Traces of yesteryear.

Walking around on Coin Perdu delivers surprises around every bend.

…savouring the old…

Firs, it is the obvious: the kitchen with some of the belongings still lying around, the rooms with its wooden, tilting floors, the original closets built into thick walls, the old barns with its farming implements, the old stables with its original chains and feeding cribs, no bathroom, an old longdrop outside behind the four a pain, the chicken coop and pig sty…

Then the stories of long ago and the people and their habits, likes and dislikes, their lifestyles slowly reveal itself when you start losing yourself in the discoveries. And you wonder about them. About the past of this house that is now yours.

Coin Perdu belonged to three generations of the same family. The house and outer buildings were handbuilt by the father, passed on to the son, and the grandson then ended their generation. After his death at old age recently,  it was inherited by his sister, who sold it to us and we are now starting a new book there, with our own stories.

Growing up in South Africa, where storytelling is a fundamental part of growing up, of teaching lessons, of learning about life, we are now sensitve to the stories and tales of this old property. We will allow it to remember its past, while  breathing our new experiences .

Click on images to enlarge

…the stables, situated under the big barn, which will become our future wine cellar…

…the working barn, with all its tools and farming equipment and hay fever triggering elements…

…my soon-to-be-dinner-table…

…the large barn – our living “chalet/quarters” for the next few months…

…the old kitchen, with traces of a previous life untouched on a yellow oil cloth: a gas cylinder, a bar of soap, the yellow pages, a plastic bucket…

…an ashtray, wine glasses, string , a pen -we use Monsieur’s wine glasses and I think of him every time…

…his meals consisted of many bottles of  paté de canard, probably along with une baguette et du vin rouge …

…two woodburning stoves and their tools, an old kitchen cupboard with beautiful doors, some vintage frills on the dirty shelves, a modern plastic coffeegrinder, a chamber pot bench in the massive fireplace…

…old porcelaine pieces dug up and discovered every day…

…plum preserves dug up under the ground, preserved peas in wine bottles from even deeper…

…Old school books of Jeanne, inscriptions on 20 Aout, 1884, discovered in the barn…