Ireland - Summers in France

Summers in France

Kathryn M. Ireland

Summers in France

Digital Edition 1.0

Text 2011 Kathryn M. Ireland

See photo credits chapter

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To my darlings, Oscar, Otis and Louis, who put up with all those summers in France!

No one has ever stayed at Kathryns farmhouse near Toulouse without wishing they owned something similar themselves. Deep in Cathar country, in one of the last properly rural areas of southwest France, she has created the alluring French idyll that exists deep inside all of us: the tumbledown farm brought glamorously back to life, fabulous food, sunshine, the laughter of friends.

And so many friends. You never know who youll bump into next in the kitchen: it might be an Oscar-winning actress or a Manhattan restaurateur. Decorators and designers, society chefs, photographers, Shakespearean actors and East Coast fabric tycoons all gravitate to Kathryns table with its ever-changing cast of characters. To be in her orbit is to be bathed in generosity, love-bombed with delicious food, gossip and warmth. Her French house is a sophisticated exercise in sustainable upscale bohemia, where the atmosphere is gloriously relaxed but everything somehow works perfectly.

Everything is on a big scale: a dozen or two dozen people for lunch and dinner every single day in the open-sided barn that serves as an outdoors dining room; huge squashy sofas everywhere, occupied by sprawling teenagers or children watching DVDs; giant ceramic and terracotta bowls filled with lemons from her trees; bolts of Provencal fabrics from her latest collections; a stable full of horses, and a major barbecue sizzling with grilled chicken and earthy Toulouse sausages. And at the centre of it all, Kathryn herself, often dressed in the sexy suede chaps of her riding kit, drawing everyone (quite literally) to her bosom and cackling with raspy laughter.

There is no fixed boundary between inside and outside: every door stands open to the garden and the numerous outside sitting areas of wicker chairs covered with cushions in her trademark fabrics. Children sleep on the lawns under duvets in the open air. In the fields around the house, sunflowers turn their faces 180 degrees during the course of the day, following the trajectory of the sun. Teenagers cluster by the swimming pool behind the pigeonnier on romantic assignations; guests of ages from four to seventy play fifteen-a-side football matches in the evening cool. A local farmer arrives with jars of his homemade foie gras, which looks like body parts in formaldehyde but tastes wonderful. Each morning guests set off on shopping trips to the market, returning weighed down with sweet-smelling melons, beefsteak tomatoes and aubergines for another lunchtime feast.

If there is anywhere on earth more fun or more chic, I have not found it.

Its a magical place where ponies run wild through fields of sunflowers.

On a whim one bleak midwinter February, pregnant with my first child, my nesting instincts urged me to take a trip through France with the unrealistic goal of finding and buying some rundown chteau. I had gone to California on a whim the year before and met and married the father of my three boys. Instantly, I had a new homefar from where I had grown up.

The idea of summers in France was a dream. I was working in London with my husband, Gary Weis, and it seemed crazy not to take a trip to France to look for a place where I could take my children for their summer holidays so they would have a sense of Europe growing up and would have wonderful memories of their childhood, as I did of mine.

Unbeknownst to my husband, I had scoured the Herald Tribune, the Sunday Times, and any magazine that listed houses for sale in France. I had calculated a trip throughout the west of France, through the Dordogne all the way to Provence in search of a house. Gary and I set out from our rental in Somerset, England, and took the ferry to Calais. We drove through Paris and spent a night close to Versailles, where we had the most unbelievable dinner and my first bottle of fizzy-less champagne. The following day we continued to the Dordogne and stayed at Sarlatpicturesque but a little Gothic for me. We visited a few houses but nothing that I had to have.

I always know what time of summer it is by the dispensation of the sunflowers. In early June they are just breaking ground, but by late Julyearly August, they are in full bloom.

I was map reader and, with the map of France spread out in front of me, it dawned on me as we were driving south on the A61 towards Toulouse that the area we were coming to next was the subject of a postcard sent to Gary the previous year from friends who had a house in one of the fortified medieval villages, Bruniquel. I leapt at the opportunity to explore this area instead of continuing on to Provence. In my handbag I had the name of a real estate agent that my fathers accountant had given me; I called her from a pay phone in Cahors and asked if she had anything to show me. She did. Driving through the overcast countryside reminded me of my familys retreat in southwest Scotland. There was a perfect mlange of farmland and architecture that brought the two places I love the most togetherTuscany and the west coast of Scotland. I just knew this was where I wanted a house. I felt that a shepherds croft, barn or chateau was waiting for my love and attention. We drove on I with the intention to buy a house and Gary to have lunch.

We met the realtor in Monclar-de-Quercy, a somewhat sleepy little town with a very pretty square and an impressive early 19th-century marie (mayors office). The agent told us we were going to see a rambling farmhouse with sixteen hectares.

As we came down the driveway, I had that same feeling I had had when I saw the Grand Canyon for the first time. The sweeping, uninterrupted views over the Tarn Valley facing south towards the Pyrnes were spectacular. The house sat on a knoll with 360-degree views. I knew instantly that the house and surrounding barns could become home.