Elise Detterbeck
Bienvenue! We are delighted to welcome you (or welcome you back!) to our blog about summers in the south in France!
Our 2021 summer theme was "Getting Back to NORMAL", & I guess this year's theme could be "Getting Back to ALMOST Normal". This will be our 7th summer in Villevieille, a lovely old Roman village perched on top of a steep hill, above a larger town called Sommieres. We are addicted to our view--that's why our blog is called "View from the Terrace".
Our real iife is in Charleston, SC, where we both have hectic schedules. Both of us are determined to be "productive seniors", & love contributing what we can to our community. I work with children in an art museum & in Charleston schools, & Les works in wealth management, which, thankfully, he can do from here remotely in the summers.
This year we have a whole 3 months here, with 3 planned trips: one by car to the Loire Valley, one to England (London & York), & one to join our kids & grandkids on a Greek Island. As usual, we will try to blend into the French way of life, & seek out interesting things to do that are not on the regular tourist agenda.
We hope you have a super summer planned wherever you are & whatever your plans.
Elise & Les
Debby Passo Amazing so much fun to follow you both. Glad your Summer adventures are both enjoyable and memorable! Stay well and keep exploring
re: Back to the Terrace! Our French summer begins!Bruce Detterbeck Nice presentation.
re: The entry way looks better too.Bruce Detterbeck nice views
re: Time for wine & a good sunset...Ruth We have to meet another year in Villevielle. A great spot
re: Back to the Terrace! Our French summer begins!Ruth It is really worth to visit Marseille and the MuCEUM
re: Marseille, the beautiful port town, full of surprises!Lucie Thank you for sharing your spectacular bit of paradise!
re: Here's last year's picture of the terrace view. Didn't quite look like this when we arrived.Mother Corinne (Gigi) look forward to sharing your summer!!
re: View From The Terrace, Summer 2021david gooding what a view!
re: We missed our terrace last summer, but we're back!Jane Pawelkiewicz You are too much! LOVED LOVED LOVED all the photos of Italy and Finland. You are traveling fools this summer. I have 3 more sets of photos to view, but I'm out of time for today, so thank you so much for sharing all this history! Love,, Jane
re: Meet Terri & Doug, my cousin & wife...David Hibbeln In the US this is called "baleage". Its is an ensilage method of storarge forage crops for ruminants - mostly cows/beef or dairy. It was first stored in vertical silo's, then in horizontal bunk silos. For the silage process to work, its a fermantion process you need to remove excess air, in the vertical silo this was done by wieight compaction, the last in pushed on the first is. In bunk, the tractors flatten the cut corn or grass. In Haylage you cut the grass green/wet, rake into long lines called windrows and then gather into a round bale enclosed in an open mesh netting then wrap in 12 layers of plastic to squeeze out the air. Wait about 45 day until it cools down and then you can feed it. You can see see the effect of the drought and heat conditions. I'm assumeing that few bales have been moved off this field and these look like first cuttings since its july and grass is green. if it was brown the grass would have not regrown and still be brown from the cut. If I'm correct the hay harvest was poor on this field since i would expect to see 3 to 4 more the number of bales on this size field.
re: Teemu called this "grass food for cows", which they bundle into plastic & stack in the fields.David Hibbeln These are tulikivi soapstone fireplaces
re: Every room had a stove in it (it gets really COLD here!), most of them in the corner like this one.David Hibbeln I suspect it was Finnish for "hello"... HEI
re: Maija shows us how it worked...speaking Finnish, so have no clue what she said!David Hibbeln Line is Pekka (Peter) Samulinpoika Juurikoski Ängeslevä, to Jalmari, to Anna Sofia
re: Maija doesn't speak English, but Teemu translated. Even with that, I was busy taking pictures, so am not sure who all these people are/were.