July in the French countryside and a visit of Château Sainte Sabine

how fast time flies at the moment. We are welcoming guests, wonderful guests from around the world in the cabin and the cottage, but we still have quite a few things that we should finish. So, one of the things is the entrance to our swimming pool. And we have used the old door to our cellar and it needs a lot of work. So, Olaf is just trying to prepare everything and then we can renovate the door and paint it. Other than that, I have been trying to learn about gardening and plants. I absolutely love nature and flowers and everything, but for some reason I don't seem to be very talented. So, I have started following this woman on Instagram, a Dutch woman, and she has a garden that you can pay to pick your own flowers. So, she just sows all kinds of gorgeous flowers and then she has this pluktuin, as they say in Dutch. You can go there and just pick any flowers that you like. And so, I've been following her advice, things that she shares on her Instagram. I'm just doing as she does and hopefully we'll be able to, you know, learn more about this. Because the longer I live here, the more details I see in our garden. The previous owners were gardeners, so they have planted so many gorgeous things and it's just one big surprise kind of thing. Like, every year in all the corners of a garden, you know, something else comes up and something else starts growing and blooming. And we're just... I love learning about this and so that's what I'm trying to do. Another thing, the boys are off school now, of course, that we have started doing in our family is taking turns for cooking. Now, usually our boys help out with cooking a lot, especially my oldest. He really likes cooking. The youngest is learning. He's almost 13. The oldest is 15. What I do like is to give my children a say in what we're eating because they don't always like what I cook. And so I've started to have everybody pick a recipe before I go grocery shopping. Everybody picks a recipe that they like and then we take turns in cooking. So I'll be cooking tonight, my oldest will be cooking tomorrow, the youngest will be cooking the day after that, and then Olaf will be cooking the day after that. So this gives them a chance really to eat something that they really want to eat and they have to give me a list with all the ingredients and then I'll go get that and make sure that they have everything. And it's really fun. It's nice to see how our boys are growing and learning. And Kasper, the oldest, is taller than I am so I don't feel old but I look at my boys and I'm like, where did the time go? So I'm really grateful that this summer we're spending more time as a family. We've paused all of the building works so we can just enjoy being together a bit more and I fully, fully enjoy that. The summer so far seems to be a lot less hot than previous years which is really nice but we always need more rain. So we were happy to see clouds coming in but then it started raining and it quickly turned into hail which is a catastrophe for the vineyards. A lot of the this little fence which he uses to isolate the cow or I don't know if he potentially may be bringing another cow. Oh I think he's bringing calves. I think there's a really tiny one back there. I just received an SMS from the farmer because they saw me standing here and obviously questioning what's happening. They know I watch over the cows. I always try to check if everybody's there but apparently now the big brown cow was ill and needed to see a vet and there was a calf as well that they put in I believe and there was a second calf that was born today and hadn't drunk anything since it was born which you know obviously things go downhill pretty quickly. So they were just coming to pick up the cows or the big ones so they could have the vet take a look at it. He just came to the village. Okay the bells are ringing. I'm going to cook for our guests. We have lovely guests from France now this time and Belgium that have arrived this afternoon so I'm going to cook for them and just triple check with the farmer how many cows are in here now and what they look like. They're all gone. They all have gone to the other end of the field so at least you know we'll be watching them. You'll be watching them with me. You know I always film them so at some point you must have known how many there are and what they look like. There's a little baby. The other one's gone. Oh no. I feel so bad for the brown one because she's lost her baby. So the big brown one you can see she still has a lot of milk. Her calf was taken away because it was ill and that other brown one is her child as well. That one's one year old but you can see big brown one ready to feed her baby and the baby was taken away when I filmed two days ago because it wasn't doing well. It was not drinking at all. It hadn't drunk anything since it was born that day. So they had the vet look at it and they tried to bottle feed it. They took it to the farm so they could watch it very closely and it just wouldn't drink and it passed away. And the mom is just crying for her baby. Oh my gosh I can't even say this without crying. My friend Mélanie and I were invited to an event at Château Sainte-Sabine. It was a wine tasting from the Château de Pommard but the Château Sainte-Sabine was completely refurbished and renovated recently so they had this really nice little event where we could see all the new decorated spaces. So of course I had to take you with me. Is that something you do when you take the time? Ah yes. Yes, that's it, fishing. I won't be there. I'll take my idea tomorrow. I found the stairs. Like my friend, little chocolate balls. Thank you very much. I had heard of this château many times but I'd never had a chance to visit and now we were invited by our partner Château de Pommard so that was a really wonderful way to discover this gorgeous château and it is actually a hotel so if you ever want to visit you can simply book a room. I am closing the video here. Thank you as always so much for watching and I will see you next time.