Author Archives: grasspunk

[I dropped the ‘Farm Diary’ bit because I’m guessing it is all going to be Farm Diary from now on apart from a few posts closing out how we ended up here.] I was wrong when I said I didn’t think much about farming yesterday. The truth is I spent a few hours of theContinueContinue reading “French Farming Books – Dominique Soltner”

This old farmhouse is slowly taking shape. It surprises me how much effort it takes to move a family of five (soon to be six) into a house and get it organized. There is still so much work to do. There will be stuff in boxes for all time. The guy in the local dechetterieContinueContinue reading “Farm Diary – the spirit of the library”

Questions What do I use for winter housing? I spent the morning looking at the existing cowshed structures and seeing how we could use it for a year or two. There’s a big space that’s currently used for storing hay bales that looks perfect for, well, storing hay bales.     In order to minimizeContinueContinue reading “Farm Diary – cow breeds, cowsheds and a photo of the library”

It is about time I wrote up the things that are going on here. There are a couple of questions that would help focus my thoughts: What farm questions have been on my mind? How has the farm moved forward? I’ll give it a go today and see if there’s enough material to make thisContinueContinue reading “Farm Diary – wintering cows and Joel Salatin”

This house was nuts. Well, ‘nuts’ is perhaps too strong and if I was being as clear as I could be I would say that the house was disorganized and remodeled in an unconventional way that reflected the needs of the family that lived there and not those of any potential buyer. From this potentialContinueContinue reading “The last round of houses before the farm search – Odd Béarnaise House”

In October last year our house search was continuing but had hit a stumbling block. Every house we had seen that was reasonable had a bad lot – next to a road, next to new construction, too small. So we made the decision to expand our search to include small farms, thinking they would atContinueContinue reading “The last round of houses before the farm search – White House”

It has been a big day. But in the context of the last few months it has been about average. It has been a big year. There is so much going through my mind and so much going on around us that by the time things quiet down I am asleep. We’re living in interestingContinueContinue reading “So much to write about, so little energy left at the end of the day”

We found one more good house before we switched direction, and it was a big one – 500 sq m (that’s about 5500 sq ft in US measurements). That’s a house with more square footage than the standard lot size in Queen Anne, Seattle. It also had a long line of barns and was inContinueContinue reading “The Trie House – an old Maison de Maître fallen on hard times”

After the failed bid on the House at Pig Corner we spent months looking around. We saw so many awful houses. Nearly every house we saw was bad: bad houses are hard to sell and spend years on the market. These houses might have been on a busy road, or had awful renovations or waterContinueContinue reading “The Nouveau Chateau”

I took a closer look at the farmhouse kitchen yesterday, checking out the power situation. There are a couple of 3-phase outlets there. Woo!     Why is this important? So I can run something like this:     and this:     With so many cafes closing down in France there’s a ready supplyContinueContinue reading “What every house needs: 3-Phase Power in the Kitchen and a Party Room”