Browsing Archive: September, 2012
Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, September 30, 2012,
I reported last week about my assault against the moles who were invading our orchard. The chemical weapons were used and for the next few days it seemed to have worked. No new mole hillls or any sign of mole activity. We were congratulating ourselves on a great victory when yesterday there were about 20 new small molehills. So another round of chemical warfare which involves finding the mole hole, putting in some chemicals, closing the hole with a stone, to stop the mole coming back up and r...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, September 23, 2012,
My skirmishing with the sheep continues. They have adopted a new tactic in their bid to confuse my counting. Previously the sheep have always been together in the field. A sort of sheep solidarity in the face of my morning visits. Not this week. They have cunningly detached one of the sheep to another part of the field. Down I go each morning around 8am to count the sheep. On Monday I get to 2 and then stop. Where is the other sheep, has she escaped, fallen or become ill. The sheep succeed in...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, September 16, 2012,
Nearly 4 weeks now. Unbelievably we have been French residents for almost 4 weeks here at La Godefrere and we are really enjoying settling into our new life. On the downside we are still waiting for our furniture to arrive from Britain. Apparently all the dynamism of the thrusting private sector is unable to to match my need to have furniture delivered. We contracted a local Wincanton firm to store our furniture and then to deliver it to France. Apparently the "idiosyncracies" of european d...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, September 9, 2012,
In :
News
It's the end of our third week here and we are beginning to warm to this french life. Of course the wine is a great bonus, both the quality and the price and the range of wines in the supermarkets. The vast majority are French of course, with a minor concession to some German hocks. The French don't really recognise new world wines, just as they don't recognise cheese that doesn't come from France (edam does sneak in) Although interestingly alot of supermarkets now have an English section, re...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, September 2, 2012,
In :
News
This week we have spent time getting to know the buildings and grounds at La Godefrere. The top floor of our spare barn is part converted, with a new floor laid ready to develop further. The roof is exposed and when investigating we came upon lots of little black things on the floor. I though they might be bat droppings which I was able to confirm on the internet. In the workshop there was more bat poo, but a bit smaller. So the question is, can you tell the species of bat from their poo? App...
Continue reading ...
Graham Parish is a former UNISON Trade Union official who retired to France with Kate (a previous self employed gardener and now resident gardener here) to start a new life of wine, cheese, french bread and a vegetable garden on a large rural french farm with holiday gite, and associated animals.
