escapefromthechateauDIY

What will the paysans think of your chateau rescue shenanigans In the English speaking world calling someone a peasant is a term of abuse. You could say that ‘peasants’ in the UK are an unprotected and disappeared species. In France the word for peasant, ‘paysanne’, is a badge of honour. If you are a ‘vrai’ Paysanne’, you are a keeper of secrets and skills of the countryside, holding the fort against a rising tide of rubbish. Rubbish food, adulterated dairy, radiated lettuces. A modern life of keyboards and fashionable ideas in a pre-fabricated world. Paysannes still pick great bundles of vegetation every afternoon for their rabbits and measure the rainfall. They have their own winter wood growing, cut, drying, stacked and split. Some things are best not left to others. Whopper crops of artichokes, beans and tomatoes are transformed into exquisite preserves. Dried mushrooms gathered at ancestral glades in the woods dry by the fire, a stock of home made confiture always at the ready. It...

Many chateaunauts enjoy welcoming volunteers. The volunteers bring the world to us. It was a benefit James a​​nd I had not anticipated when we embarked on our castle rescue dream. We moved from Elephant and Castle in London to a tiny village South of Carcassonne, in the Aude, one of the least densely populated departments of France. We were soon informed by an encouraging neighbour and fellow chateaunaut about sites like https://www.workaway.info/en/hostlist/europe/gb https://wwoof.org.uk/how-it-works/be-wwoofer and https://www.helpx.net/ . These are sites where volunteers can post their interests, skills, dreams and availability and hosts can explain their projects, accommodation standard, work routine and expectations. The volunteers get themselves to you and you organise the work and everything else. Some stay for months, some pass through.  Over 22 years several settled permanently in the Aude. We as hosts learn to roll with their talents and interes...