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!

Not so small potatoes.

Just dug up half a row (5m) of Charlottes and got 18kgs worth.  Didn't get that from the whole bed last year!
So... should get at least 72kgs per 1.6x10m bed for the total harvest.  Commercial growers get an average of 42 tons/hectare, which equals 67kgs per equivalent bed, with all the gubbins like tractors, fertiliser, pesticide, etc, etc, which costs thousands.  I have a spade that is older than my grandad and cost £5.

Losers!

Double dig, add 5 barrow loads of muck, plant 6 ins down, earth up until the ridges are at last a foot high, water religiously and keep an eye on the blight.  Job done!

Just got to crack the rest of the veg...

More gite progress: nearly there at last!

 Main bedroom with hand forged iron door bits on a hand planed (you can tell by the super-rough finish!) ledged door that wouldn't look out of place on the front of a castle.

Shot from the small bedroom to the big one. 

 Inside the big bedroom.  Bit mock-tudor, like...

 Wee bathroom finished.

 Stairs nearly done at last.  Finished in "Essex Theme Pub Rustic Oak That I Wish I Hadn't Bothered With" woodstain.

 Bit gloomy due to the shutters being shut to keep the bloody cats out and off the paintwork!

K's annoyingly good first attempt at tiling in the kitchen.

Wee tastes of success at last.

One day I'll have the time to use this!

Took a while and four thousand trips to the water cistern, but things are finally looking like vegetables.  It even rained for ten minutes this morning!

 Very neat, but where's the food?

 Food just coming along now... broads are promising a bumper harvest.

 Sunflowers that are meant for salad greens, but I thought I'd try them for chicken feed.

 Buckwheat for chickens just peeking out of the rock-hard clay.

 Spuds looking very good indeed.  We've been eating them for about 3 weeks now.  

Such a relief to get them right!

 Tomatoes coming on a month earlier than last year - that'll be the heatwave.

 Bonsai okra flowering.

 Winter stuff holding out in the sunshine.

 Soft fruit!  Look!  No caterpillar ravages!

Garlic batch no.1 harvested and drying in the hangar. 

...and a mystery polytunnel inhabitant with no legs that's on the peppers and aubergines.  Not spider mite, not broad mite (too big).  No idea!