Thaw and mills

The big thaw started on Valentine's Day, and we can feel our toes again—hooray! For two weeks, our new wood-pellet-burning heater got a good workout, night and day, something we couldn't manage with the old fioul burner. Moving the wood burner in the kitchen to the edge of the hearth definitely kept more heat in the kitchen. And we're still learning tricks like closing the shutters at night when it's cold. We didn't set a record for a long, cold spell, but this period was in the top three.

As the frozen water under the road thaws, the road beds become very unstable for a while. During the period of dégel, heavy vehicles are prohibited on the minor departmental roads. Overnight, signs sprouted at all the turns off the major roads. In spite of this effort, there has been a lot of damage to roads from the cold. Edges, in particular, are crumbling away. There was apparently a major road resurfacing effort in the year we moved here, but now it looks like it all needs to be done again.

Spring is starting to spring and it's very nice to have the doors and windows open again. Waves of cranes are flying northward. Bulbs are coming up. Violets are blooming. But it's still unclear how much damage there is to flowering shrubs, fruit trees, and all.

Last Sunday, as part of the open mills day, we re-visited the two mills we saw last summer. At the first we had a hearty lunch of soup followed by sausage and beans. This is the chateau Chabrot near the Moulin Chabrot.

These are the water wheels at the Moulin Chabrot:

In this clip you can see what the wheels turn inside the mill. Unfortunately, Kaye didn't realize that the camera software won't rotate a film clip, so you need to put your left ear on your left shoulder to view this properly. Also, Kaye shot it backwards, from the ceiling down, rather than from the wall upwards. Use your imagination please.

The millstones are located on the floor above:

A Rube Goldberg series of wheels and pulleys and baskets gathers the milled flour and routes it into an enormous sifter, which, in turn, dumps fine- and coarse-ground flour into waiting sacks. Unfortunately that wasn't working while we were there, but it's definitely impressive.

Further there's not much happening. With the warm weather, we're thinking about the garden and starting to clean up outside.