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Welcome to our Smelly Smallholding. This website is the home of The chickens have escaped! - a blog about sustainability, veg-growing, permaculture and living in France written by Scarlet Merrill. 

We live on two hectares of rough, old cattle pasture in an area called Le Perche, an ancient province dating back to the 12th century which is tucked into the south-eastern tip of Lower Normandy in France. 

Le Perche is today classed a Regional Natural Park which means it has a protected status a little like a National Park in the UK. It's a quiet pocket of countryside characterised by rolling rills, apple orchards, winding rivers and 'bocage' (network of hedgerows).

We moved to France from the UK in 2001. We lived in the Gers, in Gascony, before moving here to Le Perche. We bought this place in 2006, and whilst looking after our two children and avoiding the bank-manager, we are trying to turn the land into something more productive than grass (it tastes weird and gives me heart burn). So we'll be growing our own food (vegetable and animal), and trying to live life as simply as possible using a wide range of organic, permaculture and general penny-pinching techniques and principals.

We're looking for teachers who want to run courses on smallholding themes - anything from pig-keeping to felt-making! If you would like to run a course but have nowhere to hold it... contact us!!

We plan to create a permaculture garden with a polyculture of fruit and vegetables and some livestock which will be open to the public and sell its excess produce by gate sales and at local markets. 

As, in our experience, most of life is about trial and error, we've decided to share with you our failures, successes and further failures in order to spare your sanity and give you an excuse for staying inside with a cup of tea or a glass of wine. But when the men in white coats finally take us away, one of you will need to come over and feed the chickens.

We'll be updating the site regularly and bringing you news of all the latest comings and goings. To get started, why not read some of the previous posts on Scarlet's world-famous blog The chickens have escaped!. You can read about the project and all about us; there's also the bookshelf - where we review some of the best books about smallholding and other alternative issues. We have started to write articles for the how-to section (making your own paints, nettle fertilisers, potato towers, etc, etc). The photo page will be updated once the sun starts shining again.

Please browse around; we hope you enjoy your visit and feel free to leave us your comments!