MisAdventures

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted, but that's probably for the best because it's basically been business as usual for the past week. We got more pears from a nearby farm, so I spent a few days getting to know the juicing machine. There's now around 35 gallons of would be cider sitting in a tremendous blue jug in Peter and Julie's kitchen. We also found a ton of good mushrooms while out looking for pears. Some of which turned out to be slightly less than edible. I spent a morning pretty nauseous after a very shroomy breakfast. Oh well, considering mushrooms' potential for toxins, I figure I got off easy, and they did taste pretty good.
The project of today was leading the lamb to slaughter. The ex-sheep affectionately known as Fatboy has joined the chops and burgers of the world. The whole process was pretty interesting, of course, and it's well documented in my photo collection. It was all pretty straighforward, and made more interesting by the army of cats (all were present except for the recently sold Little Pretty Boy) who had to be constantly fended off.
My personal project has been of a crafty nature lately. Julie has a nifty little contraption for her clothes drying line which is essentially a bunch of clips on a wheel looking frame for hanging socks. It's easier than putting them all up on the line, and it's easier to bring them in if it starts to rain, you just take in the sock hanger. The problem with this specific sock hanger, is that's it's a cheap piece of shit, made of flimsy plastic. So, I figured I'd make a more rustic, durable version. The first version was a sort of success, but it was kind of typical of how a craft project turns out when I've gotten my hands on it, overcomplicated, and aesthetically wanting. Showing uncharactaristic perseverence, I set out to make another. I decided the problem with the first was that I tried to make it just like the plastic store bought one, which had spoke that all folded down or up on their little plastic hinges. After rethinking the whole idea I decided to make my spokes spiral down around a strong center column. I'm pretty pleased with the result, simple, practical, rustic, and not too sore on the eyes. In the picture below the left is my first attempt, the center is the upgrade, and the far right is the inspiration (cheap piece of crap that it may be).also...
http://tinyurl.com/yjesaaq - video of pretty impressive firewood chopping, i was kinda like that :-)

Great Adventures

The work on the farm is great and interesting projects, and one of my favorite things is the variety of projects I get to try. I spent a day working with cement and making tiles from the dirt i had quarried. Working with cement is not something I've done a lot, but it's pretty fun. With the extra I started rendering the wall; filling in holes between rocks.
The next few days I made pear cider. Great project, sticky project. First I gathered a load of pears, and then we got to the real juicing. They have a juicer, and then a press for the pulp. All in all, I pressed over 35 liters of cider, all of which is going to become hard cider, all of which will be awesome I'm sure.
Today was back to one of my favorite playing grounds, the wood. Today was different than last time, we got to actually fell trees instead of just pulling out dead ones. Felling trees with an axe is just loads of fun. I think I have a great future ahead of me as a woodsman.

Living the Dream

That's right, today I embarked on what is most certainly the dream of almost every young child (it was for me anyways)... digging a massive hole. Peter started digging a drainage ditch in one of his fields and discovered that the soil about 1.5ft down was a sort of sandy eroded granite. This was good news for him because he'd been hoping to find some way of making tiles and bricks from a local material, and this would be perfect. With 4 parts soil, 1 part cement and a little water he can make an attractive and serviceable tile, probably for flooring, and who knows what else.

This is where I come in, I get to mine from the quarry! The whole pictured was about half dug by Peter and half dug by me today. He said he dug another drainage ditch that was up to his shoulder, which would just be awesome, but right now it's up to my knee, so I have a lot of work to do. Fortunately, the weather has been absolutely fantastic for the very end of October, sunny and damn close to hot 3 days and counting.
I've also uploaded a ton of photos from the last farm I was at, la Vesvre. This [LINK] should take you there.

Long time

Bear with me this post, it's been a while since I've posted and it feels like loads has happened. Last time on Eric in France I was mercilessly attacking a woodpile. I'm proud to say that I fully accomplished my goal, all of the wood that Anette bought was cut, chopped and stacked, and I was totally exhausted at the end of the project. It took me up to 2 days before I left, then I kind of slacked off for the last of my trip.
There were two new faces, in addition to the 3 people who I already knew. Marcus was an adopted son of Anette, who was pretty cool. He works in a casino and loves techno music, he also had a sweet Audi. The other was a 65 year old woman named Trilby. Trilby was an absolute riot, she's had quite an interesting life, and was celebrating her birthday wwoofing. She was pretty familiar with horses and stable work, and spent some time helping me stack wood. She was also really personable in that way only old people can be. She claimed that the one thing she felt she could really look back on and feel that she had accomplished was forging the signatures of her bosses to double the salaries of every underpaid worker at her job in Jamaica. Pretty rad. She also was a mean Ping Pong player, and when she Marcus and I played, Marcus was the champion, but she still showed me what for in our game. It was all in her killer serve.
I also got to be a little bit closer with Thais and Amaldine. We played card games and watched movies (in french) and had a blast. I think we were partly brought together by Trilby's hilarious nature. Amaldine taught me a game that was classic 13 year old girl, there wasn't realy a point that I can tell, I think I lost though because at the end she was laughing and got to give my hand a strange indian rope burn sort of thing... it was wierd.
Anette was away for 4 days and the internet went down right after she left, which made blogging, and planning my train ride difficult. The french rail system is kind of frustrating if you aren't traveling to or from Paris because it is basically all spokes radiating out from Paris, and getting between the spokes is a real bear. In the end it turned out Anette was going for a long road trip up north (again) so I joined her for the first 3 hours and then took a couple of trains.
I'm happy to be back with Peter and Julie, I have been greeted by Hamish and Willow (their two dogs) everywhere I go, and I started my day with a nice cup of tea and swinging a machete at corn stalks. I've got reliable internet again and afternoons basically free, everything seems right with the world.

Workin' It

So, the game I'm playing right now is called Chop, and the goal is to turn the pile of wood you see to the left, into conveniently sized firewood in as little time as possible. First you cut the 1m logs in half with a huge saw that's run off the back of the tractor, and then you split it all and lay out nice piles. There were two piles of wood like the one pictured, and I'm happy to say that I'm gonna totally dominate this game. I've already cut one of the pile in two, and by tomorrow morning I should be finished splitting it all. Which means, I think I'll be able to finish both of the piles of wood before I leave. I'm pretty tired, but not too tired, and I think I can slow down a little bit and still finish. Anyone reading this should know that I'm having a blast, this kind of project suits me just fine, and if I finish it I'll be one proud (and strong) lumberjack.

Today was my last day of running the farm alone, and while it has overall been perfectly enjoyable, I can safely say that I am glad there will be others to help. This kind of work is just plain exhausting. No single part of it felt particularly tiring, and no one day felt overwhelming, but after 8 days in a row, I'm looking forward to my first full day off since I got here. I plan to sleep as close to 14 hours as I can get, and watch the new James Bond movie I got soon as I wake up.
Today I also had the experience of having a horse rear up on his hind legs while I was trying to walk him to the stable. There was half a moment when I thought I would have to just let go and wait for him to calm down, but it ended up only being half as terrifying as I expected. 3 weeks ago, I'm sure I would've freaked. Horses are big!

Home on the Range

Well, things are going well still, but there is a big ol' adventure to report. One of the paddocks that I drive to each day to feed the horses is a retirement of sorts. There are 4 old horses, ranging from old but mobile, to nearly skeletal. The trick of this specific paddock is that you drive up, get out of the car, open the gate, get in the car, drive through, then get out to close the gate before proceeding to where they're fed. The problem yesterday was that not only where they waiting unusually anxiously near the gate, but I managed to drive the car in on top of the strings that are the gate, so I couldnt' close it without pulling the car futher forward. Now at this point I probably could have come up with any number of genius solutions, but I figured I would just sort of shoo the horses away and try to move the car and close the gate real quick. Next thing I know there are four old geiser horses trotting down the road with me behind them trying not to totally lose it and scare them more. They eventualy walked past another field they liked the look of, wandered in and just started to graze like they did this kind of thing all the time. I'm freaking out and unable to call Anette because I purchased only 5 minutes for my phone and had used them up. Finally I was able to sort of close them in the field and drive all panicky to find Anette to help me. She made sure I felt a little foolish, and understood how serious of a problem it was (horses in the road are worse than deer), but then sort of admitted that these things can happen to anyone. Horses seem to be the sort of animal that is really easy to manage 95% of the time, but that other 5%, you just never know what kind of stunts they'll pull.