Right - just to explain a little about where I live and what I have around me.
On my birthday, 12 April 2006, I completed on the purchase of a derelict house in a very small hamlet in Department 22, Cote d'Armor in Brittany, France. I'll do a post of the way it was then and how it is now at a later time. My hamlet has just seven other dwellings. Four are permanently occupied by Breton families and I'm pleased to say that the people who live in them are very friendly and have welcomed me into their community.
The house the other side of my garage/studio is owned by an Englishman who hasn't been seen for ages, his post is piling up in his garden and the front door is beginning to take on the look of Sleeping Beauty's castle entrance. I think perhaps he has retreated back to the UK. There is a house the other way down the lane, a holiday home, owned by a couple from England who visit for about eight weeks a year. Down the lane from them is a house with a small lake, no longer lived in, but maintained by the son of the man who did live there.
There is a large house set back from the top lane with a lake owned by a cattle dealer and his artist wife. The large stoned house (below) is owned by a lovely French couple who come roughly every eight weeks and stay for about three. They are the same age and me and we have the same sense of humour and get on very well.
The house with the tower is lived in by a single young French farmer, the same age as my eldest son, who supplies me with wood for my woodburner.
This is the house of Vand M from the UK, again in this January's snow.
There is stone cross at the top of my lane, called a calvaire - it doesn't always have a rainbow to set it off.
200 metres up the lane leading off to the left, is my very small smallholding with goats, Basil and Betsy, hens and my goose, Grace. I have a small barn for the animals as well as individual houses for them. There's a standing polytunnel and a collapsed polytunnel, which succumbed to the heavy snowfall in January, several outside veggie beds, my runner bean frame and lots of compost bins. I have yet to decide the fate of the collapsed tunnel.
Thanks so much for the introduction to your hamlet; I have a much better sense now of where you are and what you are doing there. And, of course, what better subject for a blog than a house and garden that are in the process of reclamation. I'm looking forward to learning/seeing more. -Jean
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