XmasLetter
[[XmasLetter]]
2024 has been a very quiet year for us though we have worked hard to tame the overgrown garden and grow things in the wet and abnormally cool summer and autumn. It was not a bad year but the figs were extremely late and we lost all the kiwis due to the flowers being frosted by late frost in March. But our pear and apple harvests have been great and as usual we were inundated with peppers, tomatoes and aubergines.
Etudia, a great open pollinated orange bell pepper
New Bathroom Chaos
We have been 'enjoying' the results of employing French artisans for the first time having always previously relied on our DIY skills but employing others was not the easy alternative we had expected. We simply wanted to create a de luxe downstairs bathroom to make the best use of the large entrance hall.
Our first enquiry was with the local plumbing company in early March, but this meant a six week wait for a home visit. Then we waited another six weeks for the estimate, which was alarmingly expensive for such a small project . And when we asked if the work could be done before summer, that produced a hollow laugh.
'You aren't really expecting work done any time before the autumn? C'est impossible! We have the long summer holidays coming (they say in April) Nothing can be done between June and the end of August. Non! Impossible! '
Come late September we had heard nothing more but surprisingly we are abruptly told that the plumbers would be arriving in the first week of October at 7 a.m. And true to their word they came to rip out the old loo and basin, disconnect all the pipes and drains and move the electric consumer unit two metres to the left with new circuit breakers and consumer unit. The house was now in chaos and we have no water downstairs and an interrupted power supply.
Just when everything is going well, we have to wait for Wat the tiler to come to start the tiling and decoration. We are promised Monday at 7 a.m. but when we get up with the dawn and wait, nobody comes. Nobody comes the next day, or the next and our phone calls to Wat's mobile go unanswered. A call to his 'office' gets to an answering machine which is also ignored. There are in fact a whole assortment of 'Wats' who come variously from near Angers (an hour's drive distant) and Saumur (40 minutes) and they all have different jobs to do. And few of them come on the day promised and never warn us of their 7 am arrivals. No tiler can do the plastering, and only another can move the doorway.
To cut a long story short, the entire job takes months to complete. But at least we can now use the unfinished bathroom!
New bathroom looking towards hallway
The work is in fact completed to a very high standard and we are pleased that French artisans do such a good job.
The Leaking Dam
Meanwhile, the only other excitement is with the dam which borders our property and which forms the huge Lac de Rille which acts as an irrigation source for the River Lathan.
For years they have known that the dam has started leaking and water has been spurting through the base in the earth on our side. Apparently this is not a 'leak' as such in the sense of the water coming directly through from the lake, but where originally springs coming from the valley side were forced underground when it was constructed. These springs have always been finding a new level and the water pouring through has been channelled into drains and a little canal which takes it back the river.
However, observations and analysis has shown for the past couple of years that the leaking water is full of fine white clay particles. This indicates that the particles come from the materials at the core of the dam before its earth and boulder cover and left to its own, represents the hazard that the dam will eventually give way. This news has resulted in dictats and sharp words from the local councils and departmental authorities who oversee the whole management, and as a result some drastic work has to be done.
This autumn therefore the lake has been drained to the lowest level for more than twenty years and there are numerous heavy machines, diggers, lorries and cranes which have made a deep gravel road along the base of the dam on the lower side opposite Chateau Mousseaux, as I call our home.
So there has been a lot of noise and disturbance in the past few weeks as they try to allay the situation, the aim being to dig out the base area to some depth, set in place an impermeable fabric membrane and then weigh the whole thing down with heavy gravel to a depth of several metres. The idea is that the spring water will still pass through but it will not erode the dam interior itself and the fine clay will stay in place.
Start of engineering work on the dam
Nobody is sure if this will actually work, though the draining of the massive 200 hectare Lac de Rille which was due for next autumn to allow inspections to take place, will now be put off for a further year until autumn 2026. In the meantime it will mean the lake being kept very low which will make it far less useful for irrigation and likely to cause even more smells and poor water quality than we have experienced in the recent wet years. The lake has already been hit with a massive outbreak of a ranovirus which killed several million young and old catfish, whose bodies littered the shore in the early autumn, but we are wondering how the wild migratory birds for which the lake has been made into a Site of European Nature Importance are going to survive with so much going on.
Now the work is finished, disappointingly, it has not fixed the basic problem, that of spring water threatening the integrity of the impermeable clay layers inside the dam. So we wait to see what further work is planned in the coming year. But at least Les Mousseaux is still in place and not washed away down the river to Breil.
Projects Keep You Young
I have planned several more projects to keep me active in my advancing years as I approach 80 in a year or two. I want to build a new porch and 'small conservatory' around the front door next spring, as this is where the cold and damp penetrates into the house the worst in winter. As an old mill, the house is also constructed on the actual water table so damp has always been a problem and the new construction might indeed stop water penetrating into the front stone walls around the entrance.
My second project will be to turn the bottom part of the barn into a workshop with a raised plank or decking floor, and a lockable door and proper timber walls. We are always acquiring new battery powered tools which are expensive and easy to steal so rather than leaving these lying around in various open sheds, we want to put them into secure and dry accommodation.
France goes on as normal, and life is much the same, but as you will have seen our government is in chaos as there is no majority for anybody in the Assembly and the President who has 3 more years to go until 2027 has to appoint our prime ministers. The largest opposition parties are the left, particularly the far left under Melonchon, and the far right under Le Pen, but they can only get on together when it comes to a vote of no confidence in anybody else who tries to form a government. Nobody seems able to ever form any government which will permit painful things to be done as France heads towards exceeding its national debt and soaring interest rates, not to mention breaking EU rules. So the next year also will prove to be quite interesting.
We are wondering about whether we should bury our diminishing savings in the garden by changing them into Louis d'Ors as people did of old. That at least will stop the government from taking them to pay its way.
But mostly we will just go on enjoying life here.
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year.
Adrian and Sally
Black heron
Bee orchid
Glut of Japanese wineberries in July
Oscar still enjoys eating out