Parquet - Friday We ordered new wooden planks for the first floor from the sawmill close to our property. We took a day off to pick up the charge, because the mill is only open during the week. The 80 m2 did not fit into the car trailer at once, so we had to make … Continue reading The weekend from the 5th to 7th October
In the following article I give a short summary of this year's harvest in the Landes and the resulting cans: Apples - "good" Even if "poachers" have secretly cleared one of the old 3 apple trees on our property during our absence, there was still enough left of the two remaining trees. However, our apple … Continue reading Harvest 2018
It's been a while since the last update of our renovation, so here are some news from the house. During the weekends in August and September, Bob the Builder was busy finishing the wooden floorboard in the top floor. During the installation, we were obliged to replace two big beams because there were completely eaten … Continue reading The first layer of wooden floorboard is installed
When we acquired the property a year and a half ago, we also inherited also a couple of old sheds which carried a great risk of collapse. We wanted to demolish these sheds for a while, but we never had time to deal with them because the house renovation was our priority. Finally we planned … Continue reading The death of the old sheds
Part 1 - July 14/15, 2018 Before the insulation will be put in place by the mason company, we had one weekend to dig and close trenches for the future water pipes and electric pipes. So Bob the Builder took the shovel in the hand again and was diggin. Part 2 - 21./22. July 2018 The … Continue reading The concrete floor – in 3 parts
When I opened the shutters on a Sunday morning in May, something was flying around my head. At first I thought it was a bird, because I was not yet awake. As I lookud up I saw one bat at first, by opening the shutter completly I discovered the whole family asleep between door and … Continue reading Batman’s family visited us
Those of you who belong to my generation can still remember them very well in Europe about 30 years ago. What were they buzzing around our heads in May and June when we played with friends outside … the Cockchafer/Maybug (Wikipedia) After half an eternity, I’ve seen one again. This one was buzzing around our … Continue reading And they still exist ….. the cockchafers/ may bug
The bricklayer company had to postpone the start of the work several times and so we dedicated our efforts to the first and the top floor. Ceiling between the first floor and the top floor: All ceiling beams of the second half were treated with wood preservative three times and painted twice in white. Between … Continue reading Our construction site in the last weeks
Until two weeks ago we had hoped to harvest at least one little pot of honey from our largest bee swarm captured in May. But last weekend we buried that hope. They swarmed again ☹ The bees grew enormously in the Topbarhive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_top-bar_hive) in a relatively short time and we have constantly enlarged the breeding space, … Continue reading The bees and their swarming behaviour
We had capricious weather this spring in France - months of rain followed by weeks of heat - but the plants and trees of the Landes are robust and the animals are doing well thanks to our plantations 🙂 The corn I planted found gourmets among the chervils and hinds. The peas survived. The pepper … Continue reading The garden in June/July 2018
