French orienteering championships

An amazing orienteering event today - although I didn't get to run in it, being part of the organising team. As you can see from the map below, most of it on beach/estuary that is covered by water at high tide! And of course the long courses went out to the edges of the map!
The start tents had to be put up behind the causeway, as the westerly wind was so strong:
And the first control kite can be seen on its pile of rocks!
Note the island on the left horizon (left of the yacht mast, with a strip of sand showing). This was accessible via a sand causeway at low tide.
By the time the starts were finishing, there were people (you cant see them in this photo, but I saw them!) wading across the gap, up to their hips in water!
I took this next shot only about ten minutes later - fortunately all the runners did get safely in! Only one or two complained about 'not safe, taking risks etc'. Most runners had a ball - who doesn't enjoy scrambling over rocks and running across sandy beaches?
The next picture is one of the controls, not sure of the description - crag foot perhaps??
This is the finish - the last kite was on the dark shape (an old wooden hulk) in the centre of the picture.
Lots of us were itching for a run on the area, but had to man the information/ start/ finish etc etc. However, now the map is made we will probably have a regional event there in the not too distant future. Hopefully on a day with less wind than today - the starts had to be put back by an hour, as the westerly gale prevented the low tide from falling as low as was needed in time for the first starts. Hence the rush at the end.... Anyway, a really good day.

ducks afloat

Ducks were afloat before we finished the pond - they were still on the water at 2.00 am the other morning when we went to shut them in after a late night out!

Jane's nectarine and lemon chuney

Having had a few requests for the recipe, here it is with pictures! (I have adapted this recipe from one in the WI book of Jams Jellies & Chutneys) It is oven-cooked - this keeps the fruit in lumps and allows it to caramelise nicely. Goes well with roast or BBQ lamb or pork...

Quantities are for a double amount, using a 2 kilo box of nectarines which are widely available here in France this time of year. This chutney can be made with any other fruit - I have used plums & lemons before which is very nice. Just keep the ratio of fruit : vinegar : sugar the same and use at least 1 lemon.
1.6 kg nectarine flesh in pieces 1 kg lemons de-pipped and cut into pieces (skin and all)
1.3 kg onions, chopped roughly
6 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp allpsice
0.5 tsp ground chili
500 ml cider vinegar
1 kg sugar

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 200°C (180°C fan oven)
2. Put all ingredients EXCEPT SUGAR into a large roasting tin & mix well
3. Cook for up to 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally
4. Once the fruit is tender, the liquid is reduced and it is starting to colour, add the sugar & stir.
5. Cook for at least a further 30 minutes till most liquid is well thickened and the fruit is as caramelised as you wish
6. While it is cooking, put jars (between 10 - 12) in a tray in the same oven to sterilise. Boil lids in water
7. Allow chutney & jars to cool a little, then fill jars, seal & label.
8. keep at least a month (preferably longer if you can!) to mature Voila! 11 jars of chutney for about a euro a jar!

another rainbow cot quilt

I have managed to get the overall rainbow effect better this time!
This is a hand-painted, pure silk dupion cot quilt with personalised embroidery - available to order for 110 euros. Now to get the website up and running....

Duckpond!

The excavation of the pond is complete, now to use up the metres of black plastic we have disinterred from around the garden. This stuff is not waterproof or big enough to be a liner, but it will protect a liner from stones beneath (we hope). The ducks are intellectually challenged by the steps into their current pond arrangements. Three have worked out how to step up into the water (most times) but the other two just look on in puzzled interest
Watch this space for a flotilla of happy ducks in a day or two.

cot quilts in silk

To compliment the knitted cot quilts that Pete is trying to get launched, I have started to make patchwork quilts in pure silk, with hand-painted patches plus room for a machine-embroidered panel to personalise the quilt. These are two prototypes:

The animals are outlined in a bronze 'gutta' but I think something darker would look better. This is a small, pram size and will sell for about 90 euros (including machine embroidery).

This bigger quilt is a cot size and the rainbow patches didn't come out quite as I hoped. I have put the gîte name and date of our first guests on the panel, and I will use it on the cot we have in the gîte.
I am now making another of these, but have painted the rainbows in narrower stripes on a full quilt size piece of silk, and will cut out the piece to give two quilts-worth of rainbow patches. I am also going to use a darker blue for the plain squares. Photos to follow soon.

Now the gîte really is finished AND inspected AND passed for inclusion in the Brittany Ferries brochure next year we can get on with other stuff again at last - there IS life after Gîte!

chicks at one month

The chicks shown in the last posting are now exactly one month old. In the end we got eight that survived. They are now reaching that tatty gangly teenage stage and Mrs Broody is having to keep a constant watch out for them as they are inclined to wander off on their own. They are enjoying the freedom of being out of the chicken shed ....
because we have acquired some Indian Runner ducks, and they need to be kept in a few days before being let out. I have always been fascinated by Indian Runners since I saw a picture of them many years ago. The two small ones (Linford & Sally - think about it) we got first, and I doubt they are true runners. The three bigger dark ones are undoubtedly Indian Runners and very handsome they are too. There are two ducks and a drake (who is called Jackson, tho' I dont know if he can hurdle yet). Suggestions please for names of the two girls - only criterion is must be a runner of some sort (Hev & Yvette??). We are planning a duckpond in the walled hangar area. They are coping with a cattle drinking trough at the moment.

THe tomatoes are flourishing in the tiny greenhouse, as well as aubergines and peppers. I suspect we may have a case of blight, so toms may come to nought. The sweetcorn outside is sprouting beautifully but has to be fenced from the chooks.

The potager has given us crops of potatoes, rocket, radishes, lettuce and peas already. The beetroot, carrots & turnips are swelling nicely. I have recently sown or transplanted runner beans which are romping up their strings and broccoli, both normal and purple sprouting. Only the parsnips and spinach have been a bit of a disappointment. I think things were too dry/cold to get them to germinate properly. Our culinary high point recently was a spanish omelet with our own fresh eggs, potatoes and peas, with a home-grown salad.

chicks

They arrived exactly on time, starting late last night. We went to check her when we got home after the Rock Moelou concert last night, about 1.30am.
So far this afternoon Mrs Broody has had six hatch out - five yellow and one black. There are quite a few eggs to go yet. Because she brooded in the top of an oil drum, with nothing to stop the other hens laying a sly egg every now and again for her to incorporate in her brood, she started with about ten and ended up with nearly twenty. Not all these will have developed enough to hatch and we don't have another broody to put them under. Watch this space for the final tally.

musical season....

loads of musical stuff happening around now - next Saturday is le fête de la musique and there will be Rock Moelou down the road in St Lubin. This is preceded by a balade à moto - a 50 kilometer ride round the countryside for all who have motorbikes.
Pete & I will be serving food and washing up for most of the evening, but I expect it will count as one of the most enjoyable days in the year, as it was last year.

The Friday night before (june 20th), we are once more giving a concert of traditional song in three languages, but this time they are breton, czech, and english.

This is in the tiny chapel at St Lubin - amazing acoustics and terrible, agonising bench seats! Bring a cushion.


A couple of sundays ago we were asked to sing at the opening of a four à pain (bread oven) in Ploufragon, near St Brieuc. The day started with une balade chantée - all singing as we walked through the forest. Personally I prefer orienteering at a faster pace and I also prefer the sound of birdsong in a forest, but there are lots of these singing walks, so we had to see what they were about....











On Friday 13th June we sang at a concert in the port de Legué in St Brieuc - a spin-off from the chant de marin sessions we have been going to for the last year or so. The boat behind us is a reproduction gaff rig lugger, built a few years ago by a association (club) in St Brieuc, from the plans of an old fishing vessel from the same port. As you can see we tried to help the chorus singing by holding up some words - got a giggle!




Fran & Jen made it over for a few days, and Fran immediately wanted a go on the tractor now called 'Bessie' by default (no other suggestions - does ANYONE read my blog I wonder?). He also enjoyed a bit of pyromania - the field loooks much better now we have got rid of the pile of dead brambles and hedge trimmings.



Some pictures here of the 'chaos' at Huelgoat, where we all went yesterday.
This is yet another extraordinary river bed full of huge boulders - there are quite a few round here, some more frequented than others.
They make for a fun walk with a bit of optional scrambling on a fine afternoon.

Tractor!

Here is Pete with his new toy. She is actually about my age (50+), but goes fine once started. Getting her started is another matter, requiring jump leads from a hard-revving car and a squirts of 'easy start'. But she has been sitting in our barn getting cold and a bit wet all through the winter... Hopefully once the battery is thoroughly re-charged and all damp dried out she will only need a bit of help to get going. The topper on the back is a fantastic piece of kit and mows the long grass like a dream, so hopefully the grass will be less long in the future.

So - suggestions please for a name for this venerable bit of agricultural history!

Got the BBQ built and finished off today and photos of same put on gite site. Photo a bit one-sided; but have not finished fence on the right yet - gotta go with what we've got! We also finished and hung the gates at the bottom of the garden - divides the tidy bit from the rest of the land - photo below. Again, the garden need some work, but hopefully we will have some time to do it now - just need the weather to be a bit kinder.

Gruesome photo!

I managed to shut my finger in the car door yesterday - so I ended up with ten stitches, the six shown below and another four on the other side of this finger. I have to go back to the doctors today for a tetanus shot....

As you can imagine, I said a few things like 'damn' and 'blast' etc. Luckily the lady in the bike shop (we had just picked up our bikes, having had new tyres fitted) didn't understand the actual words, although I'm sure she was in no doubt as to their content.
Pete just drove me up to the doctor's cabinet, and he stitched it up on the spot, during his lunch hour, saving us from a drive into Carhaix hospital and possibly a longish wait to be seen. Once again I cannot fault the French health system!


Luckily we are just going through a 'snag' list now in the gîte, finishing off the little bits that have got missed on the way. Here is the latest picture of the outside - better now the grass has grown back outside the front.

late lamb and new chickens

At last Dolly has had her lamb - here is Friday (running out of name ideas), a young man who is not going to go short of calories!He was born last evening while we were having dinner. I noticed Dolly looked a bit restless before we went in for dinner, and there was Friday when we went to check afterwards. Nice to get a live lamb after the fright dolly gave us two weeks ago, getting hypocalcaemic, and us having to call the vet out. Intravenous calcium & steroids got her up and about very quickly, but the vet thought we may lose the lamb. These ouessants are tougher than you think!
Our new potager looks a bit bare still, but doubtless the weeds will soon green it over... We had to fence it to keep the hens off, then thread willow twigs through the wire to stop the hens squeezing through. Note greenhouse in rear - no glazing as yet - we are working on panels of polythene, but tomatoes may be a bit late this year.
Finally a picture of some of our new hens. We have quite a colourful flock now, with some of the original white sussex, including Iggy the cockerel, some 'poulets rouges' (the brown ones) and some 'cendres' (the grey ones - 'cendres' means 'ashes'). Just Baa Baa to lamb now - she's usually the last.

found sheep cartoons...

Whilst clearing out the bedroom of the gite (to make room for the bed), I came across these cartoons that we had commissioned way back when pete was selling machine knitting wool. I cannot remember the name of the artist (suggestions gratefully received), but they amuse me greatly; especially the park bench one...Talking of sheep, Dolly & Baa Baa are still awaiting a happy event, as we forgot to supply them with a suitor till december last year. Watch this space for late lamb pictures.
Gite coming on OK - seems an endless job of finishing off now. Had to saw off a dodgy plumbing joint today - will need replacing, as no amount of car body filler was going to stem the leak (what, ME? bodge a joint??) caused by a squidged washer. The upstairs is essentially finished. Pete has a half days work under the stairs swearing at the electrics circuits etc (don't ask) and I have yet to plumb in the downstairs shower room. And we have loads of stuff and tools and rubbish to clear out and find a home elsewhere for. Garden still needs work before taking photos is possible, but the weather has been so appalling that we would be paddling to mow the grass.

But - have finally got round to getting a potager set up. Lots of seeds planted, but not much showing as yet. We are looking forward to a home-grown spanish omelette soon - our own eggs and potatoes, with a home grown salad. Fruit trees all in flower too, we are hoping the recent hail, rain & wind doesn't ruin the crop this year.

Long absence, but lots done

I have just realised how long it is since I last posted anything on this blog. However, we have been SO busy, we have hardly had time to draw breath! Pictures of the results...

The dining-room end of the upstairs living area, plus the staircase.

The lounge end of the upstairs living area. These are preliminary photos for the gîte website that is is the process of bring done right now. The rest of the place still looks like a building site, there is loads to do yet but got to get some publicity out now....
The last photo is the outside as of today - steps, front door and bit of a flower bed. Obviously ladders, wheelbarrows etc will be got rid of...

Need to do some serious weeding here!

New year photo update 2 - barn/gîte

First photo is a catch-up on the shower room in the first upstairs bedroom we finished earlier last year. Can't picture all in one but you can just see the edge of the shower to the left of the picture.
OK - this is the room over the shop, just before we cleared the decks and started to lay the pine-plank floor. As you can see, we have finished insulating the roof - makes it possible to work in there in the winter, and even add a bit of heat from time to time.
The pink stuff, foreground, picture below, is extruded polystyrene which we have used to insulate the old doorway - there isn't enough thickness to use glass wool. The heap of wood is the flooring, yet to be laid. These pictures were taken on new years day 2008.
The next two pictures are where we are up to now. The floor is laid and sealed, the partition wall studding for the bedroom and shower room is up, with the doors in place. We have dry-lined the end wall with "doublage" ie plasterboard backed with 40mm polystyrene. Next job is to finish the plumbing and electric cabling before we plasterboard the walls and tongue-and-groove the ceiling
You can see the bookshelves in the picture above. These will be set into the wall of the living area, ie built-in. In the picture below you can just see the two tiny windows that used to be for the pigeons in the end wall (over the shop door). They are now glazed on the inside, between the wall and the doublage. I will add a second sheet of glass to the outside end of the holes when the weather gets a bit warmer.
Thats all for now - Too busy to post too often!