How to make cider "The French Way"

Firstly, gather the following essential ingrediants, all are essential to avoid devastating failure. An Old Washing Machine. Preferably of the upright varietly. Some old bits of metal. A bevel/worm gear assembly. A large peice of timber. A Frisbee. Oh, and some apples. Next, hunt down the following tools. A Welder, not too powerful. An Angle Grinder A Chain Saw A drill and a leatherman. Spend a day assembling the cider press as per the original plan. We were so confident we didn't even waste a cigarette packet. Chop apples coarsley. Approximately 40 for the initial trial. Throw into the stainless press chamber. Insert hand carved oak log. Wind Down mechanism onto log. Continue winding till no further movement occurs. Check frisbee for juice production. If no juice has been produced, go to Range Rover for bottle Jack. Exert further pressure, approx 3 tonnes. Bend frame in effort to produce juice. Check frisbee. Having produced one egg cup full of juice from 40 apples, get into car and drive to Le Mutant. Purchase stock of cider and stop wasting time trying to make it. Today, we built a 9 foot by 3 foot television screen which I can happily say works very well. On the subject of wells, park cider press by well and hope that one day the apples will find there own way out and turn into cider all by themselves.

Can you guess what they are making this time?

Well, the boys have spent most of the day constructing, but can you guess what they are making this time?

Peter has been playing with Kirsty as well. I am not sure whether the photos should be published or just kept for his 21st birthday party!!!!

I have spent this afternoon in the kitchen making pudding!! If it comes out cooked and edible I will tell you what it is!!!

Peter made his own bench, doesn't he look proud of himself??

More Jobs Done

Well, the boys have worked really hard again today. They have completed the ceiling and insulation in the dormitory and made all twelve lights work!!! A part floor was also layed so that we do not have anyone else trying to take the short cut to the party room downstairs. Mind you, a firemans pole could be a very good feature, as long as it came with a few firemen for demonstration purposes. Andy, could you oblige??????

They have also completed a superb bench in the front garden. According to my sources it will last for at least one hundred years if we oil it well and look after it. Maybe our great grandchildren can enjoy the view from it as well!!! Scary thought!!!

Tomorrows list includes .............. (Sorry, too long to add here!!)

What can you do with a log?

First find a log in your valley.

Then find three men, a woman and a towing vehicle.

Try to pull the log out of the valley whilst avoiding looking at the woman who is there for pure aesthetics!!!!!

Then leave the log in the middle of the drive for a day.

The following day take a small trial slice of the log and determine the type of wood.

Burr Ash??? Perhaps??

Decide that it is nice wood and consider taking a slice from the log and making a table.

Make lots of noise with a chainsaw, make arms ache lots and then resort to the two man saw!!

Make lots of sawdust.

Abuse wife and three children by making them saw with two man saw.

Decide that making a table will take too long, too much planing and too much sandpaper!

Leave log for another night whilst deciding what to do next.

The next day have another look at log and decide to finish slice with chainsaw.

Make even more sawdust.

Look at slice and decide that rest of log may look very nice as a bench with first slice as the backrest.

Ask wife where she thinks the bench would look best and plan how to move it there.

Stand back and then consider making another slice from the log for a worktop.

Make some more sawdust.

Take an hour and a half to take slice for the worktop.

Use chainsaw in as many different angles as possible to make sawing easier.

Poke with a stick occasionally to see if chainsaw is cutting through the log correctly.

Make an even bigger pile of sawdust.

Then tell wife that worktop has to be put into storage for at least two years as wood must dry first.

Put worktop on sack barrow, strap on well and move!!

Decide that other parts can still be a very useful bench and leave on drive until further plans can be made!!!

TO BE CONTINUED ..............................................

A Great Weekend

Well, the boys and Lisa have done lots of drinking this weekend!! Enough said about that though!!!! We have had an absolutely brilliant weekend catching up with my long lost brother and his wife, I just wish it could have been longer. We even managed to get Derek to get his hands dirty in the gite!! So now I can say that some of my family have helped in the renovations too, well, a little bit anyway. After a fun morning sawing wood again we had a lovely lunch courtesy of Terry and Sue. Now we are having a relaxing evening before the fun starts again tomorrow. We are looking forward to another productive week and more guests!! xxxxx

My Brother Has Arrived for the Weekend!!

Well, after seven and a half years I finally get to see my brother and his wife again!! It is great to have them here and lovely for the kids to finally meet their Uncle Derek. We have got loads to catch up on so this may be the last post for a couple of days, but I promise to take loads of photos. xx

We Love Where We Live!!

Powering through the work

The last couple of weeks have really been quite efficient. We logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged and logged. The Range Rover was invaluable. We did extreme 'Axe Men' style log pulling - to the theme music of Thunderbirds. It was very muddy. The Grizzly Claw tyres dug in and pulled like a tank going over the Somme. That reminds me of my experiences as a pre-pubescent nine year old just at the end of World War II. It was a few weeks before the end of the war, we were hunkered down in a trench sheltering from the incessant bombardment from the gerrys. It was cold and wet. My feet stank of almonds. Gangrene was setting in. Fourteen of the fifteenth regiment were dead. I was armed with a single Thompson and only a dozen rounds left. But anyway.... After some more logging, and some cutting (hay), we collected 35 sheets of plasterboard from the other side of Danvou (roughly translated as transvestite donkey). We used a full 2.5 sheets to put up the ceiling in the bathroom. What we will do with the other 32.5 sheets who knows. Personally I am in favour of stenciling a number of suits on one side then going for the Guinness World Record for the largest house of cards ever built. Obviously this will not be the number of cards - but the size. Alternatively we could cut them into 20mm x 90mm rectangles, paint them black, then go for the oversize domino toppling world record. Anyway - back to the trenches... There I was with a dozen or so rounds left...

I must remember not to let Uncle Tony write the blog!! Inside the house we have also reorganised our bedroom and Kirstys bedroom and given Josh a new, bigger chest of drawers. All very important in the larger scheme of things!!

Anyway, we are enjoying having our visitor here and he is being very useful!! Thank you Uncle Tony. xxx

Thank you Grandma Jenny, we love strawberries, chocolate and sugar!!!!

Daddy is on the way home!!!

We seem to have survived these past two weeks without any major mishaps!! Something must be going to go wrong this afternoon because we always have a disaster when Andrew is not here!!!

Nothing exciting has happened recently either. The chickens have been cleaned out twice and the ponies have had their stable spring cleaned. Zorro has been bleached, well his room has anyway and the kids have tidied their rooms!!!

I am sure within the next few days we will have some exciting news items for you but until then I have just taken some snaps of the kids to keep you going.

Lots of love xxx

The Second Week of School

We appear to have started the second week very well apart from Josh who was caught running behind the school. OOPS!!! Oh well, at least Kirsty is being good at school. Her teacher has told her she is 'sage'. That's well behaved to those of you who cant parlez le francais!!!! She tells me that she is doing really hard work at school but that she understands it all.

Kirsty has also managed to lose a tooth this week. I think the poor mouse is going to be poor before too long, at five euros a tooth I think I will start pulling some of mine out.

We have been lucky enough to have some lovely sunshine today so Peter and I have spent lots of time playing in the garden. He still likes the swing best though and playing in the mud and water!!

M and Mme Le Baron were also entertained this morning when I took Peter to say hello. He played on the ladder in the garden for ages before finding what he thought was a frisbee and rolling it down the drive. M Le Baron tried to show him how to do it but of course Peter knew best. M Le Baron has also offered to help me with my cv. After doing thousands of cvs with students at his school he said that most people think that the fact that they love cooking is the most important thing to put on a cv!! I am not sure what he was trying to say to me!! He is a great source of knowledge anyway and he helped me understand the letters that we keep getting from the telephone and the water company!!!

Have got to go now and do some hard homework with Kirsty. Thankfully Josh does not have any homework this evening so I can work hard with her instead!!!

We have survived the first school week ...

Well, I say we have survived the first week. Now that we do not have school anymore on a Saturday morning or on a Wednesday we have only actually done three days this week!!! The kids have definitely settled in well to the new school year and seem really happy to be back with their friends.

Meanwhile back at the homestead we have managed to cut all of the lawns this week, despite the torrential rainstorms and the wind that will not go away. We have cleaned out the chickens, tidied up the back path, collected all the cuttings and hoovered from top to bottom in the house. There are no spiders to be seen, well for at least two minutes anyway.

Today is Grannys birthday so the rest of the clan will be partying this evening!! We will have a nice quiet dinner and drink here and celebrate in peace!!! Happy Birthday Granny. Hope you all enjoy the party, dont eat and drink too much!!

The Second Day at School

Well, the second day at school seems to have gone well. Kirsty is happy because they have no homework this evening and Josh is happy because they did a big A2 picture at school. They seem to have settled back in to school life quite well. Kirsty seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the outdoor activities this afternoon and appeared to understand what she was doing as well.

Peter and I have spent the day sorting animals, washing and making more apple sauce!! Three more pots for the freezer, at least that will last a while.

Josh has also been very careless, he managed to lose a tooth again yesterday. However, for once he did not swallow it and was able to put it in an envelope for the mouse to find. Yes, you heard right, the mouse. In France, for those of you who don't know, we have a mouse instead of a fairy. Thankfully, we have loads of mice to choose from in this house!! They come out about 2am in the morning when the children are snoring!!

The goats are still our resident escape artists and despite our efforts to stop them going into the orchard they still manage it. They are not however, so clever at getting back into their own field. The best exercise of the day is in the evening when we regularly spend half an hour persuading them that they should go back into their own field. We are lucky we do not have any neighbours that can watch the antics!!

Lots of love and see you all again soon. xx

La Rentree

Well, it was back to school this morning for two members of the household. Bags were sorted and packed yesterday and all articles named!! How efficient!! Needless to say they did not want to get up this morning, Kirsty insisted that it was still dark. Josh tried to pretend that he was not awake at all!! Once at school the mood changed slightly. They were soon reunited with all of their friends and seemed to be happy. I will find out at 4.30 how they got on. Kirsty has Joshs teacher from last year and Josh has a brand new one!! Hope he behaves for her, she only looks about twelve years old! Stephanie announced that there are 67 children at the school this year, think it must be a record.

Now all I have to do is decide what Peter and I are going to do with ourselves. It is raining cats and dogs again today so gardening is out of the question. Maybe we will do hoovering and sleeping!!!

I have added some photos of the little darlings before they went to school. Lets hope they look like that when they come home!!!! And yes, father in law, I know the one of them together is blurred!! Sorry, will do better next time. xx

I have also spoken to the French softball team again. They are hoping to bring a team for our weekend of fun and games in October. They have got to speak to the President in Caen and Honfleur again to arrange the details. Sounds like fun!!