We stayed chez les grenouilles today, the old dumpster had been replaced with a fresh one to accommodate the still daunting level of iron laying around the farm.
Today we made real progress, I think the majority of the scrap has actually been taken care of. Occasionally as I was lugging a wheelbarrow full of metal up the hill Jean Louis would run over, grab a piece of iron, and run off grinning. I think he inherited a small fraction of his fathers pack-rat tendencies, as he kept saying what a beautiful piece of iron it was.
I thought we were almost done around 11, but some digging with the backhoe revealed a network of rebar and roots that I hadn't seen before. I spent quite a while excavating, hampered by the fact that a dirty, rusty, piece of mangled rebar looks exactly like a dirty old root. It turns out that shuffling about and listening for clanging is the best way to distinguish the two.
Joelle is back from some mysterious mountain vacation, I ran into her while I was looking for Jean Louis. She was actually up in an olive tree at the time so I didn't see her until well after she started talking to me. She asked if I wanted coffee or tea and I said sure.
We take occasional tea breaks. It's really pleasant it's just a little jarring, as I get focused on work and the next minute we are sitting around the stove relaxing and drinking tea.
Lunch was again fantastic, Joelle made a quiche with leeks. I told them about the famous leek/walnut/brie appetizer I had recently taken a liking to in an effort to sound like a cooking expert. They sounded intrigued, maybe I will make it for them someday.
Then Joelle and Jean Louis started contrasting their cooking techniques, and I was caught in the middle as an unbiased judge. It boiled down to Jean Louis being italian and loving brick ovens. He got a light in his eyes when he talked about a big brick oven that someone somewhere used to have (the details escaped me).
We then watched the news for a while. I don't watch news a lot but French news seems to jump around more so than your average american channel. Most of the news was bad, with a helicopter crashing in London and a hostage situation unfolding in North Africa.
Then it was time for laundry. I have a washing machine, but no dryer. I investigated hanging the clothes on the clothesline outside, but found a towel there that was mostly dry and completely frozen.
I don't like wearing frozen clothes, so I built a pretty roaring fire inside and criss-crossed laundry lines around the room. As I write, almost everything is dry, dependent on proximity to the fire.
No pretty pictures today, just imagine a refugee camp and that is pretty much what my abode looks like.
Good night!
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