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Every single morning I wake up to something different here. The countryside is changing. Bleak lifeless landscapes have given way to vivid and turgid growth; Grasses, trees and wild flowers are now erupting.
We also enjoy a wide array of wildlife too. I have seen boar, deer, foxes, badger, owls, buzzards to name but a few.
I will never forget the first time I saw Jean Blanc. The house was empty and all of the barns and outbuildings were used as agricultural storage and cows still occupied the yard and fields.
Mr Bertrand had told us that the house had not been lived in for about forty years and his father had purchased the farm including the land but they never used it as accommodation - It was much cheaper to re-register all of the property as agricultural.
Continue reading "Tracing the history of our French house" »
Moving to France can be full of so many high's. The scenery, the peace and quiet and of course the local food and drink and it is also so easy to feel as though all of your troubles will go away forever, sadly, this is not the case.
Speaking the language, even if it is just a little is the best asset you can have to make life go that little bit easier and let you get on, stress free with the things you moved to France to do.
Continue reading "How to get your phone connected with France telecom" »
I know that there is a growing feeling that the love affair with France has died now that the credit crunch and the strong Euro has put pay to cheap holidays and cheap French houses.
My personal view is (and this is not intended as any kind of advice) that France will be a secure bet for living and buying a property in the coming eighteen months.
I have been keeping a close eye on the UK weather and boy does it look cold.
For all of you who are dreaming of sleepy France with memories of your last holiday, basking in the hot summer sun, take a look at the scene that greeted us this morning.
Temperatures are set to fall to around minus 4-8 in the next day or so and are currently hovering at about minus one.
It really is quite picturesque but I can tell you, despite insulation, oil central heating and the Godin kitchen wood burning stove, heating these stone houses is quite a task.
Late yesterday afternoon I spent an hour in the woods with the chainsaw and cut a third of a cubic metre of still standing, but dead oak.
It was like burning pure charcoal and the temperature gauge was screaming to its maximum and for the first time this winter I didn't feel like putting on extra clothes at night while watching the TV.
We can add a little artistic and creative twist to your French holiday by offering you the chance to learn how to carve from wood that you cut from the woodland.
My mate Mark Rogers will come to the pigeonnaire and show you how to carve small wooden caricatures from green and seasoned wood that has been cut from our own woodland.
Thank you for visiting us at Perigord Vacance.
You have come to the right place if you are looking to book a holiday for 2009.
We think that our little spot is special and we hope that if you come you will agree.
Why not come with the hope of seeing one of many flights of the Hen Harrier as they make regular feeding flights around our farm.
Of course, we are not going to make promises but going on previous history, daily sightings are the norm with up to three or four separate fly pasts in a day.
If you own a second home in France or you are planning to move to France in the near future then there is the possibility that you will be in need of a local tradesman to carry out installations or repairs.
It is advisable to use French tradesman where possible and avoid black market labour on important jobs such as structural modifications, roof construction or repairs, plumbing (especially gas an oil) and probably the most important of all electrical works.
The French people love you to integrate into their communities and contribute to the local economy. It helps to keep the small villages fluid and vibrant as well.
Continue reading "Roy Seedwell - English Electrician in France" »
Hunting is hugely popular in rural areas of France and after the 1st September every year you will see men with shotguns and dogs wandering around the countryside looking for rabbits, hare, pigeons, woodcock, pheasants and partridge etc.
Our land here at Jean Blanc has been 'donated' by Mr Bertrand to the Chasse which means the hunters can wander within 150 metres of our house 'popping off' game.
Watching the weather is a bit of a British trait and for those of us who do not want old habits to die out might be interested in the new weather website from Meteo France.
New featured have been added in Java Script that allows the user to hover the cursor over a region and get a pop out summary of what the weather is doing for the day.
I didn't realise that fishing was such a massive pastime until I moved to France but it is. One of the major things that fishermen have going for them is the space and no shortage of lakes and rivers.
Locally to us there are an awful lot of small irrigation reservoirs which are stocked with large Carp which are introduced to help clean the lakes up.
Even after being here for nearly four years there is still something new to discover almost every week. The latest one is a rather attractive light blue flower that grows in abundance in the meadows all around the farm.
The plant is Chicory - Cichorium intybus which as many of you know is used extensively as an additive to coffee,
I have just added a competition to my Landscape Juice gardening site. The winner will win a week for up to four people in our Pigeonnaire in June 2009.
"The prize will be one week accommodation only for a party of up to four people in the stunning Pigeonnaire on our farm situated in the Lot et Garonne in South West France.
Sun_025_2The farm is set in 20 acres of stunning unspoilt countryside which is teeming with wildlife and wild flowers. You can expect to see an assortment of wild Orchid as well as the possibility of young deer, the Hopoe or even baby Boar (but you have to be especially lucky there)."
Continue reading "Your chance to win a week's holiday in France" »
Under normal (with heavy emphasis on normal) circumstances, we should all be snug as bugs and moving onto other projects outside of the main house.
Trouble is, we do not seem to be normal and effectively built the house twice. Once in the original format but using plan 'C' and now in the new much more practical and comfortable format using plan 'A' (which we should have done originally)
I think I am developing square eyes! If it isn't busy enough I decided to make it even busier and start a garden network attached to my Landscape Juice garden site.
The aim is to build a professional and amateur gardening community who can return time and time again and glean valuable snippets of information and put it to good use.
The idea is, once a critical mass has evolved, the membership will fuel the content from within leaving me with a more administrative role.
I had, with the help of a couple of buddies, worked out how to wire the kitchen plugs and circuits and I had delivered all of the conduits back to the fuse board.
Half of the electrics had been temporarily connected for some time but I has not fixed the conduits onto beams and walls in the cave so all had to be disconnected and then routed and fixed.
I didn't sell any island units but it was a good exercise never the less, although, this week I did get an enquiry from an Ebay'er who asked me if I would take an offer on it.I probably didn't go about the marketing properly (mainly because I could not fully understand how to navigate the site in French) Not to worry, at least I do not have to worry about spending a lot of time making another one at the moment.
Has it really been over one month since I last tapped the key board and updated Perigord Vacance?
It is certainly not down to laziness because I have been doing plenty of other things and maybe it reflects the stage we are now at here in our farm house.
When things were moving at a pace and we were captivated by the excitement of the deadlines, I felt there was something of interest to keep readers popping back.
However, I am sure that no one wanted to hear what toothpaste we used and how many times a day we passed wind so the posts died down again.
Settling in Service - English speaking help in FRance
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