Faa 22022021

Another year has passed, and well I think we can all agree that it was a special one. I will start this news letter where the last one from 22/2/2020 ended. Two notes, first sorry for some strange phrases, the French is slowly creeping in to my lingustique style, second I'll try to be more to the point because of being very busy, so I have to well organize my time and I also plan to translate this letter to another two or three languages.

Introduction

So what did happen since the last February 2020? I guess you all know the big news but I've to say for good or bad the last year covid situation did not actually affect me too much. During the spring lock down or "confinement" as the French say around the April I've been busy with bottling the 2019 cider season, which some of you supported through the last campaign, again once more thanks! Instead of few days it took me around a month because I could not ask my friends for help and I've done vast majority of the 7 000 of 75 cl bottles alone. Also since January I had issues with my knee which prevented me to get a job, it was actually really bad, I had issues to walk. During the late spring and beginning of summer I came back to Czech Republic where I got help with the knee, which improved a lot, it was caused by muscular disequilibrium. At home I've also progressed with work on family house, which garage I plan to use as cider storage for Czech Republic and surrounding regions. In June I came back to France and within few weeks I've actually started to feel physically very bad. Long story short, I had a Lyme Disease, which was twice wrongly diagnosed as an allergy even when I was mentioning the tick bites and my suspicion, well it was ignored and I was completely ignored afterwards by the medical system too. I got really bad, at the end I've managed to get appointment in hospital department specialized in infectious diseases and was immediately hospitalized. I stayed there for a week, did lots of tests, got inter venal antibiotics (for one month), later on corticoids and was send home. All in all I've been out very sick for nearly two months. Still when taking medicaments I've managed to get a job in my field of expertise and started to work for cidrerie Les Vergers de Ducy as a seasonal worker. I've managed to keep the job, now it is my sixth month there.

Cider Season 2020

For the details of the 2019 cider season, please have a look here. The 2020 season, which started around mid of September, came early this year, was very very challenging. I have been working around 200 hours per month for money so I money to invest into my activity and I did around another 100 hours per month for my micro-entreprise artisanal, Cidrerie Jara. Since the mid of September till mid of December I had around four days off, I can say it was way too much and I do not want to repeat this again. However because of lack health condition to work during the spring and summer to earn money to have treasury for the 2020 season, I had no choice except forfeit and I did not wanted to do that. Well at the end I've managed to process around 18 tonnes of apples, from which I've manually harvested around 6 to 7 tonnes, bought another few of manually harvested and the rest I got from a friend who uses small semi-automatic machine. The cider is fermenting, had to do all what I could to slow it down because it was quite warm during the autumn and winter but it seems I will manage. This year I'm newly trying to completely avoid filtration, lets hope it works. For more information about the season please have a look on the crowd funding campaign combined with the presale/prévente.

Daily Routine

Just to get a bit of idea how my life goes, here is little "window" in it describing my usual working and relaxation day.

On a working day I wake up at 6h00 (trying to move it slowly towards 5h00 but it is not easy), do my meditation with reiki, physical stretching and muscular exercise, have a breakfast and well off I go to work which starts at 8h00. I hope to wake up more early so I can work intellectually in the morning. During the day I do variety of activities in the cidrerie, from labeling the bottles, pruning trees and arranging branches in the orchards to helping working with the cider in the cider cellar. Lunch brake is one hour at noon, plus two smaller break during the day and finished at 17h00. After that I take shower, have a preprepared dinner (cooking and freezing meals during the weekend) and after that I use the bureau of my boss where I do my correspondence. Around 19h30 I try to finish up, go back to my caravan, play a bit of guitar, do some reading and go to bed, really really tired. I sleep as a baby, that is for sure.

On a "relaxation day" well it actually looks like the working day but I get up one hour later or so, do all the washing and cleaning which I've to do to be ready for the next week. I started to cook and ferment again, had to stop since September because of lack of time during the season and I really enjoy it. Marination and fermentation of crew crevettes/prawn is my latest achievement which I'm "proud" off. From time to time I watch a movie, go for a walk and I try to see more my friends because I was doing that less than I liked in last years because of being too busy with other things and it is not good.

Over all

Despite all the complications of 2020, I've progressed with my micro-entreprise artisanal cider project but lets be honest the toll was high and it reconfirmed to me that I have to make sure that at least from September till December I can fully focus on my cider season only otherwise I'm loosing big time. One of the things which made me happy is finally starting to use my caravan as home so really live in it not just sleeping spot. I wanted to do this for many many years but generally never had the money and place to make it happen. I'm working on "deplacement"/displacement now so during the week I'm in the caravan which is connected to electricity, toilets and showers are near by. I've to say I'm happy with the set up, it confirmed to me that especially when I get bit bigger caravan, my one is nice but just medium size, I could actually stay in all year long, comfortably and importantly also on a very low budget. This is important for development of the business. Decreasing the living costs helps me to accomplish sooner the switch from earning money by working for someone else to gain what I need from my own activity, which has been my principal goal since coming back to Europe in 2016.