Le Couvent Diary

 

 

Ali's in Australia visiting her family, it's lashing down with rain outside, I haven't finished pruning all the vines, but life is oh-so-sweet. I mean, a day pottering about, lugging logs, taking the quad in to the repair shop to be sorted out ready for our volunteers, supper and a game of Scrabble with my pals. How bad can that be?

We live two completely different lives here at Le Couvent. From May to September we are hosts for our lovely B&B guests, and we squeeze in a bit of wine-making on the way. We, willingly, put our lives on hold while we look after people. It's a very pleasurable way to earn a living. But in winter we are pretty much farmers and handy-women. We spend our days looking after this lovely old building and tending the vines. For most of the time the weather is crisp and stunning, although the wind can knock you off your feet from time to time. It's the season when we see our friends after having abandoned them during the summer. After seven years of life here in Roujan, I still pinch myself. How did I come to be so lucky?

P.S. If former guests don't recognise the photo it's because it's taken in our apartment, which you probably didn't see.

It's been a good day. A long happy birthday phone call to my mum kicked the day off, then the log man rang to say he could only deliver today at 10.45am otherwise we'd have to wait ages. Fine, except Ali and I had our first doctor's appointments for at least ten years at 11am. I'd been dreaming of the smell of burning oak more than antiseptic, so the wood man took priority.

 

As it happened we still got to the quack's in time, then waited half an hour to be seen. I was unsurprised to hear that I have worryingly high blood pressure and Ali's is perfect. I weigh and eat twice as much as she does so I'm back on a diet. Bother and blast.

The four cubic metres of logs looked heavy and cumbersome and I was sure it'd be too much to stack in a single session, but good pacing meant we got it done without wrecking our backs.

 

 

 

We're about to start pruning our vines, now that the leaves have fallen. For the past two years we've simply dropped the  cuttings (sarments) on the ground vowing that we'll go along afterwards to pick them all up. Of course we never do it properly, so this year we intend to burn them as we go along. The easiest way is to make a brûleur de sarments which is a metal wheelbarrow with an open oil drum on top in which you keep a fire going with the sarments. Easy peasy we thought, we'll find an old coach-built pram and lob an oil tank on top. Fine. So we drove off to Emmaus in Beziers hoping to find both. Monday. Closed. Dammit. We then went to a really crummy flea market and found the perfect pram lurking in a dark corner. OK, now all we need is an oil drum. Fifteen garages and agricultural service workshops and two rubbish tips later we had had no luck. Apparently the oil companies now collect them from the garages when they deliver full ones. As a last resort we screeched up at our lovely village petrol station  (from whom we buy our heating oil) - Garage Lafitte - where we struck lucky. Thank you lovely M. Lafitte.

So this afternoon we set to work, making the most appalling noise jigsawing open the oil can. Then bashing a fold into all the suicidal cut edges to round them off. And here it is, Hot Pegasus.

 

We'll let you know how long it takes for us to burn the rubber off the wheels.

Some time ago Ali bought some experimental ostrich steaks and we thought them tender and delicious. This evening we tried them again and I made the mistake of reading the cooking instructions. Make sure you cook it completely it said. So I did, and it was as tough as old boots. Last time I flashed it as I would have done with fillet steak. That's the last time I read cooking instructions.

Today we received a lovely e-mail from a reader of this blog who lives in South Korea. She gives Le Couvent a kind mention ,  for which we'd like to thank her.

 

 

 

Thanks for all the kind messages sent to Darling the hen who suffered at the beaks of her bullying sisters. I'm delighted to report that she's obviously much happier since moving to her own quarters - to the extent that today she laid her first egg for a month.

 

 

 

 

Darling is gathering a fan club, so, as her agent, here's some more information about her. She's a 9 month old Sussex Light bantam who adores kicking leaves around.

 

 

 

She was an excellent layer, but her production ground to a halt as soon as the big girls started jumping on her. Her response to their attacks was to run and hide behind a 1500 litre oil tank and refuse to come out until I called her, whereupon she would leap into my arms to be carried to safety.

 

She's an extremely friendly hen and it's a mystery why the others suddenly took against her after a summer of living together perfectly happily. Her favourite food is bacon, but when that's not on offer she's placated by pasta - tagliatelle by preference.

 

 

 

Her current aim is to dash into the kitchen and here's Ali persuading her otherwise.

 

 

 

We'll keep you posted on her progress.

Ali and I are on our hols in the Big Apple. Today's our penultimate day and this morning we're hanging out in our wonderful Marmara apartment in Upper East side.

 

 

We've bought a ton of books, shoes, clothes and lots more luggage to carry it all. We found a hat, bamboo shirt and crunchy heritage apples in the Greenflea market;

 

 

cycled through Central Park and Harlem with the fantastic Johannes from Bike the Big Apple and a family from Nancy, France;

 

 

 

seen some powerful images of the World Trade Centre after 9/11 at the Ground Zero Workshop ;

 

 

spent a morning spiralling up and down the Guggenheim Museum marvelling at a multitude of Kandinskys;

 

 

failed miserably in our attempt to book a Liberty Island trip online; had lunch in the sublime Grand Central Station Oyster Bar and several other Texan, Indian, American restaurants.

 

 

Tonight we're off to Falai , way downtown, for some Italian deliciousness. As if all that eating isn't enough we're taking a food & culture tour round Brooklyn tomorrow before flying home via Heathrow and Toulouse.

You really can pack a lot into six days without feeling wrecked at the end. Next week I'm going on a diet though. It's been tough on the waistline.

We closed for the winter a week ago and since then we seem to have done no end of clearing up jobs. The trick has been to have no lists, no preconceived ideas of the forthcoming day and no outside calls on our time. That way we've gently muddled around the house tidying a little here, cleaning a bit there without it costing too much energy-wise. It's amazing how much can get done by taking it a tiny chunk at a time.

Having missed them all summer I have been off to my favorite markets in Clermont l'Herault and Pezenas, to a boot sale in Canet and the giant flea market in Marseillan. What fun. My super bargain find was a complete and perfect John Jaques croquet set. "C'est anglais" said the man on the stall. "Je sais, moi aussi, j' suis anglaise." "Au niveau de prix, c'est bon?" "Mais non, c'est beaucoup trop cher, vous m'avez donner le vrai prix, pas de l'occasion."  What would I know? I've never bought a new set, nor even played croquet, but he seemed convinced. At this point his price halved and we started to negotiate. Finally I handed over 25 euros and heaved away a large wooden box, anticipating some fun with guests next summer. Poor chap. I hope he managed to diddle the next punter to make up the shortfall.

 

 

 

 

The weather's been exceptional too with each bright, hot sunny day following another. I swam in the pool yesterday in celebration of the fact that it had finally started raining despite being 27 degrees. The rain stopped instantly some three minutes after it started. I was somewhat relieved, having spent the day digging fifteen large holes in the amphitheatre vineyard - not wanting them to collapse in a deluge. This afternoon I'm picking up 15 eucalyptus trees to plant. During the summer guests often tell us to 'keep the change' when they are settling their B&B bill. We save it up in a commemorative tankard (Runner Up - Dustman of the Year 1987) and tell them we'll spend it on trees. This year we'd saved 130 euros. I scoured the internet for the least expensive young eucalyptus trees and by complete chance tripped across a private wholesaler in Roujan, just 200 metres from Le Couvent. So the planting ceremony will take place late this afternoon, just before the rainy season begins tomorrow - I hope.

In three weeks' time we're off on our own hols - to New York - perhaps. The apartment's booked and paid for, as are the flights, but we've had a slight dog/house-sitting disaster as our planned sitters couldn't get the time off work and everyone else is busy that week. So we're panicking. I'm sure something will turn up otherwise we'll have a very nice holiday to give away. If you're free from 23-31 October and fancy looking after Le Couvent, two very nice dogs, a cantankerous cat and nine hens, do drop us a line. Previous guests and friends only please.

Ooh, by the way, if you're house-hunting, there's a wonderful house for sale in nearby Servian. It's been superbly restored by some good friends of ours and there is absolutely nothing that needs doing to it. Have a look here: Maison Vanille .

 

The guests have all gone home, the rooms are cleaned for winter, the cooling fans await their winter home in the loft, but the pool's still swimmable. Yesterday was our first day without guests for five months and I felt truly ill after a rather-too-long lie-in. 

However, today has been magical. I woke at 6.19 am, just as I have all summer - one minute before the alarm, although it is now turned off. I felt fit as a fiddle and zipped off to the market in Clermont l'Herault. My basket crammed with plants, 20 Christmas cauliflower, 2 basil, 15 oak leaf lettuce, 3 celery, along with finely cut jambon sec, a paillasse loaf, tiny coffee meringues, yellow courgettes, five different types of tomatoes, leeks, french beans, pork loin and the crowning glory - huge cep mushrooms from the hills in Lozere, I was home again by 10am.

 

 

I'd be very happy to spend this winter gardening, so this afternoon found me planting all that I'd bought this morning. The potager has been easy to prepare this autumn, thanks to a fantastic attachment made by Wolf tools. It hoes and breaks up the soil to a fine tilth like nothing I've ever used before. God knows what it'd be like in wetter, heavier soils, but here, in the dry, fast draining bauxite of our vineyard it is brilliant. 

 

 

 

The potager is so packed with winter vegetables that I've started filling up the extra space with Australian everlasting flowers. I have no idea how they'll do, but we'll see.

 

 

It's been a long time since the last post. August has been our busiest month of the season - not only choc-a-bloc with B&B guests, but also with our grape harvest and wine-making. After the heavy rains in April we had a diminished number of tiny grape florets, already reduced by the after effects of the terrible hail storm last September. This summer has also been officially heatwave hot, so the result for us has been a tiny harvest of very early ripening grapes. We ended up with just three trailer loads like this. A ridiculously small harvest from 2.5 hectares.

 

 

We picked during the third week of August - at least a fortnight early. Since then we have moved our wine-making operation to Le Couvent, where we now have a miniature cave, complete with fermentation tanks and all the paraphernalia you need to make wine.

 

 

Thanks to help from several unsuspecting, yet willing, guests and friends we got our meagre harvest picked in record time, over three early mornings, before the temperatures began to soar.

 

 

Since then we have completed the initial fermentation on two of our three cuvées and will work on the third today. After that it's just a question of regular checking that all is OK until the spring, when a secondary fermentation should take place.

 

The good news is that people seem to really like the wine from last year's fated harvest - L'Orage, a blend made on the hoof while we were picking, Syrah, Cinsault & Grenache. But the truth will be known when our lovely Master of Wine pal, Rosemary George , tastes it on Sunday evening. I'm nervous.

With just over three weeks to go before the end of our season, and a fully booked B&B, I'd be lying if I said Ali and I weren't a bit tired. But reserves get tapped at this time of the year, and we have such lovely guests that it's easy to rise to the occasion. We seem to have laughed our way through the summer thanks to some very funny people, especially all the jolly Americans and Canadians who've pitched up at Le Couvent. Thank you all!

 

If you'd like to know how the wine's progressing click the picture below>>>>

 

 

I sit here on another sunny morning that portends a perfect day for the guests who love to read and snooze by the pool. We've been full-on with guests, leaving no time for blogging, so I'm playing catch-up.

Our main news is that we've decided to move our wine-making mini-operation to Le Couvent, so we've been clearing out the cave and buying new tanks in preparation. It'll mean that we can keep a closer watch on our wines, and guests will be able to learn a bit about the process, and to taste the wine in all its stages.

Last year's wine is just about ready for bottling and we're hoping to get that completed in the next three weeks before this year's harvest. If you're coming to stay at Le Couvent towards the end of August, or the beginning of September, it's highly likely that you'll be able to witness the harvest and wine-making first-hand. Unless we have another hail storm, that is.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, guests continue to arrive from all of Europe, the Americas and Australia, except England. We have far fewer guests from England this year. We still have lots of Irish and Scottish. So what is it about the financial crisis that it appears to have affected Les Anglais more than anywhere else in the world? I don't suppose the media could have fuelled it at all - could they? Very bizarre. But for us it is all the more rewarding to have a house full of different nationalities. This morning we have Swiss, Irish, American, Scottish, Colombian - and English - around the breakfast table. It inspires wonderful conversation.

Having said that, the weather appears to have taken a turn for the worse in the UK if the flurry of late booking enquiries is anything to go by. And receiving an e-mail asking for four rooms for next week does sometimes drive me to mentally conjure a response slightly less polite than the reply that I actually send. Ho hum.

The weather's been hot and gorgeous, so the ice-cream machine's been put to good use. It's hard not to when the hens are producing such luscious eggs at the moment, thanks to leftover croissants, pains au chocolat and fruit.

This week saw the Roujan fete, with four nights of music, food, wine and dancing and a carnival procession through the streets of the village. I'll leave you with some photos of the jolly events of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This last photo's here because I love the small dog, eager for the chap in the yellow jacket to move so he can see the action. 

You're right, I've neglected the blogging. But in my defence we've been looking after lots of Belgians, Germans, Swiss, Americans, English, Irish and Scottish people over the past couple of weeks. People have arrived by car, by scooter and on foot. It is extraordinary that little old Roujan should find itself with all these amazing people passing through.

We've also managed to sneak away for one 60th birthday party, one early aperitif and one lunch. The latter was a rare treat - a trip to O Bontemps in Magalas. This is a restaurant that's notoriously difficult to get into, so when our pal Erzsi invited us to fill two seats unexpectedly available we were quick to agree. The food is delicious and the serving is pure theatre. The meat arrives on a two metre plank held aloft by two chefs who then place it across a couple of carefully placed tables, then they set to with flashing blades and speedy dexterity, delivering it in a pretty pile onto each plate. There are courses between courses and a very good wine list. It's well worth a visit, but you need to book months in advance to get an evening table.

 

 

O Bontemps, Place de l’Eglise, Magalas 34480 Tel: 04 67 36 20 82

A few years ago we had a lovely jazz singer to stay.  She has a friend who lives close by here who makes soap and she told us that her friend's soap was exceptional.  Now, I don't know about you, but to me the notion of making soap seems somehow rather arcane.  It's a process I know practically nothing about, I just know that like anything that's good, it takes effort, knowledge and skill to make it terrific as opposed to ordinary, and, hey, we all know that most bars of soap do the job in a wet and suddy kind of way but, basically, ordinary is missing the point.  Isn't it? 

So.  Ripple, lather, dissolve.  For the last couple of years we've bought our delicious organic soap from the Savonnerie de Saint Privat.  (Her lavender soap, by the way, is the very same gorgeous, purple stuff sold by Neal's Yard.)  Anyway I phoned the savonerie yesterday to find out if she or her partner were going to have a stall at Clermont market.  She told me she'd just had a baby and wasn't going to be making any soap for the next year or two.  Eekamouse.  PANIC.   

So today, on her advice, I headed for the Olive Oil Co-operative at Clermont l'Herault which is where all the local growers take their olives to be pressed.  I discovered that it also has rather a fantastic shop, which apart from olive oil also sells regional artisanal products like wine, pottery, honey and wine.  And soap.  Lots and lots of soap.  And also our girl's soap. 

I bought it out.

 

 

 

So, when you arrive, you may find in your soapdish:

Lavender (lavendre)

Honey and Geranium  (miel et geranium)

Rosemary and Spirulina (romarin et spirulin)

or

Orange and Cinammon (orange et cannelle)

I drove back with the car heavily, headily, drowsily pungent with all of the above.  Oh my, oh my, it smelt good. 

We can't actually afford to give you a whole big bar of these soaps because, like most things good, they're pretty expensive and it would be enormously wasteful to throw out almost all of a bar each time.  So we hope you enjoy trying a taste of something that couldn't be more real or more local. 

 

 

A couple of Sundays ago we found ourselves in Beziers, having visited our pal Maria in her rest home. We'd been told about a large and interesting brocante in a former Intersport warehouse. Ever eager to spend money we haven't got on bits of art and odd treasures, we went to explore. I saw lots of things I liked very much, but none so much as this little chap. He weighs a ton and has sticky out ears and a hole in his head. He would have had a metal prong with a half moon rasp where the hole is, but that's not there. He's a tool for scraping the flesh out of a coconut and I adore him.

I use the word him somewhat loosely since he has both male organs and pointy boobs, so I'm a little confused.  But I love how he swims towards the patineuse on the other side of the table.

 

 

 

Today we had the Roujan Foire, an event where around sixty or more stallholders sell stuff in the streets of the village amongst lots of noise and milling people. Someone on a microphone talks right through the day - irritating, but it keeps the buzz alive. The weather was fantastic so everyone looked in a jolly frame of mind.

 

 

I was thrilled to find a chap selling exotic citrus plants. He had some extraordinary stuff, and I'd have loved to have bought lots, but where to put them? So I settled for one beautiful lime tree.

 

 

Ali couldn't resist the charms of the saucisson man, so we have enough to last for a month.

 

 

I bought aubergine, tomato and pepper plants and they are all now planted in the potager at  Chateau Malaudos. One could take a lesson in Archery (Ali and I were both too embarrassed to have a go) or Fencing (both of us felt at least 40 years to old for that too), but the bit we had been very much looking forward to was a display of old photos of the village. In the event it was merely some copies of very familiar postcards so a little disappointing. However, I was rather taken by this one which I hadn't seen before. I especially like the look of the chap on the right.

 

 

So beautiful was the weather, we took lunch in our, now customary, new spot in the garden (thanks to the new bridge).

 

 

All in all, a very good day.

Yesterday was the first day this year that Ali and I found ourselves in our vineyards with no vital work to be done. All the pruning is finished, the fruit trees have been treated and pruned, the wild bits have been mildly tamed and everywhere is looking just gorgeous. OK, there are still about five square metres of the potager to weed, but there's no hurry.

 

So we took time to relax in the glorious sunshine at the top of the amphitheatre. Our stone seat there has a new name - The Lap of the Gods. We took sunbeds and squidgy cushions and flopped out under a blue blue sky and the only sounds were a zillion birds and the drone of the occasional small plane - and me snoring. Even Kit gave up her irritating guard-bark.

 

 

A halcyon day.

 

We're now into our second week of volunteers and I thought I'd drop in a quick word between all our guest bloggers. If you'd like to see what they've been doing you'll need to have a look at their diary .

When Ali and I bought the vineyard we've named Chateau Malaudos we thought it was beautiful. Abandoned for at least three years, it looked tired and neglected, but you could see those high cheekbones and exquisite structure nevertheless. However, we had no idea what a sleeping beauty the land really was until our volunteers started work. They've lifted off the dead skin, plucked her eyebrows, removed the blemishes, pulled the hairs from her chin, moisturised and given her some beautiful earrings. She has had a stunning new haircut and, needing no clothes, has revealed the body of a goddess. I think we're all thrilled at the revelation brought about by the volunteers and their fantastic work. Ali and I certainly don't have words enough to express our thanks adequately.

Each day two of our volunteers were responsible for preparing breakfast and dinner. For many this was the first time they had cooked for more than four - we were frequently at least 12 at the table.

 

 

Someone was always responsible for ensuring the dogs didn't get too stressed. 

 

So many excellent meals demanded hefty work to burn off the calories.

 

 

 

And when the volunteers had had enough of one job there were plenty of tools ready to start the next one.

 

 

But it hasn't been all work. On Saturday afternoon we all had a go at archery. It wasn't a wild success in the scoring department, although a couple of us did finally hit the target. Everyone seemed to enjoy the experience nevertheless.

 

 

 

 

Ali and I realised a long held plan when the first week's team painted a quotation from 14th century anchorite Dame Julian of Norwich on the wall of Le Couvent. It reads 'all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well'.

We have just two more working days to go and our list has been well bitten into. Today is a day of rest and our current team has gone off to explore; some to the Mediterranean coast, others to St Guilhem le Desert, and one couple are travelling about chewing over the notion of finding a second home here. Meanwhile Ali and I catch up on e-mails, clean up our neglected apartment and plan her forthcoming trip to see her family in Australia. It's been an extraordinary two weeks.