A splendid dawn lights up the frosted apple trees...Winter work inside the Chateau beckons...while winter transforms the landscape and stills the life of the "basse-cour"

Chère amie, cher ami,

The crescent moon, its white edges softened by a gauzy veil of morning light, hovers just above the roof tree of the long stone barns of the basse-cour. The sky is a deep vaporous blue.

In front of the farmhouse, a fine layer of gleaming ice encases the slender limbs of the young apple trees. Hoar frost coats the rough grass. A frail layer of ice on a puddle from last week’s rain reflects the meagre light of the moon.

Scallop-edged triangles of condensation fill the corners of the window panes inside the farmhouse. On the kitchen hearth, embers from last night’s fire glow red underneath soft grey ash.

We are in our quartier d’hiver, winter quarters at the Maison de la Ferme at Courtomer. It’s time to turn on the lights, stoke up the fire, and make breakfast.

Over at the Chateau, lights wink out from hallway windows. Cédric and his father, Monsieur Xavier, are at work. Drills, hammers, a blow torch, muttered remarks…they’re taking apart the kitchen. Meanwhile, Aurélie’s husband has just dropped her off. Soon, the iron will softly hiss; the radio will crackle; there will be an exasperated exclamation over the state of a tablecloth. Martyn, our gardener and sometime handyman, will be going up and down the stairs, carrying a hammer and a measuring tape, humming to himself and making mental lists of trees for the park. I’ll be there myself in a while.

*Looking toward the Chateau from the allée of horse chestnuts in the "parc."*

But within the walls of the basse-cour, those affairs hang in suspense. The farmhouse turns a blank and silent back to the Chateau. Just a few windows give onto the cour d’entrée, the circular driveway that leads from the outer moat to the inner canal and over a little stone bridge to the Chateau’s entrance court. The Maison de la Ferme faces south, opening its double row of windows toward the sun and the life of the farm.

Separated from the Chateau, this world revolves around bovines, crops, and hay. In the cottony air of this cold winter morning, there’s just the faint lowing of a cow to her newborn calf. The young steers rattle metal feeder bars with gentle impatience. And from way over on the other side of the cour d’entrée, in the old stable block, Madame Francine’s rooster crows to the incipient dawn.

Walking out to the Chateau after breakfast, the grass is stiff, still heavy with silvery frost. The sweet smell of cattle bedding wafts over from the stabulation on the other side of the stone barns.

“Une petit surprise avec le numéro 228!” Madame Brigitte exclaimed, as we met briefly outside the cour des bovins, the cattle yard, yesterday.

Our farmer's wife knows every member of the herd by the number tattooed on its ear. Number 228 was thought to be “vide” or empty. But the previous morning, a sturdy little calf had been found sucking lustily at her udder.

“A good mother,” she told me, with tender satisfaction.

Calving and feeding times regulate the world of the basse-cour and the daily comings and goings of Madame Brigitte, her husband Monsieur Jean-Yves, and their son. Now and then, a mechanic comes to tinker on a tractor in the shelter of the machine shop. The vet and his assistant stop in to vaccinate the herd, to “fouille” expectant cows, or to sound out a sickly calf. And soon, our charpentier will start repairs on the bâtiments de la ferme, on the roofs of old slate and clay tile on the buildings that enclose the farmyard.

But it’s quiet now.

Through the gate in the farmyard wall and onto the driveway to the Chateau, wide brown leaves from the allée of lindens cover the ground in an overlapping network fastened with ice.

Ice clings to thin stalks of moss on the stone fruit baskets on the bridge. A wrinkled sheet of ice covers the moat.

I linger to watch for any signs of the poules d’eau, the little black moorhens that make their nests around the moat. A bold ragondin has recently appeared, uninvited, to burrow in the banks of the moat and eat our waterlily roots. And the poules d’eau have taken their leave.

*Looking over the frozen moat from the bridge*

“Ne vous inquietez pas,” says Monsieur Xavier with a snap in his blue eyes. “Don’t worry!” He is an excellent shot. But Monsieur Martyn, more tendre, has placed a couple of traps baited with apples to lure the creature into captivity.

Slowly, a wash of rosy light glows from the eastern horizon, silhouetting the leafless branches of the trees in the park. The moon has slipped away behind clouds.

I cross the gravel courtyard to walk up the stone steps of the perron. The front door of the Chateau closes on the winter landscape.

Here, an ambitious program has begun. Besides the kitchen, there are two storerooms in the sous-sol to plaster, bedrooms to paint, old curtains to discover in attic trunks, a carpet to design for the escalier d’honneur, mounds of linens to inventory, furniture to repair, a double rose bed to lay out, trees to order for replanting the parc. There is the huge and ancient fallen oak to saw into planks. The corps de métiers has gathered…and we must determine the plan d’attaque, as Monsieur Xavier puts it.

With one last glance out the French doors to the frosty park, I take out my notebook and we begin.

Winter work at the Chateau has begun in earnest...an account to be continued in next week's letter, chers amis!

Elisabeth

Winter in the Farmhouse

A splendid dawn lights up the frosted apple trees...Winter work inside the Chateau beckons...while winter transforms the landscape and stills the life of the "basse-cour"