Noé came to us in early July 2025 with his two friends, Zac and Baptiste. Initially, the plan was for them to come just for one week to pick up about a kilometre of large, old hardwood fence posts from our smaller farm, cart them all back to our principal farm, and chop them up into manageable firewood. What ended up happening was that they
… read more finished this job in lightning speed, including immaculately cleaning out the old woodshed and stacking their chopped wood as if it were an art installation.
By the end of the week, it was quite clear that we didn’t want them to go anywhere, and they, thankfully, didn’t want to leave. They ended up staying with us for three wonderful, seriously fun and highly productive months throughout winter (with fires burning every night and wood stores continuously restocked) and into spring.
Turning to Noé specifically: Noé is a beautifully mannered, well brought-up, polite, hard-working and mature young man. He’s an absolute delight to have around. He arrived speaking a beginner level of English but is returning to France with a rock-solid understanding of everything that is said and an intermediate to advanced level of communication. I think this is largely due to his love of conversation and storytelling (and he’s a great and very entertaining storyteller).
Some of his other jobs during his time here included: repairing panelling on one of our worksheds; replacing hinges on a door in the garden shed; cleaning my car inside and out; moving a huge number of boxes and pieces of furniture to storerooms (including up and down very steep staircases); bringing all the contents of the barn at our smaller property to the barn at our principal property; taking a ute load of wood to our beach house and stacking it; then dead-heading all of the protea bushes in our garden there and bringing them back to the burn pile on the farm; clearing the working farmyard and building/burning a bonfire there; catching and releasing a possum that was up in the roof; and taking numerous rubbish bins to the local transfer station once a week.
Then, on top of all of these time-consuming and extremely helpful tasks, probably the two greatest gifts Noé gave us were:
1) Using his advanced carpentry skills to completely renovate an old bedroom with an existing but decommissioned ensuite (now known as The Frenchies’ Room). One thing our old homestead is short on is bathrooms, so we now have a completed, stunning guest bedroom with a feature wood-panelled wall and matching ensuite cabinetry, a new mantelpiece, new bathroom fittings, an immaculate paint job, plush carpet, and the bed moved in — making it fully functional just a day before the boys went home to France.
2) Transforming what had always been the old attic and roof access space into a beautiful living room with a mezzanine bedroom. It’s truly incredible. Fully insulated, with repurposed old Victorian hinges on cleverly designed door hatches for continued roof access, the space is now lined with wooden panelling. It has a built-in staircase up to the mezzanine bedroom area, a feature wall to match that of the renovated bedroom downstairs, and well over a hundred years of dust washed away, resulting in a warm, cosy, self-contained area that’s worthy of a magazine spread.
Noé is, without a doubt, a perfectionist with an excellent work ethic. To add to his brilliance, he is also a talented artist and drew us a beautiful picture, which we’ve had framed, and it will hang in The Frenchies’ Room. He also sings beautifully, and we were regularly serenaded in the evenings, in front of the roaring fire, with Baptiste playing the guitar. And he plays a mighty fine game of Rummikub.
So, basically, Noé is totally awesome — and if you are reading this review because he has applied for a position with you, just say yes. You’d be completely crazy not to! We are sincerely going to miss all three fabulous Frenchmen. They’re the best and will always have a place to call home here with us. I know we’ll see each other again.
Thank you so much, Noé, for all of your hard work — we’ll miss you. x
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