Friday, January 18, 2013

Winter In La Sechere

This is the road I live on....It just sort of ends in the forest.
The strange animal in the road is my buddy, J Edgar.
He's tri lingual, he speaks English, Dutch and much better

 French than I do...
And this is the nerve center of the operation....Believe it or not,
I am heating the entire house with wood! I am sitting in the upper
left hand window typing at this very minute! If you look on the left
side of the house, you will see a huge palm tree! It's a hardy variety

 from Serbia....Just in case you think I have escaped the same winter you 
are experiencing in USA! More snow than we have seen in years. 
It snowed about 6 inches, then more this morning...
We really can't go anywhere until the ice thaws on the roads. 

2 comments:

squatlo said...

I'm intrigued by the structure to the left of your house. Is that another house, a barn, or a log structure of some sort?

microdot said...

The big building is a 200 year old stone barn which was enlarged around 1960. The orange brick is part of the "modernization". 2 years ago, I had to rebuild the back wall, which had started to collapse....new cement floor and foundations and I totally replaces the roof. Now it's pretty dry inside with a huge hay loft in the upper modern addition...there is a ramp from the road you can drive a tractor up. I use the loft to store hay for the herd of horses my neighbor has....there are a lot of horse enthusiasts around and I keep them all supplied in the winter. On the ogther side of the house is a little stone building that was used to house a wine press and the huge 3,000 liter oak barrels. Then there is a cement slab garage. I've been here for over 10 years, When we bought the house it was an abandoned farm which no one ever saw because it was totally over grown.No body wanted it and we got it dirt cheap after selling our old house about 35 kilometers from here. I tore down a few buildings and rebuilt the place. Now it's one of the coolest houses around here...The snow totally melted yesterday afternoon. I went shopping, got home, it started raining...the rain turned into snow and now there is more out there than when I shot this picture! It's still snowing furiously! The weather says it is going to warm up and melt again which is a very good thing because I have to take my wife to Brive on Wednesday. The main highways are usually okay after a few days, but for me the problem is the little back roads....mine is at the very end of the line....