We are heading down to stay in a gite near the mill tomorrow for a week during the Easter holidays. The kids are unaware of our imminent move but we want to tell them while we are at the mill and also show them their school at the same time.
The kids will have the final 3 weeks of the summer term at the village school in Castelnau-Barbarens (8kms away) as we hope they will adapt easier with a few weeks to make friends while they are still in the same classroom (they are 1 school year apart and there are 2 school years in each class). From September, they will be in different classes. We are hoping they will meet some local kids before the summer holidays and that we can grill their parents on the locality!
So what have we actually bought;
The mill house;
The house is not huge - it is a typical double fronted Gascony farmhouse with two rooms downstairs and 2 rooms upstairs - totalling around 150sqm. The difference with our mill is that one of the front rooms has a couple of 6 foot diametre mill wheels taking up a third of the floorspace but they will eventually make a beautiful feature in a living room we hope to create. Off the mill room is a threshing room which will create a second part of the living area (both these areas are not live able currently)
The main living space is the kitchen which is very basic but useable. In June we hope to make some major changes with the addition of a wood burning stove/boiler and new (second hand recycled) kitchen and floor. Also downstairs is a WC, bathroom and cloakroom.
Upstairs the owner had made some changes to suit his late mother - there are 2 large bedrooms, a smaller double bedroom and a shower room with WC.
This is just the right size for us because we hope to live a sustainably as possible and therefore avoid heating/lighting unused space. Also attached to the house is a pig shed (under the threshing room) and a chicken coop (we are hoping to improve on our currently-poor poultry-keeping statistics!)
The house is generally in a liveable condition but needs modernising. As we said before, we would rather buy cheap than pay top whack for someone else's taste that we would end up re-doing anyway.
The barn is a monster - around 15m x 5m. Described as a Dutch barn being open on all sides except the west side. Generally in Gascony
On the ground floor of the barn are some rooms, namely the original bread oven (last used circa 1920), the stables (all original and ready to home cows/horses) and a store room on the northern end.
There is also a carport for parking and storing machinery and 5.5 hectares of land. Crucially on site is a natural spring, a well, the lake and the canals that supply the mill so we shouldn't run short of irrigation water. As part of owning a mill we have learnt that we are responsible for the upkeep of not only the canals on our land but the entire water supply from the dam on the river that creates the flow of water into the canal, the 1000m of canals and the overflow/run off canal upstream from the mill.
This is quite a scary proposition as we don't really know what it entails but it seems that we need to maintain the trees and greenery along the canal and that is about it for the short to medium term. In the very long term, we might need to take on some repairs on the dam if it gets damaged but as it has been there for at least 2 centuries and the river flow is now controlled by an irrigation damn 10kms upstream, the chances of a major flood of water damaging the dam are quite low. We hope.
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