The SAFER told us that a little two and a half hectare (six acres) parcel of land was for sale that adjoined our farm. It was messy, with a power line running through it, some old vine posts and lots of blackberries and young trees. This kept the price low at 3000 Euros a hectare.

 

 

The shot above is from the border between our farm and the land parcel. You can see the power company has ‘cleaned’ the ground below the lines. There are a few larger trees but most of the land is scrub.

 

 

There are several lines of old vine posts and wire in there. I don’t know why they didn’t properly clean it up when they planted new vines, but so it goes. There are wild grape vines growing on a lot of the trees.

Also hidden in there was some old tool. It had a few discs but wasn’t large enough to be a disc harrows (cover crop). Maybe it was for cleaning up between vine rows?

 

 

There’s a good view of one of the grand houses across the road, this one owned by the Condom dentist. He isn’t close – this is at maximum zoom for Jean’s camera.

 

 

Between the taller trees and the old vines the land has a mysterious feel. The land is hard to walk into because of the thickness of the scrub. And the local chasse tell me that sometimes they find sanglier (wild pigs) living in there.

 

 

So we bought the land. The rough plan is to clean it up and seed it for pasture, but we’ll see.