Christmas in the Loire Valley

Christmas in the Loire Valley For Christmas, I decided to buy myself and my daughter a house. Well, not exactly, but I finally, just in time for Christmas, managed to buy the house I’d been seeking for years. I found this place, a 17th century farmhouse on a few acres of land in the Loire Valley, just the way I should have known I would: completely by chance.   After all those visits to real estate agents and notaires (combination lawyer-notary public figures who also deal in real estate), after pouring over countless ads for real estate, after all the visits to houses that for one reason or another weren’t right, I found MY house one day when I was riding my bike around the countryside, took a road I’d ridden down a million times, and — because the corn had just been harvested, opening up the view — spotted a house I’d never seen before. I was attracted to it for its idiosyncratic roof, a typical French farmhouse roof in that three different types of roofing material had been used on it, depending on the tastes or pocketbooks of various generations of owners: flat terra cotta tiles, rounded terra cotta tiles, and slate. Originally, the roof would have been thatch, as its steep pitch showed. Around the house was a jumble of buildings, barns, chicken houses, a huge corrugated metal hangar full of firewood, and god knows what else. The house was at the end of its own road, and backed onto a forest. I went back later with my daughter to snoop in the attic (see photo at right) and spotted a beautiful owl in residence, surely a sign of good luck. And miracle of miracles, in one outbuilding I found a wooden wine press, and under that building, a vaulted stone wine cellar. For a wine freak, it just doesn’t get any better. I went to the local Mairie (city hall) to find out who owned this wonderful place, and was told by the lady working there that the owner was an 85-year-old man who’d recently moved into a nursing home, and that the farm would eventually need to be sold. She gave me the family’s telephone number, I called, and the woman I spoke with said that her dad couldn’t cope with the thought of selling. She added that she and her brothers were anxious to sell, but didn’t want to upset their father. I gave up. Three months later, I found a phone message on my machine that the patriarch had changed his mind, and that the house was for sale after all. We finally agreed on terms, and two weeks ago met for the promesse de vente, a ceremony where buyer and seller sign a document and buyer forks over 10% of the purchase price, to seal the deal. As all the papers were being signed, and the notaire read out my full name with my middle name – Margaret — the 85-year-old owner, briefly drifting in to us from the cloudy outer corners of his mind, suddenly said, “Marguerite. C’est bien, c’etait le nom de ma femme.” (“Marguerite. That’s good. It was my wife’s name.”) A few minutes later, after having to be told where to sign his name and how to spell it, the old man popped out another detail, which was that he’d inherited the house from his wife, and that the papers on it, stored with another notaire in the area, included a sheet of parchment detailing the house and property as they had been in 1765, the earliest written record of my house. My notaire promised to get this parchment for me. It was sad to see this old man just barely hanging on to the tattered last threads of his life, as his children, eager to shake off the dust of that old farm, sold it all away, all his carefully hand-made and well tended tools, his carefully stacked terra cotta tiles he’d removed from the floors to replace with modern ones (I’ll put the old ones back), his hand-made oak wheelbarrows and ladders, his much-mended chicken coops, rabbit hutches and pigeon houses. I wanted to tell him I would cherish it all, but he wouldn’t have understood. I hope I have the sense to pass this house along to my daughter while I still have my marbles, but I’ll probably hang on to the bitter end just as he has done. So I get the huge tuffeau barn full of farm implements and a magnificent fireplace, a tuffeau hangar full of more farm implements, a metal hangar with 20 cords of prime oak firewood, the pig sties (crumbling), the stone well (only source of water), the cellier full of shallots and a wine press, the wine cellar, the vegetable garden, the duck pond, a willow tree, a bay tree, a linden tree, a stretch of woods, and finally the house (see photo 2), with its old part – one big room with a tuffeau stone fireplace big enough to roast an ox in — and its “new” (19th century) wing, and 5 beautiful armoires, a wood stove, a big farmhouse table and benches, two funky beds, two chamber pots, and a dishwasher that no one wants but me. Real French roots, just in time for Christmas. This morning, my daughter and I found holly and pine branches on our new land, and made a wreath for our new front door. On Christmas eve, we’ll have our usual Loire Valley feast — foie gras with the local Coteaux du Layon sweet white wine, roast pintade (guinea hen) with wild mushrooms and a rich Anjou red, cheeses, salad with walnut oil dressing, and pears in hazlenut sauce — then we’ll go to the beautiful 12th century Cunault abbey church down the road from our farm, to hear a Gregorian mass. Joyeux noel from the Loire Valley! Copyright (c) Paris New Media, L.L.C.