More French strikes

My flight yesterday was cancelled. Probably the 4th one due to strikes in the last few months. I am flying back this evening with BA - at great expense. The flight is quite late anyway so I should have got home at about 1am. However it is now 3 hours late and we are waiting for a bag to be removed after someone failed to board the plane. It is likely to be an hour apparently because most baggage handlers have gone home. I have two screaming kids sitting in front of me and one is playing with an ipad on full volume and banging on the seat. Aaaaaaargh. Looking at about 5am to get home. Booo hooo and we are leaving the EU too. Not a good day!

Ditch by the drive

The cows mowed the drive very well, but because it had been a bit long they were there quite a while so they made a bit of a mess of the ditch - the rainy weather didn't help, either as it was all very soft.

Doug used the mini digger to dig it out so it is extra good now. There are trees in it in a few places which need removing at some point so it can all be done properly.

Every time I come round the corner and see the mini digger there I get a suprise and think 'what is someone doing on our drive! Oh it is the mini digger'. The horses don't seem bothered though.

The veg patch

The vegetable garden is looking a bit better now. I planted quite a lot during week off. Carrots, parsnips, sprouts, kale, cabbages and maybe some other things.

The mange tout and sugar snaps are starting to come through as are the courgettes and one of the rhubarb is doing well.

Doug found some self seeded camomile in th field between the house and the garden which was good as a lot are needed for a years supply - for tea. They go on flowering through the whole summer so hopefully should have plenty. We cannot mow that bit now though!

These are some really really stinky mushrooms called devils fingers - which are a kind of stink horn

More sewing

Dress. I ended up unpicking this several times until the top bit was vaguely right. It is way more summery than the current weather.

Skirt. This take four of this very simple pattert, nearly right... Still not perfect at the waist. Next one will be - maybe!

The zip looks pretty good

What a beautiful hem and seam

Voted!

Feeding the pigs

Sadly you can only see this if you have Adobe Flash Player which I cannot get safari to play on the iPad. Hopefully better on other devices.

Horse ride

We haven't ridden the horses in months. Somehow things got away from us and there just wasn't time with working, working on the house, keeping the grass under control and spending some time doing fun things like walking the dog and going to San Sebastian and Toulouse.
We trimmed their hooves earlier in the week which was a bit of an undertaking too as it had been neglected too long and they had got really long. Horses have reeeaally heavy feet.
They were a bit footsore, specially Daisy having not been out on a hard surface for so long.

We stopped for lunch and tied the horses to a tree. We had home grown salad with home made mayonnaise, potatoes, egg, sugar snap peas, lettuce and baby courgette.

Two beers in one day

We were super keen today and brewed two beers. Our stocks of homebrew have run down to almost nothing as we have not found the time to do it for ages.

We made an all grain 'quaffing beer' which is made by heating up malted wheat, maize and rice then straining it and boiling the liquid with hops. This is quite an effort and takes a lot of time. 

The other is made with spray malt which is where someone else has done the boiling up of malted wheat (no maize and rice in this one) and then dried out the results. You then just have to boil with hops to make the beer. This second one is going to be an IPA which means we will add more hops as it ferments (called dry hopping).

Poppy got bored during the many many hours it took to make the all grain

We had a previous brew when we were finished to celebrate

They will now frment for a week or maybe a bit more and then be bottled with a bit of sugar to give fizz. They will be ready a couple of weeks after that. It lasts several years in the bottle usually.

Decorating ideas

The windows are going to stay as varnished wood. The lime plaster we are going to leave as is for now. But we need to decide how to finish the plasterboard walls and the surrounds of the windows as the plaster doesn't go very neatly up to the windows so some filling needs to be done then painted. But how will we blend that with the plaster?

Downstairs the plasterboard is one side of the toilet and then on the sides of the shower. I am thinking that in the toilet we will get some breathable paint and paint the whole thing with that (perhaps white? or grey) then behind the toilet is going to have a morrocan pattern in grey and teal.

The outside of the toilet and shower we will paint in the same paint. That will leave the back wall in the following photo the natural lime colour. This area will have a sink and work suface. We think the walls might get paler still as they dry, at the moment they are a grey brown colour which must come partially from the plaster not being quite dry as the sand used I think was less grey and paler. It is hard chosing the colour of the other walls without knowing what colour this will end up. If it stays this colour white could work, but if it gets paler that might be too similar.

Upstairs there will be a plasterboard ceiling, this is the insulation you can still see at moment. I think mid-ish grey could look nice, and white woodwork for the little bit sticking out the ceiling, but I think Doug is not convinced - the ceiling is high and a darker colour could make the room more cosy. But then white is always good. The joists you see here are for the bedroom floor so will be covered by floor above and ceiling below.

I am thinking about painting the window recess a different colour to the wall so that the fillered bits blend in - and this wooden bit. White? Grey? Blue - like sky? I think trying to match the colour of the walls would be tricky. On the whole I think white - but not if the walls get much paler. It would probably make sense to do the window recess and the ceiling the same colour. 

Then sometimes I think we should have some braver colour choices - I have been watching too many renovation type programs perhaps - yellow is meant to brighten up the room and bring the sunshine in. 

Maybe the windows surround and ceiling not the same colour in this case.

Pretty exciting to be thinking about this kind of finishing detail. Although a lot to do before we are actually there.

Rain and sun

Poor Doug just popped out to move Bluebell and Lismore off the drive (where they have been doing a good job mowing) in to one of the fields and the heavens openned. It doesn't show in the picture at all but there were sheets of water coming down the valley. 

You can see from the lushness of the nettles that we have been having plenty of warm wet weather.

The solar part of the uber heating has been doing us well for showers  in the new shower, but we haven't had sun, except in short spells for some days

So we might need to burn the wood gasification boiler.

Spatchcock

Apparently spatchcock origionally meant a culled young male bird, but then came to mean a way of preparing a chicken by removing the back bone and breast bone so it can be flattened out. So we had spatchcocked spatchcock. 

This is the first of this years chickens that we have killed and eaten. Last year the fox got all the rest just after that. Here's hoping we get to eat more of them ourselves this year.

The legs are the same size despite how they look in this photo.

The meat was juicy and delicious prepared like this. I just salted and a little bit of cajun spice.

We had it with home grown new potato and kale warm salad with home made mayonnaise.

So pretty much a home grown meal, with just the salt, spice, oil and lemon being 'imported'.

The flowers are borage - which tastes a bit like cucumber.

I love home made mayonnaise and could eat it by the spoonful. Not very healthy though. It is a nice rich colour from our eggs too.

I am on holiday for a week

We don't have any specific plans really. There are a few things like shearing the sheep, trimming the horses hooves, doing some gardening and preparing one of the fields we need to do. We will also go camping, maybe go to the beach, make some beer and some other things...

In the mean time we have got off to a good start eating plenty and drinking to go with it.

This is mutton cooked in coke - which turned out really well. I poured coke in to the dish with the mutton leg in it until it was about half way up the leg and added an onion, some garlic and half a lemon sliced.

It strangely stopped being brown after some cooking

Tasted delicious and not of coke at all. Sweetish but sharp too.

We had rhubarb tart for desert

We must do some exercise during the week!

Horse uses car as scratching post

We went in to the mountains near Payolle for a picnic lunch. 

We were feeling lazy so just climbed a small hillock near the car and had lunch, we were just having a little rest after lunch, and reading, when there was a clunk from the direction of the car.

Darn horse was very vigorously scratching itself on the wing mirror. 

Doug rushed down and scared it off

The poor wing mirror didn't survive very well... grrrrr

Shower is ready to use

Look how pretty it is

The ceiling isn't quite there yet - nor the walls at the side.

But it is usable with hot water from the GIANT water tank heated by the sun.

The radiators upstairs are now connected up correctly (the installer managed to get the pipes the wrong way round and came back this week to fix it). 

Just need a floor, a couple of ceilings, electric sockets and switches, fitted wardrobe in the bedroom, some steps, the toilet finishing, worksurface and sink fitting and perhaps walls painting in the bedroom and it will all be done!

French strikes

My flight was cancelled AGAIN yesterday due to French (air traffic control) strike actions. I managed to get a BA flight from Heathrow at the crack of dawn this morning and hopefully won't be toooo late for work by the time I get home.

It is getting really REALLY annoying. The strike action is lasting all weekend so not sure yet whether I will get back to London or not. When is it all going to end?? There are further strikes planned pretty much every week now.