Before I owned a castle, I did what any reasonable person does with a dream they’re fairly sure will never come true: I watched other people live it on television.
Specifically, I watched Downton Abbey. I watched Lady Mary ring a small bell to summon Anna, who would appear to dress her and do her hair. I watched Cora eat a flawless breakfast in bed, carried up on a tray by O’Brien, prepared downstairs by Mrs. Patmore, consumed while propped against pillows in a silk nightgown and matching robe, catching up on the day’s events before her feet had so much as touched the floor. I studied this closely, dreaming of such a life.
I’m here to tell you, it is not like that here at our château.
There is no Carson bringing the tea. No Tom to drive us into town. No Daisy to stoke the fires at dawn. It’s just the four of us: me, my husband Sean, and our two small children, rattling around a castle built more than three hundred years ago, along with the forest, the river, and the various woodland animals who were here long before us.
If you’re new here, welcome. We’re an American family living in a small château in rural France, restoring it one leak and one bluebell at a time. Castle Diaries is normally where paid subscribers go behind the scenes, but I’m opening this one up to everyone. Pull up a chair.
The short version, for context: we left California a few years ago, rented a farmhouse in the French countryside while we figured out whether we actually liked it here (we did), and then, with careful planning and stubborn optimism, we bought a small French château. It has two pepperpot towers, a chapel hiding in the woods, a gatehouse that once housed the guardien, and a path that loops the whole property where the moat used to run (back when this place was a fortress and was poised for battles). One of the towers holds our spiral staircase. All of it, every stone and every leak, is now ours to bring back to life.
I do have turrets. What I do not do is throw a long golden braid out the window of said turrets so an evil witch can climb up it (although, now that I’ve spent some real time in an old castle, I’ve started to see that story differently. I strongly suspect Rapunzel’s tower stairs were simply broken (as tower stairs often are), or there was a mysterious leak nobody could get a contractor to come look at, and the hair was a temporary workaround that got badly out of hand. I understand her now. I, too, would rig up something deranged before I’d sit around waiting for the man to call back).
We do not spend our days being laced into gowns and gloves and jewels. Nobody does my hair (sadly). We don’t host neighboring aristocrats for tea, or dress for a staged hunt, or get bored on a Tuesday and ask the stable boy to ready the horses so we might frolic across the grounds. We do not have a night nurse who delivers the children, freshly bathed, for one kiss on the cheek after tea and then spirits them away again.
We do all of it ourselves. Which means that we are, as far as I can tell, every single character in Downton Abbey at the same time. We are the family, and we are the full staff. I am Cora (though in outlook and general spiciness, closer to the Dowager Countess) and also Daisy and Mrs. Hughes and Anna (I do dress my daughter and do her hair) and O’Brien and the nanny, and the list keeps going. Sean is Tom and Lord Grantham and Carson (and, let’s be honest, Mrs. Patmore, because he does all the cooking. Bless him).
Somehow we manage, and somehow we even love it, though I won’t pretend it isn’t a staggering amount of work.
Here is what a typical summer day actually looks like.
7:00 a.m.
Our rooster, Mr. Darcy, delivers his opening remarks. It is a hearty, full-throated cock-a-doodle-doo, and it is our alarm whether we like it or not. We get up and put on our finest château-wear. For Sean this is shorts and a t-shirt with a few holes and some stains, one he has formally designated as already ruined so he can stop grieving it while he works. For me it’s whatever’s clean, and a low ponytail I scrape together so fast I come out looking like a minor founding father (there is no one here to impress but the rooster) and no makeup, because there’s no time, and no point (again, the rooster). Then I dress our daughter and do her hair, which is to say I give her the same fast ponytail (Anna would be appalled).
7:15 a.m.
Sean heads out to the chickens (sometimes with the kids) to feed them and collect the morning’s eggs. The kids thunder down to the cave (the cellar, but “cave” is the French term and makes us all feel more medieval) to feed our two new kittens and clean the litter box (a chore they have very maturely taken up). Sean makes the kids breakfast: usually homemade yogurt he somehow produces from fresh organic milk from our neighbor with fruit, or eggs and veggies with toast (you cannot skip the toast here, it’s just too good), sometimes a fruit and veggie smoothie. I slip away to do computer work while I still have both hands.
8:30 a.m.
Comms. Oh the comms! The genteel château pastime of telephoning French people who do not answer. We call the roofer, for roughly the tenth time, about installing the septic ventilation, so that our front lawn will stop smelling like, well, our stuff. We call the plumber (for the umpteenth time) about the heater, which has been faulty since the day we moved in. We call around for a team to help with the next renovation phase, possibly the gatehouse. None of it is fairytale-esque. Just, what needs to be done for the castle.
9:15 a.m.
The pool crew arrives with a small team to fill in some of the trenches they’ve dug and open a new one to carry the rainwater over by the coach house. Sean makes them coffee and chats with them while helping with and overseeing the work. I take the kids: reading, art, an activity book, the occasional hostage negotiation.
10:00 a.m.
We all go outside! Probably the best part of the day. We water the orchard, Sean mows, we water the flowers in the coach house courtyard, and Sean burns off the weeds that keep pushing up through the gravel (relentless intruders). The kids harvest whatever the vegetable garden is offering that day and do lots of running around. Sean and I plant a new camellia, plus kiwis and blueberries and raspberries, and then we get down on our knees and rebuild the stone path in the kitchen garden (which was all but demolished when the septic was installed a couple of months ago).
12:00 p.m.
Sean makes lunch and we carry it outside. Usually chicken sandwiches, some cut up veggies, apples, and, on a good day, passion fruit kombucha (one of our favorite summer staples). We linger after we’ve finished, and the kids run around while we talk.
1:30 p.m.
I head to the coach house to do the unphotographable work: laundry, organizing and folding linens, setting ant traps (the ants have been relentless during this crazy heatwave), cleaning, and then clipping fresh hydrangeas for the vases, because we have guests arriving in a few days (and I’d like them to notice the hydrangeas and not the ant traps).
3:00 p.m.
Everyone comes inside and collapses. Short naps, or a quiet activity like reading, coloring, watching a YouTube video on the best way to remove centuries-old paint, or staring meaningfully at a ceiling beam (usually what I opt for).
4:00 p.m.
I write. This, in fact, is the slot where my Substack essays get written. Sean goes back outside for more maintenance and loads the van for a run to the déchèterie (the dump/tip) or to the donation drop, because this place came with a heroic amount of stuff to sort through (some of it treasure and a great deal of it not). The kids either help him or stage something elaborate indoors.
6:30 p.m.
Sean cooks dinner and the kids sometimes help, and I steal one more hour of computer work (currently: making the information signs for the coach house rental, a job I did not expect to swallow me whole). We eat at our old French dining table. Sometimes a salad with grilled chicken and ripe peaches, sometimes salmon with rice, and in summer, often, Sean’s homemade ice cream, vanilla or passion fruit or raspberry, depending on his mood and the available fruit. Delish.
8:00 p.m.
Cleanup, pajamas, teeth. The civilized machinery of the evening.
8:30 p.m.
More often than not, it is simply too beautiful outside to go to bed, so we head back out into the long summer light and run around a while longer. The light won’t last, and neither will they being this small. Le sigh.
9:00 p.m. (well… more like 10, in the summer months)
We take our time. A lot of reading, a lot of drawing, all four of us together in the bedroom. I usually fall asleep to an audiobook, always fiction. I have enough non-fiction in my real life.
So, no bell rang. Nobody came to turn down the beds or clear away the tray, partly because there was no tray, and partly because the only staff on the premises were already asleep with a chapter still playing. We’ll be up with Mr. Darcy in the morning. That’s the arrangement.
À bientôt,
Kamille
Castle Diaries is normally for paid subscribers. This one’s on the house. If you’d like the rest of it (the renovation decisions, what things actually cost, the parts I can’t always publish for everyone) plus two more Life in France essays a month, you can join us below. Free subscribers get the next chapter in their inbox either way.
There’s nothing founding-father-like about this look, Kamille—au contraire! Very French-looking, darling. ;) I’m curious, how different were these lovely meals when you were in California?
What a quality, entertaining read. The Downton Abbey references were priceless.