart from the no-dig bits...

Main crops

Haven't got any pictures (camera's dead) but please feel free to Google "120kgs of Desiree potatoes".
Should be ok for the winter...

Also harvested the buckwheat and made a right pig's ear of it - I scythed it and the stalks went everywhere, and I left it too long and a load of the seed has "shattered" and been lost on the ground.  Still, it's all a learning experience and most of it is now hanging on a line with a fine net under it (scaffold net again) to catch any seed.
It's funny what a sense of security it brings.  Like Cobbett said, "a couple of flitches of bacon hung up are worth more than fifty thousand Methodist sermons even if accompanied with the horrors of hulk and gibbett".  Food security.

A couple of flitches of bacon is next year's project.

Reasons to have a bucket to shit in.

I've just taken out one of those new fangled flushing toilets and replaced it with a warm, comfy wooden composting one and am feeling green and smug.  Might also be due to finally finishing a course of antibiotics to kill off Lyme's disease and am thinking about another pint of beer.  The original toilet was connected (kind of, see later) to our septic tank, which is a great breeding ground for all sorts of things to make you sick and poison the water table.  Flushing loos also use a hell of a lot of drinking water, which seems mad considering a lot of the world don't have any.  Bit like sticking two fingers up at those who have none in my opinion.  You also get rid of fertile soil (you know, the stuff that feeds us all and keeps us from dying of starvation) every time you flush, and we as a race have managed to get rid of most of the topsoil in almost every area we've ever built up a civilisation apart from China who are a lot more sensible than we, although they too have lost the plot recently to the great god Crapitalism and build mega-cities on farmland that has fed them for four thousand years.  So we've got a composting loo now and will be growing our food with our poo.  It's just going to be a 2 year wait for it to compost, but what's that in a lifetime?  We've been here for two years already and have done bugger all apart from haemmoridge money!

What really matters to every one of us as humans and not two-legged viruses like everyone on Wall St, behind a till in a supermarket, driving along with a cigarette poked out of the window, eating factory chicken, etc on this planet is to be in a state of balance, to take and to give back in equal proportion.

So we're pooing in a bucket.

P.S. The loo I took out wasn't actually connected, which meant there was a pile of old poo under it with loads of worms in it.  This is officially named The Bad Day now.

August update

We have been busy...

 Harvesting big plum tomatoes.

 Digging up onions and putting them on wire racks to dry in the sun.

 Thinking that the sunflowers might be a good idea after all.

 Keeping it all neat, and keeping the caterpillars at bay.

 Scoffing melon, strawberries, plums and raspberries with home made shortcake for pudding.  Every day.

...and making a composting toilet at long last!  Bit on the right holds the cover material.

Gite complete!

Bit like world war one, whereby we thought it would be done in a few short weeks but we were still toiling a year later, covered in mud.  I'd say there is a substantial discount for friends but I don't have any so you can all pay full whack.

We have our lives back!  Now, where were we again? Ah yes, composting toilets, rabbit runs, beehives, pig arks, fencing and hedging....

August = 2 years in France.

How time flies when you're fiddling around trying to plumb sink units in, assuming that the caterpillars can't get your cabbages because they're netted, and shelling peas.

 ONE okra for dinner!  Going to be a bloody small curry...

Cauliflowers are doing well though - must be due to the rain.

 It's a safe bet that we have more runner beans than you, dear reader.  Most of them are for the bean and not the pod.  Not sure why no-one else does this as they're delicious and a hell of a lot easier to shell than haricots.  Probably contain cyanide when mature or something.

 Buckwheat for the chooks looking nice - this is to be a field crop if it works out as planned.

 Same with the sunflowers, which are squatting in the rhubarb patch at present.

Huge Canadian tomatoes coming along nicely - Burpee's Delicious - and are about as big as grapefruit. 

And the aim to grow a curry comes closer now the turmeric's sprouted!  Just need to keep it alive during a decidedly non-Indian subcontinent Breton winter...

Don't fight the system, just walk away and grow some onions.  It's the only way to kill the Hydra.

Even more gite progress.

I know, I know: what about the bloody smallholding?  Well, it's been howling wind and cold rain for weeks now, so instead of being cold and wet and miserable like the chooks I've been:

 Making the door and frame to the small bedroom with nothing but hand tools.  

I ripped the door to size with my Disston No.7 (I think) that I got for £7, cutting the edge 1cm narrower at the bottom than the top and got it spot on (!) for a 5mm clearance all around, and got a workout at the same time.

Detail shot.

Nice hand forged iron -not steel- mongery from a shop in Suffolk where things are made by people and not robots, for £20.  Due to my hand-planing the rough sawn timber, it's got a lovely patina on the wood with no scorch marks from a wobbly planing machine like the oak lintels we put in.  Admittedly this would look crap in a modern setting but it's perfect for the wobbly ol' cowshed we've got.

 View into the bedroom.  Loads of junk just behind the door, which is why I took the photo like this!

 Main bedroom done with some boxed-in shelves along the back to hide conduit.  Me, I would have put it under the floor, but never mind...

Concrete under stairs gone!  Dark and oak-effect woodstain dry-brushed on, looks like the real thing!  I'm going to oil them as well to give them an also fake glazed effect.  I have found my hidden talent: bodging.

"I know what I did this summer."

Sounds like a "straight to video" B-movie.

 Went to Sweden.

 Ate some fish and drank schnapps.

 Watched and didn't join in the "hop around the leafy cock" dance.

 Came back (eventually) and converted an old rusty bike into a sharp shiny bike (work in progress) with lots of wire wool. WD-40 and old imperial spanners.  Car now stays put!  I hate cars!  They will kill us all!

 Tidied the tip of a hanger and re-stacked the log pile - all nice and dry for winter.  Barbell not needed, but will go for it anyway.

 Dug up one 10m row of early spuds and got 47 kilos.  Not bad.

 Watched f-king caterpillars strip the gooseberries - again.  Finer net next year.

 Ate tomatilloes and wept with pleasure.

 Waited eagerly for the Amish paste toms to ripen.  They're in the Lord's hands...

 Ate chillies - in May!  Good variety this one.  Hungarian.

Ate too much perfect juicy beetroot and now want a break.  Good grated with horseradish, ginger and soy sauce, with toasted pumpkin seeds thrown in - but not every day, dammit!

 This tree did absolutely nowt last year.  It's stake rotted out in one year (it was sweet chestnut as well!) so I re-staked it at the angle it was leaning at and now it's growing!  Must have been trying to tell me something.

 5ft high broads on the left, tons of runners for beans not pods on the right, with netted brussels sprouts behind.

 Made six compost bins and filled five immediately!  NEVER have enough compost bins!

 The sunflower seeds for sprouting have sprouted and turn out to be a sturdy dwarf variety - spot on for this windy site!  Hope the seeds turn out well...

 Taking no chances this year with anything: all my broccoli is under (scaffold) net, and looking much better for it.  Gardener's best friend is scaffold net: shade, windbreak, pest barrier, mulch, and cheap as chips.

 Onions looking ok.  Time will judge.

Too much bloody granny's pastel shaded wee bonny flowers here!  I want paper bark birches with dogwood underplanting, stones,  moss and ferns!