Tilling a foreign soil S - Brittany Country Gite

October 2007 www.countrysmallholding.com Country Smallholding magazine

and is at pains to point out that it’s his UK-based income that provides their daily bread.“If you’re hoping to move out here andcounting on finding work, it’s not easy.”

The gîte, however, is working well, already,and the smallholding is thriving: the willowmay now be just a pastime, but the vegetablesare growing despite the lack of 2007 sun, andthere are animals a-plenty. “The idea being,”the couple tell me, “that the smallholding –and particularly the animals – will be thewindow dressing for the rental business.Attracting the clients.” Said animals are busyearning their keep by cropping the greengreen grass of their new home. There are aflock-let of traditional dumpy Breton sheepfrom the Isle of Ouessant, a sextet of whitegeese, a pair of kune kunes (the pint-sizeddomesticated pigs from New Zealand) and acircle of broody bantams recently infiltratedby a prize silky donated by a neighbour – asthanks, perhaps, for the redoubtable efforts ofa cockerel that, apparently, struts across theroad every morning like Foghorn Leghorn toservice the man’s hens and returns lateafternoon to attend to his own.

Green and pleasant landIt’s always good to hear of things working outwell. Sometimes, the dream of the good lifemay prove to be an idle fancy or, worse, turnrancid. Newcomers soon discover that the sundoesn’t always shine in France – winters canbe surprisingly severe in certain areas.Nevertheless, for all its vagaries, the climateis admittedly a notch or two better than theBritish version. And apart from the odd bloton the landscape, France is a remarkablygreen and pleasant land. It’s a big countrywith a similar population to our own, so thereisn’t the same land-hunger you find on ourovercrowded ‘sceptered isle’. Outlandishbargains may be a thing of the past, butproperty buyers do still get rather more fortheir money and find that planning permission

is generally less stringent than it is backhome.

True, they speak a different language inFrance, but it’s one we learn (even ifsomewhat ineptly) at school. And if theimmigré has to come to terms with anunfamiliar culture, it’s not as worryinglyunfamiliar as it is in, say, Bulgaria. The costof living, in my experience, is slightly higherthan in the UK, but that fabled quality of lifeis undeniably better.

Uprooting a family can be as fraught asuprooting an established tree. However, forserious bravehearts with a realistic idea ofjust what’s involved, there are clearlypotential advantages in shifting operations tothe other side of the Channel. Stuart andGabrielle’s largely positive experiences reflecta positive attitude and a willingness toembrace a brave new world. We’ll delvefurther into their experiences next monthwhen we focus on some of the finerconsiderations and practical details thatsmallholders with wanderlust would be wise

to ponder before taking the plunge.Their experiences underline a vital lesson.

It may be easier to boldly go when you’ve gotsomeone to hold your hand, but I’ve heardtoo many sad stories where the pressures oflife in an unfamiliar situation, far from oldfriends and family, can put an irredeemablestrain on the relationship. It’s essential thatboth parties sign up to clear criteria and ashared goal – even if it’s something as simple,God forbid, as a bigger courgette harvest. ■

● Mark’s book Essential Questions to Askwhen Buying a House in France publishedby Summersdale, price £8.99, is availablefrom bookshops and online viawww.amazon.co.uk andwww.summersdale.com For details of Stuart and Gabrielle’sholiday accommodation, visitwww.brittanycountrygite.com You can read their smallholders’ blog onhttp://permacultureinbrittany.blogspot.com/

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Country Smallholding magazine www.countrysmallholding.com October 2007

Some years ago, when still findingour French feet – and stillmarvelling at the transformation ofour plot of land from animpenetrable bramble patch into a

potager yielding our very own freshvegetables – we were asked to tend, for sixweeks, another incipient kitchen garden.

Our new neighbours were going to Indiathat summer, leaving their newly turned-and-planted vegetable plot. They were a pair of20-something baba-cools (New Age hippiesis an approximate translation), who hadrecently moved into the house that seemedpermanently to let just across the road in thevillage that we were still learning to think ofas home.

I can’t remember everything they’d plantednow. But I’ll never forget the courgettes. Thecouple had inaugurated their good life in thedépartment of the Corrèze by putting inaround 50 pieds. (Should be enough for afamily of three.) “Just keep them watered andhelp yourselves to what you can eat,” wewere instructed. It was a fine summer thatyear and soon, those innocuous littlecourgette plants were growing like triffids.

Every day there were more and morecourgettes to bring back from our duty calls:big ones, small ones, long ones, short ones,fat ones, skinny ones. We tried every recipe inour books and madly invented new ones in anattempt to keep up with the egregious crop.But soon we were running out of space aswell as culinary ideas. We became zucchiniphilanthropists: leaving care-bundles eachevening on the doorsteps of our fellowvillagers. My wife, Deborah, would drivedown to the village where our daughterattended school and deliver baskets full to theproprietress of the local restaurant – untileven she cried: ça suffit! Enough was quiteenough.

In search of la bonne vie?Enough maybe to tempt a seasonedsmallholder to up-sticks and cross theChannel in search of such superabundance?After all, isn’t France a country where land isplentiful and as cheap as Chinese hoes, wherethe sun shines eternally, and where yousimply plant something in the soil and up itcomes like Jack’s beanstalk? The lure of thegreener grass must be why a high proportionof the estimated 50,000 British citizensannually who buy property in France actuallyquit the mother country for the territory ofour traditional enemies. So what exactly do

they find when they get there? Committed smallholders Stuart and

Gabrielle have settled happily andsuccessfully now in northern Brittany. Stuart,however, had the time to go out to France andlearn some important lessons while waitingfor Gabrielle to join him once her 18-year olddaughter had finished school. The couple hadmet on the construction site of the Brightonearthship (sci-fi eco houses built principallyof earth-filled redundant car tyres) andhatched a vague plan to start a smallholdingabroad.

The Limousin was so cheap because mostof the indigenous population had left to findwork in the city. “Tranquillity in summer,”Stuart explains, “can equal isolation inwinter.” Gabrielle adds tellingly: “I’d ratherhave the problems of living with people thanthe problems of living without them.”

Location, location, location.The old maxim is as important when you’relooking for land and/or property abroad as itis in the UK. By the time Gabrielle had joinedStuart, they knew that they didn’t want to livein either of Stuart’s bargain buys. Theythought long and hard about a more suitablelocation. “We drew up some key criteria,”Stuart tells me. “We wanted to be near thesea, we wanted to grow things, so we needed

a suitable climate: the south was too hot andtoo dry – and too expensive. We didn’t wantto be too far from the UK. And I had theseaspirations to start a business growing andselling willow. You need clients, in otherwords, people, so we didn’t want to settle inanother under-populated region.”

So off they went on their Tour de France.Working their way up the western margins,they stopped at Rennes in north-centralBrittany. “It sounds funny,” Stuart admits,“but it reminded us in a way of Brighton: it’sa university town with an arthouse cinema –which was important to us – and the rightkind of levels of population and culture.”Once bitten, however, twice shy. They didn’trush into anything this time. In fact, Stuart’ssingle most important piece of advice to passon is to rent somewhere in a likely area andget a feel for the place over a period ofmonths. Then buy somewhere if and whenyou feel quite sure that this is the right place.

They did exactly this – for six months.Within three months, they had found the idealensemble to buy with the proceeds of sellingthe two Limousin ‘follies’: a big formeragricultural building that had already beenconverted into a first-floor apartment (theircurrent quarters) with capacious storage areaunderneath, a long low barn for conversiononce the roof has been re-done, an old stablethat the previous owner transformed into adinky one-bedroom gîte, and 6,500m2 ofconstructible land earmarked for theirpersonal (straw bale) house. 20 minutes fromDinan by the northern coast of Brittany and40 minutes from the cinema in Rennes(which, ironically, they’ve been too busy tofrequent), it was all theirs for ¤210,000.

A year or so down the line and things areworking out so well that the couple areplanning, this autumn, a quirky variation onthe theme of a traditional French wedding.Stuart, though, has had to recognise that thewillow business could never be economical

Tilling a foreign soil

Mark Sampson looks at smallholding on the other side of the Channel

“Initially, I was following somefriends who had the idea ofbuying some property in theLimousin, which the media

were talking-up as thecheapest area in France.

I looked at the silly prices andthought it was too good to

miss,” Stuart confesses.He bought a barn in the

Creuse and soon after, fell inlove with a water mill in the

neighbouring Haute Vienne.“I saw it on a glorious day in

September. When I signed thefinal contract on December 31

and opened up the placewith my new keys, I wondered

what the hell I’d done.”

Country Smallholdingmagazine

■■ From the left, the oldstable converted into asmall gîte, dinner time forthe geese, and Stuart’sand Gabrielle’s raisedveg beds

■■ Left, Stuart and the kune kunesPHOTOS: MARK SAMPSON