M. Erbisti the sweep returned today, singing away to the dogs as he pulled up in his Berlingo, “Bonjour chiens! Bonjour chiens! Bonjour chiens! Bonjour chiens!” He worked his butt off cleaning the second, much dirtier chimney. He found many nuggets of carbonite, the stuff that Han Solo was frozen in.     [Amazing photo,Lire la suite "A Chimney Sweep in France"

Our friend Richard raises Gascon pigs on his farm, letting them run through eight hectares of forest. Gascons are a fatty pig but the fat is divine and perfect for my growing kids.     We bought half a pig and I spent the morning separating it into cuts for cooking. I hadn’t chopped upLire la suite "Gascon pigs and cooking heads"

This is the school bus dropping the kids off at the end of the drive, taken a couple of weeks ago when the vines were still green.     Since then the weather has gone a bit colder and wetter, with some strong winds the last couple of days. However instead of feeling miserable, weLire la suite "Project Warm rolls along with some new windows"

I’ve seen this reference a couple of places for cowshed design. It is still used even though it is from 1987 so maybe it is a classic: Beef Housing and Equipment Handbook Hugo Häring: the organic versus the geometric has some old cowshed designs that might be interesting from a architecture geek perspective. Wes’s suggestionLire la suite "Sunday farm link roundup with roadkill"

I loved this farm. I still really like it. The people that own it are fabulous. We nearly made an offer, but we logic prevailed and we didn’t. I hope they find someone to buy it.     One of the first batch of farms we saw was in the Gers. We’ve liked the GersLire la suite "An awesome farm with too many houses"

Problems How to design a cowshed? I spent a couple of hours with Gilles, a local farmer who used to run a large dairy herd. In the old days every farmer had a dairy herd and now there’s only one in the commune – maybe twenty farms or more. We discussed the conversion of theLire la suite "Cowshed design and equipment purchase"

Progress The day isn’t over, but a lot of small things got done. Most of them were not farm-related. FAMILY: A superfast visit to Auch found the cheapest appliance store. 1700 Euros later we own a reliable washing machine, a dishwasher and a big deep freeze. I’ve never owned a good-sized deep freeze before. SeeLire la suite "A very house-focused day"

Progress One of the first farm projects is Project Tidy. This involves cleaning out the trash on the farm, and there’s a lot of it. It’s going to take months to get most of it gone. There are old kitchen units here, but we’ll keep the lockers.     The salle de degustation (tasting room)Lire la suite "Project Tidy"

About October last year we switched our tactics from searching for a house with land to searching for farmland with a house. Or maybe without a house. We spoke with the SAFER, the French semi-government agency that deals with the usage and sale of farms and arranged a day to meet and look at aLire la suite "The day we switched to looking for a farm – The Daniel Farm"

Questions in my head How many cows do I aim for in 2011? Standard southwest stocking rate is about one cow a hectare, which usually gives you plenty of land for hay and silage as well as other things like corn or wheat. For us that would be around 70 mother cows and heifers, althoughLire la suite "Some elements from the farm project list"