Indian summer at Moulin de chez Joyeux

It’s autumn, which means the summer season has come to an end once again. What a wonderful summer we’ve had — with lovely guests and mostly beautiful weather. It’s always such a joy to see how enthusiastic everyone is about our little paradise here. In fact, many guests have already made reservations for next year!

This month we’ll be sending out the booking confirmations, and for anyone who reserves before November 1st, we’ll still apply the 2025 room rates. We’ve had to make the decision to increase room prices for 2026, due to inflation over the past few years and the higher social security contributions. The table d’hôtes price will remain the same, but instead of a four-course dinner, it will become a three-course dinner. Naturally, the quality will remain just as high, featuring fresh ingredients from our garden and the local area. We discussed this change with several guests, and everyone understood — some even said they preferred it, as the meals were already quite generous and they tended to leave with a few extra kilos after a week here! The most important thing, of course, is that the friendly atmosphere stays the same.

After the season ended, we travelled straight to the Netherlands, where we reunited with our family after four months. It was wonderful to hug the grandchildren again and even do a bit of babysitting. After a week, Herman drove back to France to start preparing the garden for winter, while Johannetta stayed a week longer to work on two assignments. She was able to stay in a friend’s camper at a beautiful, peaceful spot — and was lucky with the sunny autumn weather, which made camping quite pleasant.

Now we’re getting ready for winter. Over the past few years, we’ve made plenty of improvements, and you might think that would be enough for a while — but with a place like this, there’s always something to do.

So, what’s on our list? To start with, Herman and the roofer will replace the other half of the grange roof. The roof of the well house will also get new tiles, and Herman wants to improve the pergola roof so it no longer leaks.

This past year we had new double-glazed windows installed in our house, and we’re planning to turn the old doors into a greenhouse, as an addition to our vegetable gardens. We’re still thinking about getting chickens — it would be nice to have them around and enjoy fresh eggs, but we’ve heard too many stories of foxes and buzzards making a meal of them. So, we’d need to build a very sturdy enclosure.

And finally, we still have work to do upstairs in our own house — the carpet up there definitely looks like it’s from another century!

We’ve been lucky this October with the beautiful late-summer weather: dry, a lot of sunny days, and the temperatures are often above 20°C. That means we can still enjoy being naturist in the garden, and even take a dip in the pool — though it’s no longer as warm as in midsummer. It almost feels like being on holiday on our own property, if it weren’t for the fact that Herman can’t resist working in the garden and Johannetta has to sit behind the computer to finish her assignments and take care of the administration. But well — it keeps us out of trouble, as they say!

And for now, we say... see you next year!