Mayor(d)

We had a meeting with the mayor yesterday to talk about next steps.

You may remember, this is the mayor who told us that, if we bought the Shack and got permission to enlarge it, we could live next door to it in our yurts and have up to 20 people in yurts on the land next year. The mayor who, when I asked for that in writing, gave us her Parole.

Her word.

Her solemn oath.

So I was more than a little surprised when she told us yesterday that we couldn't live next door to the Shack in our yurts. That we had to show we were living in the Shack (external dimensions to be 7 x 3 metres when finished - which is something we can't currently afford to do anyway and winter is approaching fast). She told us, in fact, we couldn't live in yurts for more than eight months in a year. And that we couldn't have three yurts on our land for guests next year. She suggested putting up one yurt and, if no one says anything, putting the other two up in 2011. Problem is, we can't live on one yurt's income. We're already overdrawn (which is very inadvisable with a French bank). And we'll never raise the money for the showers and toilets if we can't pay the loan back.

The French word for this situation is translated as: Shit (hence the headline).

Chicken (d)evelopments

The chickens have noticed a few changes since we moved onto the land full time. They enjoy even fresher cuisine.


Free range even more freely.


With access to ball sports.


Spend time with the dog.


Sleep in a newer, bigger, nearly finishter chicken house.


Just up from the chicken nursery.


Where five fluffy chicks (and hopefully more to follow) are now going cheep.

Devolution accomplished

The last few steps down the devolutionary ladder were expectedly frantic.

We attempted to build the bathroom extension and, thanks completely to English mafia Nick, made an excellent start. But we didn't have enough time, so we focused our efforts on: waterproofing and laying a floor in the Shack basement for Stuff Storage; putting a joisted floor in one half of the tractor shed for Yurt Storage; sanding and oiling an 18-foot yurt frame and setting it up in the field for Other Stuff Storage; building an emergency bucket compost toilet; taking yet More Stuff (we seem to have a lot of it) to Jackie and Chris' barn; turning the caravan into a kitchen; and keeping two small children relatively happy.

Then more of the English mafia (and one Belgian: 'We don't have mafia in Belgium') pulled together to help us move - despite the heat (high 30s and beyond) and we drove away from conventional accommodation for the foreseeable future.

It's only taken three years since having the idea, two years since moving to France, countless drops of blood, floods of sweat and the occasional tear, but we've done it. Finally, legally, we're living in a tent in a field. (The devolution is so complete, I'm actually writing this on a piece of paper on a table in the shade, in biro. It probably should be a pencil. Give it time.)

Obviously, this would be an excellent time to bring this blog to an end. But I'd only have to start a new one to tell you what happens after the devolution. So I've settled instead on a simple name change. You know how I love parentheses.

Running on empty

This is the bit in the reality TV show, just before the ad break in Part Two, where the indomitable couple have run out of time, money and energy. The presenter looks at what’s going on, turns to camera and says: ‘From where I’m standing, I can’t see how they’re going to pull it off’.

But if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know we’ve been here before.

Let’s look at what would have happened in Part Two:
o We bought The Shack and celebrated with home-made elderflower champagne from HFW’s recipe; one of two batches Her Outdoors made worked and it was excellent, if a bit sweet.
o We laid into The Shack with Tools; the internal chimney dropped off the ceiling in one huge piece, just missing my leg and nearly causing A Nasty Accident.
o Our world was rocked by the devastating news that one of our key allies and Genuinely Lovely Bloke, Marc Mercier of Developpement Perigord, died during a rugby match. He was the same age as me; had two young children the same ages as ours; and he will often and always be in our thoughts.
o We took it in turns to exhaust ourselves making and moving rubble (of which there is a staggering amount, even in a small ‘house’).
o I made a chainsaw-mate and we turned an inconveniently placed, overstood chestnut coppice into compost, kindling and firewood for winter 2012.
o Our tractor doctor surgically and brilliantly unseized our tractor in the field, which sadly re-seized and will never tractor again.
o Following an impressive piece of reversing, we took delivery of a sceptic tank and load of plastic pipes for a sewerage system we didn’t want, but which made it possible for Planning to say ‘Oui’.
o We asked the bank for ten grand so we can build the extension we now have permission for. It was a long shot (I don’t have a job). They said ‘Non’.
o The tractor doctor returned with this awesome machine...


...and we sat in the shade and watched as one small scoop for him saved a giant heap of digging for us.
o I then borrowed this machine from English-mafia Lee...


...to dig a trench for concrete footings (at which point the presenter, headshaking, would have said out of the corner of his mouth: ‘And they call themselves environmentalists...’) for the bathroom walls we’re buying with money borrowed from our kids.

Tune in soon for what would have happened in Part Three.

I told you it was small

This is a picture of what we lovingly refer to as The Shrieking Shack (The Shack for short). If there were any lingering doubts about our sanity, the fact that we bought it on Thursday afternoon for around 30,000 euros of the bank’s money in a flat market should settle things.

It measures almost exactly four metres by three-point-three-five and is smaller on the inside than it looks from the outside. (Even smaller when this photo was taken, before we went to work with Tools.)

In its defence, it has a basement, water and electricity, and comes with 7,100 square metres of woodland garden; a long stretch of which conveniently joins onto our existing 40,000 smallholding.

The plot widens...

Champagne cocktail

So we got Planning Permission last week. Which means we can now buy the smallest, ugliest 'house' in the world (‘now’ in a pretty loose sense – ‘on Thursday at 2pm’ being more precise). Which means we will soon be moving into our own yurts on our own land (we have some fairly major reconstructive surgery to do first, including adding an unnecessary sewerage system and building a kitchen and bathroom) and open the business we brought with us nearly two years ago.

(How time files, as our paperwork will testify.)

Hardened drinkers will recognise that a bottle of cheap sparkling wine-type stuff was definitely in order. Which I discovered to my surprise and delight can be made more enjoyable and longer lasting with the addition of some equally cheap mixed fruit juice. Who knew?

Orchid watch

I've been very, very busy. And I'm going to get a lot, lot busier. But as the saying doesn't go, you should always make time to stop and post the orchids.

This one, which has a name not revealed here (too busy to look it up - see above) appeared over the road from ecovallee:


This is one of the Lizard Orchids just down the road:


And here's one of the orchids we were expecting this year. The inaccurately named Red Helleborine: