Beech Leaf Noyau Recipe

As we were out collecting sloe leaves (and having a very nice walk with the dog through the lovely spring woods) we thought we would give this a go too. Different kind of drink, but the leaves are MUCH easier to collect (they just strip off a branch where as the sloe ones are tiny and have to be individually picked due to the thorniness of the branches). You need the lovely green fresh spring leaves to make it.

A jar for the drink to mature in
Enough beech leaves to fill the jar (loosely packed)
Enough gin to pretty much fill your jar (we are also trying one with fruit alcohol - similar to vodka I guess)
200g of sugar to 70cl of gin (or adjust according to taste)
20cl of brandy to 70cl of gin (many people prefer it without the brandy - that is what we are going for this year)

Put the leaves in the jar and fill it with the gin.
Leave for about 3 weeks.
Heat the sugar in 1ml of water for each 1g of sugar (ie 200ml of water for 200g of sugar)
Allow to cool and mix in a bowl with the flavored gin (add the syrup slowly and taste as you go until you think it is right - some people say they prefer no sugar so taste before you start adding it!).
Add the brandy to the mix (if using) and bottle.
Improves with age

Épine Recipe

The French haven't heard of sloe gin, but they make a drink with the spring leaves of the blackthorn (the tree sloes come from) called épine (which is French for thorn - sometimes it is called épine noir or blackthorn as well).

4 liters of cheap red wine

50cl of cheap brandy

3/4 liter of sloe leaves (some people say with twigs and some say without - we went for without)

600g of sugar (more can be added to taste)

Put everything in to a container (we used the 5 liter bottle the wine came in - made sangria with the rest of the wine) and leave for 2 weeks. 

Then strain in to bottles and leave as long as you can. It apparently improves with age.

The veg

The veg is growing quite very slowly in both the potager and the cold frame, the weather has been wet and cold. The slugs haven't helped either, they have eaten most of the kale and half the broad beans as well as some of the peas, mange tout and sugar snaps.. We have planted more of each in the cold frame and plan on letting them get bigger before planting out. When they are too small it seems a slug just takes one bite  through the stem and that is the plant gone but we hope if they are bigger they might survive a bit of nibbling.

Even the uneaten ones aren't growing fast

Remains of a mange tout

The shallots and garlic are doing well (the onions less so for some reason)

 The potatoes are doing well

 The carrots less so - there seems to be one small one growing from about 200 seeds in 10 rows...

Mowing the grass

We have been mowing the lawn stripe each day and feeding the clippings to the rabbits as their cages have a mesh bottom which doesn't really let them get through at the grass. We still had to move the cages from time to time otherwise the grass dies under the bedroom and a mountain of poo grows up.The bottom is removable, so we have decided to experiment with removing it and moving the cages along the lawn instead. They will need moving several times a day - so if we are going out we will still probably feed extra clippings to keep them going. We hope the lawn will have less splotch patches on it where we failed to move the cages quickly enough and the poo build up and bedroom killed some of the grass. I expect we will still need to even it up with the mower but we hope they will make doing the edges easier as the cage can go right up to the edge but the lawnmower can't.

There was a slight technical hitch to the experiment when one of the rabbits escaped. Poppy gave chase and there was an exciting high speed race around the lawn until Doug shouted with the voice of uber-command and Poppy actually sat and stopped chasing. The poor rabbit stayed frozen in place for a while. I called for it, not expecting it to come, but one has to do something - and it came to me! So I was able to reunite it with its cage, it seemed quite pleased and stayed in the bedroom for some time. It seems likely that it escaped through the door as I had left it unlocked. Oooops!

Owen was also drafted in to do a bit of lawn mowing while Daisy went for a little ride up the land to see how her feet are doing (ok we think)

This little guy was meant to be on the drive with his mum and friends but they all escaped so they have had to be sent back to their field until we can electrify the fencing.

I killed a chicken!

We didn't eat it though.
A friend's chicken has been ill for quite a few days and as it is at least 7 years old she decided it needed putting out of its misery. She couldn't do it herself and for some reason we sprung to mind as cruel heartless people who could! Well to be fair she knows we are planning on eating some of ours and will therefore have to manage to do the deed.
Initially I volunteered Doug for the job. But as I was staying home while they went out for a ride (Daisy is still out of action) I decided that I shouldn't be such a wimp. If I can't kill someone else's chicken I am never going to be able to do one I hatched from an egg and have fed and cared for for ages... Plus this one I didn't then have to pluck and gut as we decided not to eat it given it's great age and unknown illness.
I used our 'culling pliers' for the first time.

You put them round the chickens neck and squeeze, the spikes are to stop the neck sliding out the edge. The 'blades' are not sharp, they are rounded and blunt. The theory is that they push between the vertebra as you squeeze, forcing them apart and snapping the spinal column. If you are going to eat the bird, you wait for it to stop twitching madly and then chop its head off and drain the blood out before plucking and gutting.

There is a lot of debate on the internet about the most humane way to dispatch a chicken. I would say that the consensus is that chopping it's head off with an axe is. However the downsides of this method is
a.) It takes some practice to manage to get the chicken in a suitable position without traumatising it (easier with 2 people)
b.) Blood tends to be sprayed everywhere because of the mad convulsive twitching that happens after death. There are some quite gruesome videos on youtube. I would not advise watching them unless you want a lesson in 'how not to'. There is one with some hillbillies demonstrating chopping the head of and then the headless body bounces and runs around the garden spraying blood is a quite delightful way. Euurgh.

As long as you use a firm squeeze (I doubt you could squeeze too hard and mush it's head clean off unless you have a really strong grip) this method seemed pretty quick and not too traumatic (for killer or chicken).

Still not sure I can do a rabbit though. They are awfully cute.

New cow's name

She is called Hélora and is very friendly, a lot less shy than Hainoa, she is not as pretty though!

Work on the house

No we haven't actually started yet. But we are really close. Honest!
We are happy with the plans, we don't have permission from the Mairie yet (it got delayed because there were some photos missing so the month started again once they were submitted - darn) but we hope we will soon.
We have spent the time since submitting the plans working out more details about how we are going to do some things. Such as insulation, heating, hot water etc. It is a slow process as we need to read a lot about different options and understand in detail how we would do it to make sure it will all fit together and work for us.
The following we have decided - although there are still various outstanding questions

Heating/Hot water
We are keen to use 'free' resources as much as we can so wood and sun make sense. We have been struggling with the cost of some solutions to install which is why we have gone off the wood gasification boiler idea and replaced it with a back boiler on the range cooker.

Wood burning range cooker with back boiler

Our current favorite stove with a back boiler (Themo Suprema)

Solar Thermal
Immersion heater (for back up)
Grey water heat recovery (in bathroom)
Underfloor heating (upstairs above the floor and downstairs in screed on the existing floor)
2 towel rails (1 in each bathroom) - these are heat dumps for the back boiler and will be hot whenever it is on
The accumulator needs to have sufficient inputs to add something like an air source heat pump if we find chopping all the wood too much.

Questions - 1 accumulator tank providing both hot water and heating or a smaller hot water tank and an accumulator for the heating.

Insulation
The insulation needs to be breathable throughout and also to seal the house well from drafts.
Hemp and lime for the walls (also known as hempcrete). 100mm thick with lime plaster (or possibly earthern plaster) painted with lime paint.
Wood fiber for the roof (with vapour barrier and plasterboard on top). 260mm total depth in 2 layers at 90° to each other.

Ventilation
In an old house that has been insulated and sealed from drafts it is important to have good ventilation otherwise the fabric of the building suffers.
6 individual balanced heat recovery (HRV) units (bathroom x2, main bedroom, upstairs corridor, kitchen, living room)
Simple extractor in garage (it will be unheated in there but there and there will be the washing machine)
Recycling cooker hood
Roof vents (high and low on the roof as there are no soffit vents) to ventilate above the insulation

Beams
Angle grind to improve surface
Treat with xylophene for woodworm, beetles etc
Finish with some kind of smooth finish to make dusting easy (TBD)

Floor in garage and outdoor kitchen
Despite the floor in the house being concrete and non breathable we are going to go with a breathable lime floor for any new floors we put down. The concern with a non breathable floor is that any moisture coming up under the floor goes sideways and ends up rising up the walls. We can't really do anything about the floor in the house as it would be a humongous job to take up the existing floor, but we can not make the problem worse at least.

Internal wall construction
The pantry and downstairs toilet will be hempcrete on stud (for good insulation) and upstairs will be plasterboard on stud with some kind of phonic insulation (TBD)

Poor Kira

One of the horses visiting us (there are two) has hurt her leg. The vet came to take an x-ray, as her owner was at work we helped out. Apparently the piece of kit cost somewhere in the region of 70,000EUR so the vet got worried when Tigi - the other visiting horse - escaped and came cantering towards the equipment, we had to bundle it all back in the van pdq until things settled down.
Once we managed to get some x-rays taken (Doug holding the horse, I was holding the sensor and the vet the camera) she couldn't see any breaks or fractures, but said that sometimes they don't show up immediately. So poor Kira is confined (with Tigi for company) in a makeshift stall in the barn. They will be there for around 10 days at least.

They have been there a few days now and Kira is looking much better and putting weight on the leg. The swelling is going down too. So it looks like she will be ok!
Benefit also that the stalls in the barn have been cleaned out so if we need somewhere inside for our horses we have something until we get round to building stables.

Bye bye Hoppy

Hoppy's new owners decided they wanted him earlier than they originally said. So Hoppy has been whisked away to a new home and we have a new friend for Hainoa. She is a similar colour to Hoppy, sadly we can't remember her name. It was something about the female name for god (the highland cow man tried to explain the name) and started with H but sounded more like it started with an F I think... but maybe some other letter. I have emailed and asked for a reminder. She seems very friendly anyway.

We were a bit concerned Hainoa is so shy and nervous compared to Hoppy and the new friend and that she was unusually nervy and would never be as calm as the adult cows we saw. But the Sebastien (the cow man) assured us that Hoppy and the new friend are the exceptions and most young highland cows are nervous and shy, then by they are 2 years old they calm down and are less so. He said that he doesn't have problems with the little cows escaping because he has their mothers. Sometimes they go for a little walk about but always come home to mum. He said though that other people find the little cows a bit of a nuisance, then when they are a bit older they stay in the field fine. Not sure what age 'a bit older' is!

Paths in the potager

We have had a giant (and growing) pile of branches sitting on the concrete for months waiting to be chipped in the wonder destroi. We use some of them for chicken bedding, but the main plan for the wood chips is to keep the weeds down on the paths in the potager.

Doug had a heroic session with the chipper and got it going enough to show it will look look GORGEOUS when it is done (in a few years time!).

There is still a teeny weeny amount of work to do before it is perfect - specially as we want a path round the edge too.

The pea/bean supports look nice huh? It is a shame the slugs have eaten the peas and beans.

Lorna did some weeding between our beds last year, and we got a tiny bit of wood chip down. I think she would be delighted to see the step forward things have taken, although a tiny bit distressed to see just how fast and giant the weeds have grown. 

Chamonix Flat Sold (really!)

Some months ago I said we had probably sold our flat in Chamonix. Finally the gears have ground and it is REALLY sold and we have the money in our bank.
We loved it dearly, and had a great time there, so it is sad in a way - but good to have the dosh to spend on this place (all that and more!!)

Misunderstandings

We are thinking about buying an investment apartment in Bagnere rather than trying to convert some part of the barn in to a gite as we think it would be more cost effective plus having the benefit that the people staying there are not on our doorstep. We went to look round a place a few weeks ago, bref - as the French say - meaning 'to cut a long story short'. We wanted to put an offer in, someone got in before us, I mortally offended the nice agent lady.
She very kindly translated her emails in to English. Here is a short example. Generally we could just about make out what she was trying to say, but it would have been easier in French
'I is sent to you an e-mail on Monday, April 29th for you exliquez what take place, the customer wait to make a decision, it does not have to refuse mine. He(it) have to confirm me if it was made with the other customer because he(it) he(it) waited his(its) answer'
When she told us that the owner had another offer I replied in English 'That's a shame'. Normally I wrote to her in French but I was in a rush and I was frustrated as we had waited a long time for this news as she (and most of France) went on holiday for a week as May is pretty much all bank holiday in France.
I would translate this in to French as 'Il est dommage' or something like but google translate translates it as C'est une honte. I am not sure the sentence is good French, but honte means shameful or ashamed so the nice estate agent lady thought I was telling her she was shameful or something like that.
She sent me a long email explaining how she had done the best she could and she had nothing to be ashamed of etc. I sent her one back explaining where I thought the translation had gone wrong. So everything is ok now! We are probably going to see a couple of other flats with her next week.

We do use google translate a lot when communicating with people by email, but we are always very careful to use it just for certain spelling and conjugations rather than just putting the rambling you have written in English in and giving it free rein. It is an amazing tool, but it can come out with a lot of nonsense too!

... so you must really like animals?

When we were working at our architects we were chatting away (in French) to one of the guys we were working with. We were telling him about our current list of animals

2 horses
2 cows (one on loan but another coming when it goes)
1 dog
1 cat
5 chickens
12 baby chickens
10 sheep
9 baby sheep
3 rabbits
Total - 45

He said - 'Wow you must really love animals!!'

I thought about it, one the whole I can't say I do!
I like horses.
Dogs I kind of like, but they smell and shed hair everywhere. Of course I love ours - I don't notice the smell any more, but she surely does cover everything in hair. Some other people's dogs are lovely, some not so much.
Cats I always thought I liked and wanted one (there was a period when I was perhaps 8 where I plagued my poor parents day and night for one) but having one I am less sure. She is quite cute and all (despite trying to take your hand off from time to time) but she is a shit machine and keeps digging up the flower pots to use as a toilet. She is useful for keeping the rodent population down though so she can stay.
The rest are food animals and can be quite cute sometimes, but I wouldn't say I exactly like them or that we have them because we like animals. We like what we can do with the products from them and we do very much enjoy learning about them and interacting with them. But I don't think we are 'animal lovers' like you might think we must be to have so many. I guess we might have problems killing and eating them if we were.
The cows I generally like, but at the moment actively dislike after 2 escape episodes (the second I think I did not blog but we spent half a day with a hangover trailing around in the beaming sunshine following sightings of them from various neighbors before eventually finding them behind a cowshed with about 30 cows and a bull between them and home - the neighbor very kindly rounded them all up in to his shed so we could get past easily. Frustratingly he said hup hup at them a couple of times and they all went where they were he wanted them leaving us dragging our stroppy two along in an embarrassingly uncooperative fashion aaaargh). They are now in with the sheep and need taking water twice a day - which is hard work down and up the steep slope.

Cows in the sheep field with horses outside in the larger field

When we were originally looking to buy cows I chanced on this blog, she has a lovely outlook on life - and obviously does love all animals and struggle when one has to be slaughtered or dies! I laughed a little at her woes trying to keep cows in a field - but only in a gentle and nice way because I now understand all to well the trauma of trying to keep animals where they are meant to be. Don't they understand we are just trying to keep them safe and give them nice grass and water??
The sheep also go walkabout occasionally (the ones in the orchard where the fence is a bit rickity in places - but they always go to the same place so they are not so annoying to get back (touch wood). They always go in to one of the neighbors fields, we can't understand why they prefer to to our ones that they pass through to get there, but sure they have their reasons - the first time it happened we were glad we had a bell on one of them as it let us locate them. We are thinking about a bell for the cows too - although you have to be reasonably close to them for it to help...
This entry started off as a quick thought triggered by a conversation (we have similar confusion about how 'green' we are deep down - despite living quite a green life at the moment) but became a rant about escaping animals!

I hope I haven't come across as too negative about our livestock! I don't think we are traditional 'animal lovers' as the guy we were talking to meant, but we get a great deal of entertainment and satisfaction from having all the animals and really enjoy caring for them, learning about them and interacting with them. Once we have managed to implement our fencing master plan (in approx 10 years time) I will love some of them a lot more!

Compost

We have two compost bins and a giant compost mound. The two bins have been slowly coming apart at the seams so we have dug them out and used some of the compost and returned the rest to one of the bins to finish off. We have moved one of them closer to the house, and will move the other when it is emptied of compost.

One bin behind the house

Still got some composting to go

It seemed in the bins that some parts were too soggy and some too dry. We are not sure when we should do differently but think perhaps we should have mixed more.
Ultimately we are planning to have larger ones made from wood up at the potager and some kind of smaller ones just for temporary storage by the house. We could then mix by moving the heaps from one bin to another (the current plastic bins are rather to fragile for this).
But in the mean time we were very please to have some compost to mound up our potatoes with (I hope you are reading the Dunx - you pointed out last year that we were meant to mound them up... but we didn't... this year we have. Hopefully it will improve the number of potatoes we get!)

Poppies

Actual Poppies not the dog... there are loads of yellow ones growing by the roadside around here. We are trying to encourage some we 'liberated' to grow on our land. Not sure if they will like it or not. It is possible we rather damaged the roots as we freed them. They were very long and hard to get out. We are not sure either whether they will enjoy the full sun position they are in...

If they don't work out we will go and collect some seeds and try again next year...

Fried Soda Bread Recipe

I will try to add a photo to this next time a make it. The camera went awol for a while...
This is great when you are out of bread and need some quickly as it only takes a few minutes to mix and maybe 10 mins to cook.

250g plain flour
2 tsp baking soda
60g butter
Salt
Butter milk/yogurt/milk with a bit of lemon in - any kind of acidic milk product to react with the baking soda

Put the flour, baking soda and salt in to a bowl.
Rub in the butter (like making pastry - I use a pastry cutter)
Add enough of your milky thing to make a dough similar in consistency to bread dough but like making pastry mix quickly and just enough to get dough to stick together. Don't kneed like making bread.
Put some flour on the work surface and turn out your dough. Squish it in to a round shape around 2.5cm thick.
Heat a frying pan (ideally a heavy bottomed one) to a medium heat, add a large blob of butter and transfer your dough in to the frying pan.
Cover with a lid or some tin foil and cook until the bottom is browned - you don't want this to happen to fast as you want the bread to cook through. Add some more butter and turn the bread over. Don't cover and continue to cook until the other size is brown too.
Serve immediately, by cutting in to quarters or eighths. Lovely split down the middle with butter, cheese, jam or whatever on it.

New home for the little chicks

We have moved the chickies outside as they have plenty of proper feathers now and they were getting rather big for their box, very noisy (and too smelly).

The two that are being raised by one of the hens have been set free from their mini cage and are living with the rest of the flock now. They still sleep under the chicken at night but in the normal chicken coop. They are considerably smaller than the other ten. They have rather stupidly taken to busting through the mesh around the chicken enclosure and wandering around the garden. Just begging a hungry dog to scoff them.

Drop Scones (Scotch Pancakes) Recipe

Makes about 6
125g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
salt
25g caster sugar
2 eggs
Approx 100ml milk
25g melted butter

or

125g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
salt
20g sugar
1egg
approx 150ml milk

Put the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a bowl.
Add the eggs and stir a bit, add the melted butter (or some milk if using recipe without butter) and stir some more
Add a little of the milk and stir until smooth
Add more milk until you have a thick creamy mixture. It should be stiffer than for crepe type pancakes but runnier than american pancakes. When you drop it in the pan you want it to spread out but not be so runny it spreads to fill the pan.
Put a frying pan on a medium heat and add a little butter.
Add spoonfuls of the mixture, the pan shouldn't sizzle as you add the mixture, but the butter should bubble a bit.

Bubbles will start to rise after a few minutes (mmmm that makes me think of crumpets I must make them soon!) at which point you should turn the pancake over

When they are cooked on both sized stack them up and put them in a cool oven while you cook further batches.

Serve with butter and jam. Yummy!

Flour tortillas

Makes 6 tortillas
125g Plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp oil
80 ml warm milk

Mix everything together in a bowl - should  be a dough similar consistany to bread dough.
Leave to rest for 20 mins. Cover with damp cloth or clingfilm
Break in to 6 equal size pieces, roll each one in to a ball and leave to rest covered again for a further 10 mins.
Roll each ball out in to a circle approx 15-20cm in diameter
In a dry frying pan fry for about 30 seconds each side until they look a bit puffy and done. Serve immediately or reheat wrapped in foil in the oven.

Plus de chantier collectif

Last week we went and helped our architect with some building work on his house, we went again this week. Last week the 'paille et terre' (straw and earth) work was just starting, this week it was nearing completion. Two weeks will have seen two walls insulated. There was a lot of the mix ready, so we spent the day packing it in to the walls. I did remember to take photos this time!

The wall we worked on last week (near the bottom!)

Doug at work

Close up of the finished (but not dry product)

Lunch (with wine!)

The bit of the wall we worked on this week

Although we don't want to insulate with this method, it was a good chance to ask him questions about what he thinks we should do plus to meet some interesting people. Last week we worked with an English guy who had done a lot of 'eco' building work so that was interesting (as we could understand all of what he was telling us!), this week was all French people so we got a good chance to practice our French, particularly with the very nice guy we were working alongside. He was very patient and asked us nice simple questions. As it is a bank holiday in France lots of their friends turned up at lunch time (v yummy cake) too. We enjoyed it a lot.
Our favorite insulation method at the moment is chanvre chaux (lime and hemp or 'hempcrete') and we are reading a lot about air to water heat pumps, under floor heating, ground source heat pumps, solar thermal and solar pv. Thrilling stuff!

Nice long ride

We went for the longest ride we have been on yesterday. It was a tad longer than planned due to a dodgy short cut!
We passed through many valleys and villages we had never seen before and did not know existed. Although we were tired by the time of the dodgy short cut, it was very scenic and good to see what was there. The ride has given us a lot of ideas for other rides. We also met a french girl who stopped us and asked if she could come riding with us another time. I have emailed her, and hopefully we will set something up. She lives just up the road and has a small feisty 21 year old white pony that we have passed several times going on rides.

Poppy couldn't come as she can't be trusted on the road off the lead. So Tigi's riders husband kindly agreed to look after her while we were out. Allegedly she behaved very well, she went for a walk with one of their dogs in Bagnere. She came back very tired which is good!

We went skiing today!

The ski area decided to open the off piste from the top of the Pic du Midi for a bonus 7 days from today. The season passes are still valid.
We jumped out of bed this morning bright and early - this is the view from the house of the Midi at 7am.

And rushed up there to get on the first lift.

All the skiing is off piste. We have not skied off the top before and were glad to get a bonus chance to do so this season - particularly as it is included on our season pass! It was a bit tricky with no other lifts running to manage to end up back at the car - it took a bit of climbing to achieve.

Leaving the observatory

View of where we are heading

On the way down

On the way down

Honestly this was a really steep climb

View into the mountains

We are going over there

Looking back the way we came - nearly down

Back in the ski area!

The dog didn't come on the skiing, but we took her for a walk in the snow afterwards