Reasons to visit Lénault in August

Posted by Rosie

Markets.

French markets run all through the year but are at their best in Summer. Most towns and larger villages have a market on a set day each week and they are a pleasure to visit. For myself I tend to buy four things - fruit, fish, vegetable seedlings and live poultry. You could probably get the fruit and fish cheaper in the supermarket but the quality at the markets is much better. Fruit sellers will often allow you to try their produce before buying and at our favourite fish stall in Vire they always give the boys a handful of cooked prawns as a treat. The vegetable seedlings are ridiculously cheap - a couple of euros for 100 leeks or 25 cabbage plants. And as I find it hard to grow leeks from seed this is an easier and cheaper way of doing things.

Through the summer the live animal sellers are there with rabbits, ducks, chickens, guinea fowl, turkeys and occasionally other animals such as hamsters or golden pheasants. For a euro you can buy a day old chick - for €7.50 a turkey to fatten up for Christmas.

Other stalls sell the plethora of goods you would expect at a market. Too numerous to mention but including cooked chicken, clothes, baskets, toys, meat, cheese, flowers, dried fruits, coffee .........

Markets are not just about buying things - they are a wonderful place to people-watch. Whole families go together and it is as much about meeting friends and extended family as getting the shopping done. Be aware though, markets start around 9am and usually end around midday. Get up late and you'll miss all the fun. That said there will be another one in somewhere else near-by if you do miss the first one.

Two quiet days?

Posted by Rosie

Yesterday and today were supposed to be child-free days for Simon and myself. The boys had been invited to stay two nights at the neighbouring farm and we thought we could get on with all sorts of things minus that ever present - "Mum ........ Dad .......!!"

Well as with the best laid of plans of course this was not to be. Ben and two of the neighbouring children (S and O) came back straight away as Ben wanted a different jumper. Jumper collected I walked them back, kissed them goodbye and left. Two hours later the same three were back and ended up playing here for several hours before eventually leaving. Not long had they gone when the boy from the end of the road turned up with his friend. I explained the boys weren't here but they asked if they could stay and play on the swings anyway. I could hardly say no - then they came in and played a board game and finally left, just before Ben and his friends came back AGAIN. Ahhhhh!! Is there never any peace to be had here? I finally sent them packing at 7.30pm.

This morning Simon and I half thought we might partake of a small lie-in. Fat chance. The father of the neighbouring boy said he'd come and help us put in the central support beam in the gite ...... around 9am .......... so he turned up at 7.30am!! Job done he left and guess who turned up? Yup - Ben, S and O. And for today - well pretty much repeat yesterday with the addition of an English family arriving mid-afternoon and Tom also making an appearance.

But we did manage to get the central post in, I did clean out all the animals and I did freeze and cook various things - oh yes - and I completely annihilated some plums which I managed to leave on the gas when I walked the children back to the farm. Two quiet days - you must be joking!

One oil-stain too many

Posted by Simon

Some English friends have asked if I can help them out filling in a large old pond in their garden. The previous owner had built it and - to put it politely - it was an interesting form of construction. A plastic liner was used, so were corrugated sheets plus various bits of brick and metal to keep the liner in place. Landscaped in the style of Steptoe and Son, I believe. So yesterday I arrived armed with the mini digger and made great inroads into filling in this pond. This morning I arrived and continued work, then BANG. The Hydraulic Ram which had failed a couple of weeks ago failed again. Rosie and I rushed back to the place where we'd had it repaired but with a Gallic shrug we were told that it was beyond repair now and we would have to get a new part. Can you order one for us? 'Non. C'est une pièce anglaise'. Great, this I really needed.

Anyway, Pierre, the neighbour of the people I was helping, kindly said he would look at the part and check if it all needed replacing or just the internal parts. Having nothing to lose, this afternoon I took the Ram over to him and he stripped it down. Well it was obvious that it had been repaired before, albeit in the style of Steptoe and Son. You see I had bought the digger from the man who had previously owned the house where I was filling in the pond. Anyway, these "repairs" didn't deter Pierre and having stripped it down to reveal the problem he set about fixing it. Did he succeed? Yes he did!! Would he accept any payment for this work? No he wouldn't.

So now the digger can continue to fill the pond that, thinking about now, it probably once dug out. I've got my toy back in working order but I do believe the T-shirt I was wearing today may have to be consigned to the rag-bin once and for all. For a recently mended washing machine that is one oil-stain too many.

Some facts and figures

Posted by Rosie

I have been doing some figures today to work out if keeping animals and growing veg really is a cheaper a way of doing things. It's all very well saying our shopping bills per week have dropped from about €120 to €40-80 per week but you need to budget back in animals and their feed costs plus the costs for growing veg.

Well, according to my maths these are the figures for animals bought, fattened and lasting approx one year plus vegetables:

One pig = 8€ per week

16 chickens and 8 turkeys = 6.50€ per week

Income from eggs = 2.50€ per week

Vegetables - income from veg sales to date is almost exactly the same as costs for the year so any further sales puts us into profit and I have hardly had to buy any veg this year (a few spuds and onions, the odd lettuce that's about it).

I have, however not included sheep. Last year we lost two sheep and had no lambs so financially we lost out big time. This year we have "adopted" three lambs - one as payment for helping a friend collect a new flock of sheep, one a freebie who needed bottle feeding (32€ for the milk) and another has been given to us and we will give one of our lambs back next year. They will have cost us a bit in worm and tick treatments but providing we have no disasters this year we should have meat from 3 lambs for about 70€ or just over 1.30€ per week. The ewes and ram will have additional winter feed costs but hopefully we will have our own lambs next year. And last year the local farmer gave us a free big bale of hay in exchange for the old hay we gave him from the barns.

So I reckon that works out that we grown veg for nothing and the animals cost approx 13.80€ per week, having calculated in our egg/veg income.

But if course it is not as clear cut as that - I have not included costs for replacement layers (thank you Mr Fox), the costs for fencing, shelters, water, fruit trees or our labour. But as a one year snap-shot of a life living more and more off our own land I can say we succeeding in raising our own meat, growing our own fruit and veg and saving money in doing so. We have also minmal food miles compared to supermarket food, virtually no packaging and whilst not organic we have free-range, very happy animals who give us some of the best tasting meat I have tasted.

Chicken for dinner?

Posted by Rosie

We have had friends staying for the week-end, the weather has been fantastic and so we've had a BBQ every night. It didn't take long for the chickens to realise that there might be some food in this BBQ lark for them a sure enough, here is "Old Speckled Hen" helping herself to some left-overs. Garlic bread seemed to be her favourite although yesterday we had great fun watching several chickens fighting over some left-over noodles!

Our friends have just left, as have the family with a holiday cottage just around the corner so it is all suddenly feeling rather quiet. The boys are going to miss their playmates and, bearing in mind they didn't go to bed 'til nearly midnight, they could be really grumpy today. Oh well - maybe I should send them off to try and find this little fellow. It's a fire salamander which Simon discovered in the water meter hole. I had only ever seen a squished one on the road before so this was a real treat. I was joking with Simon that they are poisonous; however having been on Wikipedia, apparently their skin can produce a toxin dangerous to human life.

(Makes mental note to self - Tell boys that if they find the salamander they are NOT to touch it!)

The Grand Opening .....

Posted by Rosie

..... of the swings/activity area!!

The boys have been using their twin play-towers all summer but the adjacent swings were taking longer to finish because of difficulties getting the top piece of wood. Simon had bought one ages ago and then use it to make an upright for the washing-line after the rotary line in a hurricane disaster. It was only afterwards that he discovered that our local timber supplier could no longer supply single poles and so he had to travel much further afield to get the necessary pole. Oh and he had to go to 3 shops before he could find the right sized fixings!!

But today, it all came together with the grand opening ceremony - Tom held the ceremonial cushion on which lay the ceremonial scissors. Ben took the said ceremonial scissors and cut the ceremonial ribbon whilst Simon stood by pretending to be a security man protecting our celebrities and I made an exceedingly silly speech.

Now - hopefully - the boys won't argue about whose turn it is on the swing, although of course there is only ONE rope ladder .........!!

Potato and Week-end Update

Posted by Rosie

Well, the spuds are all up and - hopefully - it is not a complete disaster. I did lose all my Ratte variety and about 40% of the Charlottes; most of the Desiree seem fine (fingers crossed). The Desiree cropped less per plant than the others but I did have more rows so with luck we may have enough potatoes to see us through the winter ....... as long as blight doesn't take hold in the bags - and I can find somewhere frost and mouse free for storage!

Whilst digging up the crop I came across two very welcome garden visitors. First, just after I started I looked down and swore blind the potato popping it's head out the soil blinked at me. I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Yup - it definitely blinked because there, nestling amongst the tubers was one very large toad. Today, as I neared the end of the last row, my spade unearthed a rather sleepy slow worm who was a bit miffed at being woken so early! Both were in fact very lucky as I am not adverse to stabbing rather a lot of my potatoes with the spade.

Our lovely week-end

Simon did promise a post about our lovely week-end but with one thing and other he's not got round to it. So I'll update you instead. Saturday we were invited to our first French wedding (along with everyone else in the village). We were not too sure what to expect so we did a bit of asking round first. We were invited to the marriage at the Mayor's Office and the Vin d'honneur afterwards at the Village Hall. If there was a meal after that we were not invited to that. Based on this we were told that a present was not expected although people often took flowers and dress code was anything for casual to snazzy. We decided to go for smart casual and will get a plant for their garden in the autumn, a better time for planting.

Close friends and family managed to cram into the very small Mayor's office for the actual ceremony and everyone else milled around outside, gossipping and giving/receiving the obligatory handshake or kisses. The newly-weds then emerged through a basketball guard of honour before yet more gossipping, handshaking and kissing. Moving on to the village hall we were treated to wine, some delicious little cakes called chouquettes and of course more gossiping, handshaking and kissing.

On Sunday it was the village Meschoui (barbecue). We went with a large group of English friends and were seated inside the hall, rather than the marquee, in order (I think) to get us on one table. Good food, good company and lots of wine and calvados followed including something new to us - between the starter and main course we were served an apple sorbet ....... doused in calvados - Le Trou Normand (Norman Hole), designed to help make room for more indulgence!! I don't know about that - it certainly loosened tongues. When, at the end of the meal and several hours after we had arrived, the Hall started to empty we tried to take our leave. No chance - friends in the marquee called us over for - yes you guessed it - more gossiping, handshaking, kissing and even more alcohol.

The two events made for a lovely week-end and we were made to feel most welcome by our french friends and neighbours.

It's all go - nearly - (at the moment)

Posted by Simon

I was going to do a post on our lovely weekend but first...........

........the washing machine is now whizzing around on the spin cycle and I've never seen anyone so pleased to hear that sound again as Rosie. Very kind friends and neighbours have helped us out with the washing, getting the spares and repairing the machine, but you do feel as if you are being a nuisance after a while.

The mini digger is back in action too. We took the part into the repair shop this morning at 9:15 - the man looked at the part and said he would be unable to repair it immediately. 'Quand?' we asked, expecting a french shrug and a couple of weeks - the reply instead took us totally by surprise - 'by midday today!' So we waited in town, did some shopping, got some flowers for our neighbour for helping with the washing and enjoyed a relaxing cup of coffee. After picking up the repair we then dropped the flowers off and, of course, had to have the obligatory aperitif! But I did get the digger up and running before lunch. (A late lunch admittedly!)

After lunch I did a couple of other little repair jobs before changing the bucket on the digger to carry out another job. This is when I noticed steam rising out of the engine compartment. Oh great. The fan belt had split and needed replacing. Oh great - not the easiest of jobs on a mini digger.

The job I had needed the other bucket for was to find out why the bath/shower water was over flowing by the corner of the house. I hoped that we would have a new septic tank in by now so had been ignoring this problem, but it was getting too bad to leave any longer. I started to dig it out by hand but soon got bored of that, so I rushed out, managed to get a new fan belt and got the digger going again. Digging by machine was much quicker and I soon discovered that the drainage pipe was blocked solid. Tomorrow I'm going to have to do a temporary job until I get the new septic tank in.

Now I smell like an old sewer, the mower still needs fixing and I haven't done my french homework!!!!!! Oh, and a post on our lovely weekend. Sorry but it's shower time now and then a Kir or (and) a beer. Bit of good news through - whilst digging out the blocked pipes I found my rods which I lost down the network of pipes nearly 2 years ago!