The cat that lost his miaow

The cat that lost his miaow
and other stories

We woke up this morning to find Dillon’s miaow has disappeared. He is 16 years old, and feeling his years. He has found some very comfortable sleeping spots behind the Lavender, which are sheltered from the sun, and close to his water bowl, but his favourite place is his wine crate which he sleeps in at night – why wouldn’t you. He is such an adorable cat.

After we had completed our morning tasks, we went on a beautiful walk through the vineyards and across into the neighbouring valley, Loches-sur-Ource. We passed a couple of ladies who were picking all on their own, with no aid from the spider like tractors that go behind the pickers collecting up the boxes full of grapes, something you think nothing of until you see those doing it without this assistance. The ladies were filling their buckets then walking up the slope to tip their valuable produce into their boxes stored at the end of the lines of vines. This they just kept repeating until that line of vines had all been picked, and they then moved to the next. Further up the rough stone track, was a family of seven people, a couple of brothers and their wives and teenage children. All working extremely hard with one goal in mind, to get the job done.

Our route took us round a view point that looked out across the Ource valley. We sat on some nicely positioned benches to eat our Chèvre et Epinard pastries with a cool can of San Pelegrino Limonata, which is often a bit tart for me, so I tend to just have a couple of sips of Brians before reverting to my bottle of water. It was a welcome break in the heat of the day, and gave us time to reflect on how hard growing grapes really is.

We thought we would explore a bit and take a different path back round into our valley, which lead us through some woodland. It was all going really well, until the path turned right and we ended up walking out onto a field, well I think that is what it was. It was covered in rocks. We knew which way we had to head, but it meant walking round the edge of the field across the rocks, which was not great under foot. Neither of us had put our walking boots on. I think we had both thought it was only going to be a bit of a stroll. So we headed back into the woodland when we saw a gap in the trees. Soon the undergrowth became impassable, but as we are not ones to walk back the way we came, we decided we needed to head down the slope to try and reach the track which we knew ran along the top of the vines. Brian told me it was only about 40 metres away. So carefully we headed down the slope, finding a path through the trees, trying to avoid the very prickly hawthorns that seem to be growing there. We took it really slowly, looking ahead to try and navigate the best route. Brian assured me it was not much further, and soon I could see through the trees and the valley beyond. Literally just as we were emerging out of the wood I caught my arm on a thorn and bled profusely. .

The view was stunning, and it was a delight to see the buzz all the way along the valley – the culmination of this years hard work coming to fruition. On the other side of the valley was a large team of pickers looking like ants cleaning the hillside. We could see the yellow boxes being collected by the ‘tractor spiders’ and driven to the lorries, which then took them to the pressoirs. No time to waste as they needed to get the grapes pressed.

Montbriac

I have a new favourite cheese – Montbriac is a cows milk cheese, with a slight blue vein running through it. But it is very mild and creamy, unlike some other blue cheeses. I understand it’s from the Auvergne region of France, which is just south of here and somewhere I’d like to visit. It’s quite a lush area, hence great for cows, and cheese. It also has some superb walking routes.

I’d come across the cheese at our local market. Whilst I was queuing at the cheese stall, two of the three people in front of me bought a piece, so I assumed it must be good. I also bought some Brie au Poivre, and Tomme. Altogether a very nice cheese board.

Montbriac, Brie au Poivre and Tomme

Vendanges Begins

We are told this is the earliest year a vendanges has started in Champagne. The sun didn’t peep his head out, but it was a warm humid day, interspersed with rain showers, to freshen the mood. The pickers were out in force throughout our valley that runs the 3 miles from Viviers-Sur-Artaut to Landreville. We could count at least 8 teams across both sides. Carefully sweeping up and down the rows of vines, snipping as they went. The black Pinot Noir grapes, ripe, firm and juicy. If you were to eat one, they have a very thick skin, with soft sweet flesh. They are picking for the big Champagne houses like Veuve Clicquot and Moët et Chandon but also for the smaller more boutique brands, who are making some exceptional Champagne such at Petiteaux, Robert-Grandpierre, and André Fay et Fils to name a few.

Sunset

Long hot sticky days and cool fresh nights are typical for a continental climate. We’ve had to get used to ensuring the windows are closed no later than 8.30 in the morning, to keep the coolness in the rooms that the nights have brought. Then at night, throwing open the windows to freshen the rooms, ensuring a comfortable nights sleep.
The other wonderful thing we are experiencing are beautiful orange and red sunsets. This one was taken a couple of weeks ago, before Brian had mowed the slope, and I’d tidied the garden, but I thought it really set the scene.

Hard work ahead

It’s been 4 weeks since we arrived in France, and the weeks have flown past. It’s only looking back through my blog that I remember fully how we have spent the time.
We are often asked, ‘are you bored yet?’ Absolutely not, we don’t have time to be bored. Every day when we wake up we plan what we are going to do. This morning we took time to reflect and plan what we need to do to realise our ambitions for our ‘Maison en Champagne’ B&B. Sometimes the enormity of everything can be a bit overwhelming, so for me it’s good to break it down into various tasks. For example, what administration do we need to do to live in France? How do we approach accounting and taxation? What needs to happen on the house to make it ready? Then it’s not to try and achieve everything all at once. But within its timescale.

We know that once the stone masons are back to work in September, we can understand the cost of the worktops for the kitchen, and if they are within our budget then we will progress with getting them ordered, and Brian can start to fit the units. Our kitchen units are old mahogany cupboards, which he will be cutting to fit. It will be very eclectic in style, something I love. The plan is we will have the kitchen finished by mid November.

In addition to that, whilst that is happening, we will look at refreshing the front double bedroom (named Magnum), and plan to have that completed by the end of October, so that we can then do the family room, which is named Jeroboam. That needs a bit more work, but I’m excited about doing that. That should take us through to Christmas at least.

Some hard work ahead, but really looking forward to getting stuck in, and enjoying seeing the results.

‘Never grow up’

The day started very well, Brian had readied his new coffee maker, a La Pavoni. It is a very manual coffee machine, not one where you push a button, or drop a pod in. Don’t get me wrong that’s what I use, but Brian wanted one he could control better, and chose the Pavoni, one where you pull a lever to push the hot water through the ground coffee grains. Brian had read lots about it, mainly everything that might not work with it. I wanted to see how it worked, and keen for him to make us a cappuccino each to give it a test run - and taste the results,

I have to say it was probably one of the best coffees I’ve ever had, really smooth and integrated. A real treat with my toast and marmalade.

It wasn’t an overly hot day, so we planned to do some jobs in the garden, I‘d said to Brian “we really need to get some pruning done”. As nothing had been done during confinement, the garden was still very much in need of some work. I was thinking of pruning the roses and laurel hedge, possibly cutting the Lavender back, which really was looking a bit tired, even the bees had pretty much given up searching for the last pieces of sweet summer nectar. However, it appeared that Brian had other ideas!

‘If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up’ from Peter Pan

Plum Jam

1 kg plums

800 gms sugar

juice from 1/2 lemon

Cut plums in half, leave in the stones at this stage, as it is much easier to remove them once you have cooked the plums down. But you do need patience.

Cook the plums for about 45 minutes, until they have released their juices and started to break down. It’s fine to stir them frequently and allow the fruit to mash. You can start removing any stones you see now as they will have worked their magic.

Now add the sugar, stir it in until it’s disstolved, and then bring the jam to a boil. Add the lemon juice, you can taste it now, if you think it needs more sugar add at this point. This needs to be on a rolling boil for around 12–15 minutes. You can tell when the jam is cooked by putting a bit on a cold plate and checking that it sets.

Whilst this is happening, prepare your jars, a lb of fruit makes roughly a lb of jam. I sterilise them by pouring boiling water on them, then drying in the oven.

When ready, pour the jam carefully – as it’s oh so hot – into the sterilised jars. I use jam wax seals with plastic covers that you need to wet in cold water then stretch over the jar, fixing with an elastic band. Brian finds the whole thing really fiddly, I love this part as you can see all your work coming together.

That’s it, you now have plum jam. The rest of the plums I will freeze, with the stones taken out, however if you are short of time just leave them in.

Plums

Woke up this morning to the sound of rain, and the sky looks like it is bedded in for the day. A little light relief for us from the intense heat and sun that we have had since arriving in France. However it is not good so close to harvest for the grapes, as the grapes absorb the water, and effectively it dilutes the juice. There are very specific guidelines on the levels or percentages of sugar content within the grapes. We will have to wait and see if the harvest is affected.

Today we are making plum jam. Yesterday I picked around 16lb of plums out of the garden. I will freeze some, for plum crumble, or fruit pie, or even to have with some duck.

We have cut in half around 7lb of plums which is now bubbling on the stove, breaking down the fruit. I will remove the stones once they have cooked a bit. This helps with the setting, as there is lots of pectin in the stones.

Tomorrow I will show you how we got on with making the jam.

Gasket?

It’s a bit overcast today but still warm, around 27°c, so we decided to get a few garden jobs done. Brian wanted to get the slope cut with the ancient mower that had come with the house. So after we had pulled it up the steps and up onto the slope, we decided to see if it still worked. A couple of pulls on the starter cord and it rumbled into action. Hoorah… smiles all round. It ran for a couple of minutes, gurgling as it went, then silence. Blast, I’d had a feeling we needed a new one.

However, Brian, not to be defeated, decided to take a look and find out what might be wrong. As I’d so wisely said ‘not much to go wrong on a lawn mower engine’. So he bravely went and got his socket set, and some WD40 and started to undo the bolts for the filter.
He soon found a problem with a damaged gasket. That is right up his street, cutting out a perfect copy of something. This he did with ease. But still not sure all was well, he proceeded to clean the moving parts to ensure everything moved freely. Brian really has never dabbled with engines before, and I thought that was all he was doing, however he carefully put it all back together with its newly made gasket and pulled the cord. Then ‘putt, putt put, putt’ - it started to purr into life. At last we can take back control of the garden.

Raspberry tart

It’s been a bit melancholy today. Boris announced last night that people travelling from France to the UK need to quarantine as from tomorrow, and the expectation is that those travelling to France from the UK will have to do similar, but this is yet to be announced. We believe this will be announced on Thursday. Our friends, due to come to visit over the coming few weeks, have all had to cancel, so really disappointing.

Not ones to be deflated though, we have looked adversity straight in the eye, and got on with doing stuff. I busied myself cleaning the top floor, whilst Brian built a cat proof screen for the upstairs window. The window on the top floor, when open, would be a perfect invite for a cat to go and explore the roof – not something we want to risk. So up until now we’ve kept it closed. But now we can leave it open in the knowledge none of the cats can get onto the very high roof from there.

As a ‘just in case nobody can join us’ I bought us two raspberry tarts, which will make any day brighter.

Oenology

Unpacking has not been something I threw myself at with gusto. I did to start with, but as the days heated up, I slowed down. I think what also didn’t help is the fact that owning two houses for five years has meant that we pretty much have two of everything now, in fact I now seem to have three vacuum cleaners, three irons, three lawn mowers, probably five strimmers and goodness knows how many double ups or triple ups Brian has in his Oenology drawer.

Opening hours

I needed to post a letter this morning, but thought it wise to check the PO opening hours before driving into Bar-Sur-Seine, so a quick look on the internet and I discovered there was a small PO in Landreville, literally the next village to ours. An even greater discovery was that it is also a really useful ‘corner shop’, selling fresh veg, groceries, frozen foods and fresh baguettes. Brian was extra pleased as I’d also managed to purchase the last two pain aux raisins. A very successful trip out. I think we’d never really used the shop before as it was never open when we drove past it. But I think I realise why that is now. It did take us a while to get used to everything closing at lunch time, but once you accept that it’s easy to work with it. But this shop doesn’t re-open until 4.30pm

Whilst I was out, Brian finished off the shoe rack he had been making.

A change is in the air

This morning we did another trip to the tip, but there was definitely a change in the activity along the way. More vans and people in the vineyards, more vine machinery buzzing up the slopes and the grape collecting boxes being washed and stacked in readiness for the vendanges. Everyone is preparing for and trying to predict the exact right moment to start the picking.

The Repair shop

Early start today, we wanted to visit the ‘déchèterie’ before it got too hot. We have a lot of cardboard from the move, and what seems like a garage full of garden clippings. We have three recycling tips all within a 15 minute radius from us, so you never seem to have to queue. We lined the back of the car in an old dust sheet and stuffed as much in as we could. I must say sitting in the car smelt like sitting in a rather large lavender bag, as I had needed to cut some of the lavender back. Ideally I would have collected the seeds to make small lavender bags, but for now I just needed to get the job done. 

On the way back we drove past a Vival, it’s like a Co-op. We hadn’t been in it before, so thought we would take a look as we could do with some provisions. What a pleasant surprise, they had a small fresh bread counter, and also a small deli counter selling cheese and ham. For now I just got two small baguettes for cheese later, and two croissants which we promptly ate as soon as we got back. 

This afternoon, we wanted to get one of the cabinets up that we had been working on. There are still unpacked boxes in the salle à manger, and I’d like to get them cleared before the weekend, as we have a couple of friends arriving on Sunday. 

Really pleased with how this one is looking, I’ve included before and after shots of the mend Brian did, I’m really pleased with the outcome. Think he could be on The Repair Shop at this rate. 

English mustard

It was a slow easy start to the day. Brian wanted to do a bit more work on the painted cabinets for the kitchen. The one I’d been doing was finished, but I think I’d picked the easier of the two. His one had the mend on the corner, and also we wanted to protect the aged paintwork, so it needed waxing. He went out into the coolness of the barn to work on that and I made it my aim to do both our mum’s internet shopping. Strangely, by the time we’d completed our separate tasks it was 2.30pm. Most definitely time for a swim.

It was such a glorious day and the pool is looking so good we were keen to enjoy it. We are still currently pinching ourselves to believe ‘is this us?’

I have to admit I had been looking forward all day to my steak dinner which Brian was cooking for us tonight. And when I’d read an email from an old friend of ours talking about his trip around the Loire I’d remembered we had some lovely reds we’d bought whilst there last year from Chinon which would go really well with our steak and chips. Bon appetite.

Can’t quite give up English mustard!

Prieuré de Viverie

Next to the historic church in our village, Viviers-sur-Artaut, is a long established champagne producer - Robert-GrandPierre. Vincent Grandpierre and his wife Céline have recently renovated the old priory – Prieuré de Viverie. They are producing some great quality champagnes and have extended their range to satisfy any champagne enthusiasts taste.

You can probably tell we love their champagne, and we nipped up there yesterday afternoon to top up our cellar, before life gets very busy for them during vendanges (harvest) which is going to be early this year.

Here’s my sales pitch for them, not that they need it - just can’t help myself.

The Prieuré is a wonderful setting for a degustation, in the coolness of its thick ancient walls you can taste the various styles of champagne that they produce. They also do an interesting ‘visit’ where you view a short film on the history of the Priory and surrounding area, they explain how champagne is made, you can view some of the old implements they would have used in years gone by, and also take a visit to their gallery, where they exhibit works of art from visiting artists. Of course the visit also includes a degustation of a variety of their champagnes. It whiles away an hour or two, and you come away feeling more informed and have a real understanding of how the smaller, more boutique, producers adapt to promote their worthy products. And of course you can purchase some to enjoy at home.

https://www.champagne-robertgrandpierre.fr/

Market day

Friday is market day in Bar-Sur-Seine. The sleepy town comes alive with the hustle and bustle of the locals buying their weekly fresh produce. There is an array of seasonal fruit and vegetables, with tomatoes the size of your hand – but still sweet and juicy. Nectarines ripened in the sun and full of flavour. The cheese stall has some perfectly ripe Brie, “Shall we get some of that?” – Brian knows my answer before he asks the question. The pieces of Langres are also looking good. It’s a cheese made about an hour away from here. It has an orange rind, a smooth, soft centre and not too strong. It is particularly good for lunch. A friend of mine, Sam, sent me a recipe where you cut a hole in the cheese and pour champagne into it. Lastly a visit to the champignons man, “Deux feuillettes aux champignons s’il vous plait, et cinq cent grammes des champignons Marron”. “C’est tout?” he asks. “Oui, c’est tout”. All very basic french, but now we are being understood, which feels like progress.

Before we head off to the Intermarche for the rest of our shopping, we stop by the market café for a coffee, and a pastry we have just bought from the bakers. It’s so pleasing that the café owners are happy for you to eat a pastry bought elsewhere whilst sitting at their tables drinking coffee. I just love that approach.

Roses

I’ve been pruning roses today. I would refer to myself as a budding rose enthusiast. But I think I need to do some research on how to care for them properly before I class myself as a true enthusiast. Some of them are looking a tad neglected. I think confinement hasn’t helped as I didn’t prune them at all in spring. We have so many in the garden and I have three in pots to plant out, which will be done over the coming weeks once I’ve decided where I would like to put them. For now I’m just enjoying trying to get a last flush of colour out of them.

My secateurs are not really helping though, I’d say they are nearly on their last cut. I’m hoping they will last out the summer, then I will invest in a new pair, until then I am alternating between them and a pair of loppers, which are way too big for the job. I’m thinking my other investment I need to make are a pair of rose gloves. I now realise why they are needed, as my arms are shredded! Nothing a few drops of tea tree oil won’t sort out though.

Delights of pruning, a few blooms make it into the house

First things first

The list for today was simple. paint two old cupboards to hang on the walls in the kitchen. We had everything we needed…except the table I wanted to paint on had the old kitchen wall units perched on it, and was stored in the very messy barn. First things first, we needed to clear the space in the barn to store them better. We are reluctant to take the old ones to the decheterie (tip) as we may put them up in the pool room. So we tidied some garden waste, ready to go to the tip, moved the cabinets to the back of the barn and found a good sized area to get on with the job.

My one was just a case of rubbing down and painting. Brian needed to fix some damage to the other one before painting

I will put up a picture of this mend once it’s finished, but this is how it started out.

Those little pleasures

The day started very well, my France magazine had arrived. I just love getting a new magazine, and I’m finding the articles in here not only informative for help living in France, but a very relaxing read.

Life’s little pleasures, a new magazine and an early morning expresso.

We decided to go out for lunch today, a plat du jour from a local cafe. Just really simple food, well cooked. For me, having time to spend on having a slow, lazy lunch is a real treat. For so long I’ve eaten something at my desk, or in the car, or during a meeting, I really appreciate being able to enjoy these simple pleasures.