Chouette

I have two chimneys in my house, both lined with a stainless steel chimney liner. From time to time a bird comes down the tube and flies into the wood burner at the bottom, this is not a problem (so long as the fire's not lit!), I just open the windows in the room and open the wood burner and off goes the slightly puzzled bird.

The other day I woke up to hear noises to indicate that this had happened. I went downstairs, but could see no bird, so I pulled down the flue that covers most of the tube. After an hour or so I could hear the noises increasing, and out popped a Tawny Owl (Une chouette, which incidentally also means smart or great).

The owl was very sleepy (this being day time for humans and so night time for owls, I presume) and did not want to fly away.

After leaving it there for most of the day, I decided that I needed to move it, so donned some thick gloves and put it in the wood shed. I thought that it would fly away during the night, but the following day it was still there, bearly moving. Oh dear, it was surely suffering from shock, my daughter wanted me to find a dead mouse to feed it, but not have too many dead mice in stock, I left it for another night. Happily it flew during the night and now I can hear it twit-t wooing in the oak tree in front of the house each night. I like happy endings!

Child's Play

Well I did it! It cost a lot of money, but its fantastic, mows and collects wet grass and you can empty the collecter without even getting off your seat!

It is so simple to use that my son, Hugh, mowed the lawn today








Hey, that's great, no more lawn mowing. As a single mum, I'm all in favour of child labour - hey look he can empty it, too!

Tools of the job

One of my most important tools of my job is my lawn mower. I have over 1.5 hectares of land mostly laid to lawn and it takes me around 4.5 hours per week to keep the grass cut neatly. The tool for the job is a sit-on lawnmower with a cutting width of 120cm and three rotary blades. The cut grass can either be mulched by attaching a flap over the exit hole, which forces it back into the blades to be chopped up further and left on the lawn, or collected through a side mounted tube which throws the clippings up over the back of the mower into three collecting bins mounted at the back.

When I bought the mower they told me that it wasn't quite big enough for the size of the ground, but at 3,500 euros, I considered that it was within my budget, whereas the alternative started at 10,000 euros. Mistake!

I have been riddled with problems with this mower, drive belts breaking regularly, pulleys needing replacing, springs breaking. I think that (a) its not a brilliant machine (badged generic mower with Briggs and Stratton Engine) and the work that it does it just cannot cope with.

This weekend, after a short holiday away from the gites, I tried to mow - the battery was flat, so I jump started it from my car. I mowed for about 5 minutes and the blades cut out (after a bit of investigation, this was also due to no power in the battery. I charged the battery overnight, but no joy. I bought a new battery and charged it, then started to mow again. After 10 minutes, the secondary (but also important) drive belt for the mower bed snapped.

I managed to find another belt at my local lawn mower shop and I fitted it today -it took around 2 hours.

The main problem with my lawns is that they are sown on what was farm land, very well cultivated and heavily fertilised with nitrates during the 1970s, before the Agricultural control boards began to regulate the use of fertilizers. Nitrates promote green growth in plants, ie lots of grass!

Whilst I was in the lawn mower shop, they informed me that a customer who has 5 hectares of land around a lake had bought a Wolf A100K, a semi professional mower with ability to cut and collect wet grass. This customer has found that this model is not big enough for his land, so he wants to buy the next model up, he is selling his second hand 25hour usage mower for 8,000 euros. A lot of money, but one of the most important tools of my job.

I havent decided whether to buy or not yet, I can go and try the mower out first, then decide. I'll post the result.

Moles

Moles are the a huge problem here at La Lohuas, especially this year. Normally they are active during the autumn winter and spring, but in the summer when the soil drys out and hardens, they become less active. This year has been fairly wet, so they have continued throughout the season. The little blighters have a capacity to create enormous mole hills, which leave big grassless patches in the lawn even if you scoop up the molehill. The hills also pose a problem to my lawn mower - they can be up to 50 cm in height and diameter, so quite damaging to the blades on the mower. This year I have spent half an hour collecting up the soil on just one lawn filling a big wheelbarrow to overflowing with mud. I am sure they are cute and furry (I haven't yet seen one here) but they add to my workload, so I'm afraid there is a war between us. Unfortunately, they are winning hands down!

Because of the size of the gardens here (2 hectaires or 4 acres) I cannot use any of the deterrant techniques, (solar noise generators, plastic bottles on sticks, mothballs down the holes, etc) as this just means that they move on to another area of the garden and I have more damage than before. So I am stuck with the option of eradication (kill them all!)

I have tried the following techniques:
Smoke cartridges - hah! they push up a mole hill with the spent cartridge sitting on the top
Water down the holes - nothing
Diesel down the holes (I know its not very environmentally friendly, but I was desperate) they move to another area.

A Détauper - this is a small explosive attached to a trigger that is plunged into the hole and when Mr Mole comes along he pushes up the trigger and if he's arrived from the right direction the explosive goes off under his tummy (awww, but it's quick and painless) This is very expensive and works very well, however my insurance does not cover me for explosive devices in the garden, when there are small children running around, so this has been put away for the winter.

Worm poisoning - probably the most effective without damaging the guests. I bought a box which contained a liquid (propylène glycol) and a powder (Chloralose). Here are the instructions on the packet (translation from French).

Preparing the bait: Find 250g of earthworms, pick them up just before you treat the moles, they must be fresh (the children and I dug for three hours and found 80 worms weighing a grand total of 22 grammes (ok fine, just divide the mixtures by 10))
Let them disgorge (empty) themselves for one hour in a clean container (ok, but some of them have already been here for 3 hours cause it took us that long to find all his friends!)
Dry them on kitchen towel - fine 80 worms spread on kitchen towel across the kitchen table (how hygenic)
Dowse them in propylene glycol - not explained on the packet, this kills them all - very quickly and very dramatically, luckily the kids, having lost interest, were watching TV at this point.
Cover them in the powder.

Find the tunnels: The principle tunnels start from a ditch, a hedge or a wall and go towards the centre of the lawn. Other tunnels will be secondary feeding tunnels, these have smaller mole hills. Only treat the principle tunnels ( my mole hills are all in the middle of the lawn and all large, maybe they're all principle ones)

Putting down the poison - Make holes in the tunnels between the mole hills without letting the soil fall into the tunnel (how do I know where the tunnels are - I have made several exploratory digs, but it seems that moles do not travel in straight lines between their molehills! - hey ho, I 'll just go straight under the molehill - if someone knows how to dig without the soil falling back into the hole, please let me know)
Put in 2 - 3 worms - they're all stuck together with the liquid and the powder, I mustn't touch them with my hands because moles dont like human odeur, so here I am with my little eyebrow plucking tweezers trying to separate the worms and drop them into the holes (whilst not displacing the soil)
Now clear away all the molehills, so you can see if you've succeeded (the easiest step, I've been doing this all year)

As they say in French " On n'a pas un metier facile" (not an easy job)

Changeover days

Saturday is the busiest day for the gites, I ask holiday makers to vacate their gite before 10am and the new clients are able to arrive from 4pm onwards. I have five houses (total floor surface of 320m2) with a total of 11 bathrooms to clean. Beds to change for 27 people, welcome packs to provide, washing to do, guests to say goodbye to and new guests to welcome and show around. I do have a lady to help me, but it's all carried out on a very tight timescale.

I think today was the hardest day in 5 years. Last week I had a family of fifteen people occupying 3 of the gites - they were very nice and had a lovely holiday. They ate together in one of the gites, and consequently crockery, cutlery, glasses and all cooking implements became displaced and muddled. They helped me sort it out - its fairly easy as most of the gites have distinct crockery,etc and also I provide an inventory, so that we could check off what goes where. The children helped me move all the items to the appropriate gites, whilst their parents packed the car.

This week I have another family of 15 occupying 3 gites (but not the same three as last week!) so next week I have to do the same again.

It was also difficult this week as people started to arrive for their holidays at 11am (not 4pm), and although they were happy to just drop off their luggage and disappear for lunch, it all takes time out of a very busy schedule.

Tonight I am waiting for the last family to arrive then a large glass of wine and early to bed!

Beach rider

One of the girls staying at the gites last week had a dream to go horse riding in the surf on the beach. I arranged for her to have a 2 hour ride at a stables near St Brieuc at the Centre Equestre de Plerin. They are allowed to ride on the beaches after 7pm, and it was only possible on Friday, as earlier in the week the tides were too high in the evenings.

She spent one hour in the woods and one hour galloping across the sands on a deserted beach, accompanied by a dashing army horseman who wanted to practice his English with her! She said that it made it the best holiday she had ever had! (I'm thinking about treat myself to a ride there, too!)

Little Egret

Today one of the gite clients went to St Jacut sur Mer, the lady is a keen bird watcher and had spotted a bird that at first she thought was a Heron, but there were a group of them fishing in the sea. She asked me if I could lend her a bird book and I brought out my Readers Digest Book of Birds and she identified the bird as a Little Egret, rare in these parts, but apparently moving North due to climate change.

Harvest

In our commune (village) there are 1000 habitants, so not so big, however there are 34 farms in the commune - so a large proportion of farmers. My partner, Yves, is a dairy farmer with around 50 hectares (100 acres) and 45 milking cows. Most of his fields are either pasture for the cows and heifers, or sown as maize for silaging forage for the cows to eat. The remaining fields (this year 8 hectares) are sown with wheat, mainly for the straw for the bedding in the winter, but also to sell the wheat. This week has seen the harvest start for Yves, it has been going on all around us for about three weeks, but as most of the farmers are small business, they cannot afford to buy large machinery like combine harvesters, so have to use contractors. The problem here is that everyone wants the contractor to come and harvest on the first sunny day that the wheat is ripe, so Yves has had to wait his turn.

In the mornings, the dew is heavy in Brittany, so generally it is not possible to start combining until after 3pm when the dew has been dried off, then all is clear (weather permitting) until the dew falls again, normally at about 4.30am. Yves' first slot came at about 10pm on Sunday evening (very sociable!!). So we all went along to watch the Fiat combine start his large field of 6.5 hectares. The Fiat is very small and very old (it literally clatters along!), it has a cutting width of 3 meters as opposed to the modern machines of 5 or 6 meters, although the larger machines get the job done quicker, they have to process the wheat a lot quicker, so this means threshing it much more violently - this tends to break the straw and give a poorer quality bedding.

They worked through the night and had to finish at 4am in the morning because of rain. There is still one and a half hours combining left to do.

On Monday evening he had a smaller field to harvest, but there was lots of bindweed entwined in the wheat, so this required the bigger machine, which could cope with the weed.

Hugh went along with his toy combine to help as well - you can see the similarity.

Gardens

The gardens have really taken over this year, we had a dry and sunny April, but then it rained a great deal during May, June and July. I have 1.7 hectaires of land here (approximately 4 acres) and also lots of it is lawned (4.5 hours of mowing each time) I have planted a large flower garden. The gardens were created in 2004 and on a limited budget I planted a few plants that I bought and lots that I took as cuttings from other people gardens, at first they were really sparse.

This year the gardens have been hard work, everything has really grown and needs serious pruning, which I should have carried out in the winter or spring, but will have to wait until the autumn now. I have spent much more time this year, trying to keep things tidy and trying to get the lawns mown. Of course, there is also the constant battle against the moles, I'll talk about that later!

Here is a picture of the gardens now, I suppose that the most impressive for me is the hedge in the foreground, I took 80 cuttings of a Lonicera nitida about 10cm long, dipped them in potting compost and in three years a fantastic hedge - it does need lots of trimming, but is very easy to manage if you keep on top of it (it does need a trim on top at the moment!).

Leicster Spokes Cycle Club

Last week, Leicester Spokes Cycle Club stayed in 3 of the gites, Cerise, Fraise and Pomme. 15 cyclists made up the group, and they visited the area using the local cycle paths, disused railway lines and canal paths and also the trains to go further afield. Some of the rides that they did were to Hédé, Mont St Michel, Dinard, Rennes and Combourg.

They were a very friendly group and I really enjoyed hosting them here and helping them with their route planning. You can visit their website at http://www.leicesterspokes.org.uk/

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. A short history of why I am here : I was working in the computer industry in England with two small children Elizabeth and Hugh (2 and 4 at the time) and never quite seeing enough of them. I had a nanny, so they were well looked after, but never really profitted from my life as a Mum.

Just before Elizabeth started school, my husband, Ian and I decided to "jump ship" and move to France. We bought La Lohuas in December 2002 and worked furiously in the first half of the year to create three gites. This worked well but didn't bring enough money in to live, so at the end of 2004 we started to renovate the barn at the side of the property to make two more gites. These were finished in spring 2006.

The major change during this time was that Ian and I split up in October 2005 and he moved out. I am now running the business on my own and am in the process of buying Ian's share of the house and business.

To see the full layout and photos of the gites, you can visit http://www.brittanygites.com/