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.