At the end of 2016, we took a crazy turn in the course of our lives. Graham and I both quit our jobs, sold our house in the Netherlands and bought this amazing old farm building in the Bordeaux area. It had been a while that we wanted another type of life, with more time for important things and more sense, but actually jumping in the unknown did feel pretty scary. I don’t know what exactly made us go for it. Was it us falling in love with this old building and the view in front of it? Probably, and also the fact we knew that our old life was not working for either of us anymore. Were we foolish? Definitely! We had absolutely no idea of what was in front of us. Had we known, we would have probably taken on a much smaller project.

But there we are, almost four years later, still standing on our feet, nowhere near finished and exhausted, but almost ready to deliver our first gîte.

It will probably take us a couple of years to get on with the second one to come. And a few more years to renovate the house itself. But that’s ok. We’ve learned to make things smaller these last years, to take one project at the time, no matter how frustrating it is to look at things that need doing. At some point, Graham got stressed just at the view of the grass growing. And sometimes I even have the feeling he still is!

But when I look at where we are now, I already feel proud. It’s not easy, it is still very uncertain if we are going to make it or not, especially now with Covid-19. There are nights where it is hard to fall asleep.

But we feel so privileged to live here, to get to transform this old building into our vision and we are really excited about the next phase: transforming our little vegetable garden into a permaculture paradise and growing it to a professional level.