New Year

Thought it was about time I put something down on here, it's been a few months, so much for communicating better with everybody....

It's absolutely freezing here at the moment, the fire's on every day, shame it doesn't heat the whole house, but it's lovely in the kitchen. Christmas was great, our best ever. Adrian and I and the girls were on our own, my folks having gone back to the uk to be with my brother, and no-one else visiting. We were so chilled out and did everything that we wanted to do, not what other people wanted. We even had something other than turkey for lunch - 'biche' which translates in the dictionary as 'doe'. We chose to consider this as venison, though whether that's right or not have no idea, but anyway it was lovely. Best not to always think about what you're eating over here in France...

Had a tough year last year as many of you know and we are not expecting this year to be any better, hopefully from 2010 things will pick up, though I'm not sure why I think that, trying to be positive, probably. It's not so much our low income, we can deal with that (living frugally I mean), it's more the social charges and local taxes that we have to pay - they are absolutely crippling, plus our massive electric, water and gas bills! Hence we don't have the heating on all the time, we use candles instead of electric lights and collect water from puddles which we do boil for 5 mins before using. (On the fire, not the hob of course). In case you're wondering, this computer is currently been generated by my kids taking turns to ride on my exercise bike which is hooked up to the wires to generate electricity. No tv anymore, we go and watch the sheep in the neighbouring field for entertainment. There's even some action when the males have been allowed in and it's educational too.

We're putting satellite tv in the gites this year, which hopefully will get started next week. A couple of the gites should be fairly straightforward, but the other three will be harder, we have to get behind the gites and clear all the brambles first which will be fun! Adrian and Dad are also working on the pool bit by bit, they've taken up much of the terrace and will be re-laying the slabs, we were going to put in heating this year, but we can't afford it! Maybe next year.... There's a few other jobs inside the gites that will be done, but mostly we are going to try and concentrate on the garden this year, though we always make lots of big plans and then run out of time to do it all.

So in our quest to save money, we have begun our veggie plot in earnest. With all the land we have you'd have thought we could find a good spot but having one that's near a water supply and not susseptable to theft from our guests (yes really) and fairly convenient too has proved a bit of a problem. We also have a problem with moles here, they are forever digging up the lawn - we go and collect the soil and this year we ended up with loads of bins full of good soil cluttering up the place. So we decided the best option was raised beds in front of the house. We've already had other fruit and veg in pots and troughs outside the house, so it's just an extension of that really. There's an outside tap nearby, plus we have a well nearby (although we still don't have a pump for it yet - all that free water and not using it - I am thoroughly ashamed) and we will get a water butt too. We have built one huge bed so far, thought we'd have plently of soil that we collected from the moles over the year, but didn't fill half of it! Still, collecting the soil is an ongoing project, so there'll always be a supply (until the garden collapses from lack of structure under the lawn to support it, due to miles of mole holes!). Looking forward to getting some plants/seeds in. We have almost finished the potatoes we grew this year, so we'll do them again, plus more onions and garlic and new for this year - carrots, peppers and broccoli and then take it from there. We tried sweetcorn and got three decent cobs, but we'll try again this year, we have sussed how we can make it better. Although I think we were lucky to get three cobs, lots of sweetcorn crops have failed around here, there's great big fields of dead corn dotted around the place, awful for the farmers, the loss must be huge for them. Our blackcurrants and raspberries were great, so we'll keep them going and I managed to salvage some apples too (Am currently trying to make blackcurrant liquer - its coming on, slowly, looking forward to trying it eventually!).

Am also collecting stuff to sell - car boots and a local second hand clothes party thing that goes on. Hoping that we can make a bit of cash from that. Have somewhere on the internet where people who have holiday homes can swap weeks with each other, so hopefully we'll get a holiday on the cheap this year.

Anyway, enough drivel I think. Happy New Year to you all.