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October Trip to France

Some of you may wonder why I include my trips to France on what is supposed to be my "business blog". This is because France is a part of our future, we have big plans for the place - eventually! 

Unfortunately (for us) at the moment those plans are on hold until the children have grown up, being 16 and 14 they no longer share our dream of living in France so Mark and I are having to wait. In the meantime tho, it means we can do work to the house to get it ready.

So eventually when the children have fled our nest, we will be also fleeing it and moving to France!

Where we intend to take the business that I have been nurturing for the past 6 years and expand it. We would like to turn one of the barns into a craft centre where we will expand on our own crafts so that we can run workshops and holidays. We will have some sort of holiday accommodation, whether this will be shepherds huts, yurts, a converted barn or just tents will depend on our finances.

The house is located in an ideal spot for tourists, being on route 3 cycle route from Mont Saint Micheal to Paris and the town has a very rich history. During the war the Americans fought hard to keep the Germans at bay, to the point that the Germans pushed the Americans to the top of the hill behind our house only to be pushed back down again. Unfortunately for the town tho this meant that a lot of it was bombed and flattened to the ground. (Hence one of our barns being the last remaining building built after the war to house the town folk - possibly). Our house possibly was also one of the ones bombed during the war as the cellar looks original and the upper part newly built. I like the idea tho that the Germans occupied our house whilst pushing the Americans up the hill! One day I intend to buy the book about our town to fully learn its history.

We have many other business ideas for the property as well as being as self sufficient as possible, growing our own fruit and vegetables in the veg garden and harvesting from our many fruit and nut trees in the orchard. I am hoping that one day we will also have goats, chickens, sheep and weaners to bring the place alive and provide us with meat, eggs and milk, so that we can then go on to make our own produce to sell at market with our crafts.

So you see France is a very big part of our lives and our future. Our elderly French neighbours are our inspiration, the fact that they are in their 80's yet every time we visit we have to go down to the cave to see his massive strimmer! And his wood store is something to marvel at, we are also very envious of his wood burning central heating and hot water system!

This month our visit concentrated on that all important vegetable garden, over the years it has got neglected and the leylandi hedge was too big to stay (I didn't want it sucking all the nutrients from the ground anyway), so this week that was removed as well as half an acre of brambles that sent out long ten drills into the orchard and up the apple trees. As well as some other tidying up and bonfires, it was a busy week. Now we are able to get to the apple trees so we can give them some much needed surgery in the spring.

Before

After!!

So on the business side of things, I have been busy completing the next batch of mosaics, ready for Christmas and the two large Christmas Craft Fairs I have at Killerton and Knightshayes National Trust houses over the next couple of weekends. Everything is now listed on my websites shop, but hopefully they wont be around for long!