Books

As I have gashed my left hand ripping up old laminate flooring from the gite, I'm on light duties for a day to let it knit together.  Thought I'd write a bit on my favourite books and peoples and sich to make y'all as bored as I am.

"Narrow Boat" by LTC Rolt.

I often wonder what England was like before modernism got a stranglehold.  This is a glorious, poetic book to show you a place that has long vanished under by-passes, luxury developments and cheap tat, written by someone who must have had an engineer and a poet for parents.  A journey around the canals of England in a narrowboat before WW2, showing you what has been lost since.

"Sailing Through England" by John and Sally Seymour.

A similar book as the above (John S. wrote a book on narrowboating after this one in a similar vein), but more adventurous, chaotic and funny.  Another personal view of England, this time on the rivers and wide canals in the 50's.

"The Education of Little Tree" by Forrest Carter.

This is one of those books you haven't heard of but ends up changing your life.  Semi-autobiographical story of a young half-caste Cherokee boy being brought up by his grandparents in the mountains and learning about the world from a mountain "indian" perspective.  Funny, touching, and enlightening.

Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien.

Read into it what you want about war, progress, the ruin of the countryside, etc.  I like it because of it's huge depth more than it's literary quality.  Pinching elements from Nordic, Celtic and German myth to make something unique that I have to read once a year or I start seeing pink Oliphaunts.

"Unto This Last" by John Ruskin

Man was a genius.  I attribute my spitting hatred of PVC double glazing on old Breton farmhouses to him.

"On Walden Pond" by... see picture.

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."  I wonder what his comment on mobile phones would be?

"One Straw Revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka

Every bloody person with more than a patio should read this book about how to farm properly without ruining us all. 

"Cobbett's Cottage Economy" by William Cobbett

The original "back to the land" book, to help the poor and needy not be poor or needy.  Great wit and style, a master of prose.  Not a huge fan of tea and potatoes though: apparently only good for whores and the Irish.

William Blake's poetry.

Touched in the head, but touching.

...Last but not least...

Most books by John Seymour

Have only what you need to live well (ie, not bloody cars, tellies, phones and other sh-te), get some exercise outside in the fresh air, dig that lawn up and grow some bloody onions, then get pish on home brew with your mates!  Leave those big cities to fall down in the dust!  I blame him entirely for my current predicament.  I could have been content with a flat in Brighton, as an overweight office chump, with nothing to think about but trainers and records, and only a distant inkling that I had it right when I was a kid when I used to go out to the crags by myself and get stuck trying to climb them.  As long as I avoided Ray Mears I would be ok, but then I saw this bloke's book, looked at the nice drawings and got it into my head that I should be doing the same as they were and not devouring the only place we have to live on with everyone else.  So here I am in Brittany (not France, by God!  Bit like saying Wales is in England) with a sore back, gashed hand, sunburn, a beard of all things, callouses everywhere, and on top of all that, because I tried milling my own flour for sour dough bread and cracking my own barley for home made beer and growing my own veg I can't eat anything in the shops any more like normal people 'cause it all tastes like shite and I'm now starving to death!  AND the chickens haven't laid a bloody egg all week, the little bastards!

Better than working for a living though.

Chickens at last!

After months building one tiny coop and run, we've finally bought some chooks to live in it.
Cuckoo Marans - 3 hens and a cock, all looking a bit sulky out in the rain.

Looking a bit traumatised after sitting in the boot for an hour...

Marans are said to be very hardy, disease resistant, placid, and suited to wet conditions.  They lay about 200 dark brown eggs a year, and hopefully will go broody from time to time, or my efforts with chicken coop mk.2 will be wasted!  Meant to taste damn good as well.

The ladies settling in, which took literally 3 seconds!

Mr Lover Lover ...or you're in the pot, lad!

Evening in Mesle

Veg plot looking up from the potato patch.

Lawn's a bit dry...

...but the rhododendrons like it.

Pond is starting to look natural now the grass around the border's growing.

Things taking off at last in the polytunnel. I think it was the cold weather that delayed everything. That's Puck being his usual slightly creepy follow-me-everywhere-meowing thing.

A walk around a chateau, and progress.

Went to look around Chateau Trevarez, but only two rooms were open because the RAF bombed it flat during the war and it's a bit expensive to restore. The gardens were nice though.

Wellingtonias in the grounds - about half grown and already taller than the castle.

Bit grim for my taste to be honest, and it was only used half the year for hunting parties.

Nice trees in the grounds - more interesting to me than the buildings.

Almost as nice as our garden! Things progressing well - probably because the slugs haven't found us yet:

All's well in the tunnel - the toms are twice as big as this now, and the peppers are waking up at last.

View from polytunnel to potato patch, with pea and bean poles in mid-ground. The green netting is scaffold net, which is to keep caterpillars and cats from destroying the veg. Early carrots under the one in the foreground.

Pea frames for the 10 ft high "Champion of England" peas to scramble up.

Belters.

How not to make a chicken tractor.

After drawing lots of little designs and some larger ones on 1:20 scale with dusty scale rules, squares, and fancy pens from my old building design course which I bombed out of due to having not enough money for beer, I settled on a chicken tractor design that would cover half a veg bed and house four chickens in comfort. I could then rotate the tractor about the plot, keeping grass down, eating weed seeds and bugs, and harrowing the ground for me. I would have two tractors: one for eggs and one for meat. All would be simple, cheap, and easy...

...as long as I knew French and knew that cheap pine shrinks a bit when the weather's dry, which I didn't. I spent too much time explaining what I was after at the local builder's merchant and forgot to ask for untreated wood, and only remembered when I was taking the wood out of the car back on the Island. This meant planing the treated wood off every plank. The wood is pine from the Landes part of France - a vast sandy scrubland - and it grows very fast. This means the wood is sappy and expands with the weather. This means my nice smart coop, once tight as a ship's keel, is now sporting 5mm gaps between the planks! It's taken me weeks as well! I need a drink! I guess that the French aren't bothered about stable building materials - I used "volige", which are planks of wood used as roofing. Wish I'd just bought an "Eggloo" now and joined the trendy chicken set...

New plan for the gite.

Looks pretty but...

...cheeky Deathwatch Beetle has eaten our beams! It's going to be a problem sourcing timbers to replace the damaged ones that aren't in the same (rotten) condition so we're gutting the gite and starting again with nice clean timber, whitewashed walls, nice safe wiring, and a simple, nice kitchen. We'll then let it out to re-coup the costs. Another job is added to the List!

Amazing what a Dyson will hoover up - this hollow bit of wood is holding the floor up!

Looks pretty, but half of that big rustic beam is made from plaster painted black, which is now falling off. The white ceiling is chipboard as well!

Dyson power again: this beam looked solid until it disappeared into the vacuum cleaner's nozzle.

This is the result of not living in a house during the winter. A complete bag o' bollox, so it is, to sort out, but when it is it will look great. Might even move in!

A bit of progress and some lawnmowers.

We're getting busier and busier now that spring's well and truly under way. I'm usually working until 7pm most nights now, and there's still not enough time in the day to get things done! Better than sitting in an office any day though. I'd never go back.

A couple of handy horses lent to us by a neighbour to keep the field happy until we get round to cultivating it, planting hedges and trees, and keeping our own livestock.

Early peas. The ones in the front were damaged by frost but there's hundreds more coming up.

Early potatoes in an awful weed infested bed - I will be sorting that out tomorrow.

Broad beans looking good.

Chicken ark no.1 (eggs) half done. It's taking me forever to do due to all the planing off of the treatment from the wood. Next time: "non-treatement s.v.p." Quite chuffed with it even so - it's the first one I've ever made! Just need to tidy it up, fix the roof, oil it and then get 3 Light Sussex and a meaty cock. I will be making another one (meat) and a few rabbit arks as well, then beehives at some point...