To Poulet or not to Poulet – That is the Question

By Tracey Smith (DCW Member)

There were always plans to keep chickens on our farm. Well, I call it a farm. It was a farm years ago; the piggery and the old chicken house are testimony to that. We moved in at the end of August 2002 and the children hooted and jumped around, squawking about how much fun it would be to see them every day, collecting and eating lovely fresh eggs. I think it is all part of the romance too. One moment, you are caught up in the mad rush of a life in the UK, then when the dust settles on your new home in rural southern France, the idea suddenly has far more appeal. Ray, my husband said, “There’s work to do to the chicken house, don’t get them yet”, in quite a serious, positively firm voice. This told me straight, there were to be none for a wee while. There was a list of jobs as long as the Champs Eyeleese to be done before that was even a consideration. The plan was to get the gite ready for opening this spring. It is ideal for a family of up to 6, looking out over the sunflower fields, down to the vineyards and orchards. It was a fantastic place in such a peaceful spot, flanked by 2 lolloping weeping willows, but it needed stripping out completely. The floor needed tiling, a new bathroom installing, some walls tiling, other walls painting, good old tongue and groove putting up in various places and other such boy jobs. My job, was to look after the furnishings that were going in, taking the gite “to market” on the internet and taking care of the general publicity. Of course, with three little children too, there are all the other necessary chores to do, for which there is not enough space here to list. Ray cracked on with the tasks in hand. Looking every day more like Russell Crowe in the Gladiator, as he used muscles he never knew existed. Our first winter in the Aquitaine countryside was short and sharp really. Not too much rain, but jolly cold at night and our only source of heating in the main farmhouse was the big old fire in the open kitchen come dining room and a wood burning oven thingie with a trademark of “Dietrich”, that we fondly renamed Marlene.

Marlene was lovely, but a hungry old girl, who only liked well axed, 1/3-metre chunks of oak – about every 20 minutes…. When she was happy, she fired up 2 slightly clapped out, old, sky blue painted radiators, oh and of course, she cooked our food! I grew to love the hob and from initially hating this monstrosity in the corner, by the end of winter, I wanted to have its babies. It was efficient, if a bit of a faff, but it made do and kept us warm. If only the thing could spark herself up before we all got up – that would have been handy. I took many a morning tiddle, after removing several layers of fleecy pjs, being stuck to a frozen seat and watching my breath heating the room. Onward and upward the work went on through the winter as we discovered many holes in the roof of our lovely old farmhouse. The gite was fantastic though. As it was built in recent years and had proper guarantees on the work and even had double-glazing. Ray would spend hours and hours down there working, but I often thought it was because his workplace was warmer than our house! We fixed the holes in the roof and my loving husband sent chills through me as he confidently strode across the canal tiles on the sun terrace roof. As we did not manage to move to France with millions and of course, like most others, we bought just over our original budget, we had to undertake pretty much all the work ourselves. Ray was a communications engineer in London before we moved. He was fast becoming a “tout main”. As both of the houses (and in fact our grange and old barn too) are built in beautiful local stone, re-pointing and wall building has become quite a well-tuned skill. The French electrical system sometimes leaves us baffled, but generally he can cope with that and his soldering skills on the plumbing is something to be admired! As the frosty mornings eased up, of which in truth, there were not too many, we reached regular lunch times where we could eat in the garden and only have one layer of top clothing on, my thoughts turned to the gardens and the chicken house again. Ray, now well underway with the other endless chores said again “Not Yet Woman” and I had to content myself by not running down the chickens on the road on the way to school and seeing the ones that resided at friends and neighbours houses, thinking to myself, a bientot, a bientot… Then one day a couple of weeks back, there I was, over at the fantastic biologique farm (Pozzeur at St Aubin) on the other side of our village, which sells everything from flour, eggs, fresh pasta, the most amazing bread you have ever tasted in your life, fruit tartlettes, milk, crème fraiche and a stack of other delicate treats. I was chatting away to the lovely lady that runs it. We were just talking casually about keeping chickens and I was asking her advice. My conversational French is coming along in leaps and bounds and I am told my accent is very good, but I think it gets me into more trouble than it is worth. The problem is, everyone expects your vocabulary to be vast as the words you can say, you say so well. So somewhere between saying, they were terribly easy to keep, the eggs taste so much nicer (which I knew already as I bought their eggs and the flavour is incredible) and of course, after they have had their day, whey hey, coq au vin, here we come ~ she seemed to slip in that she would sort me out half a dozen and we could see for ourselves! I didn’t hear that bit. Or maybe I did, but I knew I had said the house wasn’t ready yet, but that it didn’t need much work really, just a few nails in on a couple of holes and a bit of new wire and that would be it! Well, showing willing on a subject here is like a red rag to a bull. The friends I have made here have been nothing but amazingly gracious and kind. Thoughtful to a fault. Off she had gone and ordered them from her friend who hatches them out and gets them ready for market.

The following week, our little boy had one of his best chums over for the night. His mum is the second generation of family that work on the bio farm. In came Clement, his mum, a rucksack and a large cardboard box, that kept going “Cheep, cheep”. She plonked it down on the table and said “Voila, le poulet”. When the colour finally came back to my cheeks, I looked inside and low and behold, there were 6 teenage chicks! I say teenage, because they were about 2 months old and didn’t quite have their full size and set of feathers yet. They stared back at their new mother with a ‘quite happy to be here’ kinda look in their eyes and extended their long necks out of the confines of the box to take a look round. As Christine shut down the flaps of the box, one got its neck caught and let out a yell!!! ARRGGHH…maybe the coq au vin would never come ~ how could I even think about killing the little dudes? I think at this point, I was more worried about exactly what I would be telling my husband. I don’t mean to make him sound like a meanie, but it’s just that he was right; we had enough to do and concentrate on, without having the worry of a new thing on board! Christine reassured me that they really could not be simpler to keep and that if there were any problems, she would have them back. We had coffee and she left me with her little boy to stay over and the new arrivals. There the chooks sat, cheeping and waiting for their new daddy to come home. Good grief. How typical, he was out for the day, helping an elderly neighbour painting a high wall. There is no time to lose, I thought. These poor little chaps wanted to be out and my dogs had more than an eye and an ear on the box! I attacked the re-hash of the poulet maison as best as I could and rather hoped that the nails I was slamming in, were not going to be impaling rods on the other side in their house. The children thought it was amazing and were really helpful getting their beds ready. The old owner had left wine crates there and we made them up with the bail of straw in the barn and sawdust from the chain-sawed winter wood. It was quite good if I say so myself. We stood back, chuffed with our efforts and I went to fetch the new occupants. I opened the lid, more carefully than it had been previously closed and their little heads peeked out at their new surroundings. Off they fluttered, quite timidly at first and we hoofed them all into their house to settle in and see what was what. They were quite the most endearing little creatures and although I have never had a huge desire to pick one up before, I felt that I really should get to know them a little better. The children thought catching them was a great source of free amusement and the chickens probably thought much the same about my children. How strange it was to hold something live, that I had such a good knowledge of its internal organs and taste. Of the six, it looks as though 3 of them may well be boys! The girls apparently have either no crown on their heads or only a small one. They were too young for my friend to know for sure, but she said we needed at least one cock to encourage the eggs to come. Then that we should whip them away as soon as they were laid so the girlies didn’t hatch them into babies! I reckoned they would be in an omelette before that could ever happen and anyway, I would have to fight the children off in the mornings to see what had been laid as we let them out for the day, so they wouldn’t be there for long. Ray came home later that day and I broke it to him gently. He walked over to my recent D.I.Y.ing and raised his eyes to the heavens about that more than anything. He said, “I’m having nothing to do with them, because I have too much to get on with!” but said it with a glint in his eye and a wry smile. “OK, so we get to eat all the eggs then” I said about the children and me…… Before the day was out, he was in there, re-patching my woodwork and talking in his Harry Hill accent saying, “What were the chances of that happening then eh, go paint a wall, hmm, hey, then come home and find a load of chickens in yer garden, hmm, hey”. He clearly wasn’t too cross. They have been here for almost a week now and I have to say, they are just the simplest things to look after. I open the door in the morning and hoof them out, the children love feeding them their special 2nd granules from Gamm Vert, so that’s dead easy and in a week or so, they can have scraps from us, small chopped veggie peelings, breadcrumbs, maize or another cereal and we can sit back and wait for the first oeuf to arrive! I adore going in to see them; their little world is quite calming and fascinating. There is a boss and it is quite funny to think I now know the true meaning of the saying “pecking order”. The gite is now ready, the sun is shining for all it is worth and we have a few bookings for the summer. Our focus is on our house now and its list of jobs. What do you expect with a 200 year-old building with 2 ½ acres of gardens and an oak wood! There will always be a list! Ray is happy, our new life together is going well, the children are back to school and the chickens are getting bigger. The big day is coming, I can smell it!