It’s been all go at Le Temple de La Rose as the growing season gets in full swing.
Since January we have been opening the space on the land, felling the trees that have been neglected for so many years that they grew leggy and were fighting for light, some rotten, some split, and others were pines dangerously close to the house. It was hard for us to fell what was needed as we love and adore the trees and tried to mindfully keep what we could. We could not escape the work that needed to be done in the woods, and there is still more we need to do in there but for now. ..
The land as it sits is on a gradient to the river and it needed landscaping a little to give us a softer incline to build some polytunnels, place the greenhouse and grow a large vegetable garden. We worked in the cold and the rain with Gavin the tree surgeon and Dangerous Dave and his digger. The days were a mix of clearing branches, chain saw logs and wood chipping – all hands were on deck and we have worked 12-hour days and weekends to clear what we could ready for the logs to be milled into the wood for a build we are planning.
Dave cleared space, a bowl in the land to create a studio ( yoga, meditation, workshops etc), and not without issues! Rain, frost, erupting springs of water, and a huge rock created by the meteorite that it landed here eons ago, would not allow him to carve further into the land as we had wished! This land really seems to have its own ideas and who are we to argue? We really do believe that it will support our work the way it needs us to work as we try to devise some sort of plan. The whole thing is a process for us, an initiation into what we want to bring here, and as we do our spiritual and conscious work on ourselves that we love, it is definitely not separate.
I had changed my mind about the retreat center when Covid hit, how would people get here with all this going on? Was this really needed in the times we are living in? what does this space really want from us? what is the conscious evolution that I am undertaking at the moment that dictates that I change and work with instead? This all collided at the same time, the start of my Jungian Psychology studies and the working with the land. We had spent the last three years renovating the house, trying our hardest to get off-grid as much as we could prepare for what faces us in the future and as a clairvoyant, intuitive I know we have the worst to come. I had spent the last 7 years at least teaching others that we would be facing chaos in the world and the need to be self-sufficient would become increasingly obvious and it was time for me to put into practice what I preached and prepare my own home in this way. This was the reason after all I decided to settle in France. Equipping the house with a wood-burning gasification furnace that heats all our hot water and central heating system would be a priority, and it wasn’t easy to get the system from Germany nor get the water storage tank in the man cave that wouldn’t fit through the doors of the house!!! Marlon came to the rescue with his angle grinder as I closed my eyes and wept as my interior walls were cut to allow this tank in! An amazing heating engineer fitted the system and finally, the home had heat and hot water! It was worth the struggle as now all our heating and hot water comes at no cost to us, just the manpower in splitting the wood on the land.
We placed vintage wood stoves in the bedrooms where the open fireplaces were as they gave out so little heat and added a wood-burning cooker to the dining room. One thing living in the depths of rural France with more trees than you could possibly imagine is that wood is always available, and with a property that has its own woodland with many fallen trees and trees that need felling we knew we had a lifetime supply of wood available.
Phase two of the restoration would be the solar panels, but there were rooms to decorate, a kitchen to renovate, ceilings to build and a list as long as the land to complete indoors! A water well was discovered to provide us with drinking water and a self-cleaning ’fosse septique’ so we are off mains drainage. Everything was starting to come together and we knew the land and the garden called us next. Off-Grid living was happening step by step and we had more ideas how we could eventually manage in the future without bills and to be self-sufficient as possible.
We began to prioritize.. the need to grow our own food became increasingly obvious as food prices grew, organic food became less organic, GMO foods dominate the supermarkets and the use of pesticides was unknown. We just couldn’t ignore that is was our number one priority. SO with the race against the seasonal clock, we began to build the polytunnels and move the greenhouse so we could get planting seeds and be in time for the growing season. I eagerly, planted more seeds in my greenhouse than the previous year’s knowing we would be able to grow so much more with the space opened up. There was growing pressure that the plants I was growing would need to be put in the earth and with no vegetable patch anymore and the need to build the bedding boxes, I I knew time was against us.
Team Temple has worked hard! Marlon, Collette, Caspar, and our friend Trinnu who is supporting in exchange for food and to be part of a growing community, rolled up our sleeves and set about putting together my grand design for the garden!
First of all we had to create a large chicken coop, our amazing chicken family is very dear to us and they usually wander free during the winter months, this isn’t possible in the growing months when they simply would eat all the food. So Glen, Glenda, Gwendoline, Gwyneth, Gale, Opal, Petrushka, Sharon and Tiffany got a new enclosure. Caspar then added 5 more baby chicks to the clan and the babies also needed a separate space, so last weekend we made an extension and the babies Nancy, Nina, Maude, Marge and what could be Terence all are happily homed in Chicken Towers. We erected the chicken God on the frame, prayed for many eggs and I added some roses and candelabras as chicken towers also have to be shabby chic! Next was to make the piggy ( guinea pigs) Bonnie, Boo and George at the end of the coop in their palace, as they frequent the chicken coop for bits of food! Yes they are free-range piggy’s and ramble all over the banking luckily not the veg. Finally Daffy and Daisy the Muscovy ducks were put next to them and all were happy. Animals are happy in their new village we had bedding boxes to build.
Now we could safely get on with growing food! We opted for breeze block beds this time after doing a lot of reading up, they make much more economical sense and also permit for safe growing ( just a little PH issue about a cm from the brick ) Ten beds in total had been planned and if you have any experience of building on sloped land, you would feel Marlon’s pain! Digging earth up for each bed, adding compost then layers of the woodchip took a few hours per bed and with us both working full time too this happened now at night after dinner working with the failing light and on weekends. We have in total 16 bedding boxes growing our food for the year in all the things we use in our kitchen as we are vegetarians and keen chefs:
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Pickles
Chillis
Garlic
Onions
Cabbage
Peas
Beans
Artichoke
Aubergine
Courgette
Squash
Pumpkin
Spinach
Rocket
Carrots
Potatoes
Red, white, green Cabbage
Leeks
Horseradish
Broccoli
Okra
Butternut squash
Sweet potatoes
And Collette’s Herb garden:
Absinth
Rosemary
Basil
Chamomile
Coriander
Parsley
Dill
Sage
Comfrey
Cornflower
Calendula
Borage
Echinacea
A Variety of mints
Verbena
Oregano
Tumeric
We have also planted a variety of fruit trees 16 In total :
Apple
Plum
Pear
Nectarine
Pomegranate
Cherry
Peach
Fig
Berries: 3 Grapevines , kiwi, blueberry, raspberry, red berry, elderberry!
And so we are ready for the growing season! We really want to go for it this year as the previous years have been creating the capacity for us to do this and live our dream. We want to share our adventures here on the land, the trials, and tribulations, the mysteries and magic. One day who knows you may even visit us!
.jpeg)
