Some of you may be following our smallholding life over on Instagram (@encouragementmanifesto) - if you are, thank you, and please accept my apology for repeating myself. There has been a whole lot of learning during our first year in a rural corner of the Vienne. I think it is important to get the ‘fails’ out there as often as we celebrate the rose-tinted, sunset-laden ‘ups’ of life in France.
So, without further ado, let me show you my butt … well, two of them.
The sharp-eyed smallholders among you will see that the two 1000-litre water tanks are sat on blocks and railway sleepers, creating the perfect height between the ground and the taps. It was not always thus …
(Taken from an Instagram post dated 8 December 2023)
(We are) “moving things forward despite my lack of knowledge. Smallholding life is as many stupid moments as it is “look how fab it all is”.
You have to make a few mistakes to gather hard-won experience.
Water is an issue. For us, for all growers. The climate emergency offers us feast or famine, super dry spells and biblical downpours.
We are trying to even out the bumps in the graph by building resilience. We’re in the process of adding 5000 litres of storage to the 50,000-litre reservoir we inherited with the old farm. Our portable tanks arrived in the Summer at the moment we were most aware of our water shortages. I hastily established them in place, little thinking about how to get the water into them or out of them. Guttering I can add. It’s a work in progress. But stupidly I placed them straight onto the ground or concrete pads … try getting water into a watering can from a tap that’s three inches off the ground. What a fool! And you have to empty the tanks before you can put them on the blocks like you should have done in the first place. As the clever folk will know, 1000 litres of water (a full tank) weighs about 1000 kilos (a tonne in new money!).
Yep, planning to work smarter next year!!”
Welcome to France! I discovered France when I came to study here in 1978 and decided to stay. It's a fascinating place, especially the rural areas like where you are. So diverse and so interesting. I'm in the Loire Valley, after studying in Toulouse and then living in the southwest, the Riviera, Paris and the Alsace region. May your French country life be plentiful and successful!
You’re not kidding when you say feast or famine! In 20 years we’ve never known rain such as we’ve had over the last two months! And seeing your very smartly installed tanks has just reminded me that the platform I built to take my exact same tank in my garden which I fill via tap and hose hooked to a pump in our well (which runs dry every summer) has collapsed - a job (another) for the holidays!