It was lovely to see my Mum & Dad last week. They came to visit and enjoy the progress to date. We still have composting toilets, so off they went to the little gite in La Compas for a luxury stay while we continue to camp out in the house/building site.
The creature comforts are coming along slowly. My Dad is a professional slater and all-round roofer so it was good to chat about our barn and the challenges that we face with the roof. He has years of experience working with all the tradespeople including doing quite a lot of pointing work and chimney brickwork. So we got busy with a few jobs.
Mum is just fantastic. Always ensures that we are well fed and fully hydrated. She got busy in the garden felling the knotweed and Alex helped to pile it up high ready for a winter burn to fully destroy the raging weed. It was a fairly warm day so a few rests in the garden sunshine were welcome.
Here are a few pics from our visit to Aubusson. We had an amazing lunch with sublime patisserie for pudding back home at Le Chassaing. The weather turned a little cooler, September is here and this week the change in the season is noticeable.
It’s wonderful that all of our close family are keen to help and see Le Chassaing progress. They come over and roll their sleeves up. We then drink the wine and sample the finest cheese that France has to offer. Living our best lives right now, feeling fantastic!
We have good news that our septic tank will be in position by mid-September as planned. They start on Tuesday next week. Our son Alex will have completed his journey surviving a summer in France. He’s learned to cope with all sorts of reduced luxury and he seems to have enjoyed himself.
It’s not all work. We’ve visited the festival of the Potatoe with food and drinks galore, the grand opening of Chard’s tourist center in our little hamlet complete with toilets! Visited our local Concours de Petanque with 60 teams. We’re just back from a country show with live music and more food, Alex even managed to find a pig and I bought air plants for the bathroom.
The tree surgeons have been and removed the potentially dangerous trees looming over power cables. Our neighbours are all very pleased about that too. (Woodland update here).
We now have plenty of wood for winter our Ash Tree can be burned straight away as it’s dry so we need to keep it that way. Simon is busy loading it on to the trailer and getting it into the barn. Take a look at Nick Jackson the tree surgeon’s work here.
