Don't keep reading if you are hungry

So for the last 5 days we have had a the eurpean CEF leadership meetings at the chateau and so it was 5 days in the kitchen for me. I had fun trying new recipes. The above photo is the the ingriedents for a salad with walnuts and goats cheese.

Here are our renown choclate tarts delicatly embelished by Debbie our food stylist.

Delicious Chestnut cake which lived up to it's name.

Here is the chestnut cake after it was properly embellished and ready to be eaten.

Last week our team had a pumkin carving party and here are our final creation: Jay and Debbie's on the right. Mine and Maribeth on the left.

As things fall

It is begining to look a lot like fall, the vines on the chateau are all beautuiful in red and are slowly starting to fall.
The trees however are sheding their leaves far too fast and we wish they would slow down a little. Yesterday the 4 of us on the team spent the 4 hours raking and still didn't finish everything. The only nice thing about the leaves is we throw them over a tall wall that soon becomes back filled with leaves which are fun to jump in and slide down. It is also a nice place to take a nap as Maribeth and I have found.

My job the last 2 days has been uphosting the new chateau vans panneling as there was none when we purchased it. I now have a lot of experince but little desire to do it again as it is a pain in the neck to take down and put in the panneling.

Autumn here brings us many foggy mornings which gives one a whole new perspective on ones surroundings.

"Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God."

Operation lend a hand

We had a workday at the chateau with the churches to get some projects done around the chateau. One of the projects we got done was tearing down a little house that held all the trash cans, which we have now replaced with big trash cans.
Here are our leaf carriers taking a break enjoying the view of the valley before getting rid of more leaves.

The leaf bearers in action.

Here are some of the rakers in action, we held off on raking the last few weeks so we had plenty to collect.

Tour de France in Burgundy, and other adventures

So we have finally finished the trench and started covering it back up less then an hour after it was done but at least it was all cleaned up for the Lyon Church Weekend.

We are glad that it is finally done and we can move on to other things, though we will miss having a hole to go play in.This being owen's last week at the chateau we decided to get out and do some things on our day's off. Here we are having a mid afternoon picnic at the famous stone table at Brancion.

Yesterday we went on a 28 km bake ride from the town of Cluny to the town of Cormatin to visit the castle there. It was a long 14 kms on the way back!

On arriving at Cormatin we had a snack to revive us here owen is doing a study on the differences between generic and name brand cookies.

Here is Owen, Maribeth and I fooling around on the stage at Cormatin

We were really excited that they had pumkins growing at the castle, I think that the bike ride may have killed some brain cells.