Deux Australiens fous en France...: Lundi, Vingt quatrieme Octobre

So lovely day here in the Lot today - well not quite. It was doing what we would say in Aus 'blowing up for rain' and man was it blowing!! My boys stayed in the barn all day today and Will was a bit scared of the noise the wind was making - lucky he had his very relaxed bro to calm him down and give him a cuddle. This was how they spent pretty much all day - good life for some!

We on the other hand have been pretty hard at it the past 10 days. Well Paul has anyway - I have been keeping the food and coffee coming and helping when I can. The verbal abuse given to the trades assistant sometimes gets a little too much and I have to take a break before it all comes to a bloody end since there are lots of sharp tools involved! However I have gotten better at holding the dumb end of the tape and cutting the steel for the wall framing - we actually didn't stop work last night until after 10 as we were trying to get the internal walls done as much as possible for the plasterer to do his thing today. We didn't get as far as we would have liked but it is really coming along. The bathroom and kitchen areas are close to being done with just the wall around the stairs to be done tomorrow. Then the finishing will be done on the plaster - so that will lead to painting and then installing all the cupboards - bathroom bits and all the other stuff. Should be an exciting couple of weeks!

Check out the thickness - 24 cm of insulation - hopefully will be cozy up there!

Many days work right here!

It was actually extremely chilly here this past week - down to below zero one morning. It was cold enough for me to order the heater for the attic and buy a little blow heater for the van. Most of the past week though, despite being cold in the mornings and at night, the days would warm up to being absolutely gorgeous with sunny blue skies and not a breath of wind. On one of these days I went on a hike with my friends John and Aileen - 13km and 3 hours later we got back! Was a really great walk though with lots of Autumn scenery going on - it really is a pretty good spot we've found ourselves in. I really would like to get a horse or at least have access to one - I keep meaning to make contact with the riding school that is only a km or so away but my experience with riding school horses is not great. However their horses actually don't look too clapped out so will have to do it soon as there is so many nice places to ride through. It is prime hunting season at the minute so you do have to be a bit careful - lots of men strolling around with guns and bright orange vests on. We actually got home from a trip to town one day to find a hunter and his dog (covered in blood!) in our driveway. He obviously wanted to speak to us which always scares us a little due to our awesome grasp of the local language... but as it turned out I could understand him reasonably well and he told us our house once belonged to his wife's family - with the family name of Malvey, which of course we have found written and carved in several places - once of which says "Paul Malvey 1881". He said they lived there up until the 40's which fits in with what we have kind of worked out with the what the other neighbors had told us. They would have been the last people actually living here. It would have been good to get more information from him but I had used up my complete French vocab already -was very interesting though to know they are still in the area as he lives in a village not that far away.

We are still getting heaps of walnuts from our tree. Paul has a mild obsession with picking them which has lead to an invention of a method to collect as many as possible at one time - it involves attaching a largish rock to a rope - slinging it over the tree as high as possible and then pulling the rope and basically shaking the nuts off - it is quite amusing and fun too. Here is a shot of Paul with his contraption after collecting walnuts from the two trees down closer to our front entrance. After today's wind he also picked another half a large shopping bag full. I have been using them in pastas and salads. I have actually developed a strange addiction to something that goes very well with walnuts - Blue Cheese!! Yum - yes Murray Royce you were right - Blue Cheese is amazing - never thought I would be saying that ha. Particularly good with the fig jam I made too. I have got a microwave/convection oven on it's way so I can finally bake something (walnut and date loaf anyone??) - 5 months of cooking with a two burner camping stove has gotten a little bit old. Although I do have a slow cooker which has come in handy and will do so even more now its gotten colder. I actually made some Grape Jelly in the slow cooker using the grapes from our vine - they have all become ripe at once and we are struggling to eat them all so I thought I would make some juice from them. However it's quite labor intensive and after I saw how much juice I was getting I decided to make jam from it. I only used sugar initially but it was super runny so I then added in some pectin and it did set pretty well. Peanut butter with grape jelly and French bread - yummo! Lucky it's winter - we need a good layer of fat to help us survive a French winter - or that's my plan and I'm sticking to it - ha.


Nuts galore...

On Saturday we had our first relatives to visit. Well sort of relatives - my dads sisters husbands sister and her husband came to visit. Joe is French but they live in Canada, however they still have a house here in France which is only and hour or two away from us that they visit a couple of times a year. Was lovely to meet them and show them around. Joe is a plumber so Paul also picked his brain a little re the plumbing which was handy! Here they are outside our barn.

Ok well I think that is about it for the goings on over the last 10 days. You'll see from the next lot of photos the attic is coming together nicely - Paul and I are off to buy the bathroom fittings tomorrow whilst the plasterer does his thing. We are going to take the van to Cahors - might have to have John on speed dial ready to come and rescue us if the van doesn't make it there and back!