The changing of the Stove

   This has been an eventful week for the Ark. We had decided to replace our faithful but superannuated Franco Belge cooking woodburner for a more efficient Supra spaceheater, the pic of which you can see above. We had bought the new stove from a local `Things for sale`` site some weeks ago but hadn`t got round to installing it, well, with summer weather, who needs a stove? However, a cooler few days and an alarmist forecaste of snow for Britain had encouraged us to extract the digit, and with the advice of our neighbour Ian, we had commenced the change-over




But first, we had to consider the removal of the old faithful, whose installation had needed four hefty blokes and that was before the wood flooring and fender had been put in... We had an offer of assistance from our friend Clive at Matha to come over Thursday and help budge it but on Wednesday, we commenced the job of lightening the poor old Franco-Belge to make it more portable
   The stove-pipe and cast-iron cooking surfaces were easily removable and then our attention turned to the oven door and iron fire doors, together with the cast-iron frame into which the cooking surfaces fitted. You should have seen Mrs Noah attacking the frame in a berserk frenzy, an alarming sight! Cast-iron is brittle as glass, if hit hard enough and soon all these parts had joined the heap of dismantled scrap piled in the Berlingo. Her attention then turned to the fire-box, also in cast-iron. We were surprised to find this distorted and broken in places and mended with fire cement. Our decision to replace it seemed more and more prudent!  The pieces were prized and broken out and joined the scrap heap.
  Now with Ian`s help we were ready to make the removal. We protected the woodwork with a stout rug and man-handled or rather manandwoman-handled the lightened but still weighty stove end over end out of the chimney breast , across the floor then end over end out of the front door. The mess had to be seen to be believed.... Still, a Dyson soon worked wonders.
  Next day, Ian arrived to help us fit the new, much more portable replacement, which Kim and I had already put in place with the aid of the Diable, not as you might have thought with satanic aid, but by using what we English-speakers call a sack-barrow. Ian contributed a posh, chrome-plated pipe extension and after the hole in the chimney blocking board had been enlarged slightly the connection was made!
   Now it merely remained to try it out....Rather nervously we lit a couple or fire-lighters under bark and twigs and checked for any smoke...no, it caught easily with never a puff, hooray!! We kept it burning until the evening and even with the house door open it gave a good heat, we`re very pleased!
  Phillipe took the dismembered corpse of the Franco Belge away with his tractor, so now we`re all ready for colder weather. Of course, it`s now got very mild, but it will come, sooner or later!

   Bye for now, going to admire the (cold) stove!

The body in question

   I came downstairs the other morning to a rather disagreeable sight. On the top of the chest freezer, Lillou the cat was dismembering and eating something grey, the size of a young rat. She was just in the act of eating the body of the creature, which was grey and had rodent-like feet. Its neatly decapitated head lay beside it, a sharp, mouse-like face with large eyes and long whiskers. Also on the freezer top was its tail, not rat-like and skinny but thick and furry. Both head and tail were disdained by Lillou, together with a length of pink intestine...
   I did some research on Google and established that the deceased was a dormouse, which made me a bit sad as they are creatures which are regarded with affection. However, Margarite, who writes a blog My Rural France based not far from here speedily disabused me. She has caught 20 of the creatures recently, an absolute plague as they attack electrical wiring behind plasterboard false walls! In fact, one had kept her awake the previous night doing just that, and she was not feeling at all benevolent towawds the species. So perhaps Lillou has done us a favour, after all! Thanks, Lillou! Bye for now.

The Ark has a new tender and a new passenger!

A tight fit in the 106

   Yes, folks it`s true. If you see Mrs Noah and me on our travels, it will no longer be in our old Peugeot 106, but in this rather snazzy Ciroen Berlingo Bivouac. The Peugeot is still running well, in fact, we used it the weekend before last to visit the Pyrenees a round trip of nearly 900 kilometres and it took us there and back without a hiccup. Still, it has covered nearly 400,000 kilometres in all and was really due for replacement. Additionally, the capacious rear compartment is much more suitable for our family of dogs, who were very cramped in the 106, not that they didn`t gladly jump in if a ride and a change of scene was in prospect. We feel a bit sad at retiring the Peugeot, it has been a faithful steed for many years, but our garagiste has been on the lookout for a van-type car for a while and came up with this one at a price we could afford. It has had a very thorough `révision` and a new Controle Technique and should be good for a long life too, God willing....

  I mentioned also a new member of the Ark`s complement. Well, while we were in Orthez in June, staying at a friend`s house, her cat had a litter of kittens, one of which was a very pretty grey tabby. As the country method of feline birth control involves a bucket and some water, Kim took pity on this little scrap and obtained a reprieve, provided that the kitten joined the Ark`s crew. We have therefore been back to fetch her, and of course to spend a further weekend with our good friends Arlette and Laurent at Orthez.  The kitten is affectionate and amusing and has soon adapted to her new home and the other Ark occupants. Lets hope she too has a long and happy life!

A Shocking Sight.

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  We went shopping yesterday in our new vehicle (more news later on this) and decided to try out the Leader Price store in Melle. Melle is a picturesque and rather sleepy little town a half hour from us, and originally founded by the Romans, who mined tin there. We were waiting in the short check-out queue and in front of us were four or five teenage girls. What we found shocking was that they were buying several bottles of vodka and other spirits together with a bottle of blackcurrant juice and some lemons. I would guess almost certainly they were preparing a party. They were really very young and the cashier looked on askance as they sorted out from their various purses enough money to pay the bill. The staff security guard was also interested. Eventually one of the girls produced a Carte d`Identité to prove that she was just old enough to buy drink and the purchase was done in her name.
 Apart from the obvious problems apparent down-line, once these young people had drunk the strong spirit we were asking ourselves what the store could do? Well. what COULD they do?  Could they refuse to serve these girls, even if proof of age had been produced? Is it up to the store to try to protect these stupid girls from their own folly? I don`t know.... But we were very glad it was not our problem.
  We had thought that this sort of thing was an English one or at least in the seedier towns of France. Sad to see it is becoming international.

  Bye for now, going to drink coffee....
 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness?

Is this the end of the summer dry weather, or just a temporary set-back? Who knows, certainly not me! Last night we had the first rain we have had in a month after three days of scorching temperatures above the thirty degree mark and very welcome it was, too. I woke at four or five when Laika announced a clap of thunder and I went down to pull the computers. I saw that it was drizzling outside and hastened to pull in the sun-loungers which had been left out and were getting wet. This morning 

, I could see by the level of water in the sheep`s dishes that there had been some rain, though not a lot. Nevertheless, it is very welcome and has just about refilled our water reserve in the plastic barrel Still, this morning the rain has stopped and the temperatures are due to be a much more supportable twenty degrees so we can get on with collecting and processing our grapes. 

As you can see from my header pic, the main vines here are of the Bacco variety originally (not sure of the spelling ) once used to distill into brandy or eau-de-vie, though of course you can make wine from them. They are illegal to plant nowadays, apparently and were said to `rendre fou` I don`t know whether this was because the wine was over-strength? At any rate, our only attempt at wine-making was disappointing and produced a very sour wine. We now use the grapes for producing grape juice for drinking un-fermented.  You boil the grapes for a moment, still in their bunches, crush them with the potato masher and strain them through muslin to produce the juice. We pour this into old lemonade bottles and put in the freezer, otherwise you get wine willy-nilly and exploded bottles to go with it! We also use the juice to make a delicious grape jelly. Neither has driven us mad, as far as we can judge...

   The fig crop has been disappointing up to now, there are loads on the trees but small and un-ripe as yet, perhaps later. The quinces look promising but that`s for later. We have already picked most of the accessible damsons and a good supply of  damson jam has been made, My favourite, I think.

  Kim`s veg patch is producing loads of courges, tomatoes and green beans and she has already harvested onions, garlic and some potatoes. So you can see that my title is quite appropriate!

   Bye for now, going to see if Kim is stirring, she had a bad night so is being left to sleep late.

Home again, home again joggety jog...

    It`s nice to be back home!

 We have spent last weekend with our friends Arlette and Laurent, who live near Orthez in the Pyrenees Orientales. They have a large, old fashioned farmhouse deep in the country, and the family rear chickens for meat, buying them in as day-old chicks and selling them to a contractor after they have been fattened up. They have, I think, about fifteen thousand birds, it`s not a small enterprise! They also grow most of their own feed for the hens, about a ton a day, and incidentally, most of their own food, too! Laurent is semi-retired from the business, which is carried on by his son, Joe but remains always busy with his huge garden and fruit trees.
   We had stayed a few days earlier in the year with these hospitable folks, but the excuse for another visit was a kitten named Mounette, who is currently purring on my knee as I type. Their cat had just had a litter, which were to be put down apart from one, reserved by a friend. Kim fell in love with a tiny, grey tabby and obtained a reprieve for her. We have just fetched her home and find she is a very cuddly and adaptable cat who is not giving any trouble in settling down. Her name derives from the lieu-dit of the farm, La Moun. It was too soon during our last visit to separate her from her mother, although we have reared young ones on the bottle, they do best with a good start from mum!

  So here we are, back at the ranch, with one more mouth to feed, never mind! One extra cat among a dozen doesn`t make any difference, and it`s always fun to have a kitten about the place.

  I wrote in my last blog that we have a new vehicle in prospect. We had hoped to have it available to do the trip to Orthez, but it was not ready in time. Our garagiste, also called Laurent, is doing a full service and Controle Technique and `en principe` it should be ready by the end of the week. In fact, I was just as pleased not to try out a new car on a long voyage before we had established its reliability and the little Peugeot 106 is still running steadily, didn`t give us a moment`s worry on the 850 kilometre round trip. If the Berlingo can do as well. I shall be overjoyed.

  Well, must wrap this blog up and cuddle Mounette. Bye for now, I hope to write more frequently now the rentrée is here!

Busy, busy, busy Life is mouvementé!

   Lots of things have been going on in our lives at present, I`ll tell you of some, not necessarily in the right order, as they are all mixed up in my head!  We have continued our cycling craze, we`re both really enjoying it, and are sure it`s doing us good. On Saturday, we decided to try out the cycle-paths on the Ile de Ré. Being of a mean nature and allergic to unnecessary expense, we arranged to leave the car on the Mainland in the free carpark at Belvedere just this side of the ENORMOUS Ile de Ré bridge featured above. This cannily avoided the 16Eur car fee (bikes go free ha ha) However, we found we earned our passage by the fact that the bridge is two and a half kilometers long, the first half naturally going up!

   However, the Ile is indeed a cyclist`s paradise, with loads of cycle paths, you need scarcely share a road with motor traffic, just with foot passagers sometimes. I`ll tell more of our 23.5 k later perhaps.

   Another other major event is the process of changing our car. We had asked Laurent, our friendly local Garagiste, to look out for a van-derived car, a Berlingo, Partner or Kangoo, and he rang a few days ago to say he had a Citroen Berlingo we could have. We went to see it and as it seemed ideal and at a price we could afford we said we`d have it. We can`t take delivery yet as it`s holiday time in France, the car is awaiting révision and Controle Technique so will be a fortnight or so. However the 106 is still running well so that`s no problem. The ennuis started when we decided to get a car loan from AXA, our French Bank to finance the deal. What a load of French rules and regulations!! First, the car was a year too old to qualify for a car loan at their special rate. No problem, we could have a personal loan (no doubt at a higher rate.... Could we please provide photocopies of my passport, French and English tax returns, full details and a pro-forma invoice for the car (why if it`s a personal loan?) etc and return for another meeting. The dossier would then be sent to head office but could be delayed due to holidays season, of course. If approved, a further delay of a week would follow to allow us to change our minds.... Well it didn`t need that long for us to decide to do this, and we decided to draw on our reserves in the UK.  AXA didn`t seem too disappointed. Our currency firm changed the sum to Euros and it was with us in two days, much more like it! There was more of the same to change the car ownership, photos of passport, taxe d`habitation, driving licence, much easier in Britain, unless it`s changed since I last did it which is more than likely!

   A third event was that Jimmy Renoux, our wood provider, said he had a window of opportunity to deliver our winter wood yesterday before getting back to the harvest. As we had arranged to visit the Doctor for our three-monthly check-up, we asked him to leave it in the cour, as usual. We had decided to do the trip to the doc`s by bike, and it was not until we were coming back that I suddenly remembered that we had left the car in the open barn and risked having to shift five stères of wood before we could use it!  I sprinted on ahead and found Jimmy in the course of dumping the wood from his trailer but of course, he had thought to leave enough room for us to get the car out, Phew!!

 Jimmy is today delivering 15 Stères of wood to our neighbours, the MacDonalds so if we thought we had a job shifting a mountain of wood indoors, They have three times the problem! By the way, if you haven`t come across the measure, a Stère is a cubic metre of wood.










Hero seems to have the idea that the wood is there to provide a convenient perch



  Well, I want to get this blog on line, as it is showing worrying signs of disappearing, so i shall say `bye for now, more later!

PS What do you think of Kim`s new hair do--- chic, isn`t it!