Wednesday 12 September 2012

September at Chenevaux



September sunset
Looking from our front door out over the field opposite a few days ago - a stunning sunset.

After a very busy summer with both the gite and the farmhouse full for the whole of the holiday period and the gite still occupied until the end of September we are now catching up on gardening and other jobs that it has simply been to hot and dry to even contemplate.  The grass is looking really parched and everything needs a lot of water, despite the downpour a couple of days ago.  A few weeks ago our tractor mower gave up after 7 years of hard labour so after some investigation and discussion we decided to buy a new one but all it has had to do so far is cut the tops off the weeds!

Mark and his Machine
Since we have been here we have been trying to find a ( not too expensive ) way of getting our well up and running.  The motor works but the pump is too old to be repaired and as the water is just over 50m down it needs something with a bit of oomph.  Anyway a couple of weeks ago we were invited to coffee with some friends, who had some friends of theirs staying with them from Fiji, where they keep bees and produce honey - anyway it turns out that the husband is also a geologist and finds water sources there.  So the conversation turned to wells and later the same day they came over to have a look at ours.  He was most impressed!  and has given us some advice on what we need to buy. We have looked on line and think we may have found something suitable - so if all goes well ( ha ha ) before too long we may have lots of water for the garden.  What a luxury!

The village band drumming up business
Having decided to do the village brocante we had a really good clear out.  Its one thing having plenty of storage space in all of our barns etc but the problem is that we put stuff away and forget about it and before too long they're full of all sorts of things that we know we will never use again.  Mark actually took a car load of rubbish to the recycling centre and then two carloads down to the village for our stall.  Aiming to get rid of it rather than make a fortune nearly everything was priced at a couple of euros and still people wanted to haggle!  Great fun if hard work. Now we can now go along to the last few brocantes of the summer with a clear conscience, though we are much more selective about the things we buy these days!

Jam and crash helmets at the St Savin brocante early September
I'm not quite sure if this person is prone to hitting their head whilst making jam and is therefore on a health and safety mission to get us to wear crash helmets in the kitchen?  

Time for an apero on the square after brocanting
After a hard morning looking at other peoples' wares the only thing to do is to have a sit down and enjoy an aperitif , the blue sky and the September sun before heading home for lunch!