Whenever I come to the farmhouse there are always 101 different little jobs I could do and there is never enough time for them all. My previous research indicates the house is probably 200-300 years old. It has been mended along the way and of course had a serious modernisation starting in 2017.

This visit we did a range fiddly tasks as well as a lot of painting and also attempting some mud wall repairs.

Most of the house walls are covered in plaster so you can’t see the mud and hay mix but the shed is much less maintained and you can see a collection of different styles and old fillers like bricks and wood. The mud mixture is called torchis in french. To make the torchis, first you have to dig up some clay from the garden. Then you soak it in the wheelbarrow to form a sludge.

Once the clay forms a soup I added it to the cut flax. You can use hay but have to ensure it’s very fine pieces or they suggested using flax which was already in small pieces. Luckily we found a bale of flax at the garden shop.

There is a bit of an art to getting the right consistency of mud, water and flax. Early mixes were too wet and took a long time to dry. If the mix was too dry it didn’t stick. Eventually I found the goldilocks formula.

Another fiddly job was to cover the gaps at the end of the floor boards on the second floor. Dad spent many hours cutting exactly the right shapes and then finishing it off with a type of skirting.

Scott also spent time on a fiddly job to fill some gaps and finish off the top step.

We did a lot of painting to ensure all the wooden beams had a new coat of ‘dark oak’. We couldn’t do the back or left side as even with the tall new ladder we couldn’t reach.

Mum spent hours in a fiddly job to protect the armrests of my favourite Louis XIV chairs that were showing their age.

We have seen so many new spring baby animals, along with lots of our favourite cows. The farmers have been busy long into the night preparing fields for planting.

I couldn’t help planting a few new plants, a few flowers and 4 new rose bushes. Not everything survives the year without much care but lavender, rosemary and roses seem to do well.