Success with our first project!

After a day to settle in here at the house, we launched into our first project with Lavinia and James: to build a chicken coop!  Designs had been drawn on the back of an envelope incorporating five trees in the garden as the corner posts and an assortment of timber and materials were gathered from around the property.  This was the ideal location for building a coop or so it was thought.  Yes, I can hear the builders amongst you starting to laugh already.   This was certainly going to be a challenge.

After two long days of measuring, sawing, remeasuring, tweaking... starting again...we all realised the difficulty of building a structure where nothing is straight or level or you never have quite the right piece of wood for the job.  Then there is the need to allow for the 5 corner posts / trees to sway in the wind.  This coop is without doubt an engineering feat of some note.   

 However, persistence and a good deal of creativity was applied and over one week later, we had our chicken coop all ready for tenants, complete with French shutters for the doors.

 

The cardboard box in this photo contains 5 Rhode Island Reds - we finished the structural work at 3pm, went and selected our chickens and had them in the coop by 5.30pm, and the next morning....un oeuf!!  We were so pleased with ourselves (and the chickens) we cooked up the egg, divided it into quarters, and had it as an "amuse bouche" before dinner, with a light salad and mustard mayonnaise!

So, with all this work going on, we haven't had too much time to explore far and wide just yet.  However, we've managed a few quick trips, firstly up to a hilltop village very near here called Le Vieux Cannet".  The church here was built in 11th Century, so the word "vieux" meaning "old" is probably justified.  It's a tiny village, with no shop, cafe, or town hall,(that seems to be the minimum requirement for most French villages)  just the church, and a group of houses, largely made up from the  buildings like the girl's school, and separate boy's school.  When we visited, there was no-one there at all, other than one resident with his dog.

We've got out on the bikes once so far, cycling about 35k to Vidauban and back, along the Argens river.  Drivers are very courteous to cyclists over here.  The law is to ensure one metre between the car and bike if overtaking and drivers certainly observe this rule more than any other road rule.  The area is very popular with cyclists with lots of rolling hills and light traffic amongst the forest.  Le Tour is apparently going to pass through the region within a few miles of Le Thoronet so we're looking fwd to that.

Mid-week, with progress going well on the chicken palace, James and Lavinia took us down to Antibes for lunch.  That's about a 45 minute drive on the motorway, but it turned into a 1 1/2 hour trip due to a go-slow in the traffic at Antibes: police all over the place, helicopters flying overhead, we were convinced there was a serious search on for an escaped terrorist.  But no, it was just a taxi driver's strike.  The French love to protest, and do it so well, in this case, driving at snail's pace through the city centre, just slow enough to annoy everyone and disrupt things.

On arrival we had a walk around the marina to check out the super-yachts:

Lunch was a wonderful experience.  Just the sort of thing we have come to France for.  We had a 19.5 euro menu ( approx $30+ dollars) for a three course meal, which ended up being 5 courses with the 2 extras they threw in, plus bread.  A choice of two dishes for each course, we both started with pumpkin soup with prawns (ironic that we have come from the pumpkin soup capital of the world, but this was no ordinary pumpkin soup, no Alison Holst recipe here!)  That was preceded by a tiny piece of olive and cheese loaf and a caramelised cherry tomato.  The main course was salmon fillet on a saffron risotto while Lew had an incredibly rich and tender wild pig "sanglier" ragout on mashed potato.  Then a tiny quails egg fried, on top of a mixture of raw carrot and celeriac with lobster.  Finally onto dessert, where Lew had a pear and almond tart, and I had marinated citrus fruits with lime zest with a lemon mousse "under a chocolate hat" as you will see below!

  After finishing off with coffee, homemade chocolates and almond lemon miniature cakey things, we rolled out the door and waddled back to the car.  Beautiful restaurant, multiple good looking attentive French waiters, what more could we ask for.  Lets hope there are many more of these experiences to come, although we'd better pursue the bike riding a bit more seriously if we want to still fit into our clothes by the end of the year!

All this chat of food reminds me of my journey into the local village recently.  Jean went running and I headed into Le Thoronet on the 29'er (bike) for croissant and bread.  It was pretty cold in the valley but it only took 9mins to get to the boulangerie.  6mins to get home because it's all downhill.  That gave me time to rehearse the phrases for what I wanted.  All was going well.  On entering the shop it is polite to greet everyone including the other customers with the usual Bonjour.  I don't know the women at the bakery well enough yet to be also greeting them with kisses as the others did.  Then it was my turn  - Je voudrais quatre croissant et un croissant aux amandes et un pain noire s'il vous plait.  At that point I thought I had it nailed but didn't anticipate that there are at least 2 types of croissant. I simply chose the ones that looked the nicest.  Problem solved - well not quite.  I hadn't learnt how to ask for the bread to be sliced but with a bit of pointing and animation and it was sorted.   

Week ahead is looking pretty chilly so we'll be splitting firewood and staying close to home and the fire with the cat.