My name is Jo, and in 2020 I moved to France with my husband, Brian. From our move to France, to running our B&B, my blog, which you can read below, is a diary of ‘Our French Adventure’. I share short stories about the Champagne region, and its people, and the life we have embraced here.
Perfect timing
We woke up to the most gorgeous blue sky, it’s going to be another hot day. In fact, it’s been a couple of hot weeks, all over Europe I believe. For the grape pickers, who cut every bunch of grapes by hand here in Champagne, it makes for a hard days work.
The whole workforce starts early in the morning, trying to get a few early hours in before the heat of the sun bears down on them. With our windows flung wide open to let in the cool air at night, we can hear them preparing for their day as early as 4am. Last night we could hear the tractors clearing off the leaves from the vines, they do this by blowing directed air onto them, exposing the fruit so it can be easily and quickly picked.
Boxes are delivered across the vineyards by tractors , and distributed between the vines. They are left ready to be filled with buckets of cut grapes. When complete, just one of these boxes weighs 40kgs. A real team effort, and a well planned operation.
It’s then a matter of moving the now 40kg boxes, onto the back of the tractors , which will take them to the presses, to press them as quickly as possible from the time they are picked - simply perfect timing.
It’s all hot, tiring work, performed with a wonderful spirit, and a lot of organisation. It’s a marvellous thing to be able to see, and hear happening around you. With the hot weather set to break on Tuesday, with heavy rains forecast, it’s a rush to the finishing line.
Right time, right place
We nipped out this morning to take some photos of the harvest, as there’s a lot of activity all along our little valley. We’d stopped just on a ridge where I could pull off the road and Brian had a prime view of the workers.
Just as I’d turned the car round and switched the engine off to wait for him, I could hear a jet approaching. I peered through the windscreen and saw it swoosh overhead, with a rather thunderous roar. We often see them pass over as I believe we are on a training route.
When Brian jumped back in the car, I exclaimed “Did you get any good piccies? Would have been nice to have captured one of the fighter jet”. He turned the camera to me and showed me what he’d achieved.
“Wow hun, that’s amazing!”
A coupe
What better way to kick off the start of harvest than lunch out at the ‘café de l’halles’ in Bar-sur-Seine, and of course a coupe of Champagne.
I enjoyed a very delicious meal of roasted pork and haricots verts, whilst Brian had an onglet steak with fries. We then couldn’t resist a very chocolatey eclair for dessert. Why not?
Three per hectare
Up to 20,000 people come to the Aube vineyards to work on the harvest. There is nearly 120,000 for the whole of the Champagne region. With around 8,000 hectares of vines in the Aube (just over 34,000 for Champagne as a whole) that works out to around three grape pickers per hectare.
This year, some of the producers have also chosen to take on a few extra workers to help keep the presses clear, to help the whole process flow more easily. It is always better to keep the grapes waiting on the vines than at the presses.
The workers are often regulars that are recruited every year, from all across Europe. However, recruitment does appear to be a little more difficult this year for the growers, so some are now using service companies to fill the need for them, after all there’s enough to do without the worry of finding enough workers!
the nude
L’est Éclair, which translates as ‘the lightning’, is our local weekly newspaper. It is a good source of what’s happening and what’s on in the area.
This weeks mini headlines, we thought, were particularly provocative - ‘a nude in the Camille-Claudel museum has been censored by instagram’ - that story definitely needs a read! It refers to an historical statue of a naked man that the museum posted with a short description, but Instagram got something in this story very wrong and decided it needed to be censored. Daft, but a great way of grabbing a headline for what we believe is a rather marvellous museum.
Then there’s the delightful story about how a Playmobil exhibition on Napoleon brought ‘wings’ to the little ‘Napoleon museum’ in Brienne-Le-Chateau, and doubled their visitor numbers this year. What a wonderful way to bring history to life for children.
How many?
Thought I’d share my little purchases from the vide grenier on Sunday. I was very pleased with our finds, the metal tray is already coming in handy up at the pool. I was very pleased with my 3 table cloths. The cream one fits the dining table perfectly, and I never seem to have too many. The retro one with flowers will be perfect as a breakfast tablecloth, very cheery. Add to that some homegrown veggies and a couple of books for Brian and it was quite a haul.
Dilemma
It’s going to be a beautiful week, although I realise not everyone will see these temperatures as beautiful. The forecasters are actually forecasting another heatwave for this year in Southern France. The high temperatures, into the 30’s, are very unusual for this time of year.
We have been on a hosepipe ban for most of the summer, so I try and save all my waste water – washing up water, or when I’m running a tap to get hot water – to use in the garden. Any water that I can use on my pots helps.
Because of these two hot spells, some industries across France have been told to reduce water consumption. I think that it’s not just an immediate request, but a long term project for France.
I’m thinking about what we can do for our bit, and maybe next year I need to be thinking of more drought tolerant planting. Although I have to say, with the rain we had last week, the garden is looking very lush.
À couper le souffle
Such an amazing sky this evening. I’d gone up to the pool this evening with Brian, he needed to close it up, so we went to sit up there for a little while. There was a beautiful gentle warm breeze, and the crickets were chirping their light evening song. As Brian looked up from the pool, he exclaimed “you must turn around and take a look at the sun set, it’s stunning”. We learnt a new saying earlier today, and it seemed very fitting. ‘À couper le souffle’ – breathtaking.
For some in the region vendanges starts tomorrow, let’s hope this is the glorious sign of a good one for all.
Take a guess?
We had a great time at the vintage aeroplane and car show. I was so glad we had the time to visit it, it’s just so wonderful seeing all the old planes. Their owners are justifiably very proud of their planes, and take such great care of them.
There was also a great display of cars, in fact, I think I’ve found my perfect car.
Can anyone guess what it is?
Rassemblement
Sunday morning, no lay in today. The last job we do before our guests arrive is hoover their rooms and the ground floor. Brian does the upstairs hallway and the rooms, whilst I do the lounge, entry hall and dining room. Thank goodness we have two hoovers.
We have a quick little breakfast, then we head into Bar-sur-Seine to buy bread for dinner and maybe drop into a vide grenier that is happening today. Ideally, what we really want to do is visit the vintage car and plane show in Celles-sur-Ource. We’ll have to see how much time we have left.
Mady morrison
We woke early this morning, because we wanted to get our jobs done so we could enjoy an afternoon relaxing by the pool.
First though I was keen to do our morning stretch with Mady Morrison. We’ve not been able to do this every morning through the summer, and I’ve really missed it, so I’m trying to ensure we now take 15 minutes each morning to do one of her stretch routines. It makes such a big difference to our day. This is the link to her ultimate morning stretch. I think the key is not to worry if you can’t do all of it, just do as much as you can, well that’s what we do. We really don’t look like she does doing it, and there’s often lots of moans and groans as well.
After our morning ritual we nipped out for a well deserved coffee and a bun, before picking up the chicken from the butchers and dropping into the Intermarché for some shopping. We have guests arriving tomorrow and I’ll be cooking Sunday dinner for table d’hôte.
Early afternoon, we headed up to the pool for a lazy afternoon soaking up the warmth of the day under the shade of the umbrella, and taking a dip in the pool to cool down.
I was drifting in and out of sleep, listening to the near silence of the village. There’s some children just in the background laughing and playing. It’s the last couple of days before rentré (back to school), and they are obviously making the most of it. Brian is starting to stir, I can hear him get up, starting to potter and do his ‘pool jobs’. He’d mentioned he wanted to top the pool up, and luckily we use water from our well so we don’t have an issue keeping it at the right level.
One more snooze before we head down for dinner I think.
Waste not
Last week I met up with a friend in Bar-sur-Aube for a wonderful little lunch and a catch up following her trip back to the uk.
She very kindly brought me some of her fallen apples, as she has way too many to use all by herself. She has not yet picked them from the trees, but hopefully I’ll get a few more when she does.
I simply hate wasting food, so I was very pleased to be able to use them. I started off by cutting away any bad parts of the apples, to see how much I had left. I decided to make a spiced, caramelised onion and apple chutney, and for a little twist I would add a few raisins to soak up some of the juices.
The recipe was an adaptation of one I had made previously, that had gone really well, but would benefit from the raisins.
It came out great, and made a good lot of jars. It’s better to store them in a cool place, so at the moment the jars are in the fridge.
We enjoyed some though with some succulent smoked ham we had for dinner last night. The acidity of the chutney really complemented the meat.
Plummy
I found myself a quiet little corner of the garden, nicely in the shade, to prepare my plums. First I washed them, before cutting them in half to remove the stones.
The flesh was looking a scrumptious golden colour against the deep plum colours of the skins. By the end of it, I had very blue looking hands.
I separated a few bags for freezing, then weighed out what I had left to make some jam. It’s roughly equal quantities of fruit to sugar. I also added a bit of lemon juice, and a vanilla pod, which adds a delicate taste of vanilla to the jam. I just cut it down the middle to open up the seeds inside, then in half again, as I leave the pod in and it fits easier in the jars that way.
I’ve made about 8 jars, which is great for our B&B breakfasts, although we also get to enjoy it now and then.
A plum crop
Our plum tree was thoroughly laden with fruit this year. I had thought that because we’d pruned it we may not get a great harvest until next year, but I was happily surprised when I could see the plums ripening.
As there was so much fruit I roped Brian into giving me a helping hand to pick them.
We’ve had an excellent crop this year, which I’m looking forward to making some jam with, but best of all I will freeze some for winter plum crumbles. In France it’s called a plum crisp, and we actually have one on the menu for tonight, so we will see how good they are.
Shocked!
With all the hot weather we’ve been enjoying recently, the pool has had a lot of use, so Brian seized an opportunity between guests to give it a bit of a deep clean.
He took time to clean all around the edges with the brush and thoroughly cleaned out the skimmers.
He then backwashed the filter, to clean out any dirt from the sand filter.
Backwashing sends any impurities caught by the sand filter out through the waste pipe.
He then decided to shock the pool, this is where you add a high dosage of chlorine to kill off any bacteria that may be lurking. The pool is then left for 24 hours for the chlorine to work and levels to normalise.
Coming to champagne
For those that don’t subscribe to Brian’s newsletter, I’ve attached a link here of his most recent August edition. It makes for some interesting reading on what’s happening or about to happen here in champagne.
Good food
Our friends all left early this week to make their journeys home, leaving the house very quiet. The canicule across France was still providing pretty high temperatures, up in the mid 30’s, so we thought we’d just slow down for a couple of days and take a moment to soak up the sunshine. We love being wonderfully busy, but also like the idea of having a quiet day by the pool with a little picnic and a few bottles of beer.
The sun was intense, so we settled down for the afternoon enjoying the shade of the brolly. I was planning some new recipes to try out, thanks to my friends bringing me over some of my favourite recipe magazines, and Brian was trying to finish his summer read ‘Surface detail’ by Iain M Banks, it all sounds very odd when he tries to explain it to me, not at all like the happy little novels I like to read.
Fête de chasse et campagne
It was the ‘fête de chasse et de campagne’ at chateau de vaux on Sunday, a show about all things country.
Last year we went mid morning and spent most of the day there, but did not see any of the evening’s activities. So this year we decided to go late afternoon, have a wander around the stalls, and catch some of the evening events. Chris and Brian were soon back practicing their archery technique, whilst I was very pleased to find a new winter, waterproof hat with a wide brim, ideal for either going out walking or wearing about town. It was a bargain at just 10 euro’s.
The horsemanship at this event is spectacular, and covers a wide range of equestrian skills. The riders are all so committed, as well as the horses.
It was also wonderful to see the vintage cars do a few laps of the event ring. Normally they are just stationary, always looking very polished and ready to go. It was extra special, as we had some friends displaying their little MG, superb.
We returned to the car and found a nice quiet, shaded spot to enjoy our picnic. Everyone had brought blankets, so it made an ideal place to rest before we returned for the evening entertainment.
As we walked back we could hear the music starting up in the distance, I couldn’t help but get in the mood.
We settled ourselves in with some light refreshments to accompany the fiery entertainment.
First of all the horses and their riders put on an amazing show with bonfires and blazing torches, and then it all finished with a spectacular firework display over the château.
All of it made for such a wonderful event.
River Artaut
Sunday was a real scorcher of a day, and after our tasting we headed back to the house for some lunch and a little light activity, which involved getting in the river again.
This time though it was the small river in front of our house, called the Artaut.
We’d volunteered our friends into helping us clean out the weed. A job that needs doing a couple of times a year.
Whilst we sorted lunch, the blokes got on with the job. It was a simple task of pulling out the weed and piling it up on the side of the road for Dorian, our commune gardener, to collect. I say it was a simple task, because it doesn’t take long with 4 strapping lads. If we do it ourselves it seems to take all day!
Brian was looking very pleased, this job has been on his mind for quite some time. Big thank you to everyone involved.
Bee-ing able
On Sunday morning we headed over to the little village of Meurville. Our friends were keen to do a tasting and buy some Champagne. Jérôme Cothias has a great selection of wines and if he can he will always makes himself available for a tasting.
After the tasting Jérôme asked if we would like to see his honey production. I love being able to serve local honey to our guests, and it’s wonderful being able to see the process, the passion and the care that goes into making it.
This winter I’d like to do more recipes that include honey, so I can use this delicious local product in different ways for our guests. I will start to research some soon.