PHOTOS OF HOUSE TO RENT IN SOUTH WEST FRANCE

Gite to rent in South West France

We have a gite to rent in the centre of the tiny village of Laroque de Fa. The building is more than 300 years old and was the old bakery, the bread oven and system for heating the house are still in place. We do have a more modern heating system now..... Ground Floor: Kitchen with electric stove, washing machine fridge freezer fully equipped for four people. There is a small sitting area with armchairs and a dining table. There is a wood burning stove for which an initial supply of wood is included in the price. From here there is an original staircase to the first floor. First Floor: On this floor there are two bedrooms, one with a double bed, the other is at present made up as a single with an orthopedic bed. A second single would fit in this room. On this floor is a separate WC and bathroom with bath and shower over. Second Floor: The second floor is reached by another original staircase in the local style, through a door which effectively shuts off the two floors. This floor can be included in the accommodation although the ceiling is yet to be painted, it comprises one large room where there is a double bed and two singles set up as a corner sofa, there is also a large dining table and chairs. The windows open on to a little square in front of the house which was the original threshing area for the grain. Hot water, and electricity are included in the price of the gite. Linen is charged at 10 euros per person per week. Cars should be left in the area next to the church or on the main square. The road up to the gite becomes very narrow and although there is a way through via the top of the hill, it is only suitable for pedestrians or very small cars. There is a piece of land belonging to our gite which is a little overgrown and wild but visitors are welcome to use this for picnics during their stay, it is about 200 metres away, we will be happy to show yo where this is and in season you can pick the figs and enjoy them. Laroque de Fa is on the D613 road from Narbonne through to Couiza, putting you within easy reach of places like Roman Narbonne, the old city of Carcassonne, sed in Kevin Costner's film Robin Hood Prince of thieves, Rennes le Chateau with its mysterious history, and Rennes les Bains for free hot spring bathing in the woods, also recently used By Kate Mosse as the setting for her novel Sepulchre. There is a file of useful information on the shelf in the sitting room downstairs, and if you need any more specific information please do not hesitate to contact your hosts on : 04 68 70 09 38 You should also come and visit us while you are here, we have a small farm just outside the village where we are renovating the old watermill, the Moulin de St Jean Circa 1260, and we have an organic vegetable garden, llamas, goats and other animals to see. Photos of the gite to follow.

Another quiet day in the Corbieres!: 4th December and still cosmos in flowe..............r

Another quiet day in the Corbieres!: 4th December and still cosmos in flowe..............r

4th December and still cosmos in flowe..............r

We have had such a mild autumn here. South of France, what's new you might say? Well we are at altitude in the foothills of the Pyrenees and the growing season can be quite short with early frosts and snow. This year we were still picking aubergines and beetroots last week. Cosmos is an annual plant, as my avatar, and to still have flowers even after our first frosts is amazing. Although the flowers are about half the size of the ones shown on the left. Pandy the new kitten who was abandonned 'chez nous' this summer is growing fast, she is on the Pussy Pill at the moment as we do not have time to go get her fixed, and do not want any more little paws running around here. A friend's dog has just produced a litter of 10 puppies, spaniel crosses, but not spaniels as we know them, in France the breed épagneul has much shorter ears. We agreed to take a female spaniel-type, they will be ready to go at Christmas, but everyone wants females so do not know yet if we will get one. We can only take a female at the moment as our old Japanese Akita male is now nearly blind and deaf and a bit aggressive to other male dogs. When he goes we will be looking for a large guard dog, a Patou - Pyreneen Mountain dog or another Akita would be good. As usual I am having problems uploading photos, I think I have to learn how to reduce the number of pixels, so this message will be lacking in photos. We are bracing ourselves for a bad winter according to the locals, and snow is forecast for the Alps today, but only a little for the Pyrenees. We may buy snow shoes this winter to go feed the animals as walking was very difficult in soft deep snow last year. Photos coming soon.... à bientôt!!

Paragraphs ? Have they B.O. Bugged Off?

Maybe I am missing something on the new layout of French Blogger, I don't know but even when pressing enter/return twice while writing the post, the paragraphs do not appear on line. Hey ho, must be going the way of all grammar, it has taken me ages to decifer some text message from my son because of the abbreviations. No need now to remember things like: Because = Big Elephants Can Always Annoy Small Elephants....... So I guess I shall have to use photographs to split up my 'new' thoughts.

We have had a very dry summer, hardly any rain at all, but when it arrives to make up for lost time, we had a flood last week, although not quite as bad as the one above. If we ever had to protect this place I think we should remove the bridge and put in a drawbridge..

The veg garden was a bit of a disaster this spring as I was unfortunately ill with shingles followed by a skin infection which seemed to go on for ages. Miraculously the garden still produced loads of tomatoes and potatoes, and lots of salad for the tortoises. Last week we took off the final aubergines and chillies. I have never planted anything for the winter but maybe I should as we have more time available to care for the garden in the winter.

This picture of Frida and Marmy from last winter is just how they were last night. This week we lit the wood burner for the first time since April which is quite a saving on wood and kerosene for the Rayburn. We bought in 2 piles of wood from a neighbour's son as he was earning money to pay for his next term at college, and Dave cut down several trees in our wood in the spring, so they will also be dry enough to burn, we just have to drag them from the wood and cut them up. Did I say 'We' - I mean Dave, although I ought to learn to use the chainsaw, but it frightens me. I recently become interested in 'Preparedness', TEOTWAWKI - the end of the world as we know it, and feel living where we do is halfway to being safer than in a large town, but where would anyone run to in Europe? The only wilderness would be in or near to the arctic circle, and I do not think I will be walking there with my Bug Out Bag.....:o) I have just been updating first aid kits, clothes, my seed bank of collected seed for veg next year. We always have enough staple foods here to last months and we only go shopping once a month anyway. Let's hope things do not go even more pearshaped in Europe financially with Greece etc. and Iran stays 'cool'.

Am I becoming a Preppie, with my BOB,BOV and BOL ?

I have been reading about BVs, BOBs, BOLs for WTSHTF (when the s... Hits the Fan), i.e. a major disaster resulting in having to leave quickly - to Bug Out. I know where we live we will probably be Bugging In, as we are in a self sufficient (or could be) situation. Ray Mears is my hero, I love his programmes and films for the scenery mainly, but living on few resources and your own skills and knowledge in a crisis situation has always interested me. In the USA it seems to be big business with loads of blogs, mainly by guys, about Bugging Out and survival. I am not knocking these blogs and related sites as there is a wealth of information on them, but the selling side of things I can avoid. A great deal of these sites cater for people bugging out to the Wilderness and surviving on berries, living in home made shelters and fishing with the basic items brought with them in a tobacco sized tin, in an Every Day Carry bag with concealed weapons, but what about the townies, people in big cities or in the suburbs. The Wilderness is not very close to Wimbledon, and in the UK we cannot legally carry guns and machetes! Where would we have bugged out to if we had still been living in the UK? Some of the blogs/sites cater for suburban and city Bugging Out, but not all, remember the chaos after Hurricane Katerina and the length of time it took before some people were rescued. We have already had to survived being cut off several times here by floods and snow. The last time we were cut off for 4 days with no electricity, no phone, no mobile phone and out only way out was by tractor as the snowplough had effectively compounded our situation, had we needed to get out, by ploughing past our exit onto the main road and piling up the snow. We are lucky, we had stores of food and the building is a watermill with a well, and we had prepared when things started to look bad, by filling the bath with water etc, taking a shovel inside, propping the main door shutter open a bit as they open out and snowdrifts could block us. We have a wood burning stove and loads of cut wood which we brought inside before the snow was 2ft high, found the candles, filled up all the oil lamps. In a way we were prepared and survived with a lot of humor. The mayor and a councillor walked the kilometer from the village in a blizzard to see if we were OK on the third day, I was a little concerned about there being no form of external contact whatsoever for so long in case one of us had been ill etc. and it would have been difficult to walk out (add snow racquets to our list for this year). Having a Bug Out bag has always been sensible to me, I have always had a 'Hospital Bag' packed and ready to go, with a list of all my medications, wash stuff, my medical history written in French (husband does not speak much french), some money, etc. The bag is located in view where my husband can find it, this 'HB' came about after I was rushed into hospital in the UK and my husband ran around like a headless chicken, and a day later brought in a large black plastic bin bag stuffed with T shirts and socks some of which were dirty, no wash things. The riots and looting in the UK were terrible this year, but think how they would have been compounded had the reason for them been survival, and not just looting designer jeans and trainers after, for example a 4 day cut off from power, no food deliveries, no fresh water being pumped and no money from cash machines, no petrol in the pumps, many people shop from day to day and have no stores and there would be no fresh water, surviving a major disaster would be much harder in a town. During the Athens earthquake in 1981 my friend and I rushed out of her basement flat terrified, and spent the next two nights under tarpaulins and tents in a nearby park, it was cold even in Athens in February and would have been more bearable if we had had a Bug Out Bag to take with us, we did however, soften the hardship by consuming rather large amounts of Metaxa brandy. I picked up some very useful ideas from these US sites and blogs am now in the process of making up a decent Bug Out Bag and improved first aid kit for the house and both the vehicles. One of the best ideas/necessities I am preparing now is to scan all valuable documents, deeds, ID, driving licence, heath number, family photos, etc. onto a 4Gb USB key to carry with me at all times, together with a list of contact numbers for family and friends. The torrential rain this week set me off on this new obsession........Be Prepared, Dib, Dib, Dib......... www.faliaphotography.com a woman on her own in a van, is the site I stumbled upon while researching camper vans, which started me linking to other survival sites that she lists. http://survivalgoddess.blogspot.com http://youtu.be/DOo9bjLtL3Q this will frighten you, so what is the point of storing stuff

My Empress Tree is flowering!!!!!

No photo yet as I have a new camera and have not yet managed to learn how to upload photos, but was pretty excited when I saw the buds. Let's just hope they manage to survive the cold nights, and that we do not get a frost yet. Temp was 7 degrees C a few nights ago, but it has been up to 29 degrees C in the day, an Indian SUmmer for us.

See entry and video about Empress Trees below or in the archives.

Will add to this post later.

Never a Quiet Day in The Corbières......................

Seriously, I have just been reading another inspiring blog and when I left a comment I realised I have not posted on here for nearly a year.

Too busy I suppose with enless visitors, and various crafts, and involved with the village community.

So, I am off outside to take some piccies to bring everyone up to date again.

We are starting our winter preparations, Dave is chopping up the trees he cut down in April, so that we can bring it nearer the house before the trail gets too muddy or too deep in snow.

We have another new arrival, Pandy, an kitten with a panda face......more later.

We are considering selling our village house, buying a camper van (RV) and travelling up to see the Northern Lights..............but what to do with the animals?

Shiro is showing his age now, he is bery wobbly on his legs and when he wags his tail he falls over, he is deaf and nearly blind, but he still manages to run away towards the village.......

Spinning with a drop spindle

Thank you Abby Franquemont

NUNO FELTING SCARF 2 - Laminate felting

1.  Lay silk or silk chiffon, or muslin material along a table covered in plastic.
2.  Pull very light pieces of wool from the wool roving and place around the edge - overhanging the edge.
3.  Place some wool in the opposite direction along the edge

4.  Start adding your design, these are pink dyed Wenslydale curls.  It is always best to place some very light pieces of roving wool across addition like this to ensure they are well anchored onto the piece.

5.  Don't breath , open a window or let in the cats it could be disastrous!!

6.  When you have completed your design cover with nylon mesh - if the scarf is long this is a two person job and needs to be done slowly to avoid moving the design.

7.  Now the messy bit.......mix up a bowl of hot soapy water - washing up liquid or Lux soap flakes for wool until the mixture is very slippery.  Start springkling this onto the design covered with the nylon mesh and as you do so, gently tap down the wet design.  Continue the length of the piece, do not miss any areas.  

8.  Smooth over with fingers and gently rub all along the edges of your design.

9.  Place another layer of bubble wrap over the piece.

10. Start to roll up from one end, quite tightly.

11.  Ties bundle with old tights in several places.

12.  Wrap in old towel

13.  Start rolling quite hard, keep elbows into sides to avoid over working your shoulders.

14.  After 20 minutes, un-roll and roll up again from the other end - repeat 20 minutes rolling.

15.  After this, unroll gently and make sure the edges are well felted, if not gently fold the edge over and rub with fingers.  Check the whole length of piece.

16.  Roll up again and repeat 5 minutes of rolling.

17.  Unroll and discard bubble wrap and towel.

18. NOW ABUSE YOUR WORK :D - gather it together and repeatedly throw it down on the table - this will start the shrinking process.  Do this for abot 10 minutes

19.  Rinse your piece in hot water squeeze gently, then again, in the sink throw the piece down into the bowl about 15 times. 

20.  Check the shrinkage is to your liking - check the edges have not felted against each other, they make need pulling apart to even design.

21.  Rinse work in cold water, squeeze out and hang up, again adjust any over felting and straighten any edges that are too felted.  Hang up to dry.

21.  The wool will have shrunk and the silk will crinkle up enhancing your original design.

22.  Feel free to add embroidery or sequins - anything you fancy.

HAPPY NUNO FELTING

Summer in the Corbieres - a busy, varied time as usual......

Pixie finds time to relax in the sun on the swing bed, all she needs is someone to swing her........

MLC Blues band from Tournissan came to play at our first village fete in June - great eveing!!

We had an 'open day' on the Journee de Patrimoine' Heritage day in France and met many interesting people with more information for us about our medieval mill.

Seems to be a bumper year for large crickets - there are about 6 in this photo, all on a spindle tree.

Feline Termenes plant fete and marche gourmande, usually the first outing of the 'season', this year, after snow in May some people lost the plants they bought here.

We had a very interesting day here with an archaeologist, Frederick Loppe and an historian.  They confirmed the base of the walls at the back of the mill date back to 1200, which confirms the history we have already discovered.  I laid out all the 'finds' we had made over the years and they identified them for me, a piece of roman glass, pottery from the 16th, 17th and 15th centuries, and a 'cannon ball' that our son found 15 years ago which we always thought was an ancient 'boule' for petanque!!! This will form the basis of another posting on this blog and the blog dedicated to the Moulin de St Jean - link in right hand column.

Art Holiday in France

Fancy eating well and having fun learning new skills with artist Kate Hardy  in the Pyrenees mountains?  A friend of mine is running an art week at her beautiful secluded farmhouse in the foothills of the Pyrenees - fantastic views......check it out here:

http://artholidayfrance.posterous.com

There are only two places left now.

New llama - Carabar Lily

This is Carabar Lily, a new arrival on our little farm.  Her name Carabar is the name of a witch in France, so we have named her Lily.  She has settled in with our old male, castrated llama, Larry, in fact she is now the dominant llama in the pen, but no aggression.

Unfortunately Carabar Lily has produced two handicapped crias (llama baby), so the owners asked me to home her while they had an entire male llama visiting their other females, to ensure she did not become pregnant.  I am happy to say that she may stay permanently with us.  We already love her and she eats from my hand.  Female llamas are known to be harder than males to train, but when things have calmed down here after the summer run of tourists and visitors, I will get down to some serious training with her.

Llamas are often used to 'guard' herds of sheep against dogs, wolves and cougars (not many of them i the Corbieres I am glad to say!!). They need to have some training to do this efficiently but they do seem to have some natural instinct.  Carabar Lily is already very possessive about the chickens.  The coop is in the llamas pen and when I let the chooks out to free range every afternoon, Carabar Lily hums her little warning noise when they go out of her sight, and when they come back to roost at dusk she often 'herds' them into the coop by touching her nose on their tails - this is very endearing.

The 'S' Word again......I don't believe it.......

Snow? In June - I had to 'phone a friend' to coonfirm that I had just heard the weather forecaster on TF1 mention the 'S'Word and Pyrenees in the same sentence - Not again, please......all my pants are late this year.

Update on the Empress Trees - they are doing very well, lots of leaves but they are not enormous, however the Empress Tree I moved that was not doing well had gone completely mad, and when we get some sun it will be providing shade for the tortoise.

Picture shows latest excavations inside our ruined mill that dates from before the Knights Templar occupied the area (before 1200)

Fete de Pays Corbieres - A good day, our village was hosting an historical walk along the river, probably pointing out the 'lack' of wildlife........ Just before lunch the group reached our mill and we actually learnt more historical facts from one of the visitors. He is coming back to see us tomorrow - La Journee des Moulins 20 juin - when we have an open day - Porte Ouverte. Today was the first day of a weekend of Patrimoine - heritage - when most museums and national monuments are open for free, we had about 10 visitors which I think was good considering we have had driving torrential rain......

I will add some photos later, Blogger seems to have changed its layout and it is not clear how to add photos now......

Empress trees on their way!!!

Here is a video of what an Empress tree looks like, trying to think where to put them now.......

Another quiet day in the Corbieres!: Quelque 'flocking' flocons

Another quiet day in the Corbieres!: Quelque 'flocking' flocons

Quelque 'flocking' flocons

Here we go again.......more snow........at least this time they forecast we could get a metre....we are up to 60cms already...........

 

Larry didn't seem bothered at all.

 

About an hour ago, before we started having power cuts which has made uploading pictures difficult.

About 50 cms of snow on top of the bird flight which had to be knocked down to save the netting from breaking.

 

Glad to have the old Land Rover back on the road for this fall of snow in case of emergencies.

It passed its control technique (MOT) on Friday to our surprise!!!

I spotted this just before the snow started yesterday, it is now under a heap of snow......

My first attempt at Nuno felting

Here are the pictures of my first attempt at Nuno felting.

I used a silk chiffon scarf for the base, which I had previously knotted and dyed in Australian Landscape dye - wild raspberry.

I laid out towels and bubble wrap on the table the length of the scarf. Placed the scarf on top of the bubble wrap.

I did not put a layer of wool as a base before the scarf as I wanted a very light almost cobweb scarf.

The carefully pull out very whispy pieces from a short length of merrino wool roving and make a fine layer over the scarf. I worked from one end until I thought I was running out of dark pink, then I started at the other end, intending to use another colour in the middle and change the design I had in my head. As it happened I had enough dark pink to make a fine layer (about an inch high - sounds a lot but it is miniscule).

I then used the bright pink to make a design on the dark pink, added some pre dyed and pulled thin silk carrier rods (see previous articles on here). I also placed some light pink Wenslydale curls on both ends of the scarf.

As I was not sure if the silk and curls would felt enough and attach I placed small amounts of the light pink merino roving across them to hold them in place.

When I was happy with the design, also holding my breath as the whisps of wool are so light I was afraid they would blow away. I had a dodgy moment when a cat jumped on the table……

The place the nylon netting gently over the top of your scarf…..very s l o w l y so as not move the design.

I mixed some savon de Marseilles soap with warm water in a bowl, then gently sprinkled the mixture on the scarf on top of the nylon netting. Olive oil soap is wonderful for your hands, avoid using specific wool soap as this may in some way prevent the felting process. Gradually wet all the surface of the scarf/netting, but not too much. If you press your hand down on the work there should be no water seeping out between your fingers.

Place another layer of bubble wrap on top of the wet work. Roll up a small towel to the width of the bubble wrap which is bigger than the scarf. Roll your work round this from one end and secure with cut off pieces of tights (panty hose). Start rolling - good description of this in the video below. After at least 100 rolls, unwrap and roll up in opposite direction. Repeat 100 rolls, unwrap and flip over, roll up again from one end and yes…..another 100 rolls.

At this stage you can unroll and check your work. It will have stuck a little to the netting, peel this off very gently, and check the wool has felted through the silk scarf to the other side. If you hold the fabric up you will see a halo of whispy hairs on the reverse of the scarf.

Peel off the netting, gently rub your hands over the work to start the process of shrinkage and fulling to finish your work. At this stage spread the scarf out and check the edges are as you want them, I had to trim off some odd ends, but you can fold excess under the edges and rub for a couple of minutes to felt the ends together. At this point you can pull the piece into the shape you want, or as I did I left the scarf pulled out to points at the end which I liked.

Now abuse your work………gather up together and put in a bowl of hot water, squeeze and swish about - in fact everything you are told not to do when washing wool. The plunge into cold water, then squeeze out excess water and throw the work down onto your work surface a few times, repeat these processes until you are happy that the fibres are as fulled as you want them.

At this stage some of the edges of my piece had stuck together where I did not want the to be stuck so I had to gently prise them apart. I spread out the work to dry and dried it really quickly on the heated towel rail in the bathroon as I was impatient to wear the scarf that evening. I wore it and it ‘felt’ (sorry) great, and was greatly admired.

The finished scarf was difficut to photograph but it is lovely to wear.

NUNO FELTING - my next experiment

Araucana blue eggs - my first

 

Lovely aurprise just now amidst all this horisontal snow and blizzards, my first blue Araucana chicken eggs.

Very hard to photograph - they are a sort of beige blue, and they are larger than I had expected as the chickens are quite small.

I think they look more blue in the photo below which is of our complete colour range of eggs!!

From the left - small bantam egg, two Araucana eggs, two dark brown Marans Froment (wheaten) eggs, they started laying at the end of the summer.

the Araucana eggs are such different shapes that I thought the ducks had nipped upstairs to lay an egg, but the breed of duck I have Khaki Campbells apparently lay white eggs, so the variation is in the Araucana.

Short posting I am afraid as we have to drive down the mountain to collect one of our cats from the Vet, more about Billy later.