End of July/ Beginning of August - Bretagne - 2012

We stopped by Nantes to visit with Cath and Livo and check out the city of Nantes.  We stayed for 2 nights and had a fantastic time.   We sampled some of the local foods, rented one of the city bikes, went for a nice run in the park next to their house and saw the cheapest brocante store ever.  

Afterwards, we took a 1-day tour of the region.   This area is where Fanettes mom's family is from, so she spent a good amount of time here growing up.   She's been excited to visit this area and show me around since we arrived in France.   I must say it is quite beautiful.   It was one of those days when there just didnt seem to be enough time to see all the cool things there were to see along the way.   We stopped at a cool little sea-side town, as well as visited some cool monoliths from the neolithic period. 

Then we headed on to our next farm, where I am writing from now.   Its near a little town called Pleyben.   They have sheep, goats, horses and one cow.   We arrived on sheep shearing day - which is a pretty long day for the woofers, but we arrived half way through it, so it was ok.   Most days here center around the 2x a day goat milking.   Other than that we work in the garden, trim back the fence line going around 100 acres (which seems like the type of job that once its finished, its time to start again) and bake break on Fridays (we made 40+ loaves today).   

There are currently 9 woofers here and another arriving tomorrow.  Wayyyy too many if you ask us.   It seems like a woof factory.  All the woofers are quite nice and we get along with them, although it doesnt seem like the hosts are well set up to co-ordinate quite so many people.  There seems to be quite a lot of confusion over who should be doing what at times.   So that, combined with the fact that one of the hosts is a bit too bossy for our liking, we've decided to leave a couple days early and take a more extended tour of the area and arrive back in Paris a day early to avoid the sunday traffic.   The best thing about this farm is that its the most french speaking place we've been yet. 

Photos to come.

End of July - Paris - 2012

We spent a few days in Paris taking care of some paperwork we needed to do.

Mid July - Rupt sur Moselle - 2012

We took an assignment at a place that was not a farm, but rather a gite (french for villa or bed-n-breakfast) because we really liked the email from the people running the place and the work sounded fun.   They were rehabbing their gite with all natural methods, like using hemp and lime to fix walls and make walls, and mixing their own paint.   In the end we had a ton of fun, and got along great with the hosts.   One of them was a runner so we got some good runs in as well.

Photos to come.

Early July - 2012

After going to the Jean LeMoine farm we visited some friends and family.  We spent some time in Belfort (france) visiting Fanettes grandmother, some time on Besancon (france) visiting Fanettes dad, then some time in Munich (germany) visiting Marcel and Kathi with the unexpected surprise of seeing Keith and his mom, then we headed to Salzburg (austria) to visit with Darren and Ally.   All in all a quick but great trip.    We really wanted to visit everyone while we were nearby.

Photos of the visits with friends.

We also spent some time driving around the region between farms.

Photos of the region and the museum we stopped at.

Again, its been a month since our last update. In an effort to get this blog updated, I'm going to list each farm we've been to with a short description, in reverse chronological order. Then a link to Fanettes photos.