Farmyard

The one area of the chateau that takes the most time to keep on top of is the farmyard. Originally it must have looked great with nice walls, barns and stables for the animals. However as far as I can see from arial photos it fell into neglect in the 1980's. When we bought the chateau it was a right mess, literally a jungle. Very over grown, big fast growing trees that had self seeded and pushed over walls. The stables falling down and their roofs gone. Piles of rubble and old stone everywhere.

During the first 6 weeks after purchase we cleared this area and cut down the trees. Last summer we had a digger in there, ripping out all of the roots from the trees. But still nature fights back and it quickly becomes overgrown again. So this summer I am determined to really get it under control and make it low maintenance. It will take, I guess, up to two weeks to really complete the job. Today we are making a start. The small wall to the right we will take down and level the area and put down new soil to hopefully grow grass over. The little courtyard is bumpy and rough, full of weeds and stones. This will one day be where we will build the swimming pool.

My plan to control the weeds is to put down membrane and cover the membrane with all the stones that we reclaim around the chateau. This has two benefits: firstly it should stop the weeds growing which means that I will not have to strim every other week. Secondly, it gives me somewhere to store all of the stones that we reclaim. We have quite a few piles of stones around the place but they quickly sprout weeds! Over the next weeks we will move all of these stones onto the membrane in the farmyard. We need this stone to rebuild and repair walls.

Today I used Mel the digger to quickly knock down the small remaining part of the wall. Then came the lovely job of picking up all of the best stone and placing it on the membrane. So the first step has been taken!