Odds & Sods...

April 8th, 2009

Today was a day of meetings, of overcast skies that threatened rain but never truly made good on the threat. It was a day of discussions interspersed with some intense brush clearing in preparation for some burning. Professor Iris Berdrow from Bentley University came to lend a hand and to interview me for a case study she is writing for international business. That interview will continue tomorrow including a video component.

I first repaired the last piece of roof that I had dismantled yesterday and then set off to deal with the shrubberies. While that took the better part of the day (or until my legs turned to rubber and I could not rely on them to keep me from tripping with the chain saw in my hand) I did have a few other discussions by phone with some of the regional government representatives that I am trying to enlist the support of for efforts to restore the Chateau. In between I had a lovely meal with Professor Berdrow at Café le Peuch in St. Bauzille de Montmel just a couple kilometers away. Cheap and hearty fare served with Panache by a waiter whose name must be Gaston or something like that. He spoke English well and served with a flourish that I have not seen from a waiter in years. It may be that he owns the place but it was refreshing to be so engaged and well served.

At cocktails with Christian and Corinne I reported that we had our first orders for “A Little Languedoc” and we began our plan on how to put it all together. A little olive oil, a little honey and a little herb…it makes for a nice, unique taste of the region and of course a great Christmas gift, n’est-ce pas?

A long and tiring day ended after a late pizza dinner in Sommieres. Too tired to read more than a page of Travels with Charlie. Steinbeck is becoming more of his timeless self the further I get into the book.

Haircut pour la maison...

April 7th, 2009

Having forgotten to hang the clothes on the line from yesterday’s wash I was up early to do so. Then I sat to write for a while. Shortly Christian came knocking and told me that it was raining…”did I want my clothes brought in?” “No” I said” They’re already wet.”

Then we spent the day running around setting up accounts, getting bills paid and doing all the busy work that piles up on you no matter where you are. I finally got through all of that by late in the afternoon. When I got home determined to get some work done I took one look at the fringe of vines left on the roof and couldn’t stand it. I had to figure out a way to get on that roof and clear it of those vines.
First, I took an old piece of scaffold and propped it up in the entryway at the back of the farmhouse. IT was against the wall so it couldn’t tip over. Then I got a plank to put across it and took my ladder and put it on top of that. In that configuration the tip of the ladder just cleared the edge of the roof. I scrambled up to take a look. Yep…pretty secure.

From there it was all downhill…not! I had to figure out how to cross these four hundred year old roof tiles without breaking them. Then of course the fringe of vines extended all the way across the end of the roof so I had to work my way up one side and down the other. By the time I did that I decided the roof needed so much repair that I took it apart and rebuilt it all the way back to the side I started from. It was getting on the 8:00 pm by now and I was worried that leaving the roof open to rain for the night would not be a good idea. Then I counted out how many new (old) tiles I needed to haul up there….thirty! Thirty new tiles (three that had broken and 27 that were in too bad a condition to use again. That’s when I decided to pack it in for the evening and take a much need shower.

My stew had aged nicely over the past couple of days and a big bowl of that after working in the wet, high up on the roof, was comforting. That and some writing, some reading and bed time came upon me faster than I had imagined. Tomorrow, I begin tiling the bedrooms upstairs…gotta’ get ready for visitors!

Rockin' the CHateau...

April 6th, 2009

Easter Monday here in France and it seems like the whole country is on vacation. The kids are out of school for two weeks and so many parents take that time off to be with their kids. And they all go to Castorama (roughly translated to me by Christian as “Beaverland”).

I began the day with a determined idea that I was going to cut up a bunch of trees I felled last fall. That lasted until the fiftieth pull on the chainsaw. I must have flooded it but whatever the case it would not start. So I looked around for what else to do and thought. to myself “I’ll spend an hour pulling down all those old vines that covered the west end of the farmhouse.”

I’d pulled down all the low stuff last year so I had to get the ladder out to get the remaining high stuff. At the limit of the extension ladder (21 feet) I could just stand on the top most allowable rung and almost reach to vines that had embedded themselves in the wall where it meets the roof. ..but not quite. I worked my way around the farmhouse leaving it looking rather like it had one of those mixing bowl haircuts of seventies fame. Vine and vine branches stuck up and out from like a fringe all around the west end of the house when I was through…some six hours later!

I picked up the chainsaw and it fired on the first pull confirming all of Murphy’s lesser laws, namely to do with things not working when you needed them most to work. Since it was late in the day I decided that instead of cutting up the felled trees I would cut down three more that I didn’t like. Of course the saw got jammed in the last one and I spent another half hour building a lever to lift the weight of the tree so I could get my saw out. Thanks for all of those woodcutting lessons dad! I wish I had paid more attention.

Christian and Corinne had their friend Benjamin over for dinner, he of race track instructor fame, so I joined them. We are going to make a day of it on the 13th going to Benjamin’s track for rally racing instruction on a closed dirt track racing, 200 HP Subarus around. And then visiting some wineries owned by friends of his. We talked of that for a bit but then spent a lot of time talking about a band that Christian and he know called Ecos who are a very good Pink Floyd cover. Think “all Pink Floyd, all the time” and you pretty much have Ecos figured out.

Turns out that Christian has had the lead singer up through the Chateau and he’d like to do a concert there (hopefully a benefit) for a few hundred people. “Rock the Chateau” I think we’ll call it. We went through everything from parking to security to how to deal with the old folks living in the sleepy Hameau de Montlaur. While I thought that the first activity in the Chateau in almost 400 years should be perhaps a classical concert or maybe jazz, or perhaps even a re-enactment I was soon swept up in their excitement and the general coolness of having Pink Floyd tunes echo around the stone walls of the Chateau…how cool would that be!

So we left it at that and I went home to bed thinking of Pink Floyd’s “Money” playing in the midst of the Chateau grounds.

Dateline: South of France...

April 5, 2009

Despite the predicted probability of rain the sun shone amidst clear skies this morning, that azure blue that is so characteristic of the south of France. It has a depth to it that makes you feel that no matter what might happen it could hold back the blackness of space beyond. When it is with you it seems that all is possible, when it is not, well just say that that might not be a propitious day for adventure.

Today I had set a couple of tasks for myself and also was invited to help Christian and Corinne do some work on the hives. They were going to kill one of the Queen’s that was hurt and replace her with a Royal cell from another hive, a cell that would hatch in about a week into a new Queen. One of the hives with perhaps 60,000 bees had produced several of these Royal cells clearly intending to produce a new queen. Normally this queen would either replace the older queen or would take some portion of the hive and migrate to a new home.

You can’t control bees really, you can only set up conditions that are favourable to them. But if they want to leave they’ll leave and all of your investment in time and money for the hive will be lost. In the beekeeping world this happens fairly frequently. But they will only leave following a new queen so making sure that the queen is happy, with no challengers, is critical.

My tasks for the day were to finish cutting the grass and cleaning up the courtyard and to organize my tools for the work I was to undertake in the next couple of weeks. This was actually more work than you might imagine and I spent the better part of the day taking care of this (taking out a couple of hours to help Christian and Corinne with the bees).

By evening I had everything done and lit the first fire in the fireplace for the year. It was a good fire and burned well into the night while I cooked up some stir fry and made a stew for eating over the next couple of days…days predicted to be colder and with more rain. I wanted to be ready for them!

After toasting my Dad with a rye and ginger (or two), I went to bed to Travel further with Charlie. Steinbeck was still in his wondrous mood, marveling at the vitality of the Midwest, the can-do spirit and youthful vigorousness of it. I could only wonder at the incongruity with our times and the eminent demise of Detroit as well as the economic malaise gripping the land and indeed the world. What would be his sage observation today? Would he marvel at the breadth of back necessary to carry this load? Or would he advise all of the Midwest to get into their mobile homes and make for greener pastures. We’ll never know.

Have a little Languedoc at home!

Christian and Corinne of course, make honey…several delicious varieties of it actually. Different plants flower at different times so they can actually collect honey after the flowering of rosemary and thyme, after the fruit trees flowers and then after the grapes and wildflowers flower. Each honey is quite distinct in flavour and colour. They can make only between 5 and 15 kilos per year at the moment so production is very limited.

We were discussing this recently and wanted to see if people were interested in ordering packets of local products, which they could put together and mail to them. Something like 125 grams of honey, a bottle of local olive oil (which is excellent btw), and a sachet of fresh picked local herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, bay leaf and a few others) which grow wild all over here. Christian has mailed herbs to me before and I can attest to the fact that there is nothing available in any store in the US that can compare to the flavours.

So if you’re interested please send me an email at mikeleb1959@ gmail.com. I would guess a whole package might be $25-35 plus shipping.

Minding my own beeswax....

April 4th, 2009

Saturday morning…I’ve already lost track of time. I had to check my iphone to see what day it was. Seven-thirty am and I’m rarin’ to go. I love the market in Sommiere for the food, the colour and the fresh air and sometimes just the walk. Its beautiful town and today was already bright, sunny and warm. A perfect day!

And Bonus! There was an antique market going on at the same time. I don’t know if its been there before and I’d just missed it but it was such a treat to do a couple of my favourite things in one trip. I didn’t find anything but I did get some ideas on the pricing of a variety of stuff.

I did buy a Wisteria plant as is my custom, that is to buy at least one plant for the farm every trip to the market. I haven’t yet decided where it should go. If anyone knows what kind of conditions it likes let me know. I have several possibilities.

I could also hear Cash Converters calling as well. I’d seen a weed whacker and an old electric lawn mower there before and was sure I could get them for a pittance. Sure enough they were still there and I happily loaded them into the car after paying just 25 Euros for both. Now I could cut the grass and trim things up so they looked good.

I was just into that about 45 minutes when Christian and Corinne dropped around and offered to take me with them on their hive servicing afternoon. Ok, that sounds a little strange…they keep bees and they had to check on all the hives and make sure that the Queen’s were in good shape. Not so strange after all! They found me some gear and advised me on how to don all this odd apparel. “Make sure you tuck this in, and tape that up, two layers of clothing, hook this around your thumb to keep the sleeve from riding up.“ So many directions I felt like I was preparing for a beauty pageant!

But I found out why they needed to be so careful. Pretty obvious I guess but I was not prepared for the intensity of it. There were tens of thousands of bees in each hive and all of them angry, trying to protect the queen, and intent on kamikaze action to do so. I was virtually pelted by wave after wave of bees. The only relief was in the small smoke generator that Christian periodically waved around. I was very glad for the extra dressing instructions as I couldn’t imagine how I would have reacted had the bees made their way through my clothing and started to sting me from inside my suit. I remained very quiet and assisted in the effort to service the hives as best I could. I even got to paint the back of one of the queens with a little red paint dobber so it could be easy to find her.

After that bit of excitement I went home to finish cutting the grass and get ready for dinner with Christian and Corinne. I spent the evening teaching her two boys a little English and trying my best to utilize the little French that I do know so they would be inspired by my example….needless to say they went to watch a French movie and my idea of teaching them English was put aside.

I made my way home at about 11:00, very tired and ready for bed. The farm was comfortable and warm after a few days of heating and I curled up with Travels with Charlie. Steinbeck was going on and on about mobile homes and how wonderful they were….it seems something has been lost in translation since his time. It was like I was in a time warp listening to a mobile home salesman talk about the advantages of mobile home parks….I don’t think they knew then that they attracted tornadoes.

Clearing brush....

April 3rd, 2009

I woke, as I often do here, suddenly at 10:30 am, the effects of sleep deprivation still lingering. I had a beautiful shower outside and made myself a cup of tea and piece of toast. Christian had come and begun the work to clear brush around the old beehive well so I joined him in doing that. A new law had been passed recently that outlined the amount of clear and pruned space that needed to surround each house and property and so that meant a significant amount of brush clearing and burning had to be done.

This is not normal brush. A few of you who have been here know that this brush fights back. It grabs hold of you with razor like claws scratching and cutting, sticking you with needle like pins that can easily become mildly infected. This, as they say, is not your mother’s brush. It is dense, comprised of perhaps 10 different vines, plants and trees, most of which have some kind of thorn on them. Most of the stalks are thin, less than a quarter inch and there may be 200 to the square yard making it difficult to both cut with the pruner or even reach in with the chain saw. Christian has a machine that looks like an outboard motor that he wears in a harness and he basically sticks it in the brush and obliterates it into fine fibers. I worked with pruners and a chainsaw and for six long hours we battled that brush.

When the sky started to turn dark at around six we said perhaps just this small section but at that moment there was a flash of lightning and seconds later a roll of ominous thunder. We looked at each other and said simultaneously, “I think we’re done here for the day!”

That night I made a dinner of fresh tomatoes and mozzarella di bufala with a little baguette and some balsamic vinaigrette. A glass of wine and a book took me through the rest of the evening and I went to bed at 11:30. I did walk around in the gathering dusk to take some photos…the light just seemed pleasant and the air fresh after the storm. It was another good day.