The Wind Mill

Christian and I accompanied Fanny to the mill to pick out stones for her “decorating the well” project. She was looking for white stones the size of your palm or blue stones the size of your finger. It took about an hour to walk to the mill and we collected the stones from the gravel path. Fanny has done other art projects when they lived in Toulouse and for their new home. She tiled a wooden wheel (I guess used on farms for chord) and turned it on the side to use for a table.

The mill does not run any more but it had lights on it for Christmas time. The view was beautiful; fields and green trees, a valley and the outline of the Preynee mountains in the distance (mountains that separate France from Spain). If it was clear, you could see the mountains much better, I will take this walk again before I leave. All of the sunflower and corn fields, in fact all of the fields in St. Sulpice, are for animal feed. They explain to me that when Fanny’s grandmother came to visit she looked at the corn that they were growing in their garden and asked why they are growing animal food. I was surprised to hear this since the metro by the Moulin Rouge in Paris had people cooking corn over an open flame and selling it. Anyway, Fanny tried corn along one of her journeys and wanted to grow some. (Does anyone know how to tell when it is ready to be picked?)

The town has about 2,000 people living in it, most who commute to Toulouse to work. Each village has a church in it, even if nobody goes to the church. Since Fanny and Christian’s home is within 500km of their town’s church, they are only allowed to paint the house and shutters specific colors. This is important since they just got done painting both of these earlier in the month. The house is a yellow color that is a bit bright and Fanny is nervous that the mayor is going to knock on their door and tell them to change it since they did not fill out paperwork and get the color approved.

There is one pub and two bakeries in town. The bakery that we passed on the way to the mill is apparently the bad one and I should not go there. We did not pass the other one, but they make fresh bread each day and I doubt that I will need to buy any. Perhaps I will run into the bakery during an adventure.