Paint Your Wagon!

Instagram-able

On a recent holiday, Peter and I visited a beautiful lavender farm. There, in the middle of the fields, was a lavender coloured tractor with children playing on and around it, photos being taken and, of course, ultimately lots of Instagram posts of this unusual centrepiece. It got me thinking… What could we introduce to Fontalbe to create these amazing pictures that memories are made of? I shared my thoughts with Peter. Some ideas went through my head… a beautiful black-lined pool? But we already have that. An outdoor bar area with a river running by? We have that too. Perhaps beautiful grounds and woodland walks … but yes, we have those too.

It was at this point I decided that we really had lots of opportunities for guests to take pictures of wonderful memories at Fontalbe, and I haven’t even mentioned the Eagle!

So, I forgot the lavender tractor. Unknown to me, Peter, however, had his own ideas!

Beautiful antique hay wagon being restored

A Collection of Gnarled Wood and Wheels!

A few months later, he headed off with a couple of friends and a very large trailer! When they arrived back a good few hours later, he announced that he had found our lavender tractor! What was in the trailer was not a lavender tractor. It was a collection of old pieces of wood and a pair of huge wheels that looked like they had come out of the Ark! Underwhelmed did not quite describe my thoughts!

“It’s a nineteenth-century hay wagon”, he announced proudly! Really? To me it was a random collection of huge pieces of junk. My immediate question was, “Where do you think that’s going to go?” I think I burst his bubble a little bit.

But the restoration began.

A jigsaw puzzle on a large scale and a lot of sanding and painting

It was like a massive jigsaw puzzle! With pictures of old hay wagons that had been used in paper mills like Fontalbe in the past being downloaded from the internet, we slowly began to piece it together. My interest was heightened when I realised that these beasts had been painted a beautiful cornflower blue colour. So not a lavender tractor but a cornflower blue French hay wagon. Now I was listening!

Over the summer, 40 degrees heat or not, Peter has been steadily sanding, painting and restoring. With some help from our enthusiastic friend Mel and myself, who were often roped in to paint, the renovation is now finished, and the beautiful cornflower blue hay wagon is sitting in front of our house.

Antique waggon and wheels in the Dordogne countryside

And another wagon!

But there are still rather a lot of pieces of old wood and wheels in the courtyard. It turns out that we had the bits from two hay wagons. They had both been sitting at the back of an old barn which hadn’t been opened for many years. When Peter arrived to collect the bits of the one we had agreed to take, the farmer saw him coming – he did a two-for-the-price-of-one deal, and his barn was cleared. Peter didn’t skip a beat. Both were loaded onto the trailer. So more bits of gnarled wood and wheels to be sanded down and painted, as we now have a second hay wagon to put together.

So, the question is, where is the first one going to live – in the new wildflower meadow, at the back of the orchard, in front of the house? In the absence of a cart horse, moving it is not going to be easy, so I think that’s another debate for another day!!