Rural Life

Apricot Time

After all that lovely blossom in the Spring, we were hoping for a good apricot crop this year, and it is exceeding our expectations at the moment.  If you have any good apricot recipies let me know, particularly things that can be preserved (frozen, bottled, put in alcohol, etc) as we will soon be swamped.

The first weekend in July I was in the middle of a tour of England (partly explaining the lack of blogs recently) and up in the North East.  Now I love Tyneside and I had had a fabulous day with my friends at Howick Hall, but I really didn't need to be reminded of what I was missing at home when Much Beloved sent me the photo below.

I got back home finally on Thursday and we had a go at picking some ripe fruit - well we got enough for a good scoff of fresh apricots for ourselves, but it was on Saturday, on a really hot day, that we had a go at doing a proper pick.  They still aren't quite ripe in general yet, but we got an easy 5 kilos, some of which are now in alchohol, some were stewed and are very nice on porridge, some were turned into apricot fromage blanc pudding (too good) and some are being eaten.  Tomorrow I think we will have to have a major jamming session and give some away.

It's a lovely problem to have - so I'm not complaining, but do send me any recipies you come across!

Pour la Comite des Fetes - Chanson et danse

Cliquez ici pour voir la chanson et danse que je propose pour nous pour la Comice.  C'est a noter que c'est seulement la premiere chanson - dans aucune cas la deuxieme!!

One cat successfully rehoused

Earlier this year, I wrote an impassioned plea about the need to get male cats castrated being as important as getting females spayed - you can read it here.

One of the reasons for this was that a male cat had turned up chez nous following his hormones and the scent of a female cat on heat.  When he arrived, he was well fed, with a flea collar and with the gangley awkwardness of a young cat who hasn't filled out properly yet.  We think he had travelled a long way to get to us - no one in the village knew or would admit to being his owner.

Over the three months he lived in our garden, he lost condition badly (despite being given or stealing some food), he got beaten up by older, more experienced male cats in the area, he lost his flea collar, he developed a huge abscess on his leg and the final straw was that he got shot at by someone with an air rifle.  We spent over 100 Euros taking him back and fro to the vet and feeding him, worming him and giving him flea treatment.

We put up rather pathetic notices with lovely photos in the bakers, the Mairie and the veterinary surgery and I called a number found at the vet's for someone who had lost a cat of his description, but just got laughed at.

It couldn't go on, so we have found him a new home.  He has a new name - instead of Elvis (from the phone call) or Sh*t for Brains (he isn't the brightest bulb in the packet) - he is now Barney.  He goes to the vet on Tuesday to be castrated, and in the mean time, he has the run of a lovely water mill in the country, and two people who love him to bits.  I hope that is the end of the drama and he can enjoy the remaining 5 lives he has left with them.

Here is Elvis when he arrived around us.

 

And here is Barney a day before he went to his new home.

Final (I hope) observations on broody chickens

No pictures this time, just a few comments, as Black is finally out of her broodiness (it took about 5 weeks in the end) but not yet laying again.

• Broody chickens when you don't have a cockerel are a pain

• Going broody seems to go by moon phases

• The first time they go broody, it takes a lot to sort them out, but it gets easier - White had her first bout of broodiness this year, and it lasted about 3 days

• Black positively enjoyed sitting and brooding on top of a chicken wire cloche when I had hoiked her out of the coop, so I am not sure that broody cages work and look annoying to have to keep around the place when not in use

• ISA Browns seem to have had the urge to brood bred out of them, the nearer you go to pretty and old style breeds (White is a Light Sussex mongrel) the more likely they are to try it (a friend's Buff Orpington is also a bit of a pain)

• It seems to be a spring and summer thing

• It causes havoc with your egg production

When I have worked out what moon phase it is that brings on the broodiness, I will add the information here

Farm Gate Milk Prices

What an offer!  Free milk today at the GAEC Croix Rouge - all you have to do is turn up between 10am and 6pm with your own containers and you can fill your boots - so to speak!  But why?  How can a farmer give away milk?

Well, first off, he has a huge container full of the precious white liquid, and the cows are in the fields producing more.  Secondly, the dairy that would collect it has a few problems - various tankers are blockaded into a number of farms around the department, plus there is a lorry across their entrance as well.  Thirdly, the farmer is in any case not particularly minded to let the dairy have the milk at the price they are offering - 208 Euros a tonne or 20 centimes a litre.  With the current exchange rate that is about 18p a litre, but on the natural exchange rate, it is more like 14p a litre.

The per tonne price is the lowest offered since 1982, and just two months ago, farmers were receiving 310 Euros a tonne - as it costs nearer 28 centimes a litre to produce, the expectation seems to be that farmers will take the hit and be happy.  Would any other business be happy to take a 30% price drop and not lay off staff (not easy on a family farm) or dispose of means of production (do we really want cows killed over this?)?  However with little publicity, farmers have once again had to take to direct action.  Our neighbour's son has blockaded a tanker, while GAEC Croix Rouge is giving away milk and while your containers are filled, will tell you at length about the injustices that they face.  Others are filling local ditches and their own urine pits with milk that should be feeding Europe and the world.

But with the drop in farm gate prices, are we seeing a similar (30%) fall in the prices of dairy products in the shops and supermarkets?  No - there is some slight easing on milk prices but you still pay about 1.15 Euros a litre (so someone somewhere is still making nice margins), while highly processed things like Activia yoghurts are in places up to 2 Euros for four, and butter is about 3 Euros for 500 grammes.

So I am with the farmers - pay a decent price for your food and don't compromise on quality and where you can, go direct to the producer!  I am now off to try to make my own cheese, plus sticking to the old favourites like rice pudding, toad in the hole, fish pie... and did you know you can freeze milk?  See below for the local blockade at Montivert - aux armes, citoyens!

Medlar Blossom

Honestly - this will be the last picture of fruit blossom this year, mainly as the medlar is the last of the fruit trees in the garden to blossom.  Other colder areas might have other blossom still to come, but the only things that will flower from now on are strawberries, raspberries and tayberries.

The blossom has been extraordinary this year, and I think it is a combination of a cold winter, as the flowering shrubs and wisterias have been amazing too, and a later Easter, which as Easter is linked to moon phases, and moon phases often govern gardening activity, is another reason why the blossom has been later this year, and therefore less affected by poor weather.

We have also been lucky to avoid late frosts.

But while blossom is lovely, how about the fruit set?  I know there is wide concern about the lack of bees, and I do think that the reduction in orchards affects this, but our apricot tree was buzzing with them at the right time and now the tree is starting to look uncomfortable with the number of developing fruits (I just stand under it doing my best Homer Simpson impersonation and drooling at the thought of all that yummy fruit).  The same can be said for the cherry, thepear, the Worcesterberries, the black currants and the peach.  It is still too early to say for the quince and the medlar.

So anyway, enjoy this lovely picture of a medlar blossom - isn't it pretty?

A more determined broody chicken

Most of the visits to this blog recently seem to be generated from desperate people doing a Google search on broody chickens.  So I had better 'fessup that the tried and tested method of getting the main culprit chez nous out of her broodiness hasn't worked with Black.  We are going to have to find a Plan D!

The first two batches of chickens we had were what I would describe as ISA Browns - the beige jobs that are bred for the battery houses and similar and which you can pick up very cheaply in the local markets.  They do a brilliant job at laying an egg a day for a year and after than the problems start as they are sadly not bred for longevity.  In a previous post I outlined why we don't buy them any more, but one good side to them is that in my experience of our six and feckless Joel's two, they don't do broody.

Last year we had dreadful problems with White - our mongrel Light Sussex, who went broody about every four to six weeks.  But while she is the largestof our girls, she is really rather sweet, and would fluff up when being lifted out of the coop and gurgle a bit, but was otherwise pretty resigned to it all.  Black, our youngest and a possible mongrel Maran, has decided that a stint of brooding is what she wants  to do, and she is taking it very seriously.  I haven't been pecked yet but it is only a matter of time, and I daren't try Plan E (send in the cats) as I think the vet bills would be too high!  Having been locked out of the coop for a little too long (her opinion, not mine), she has found her way under the coop and hasn't been seen for 2 days now.  Tomorrow we will have to move the coop and scoop her out.

From that description, you can see why there is no photo of Black being broody, just one of her before the mood came on her.  For the quibblers out there - you know who you are Roger - yes, I do realise she is much more gold than Black, but only from the front and side.  If we find a way to break this one, I may have to patent it!

Peach Blossom

Last month I published a blog with a picture of apricot blossom - I can now happily report that the tree is totally covered in tiny fruits about the size of a small broad bean.  Assuming no more frosts - which should be the case now, last year's late and disastrous frost was in the second week of April - we will have to think about thinning the fruit as it develops.  In 2003, we didn't do that, and a large chunk of tree got over-loaded with fruit and broke off.  It was a waste of fruit and damaged the tree.

Since then the peach has been covered in blossom, and this morning I lost count of small set fruits at about 40 on the one branch.  As the peach tree isn't very big, I will also have to keep an eye and thin fruit if necessary.  Fortunately Rob the Pig Man reckons that his free range pigs will be very grateful for any fruit thinnings.  It could be necessary with the pear as well.

The final two trees to break into blossom are the quince and the medlar.  Quince blossom should be at its height in a few days time, while the medlar could be a little bit later.  I don't want to second guess the medlar - it is the first year we will have blossom on it - but to my mind the quince is the prettiest of all fruit blossom.

Until I can get a photo of the quince, you will have to make do with peach blossom!

A nice clutch of eggs

With spring doing its thing, the chickens are having a lovely time.  There are still lots of juicy slugs around, plus snails (slugs with a bit of roughage one might say), and the worms are near the surface to have a go at too.  We haven't got much planted in the kitchen garden so they still have the run of the raised beds.  Much as I would like them to give the raised beds a good clear out and get every last weed and seed out, sadly they seem more interested in taking dust baths in them - heigh ho!

One thing that spring seems to bring out in chickens and in chicken owners is concern about broodiness.  While White doesn't seem to have succumbed to the lure of fixing herself in the coop all day every day yet, Black has decided that getting up in the morning is not as much fun as sitting on the odd egg, however as soon as the run door is left open for a rampage in the garden, any fascination with the inside of the coop goes, as she dashes for the choicest dust baths and best slugging terratory.

Lots of people come to this blog looking for advice on how to deal with broody chickens - good luck guys!

Here is a particularly lovely clutch of eggs that our girls laid last month - we hoped they would come up with chocolate ones over the weekend, but sadly we had to make do with shop bought ones instead.

Apricot Blossom

The fine run of weather in England and Northern France has brought things on nicely after the cold and snows of February.  Actually the cold and snows of January and February have done good things for the fruit trees.  Things like fruit trees, black currant bushes and similar actually need a defined period of cold and frost in order to get the real rest they need for the next season.

It looks like all our fruit trees needed that cold spell and have benefited from it.  I have never seen the apricot so covered in flowers, nor the peach for that matter.  The apricot was a good two weeks later flowering than last year, which is no bad thing, and may mean we get some fruit this year - last year we got 2.  Given that the tree is HUGE, 2 is not a result.  In 2006 we had over 200 of the most delicious, succulent and scented fruit you can imagine - memories of that keep us trying, rather than turning the tree into firewood.

The peach tree is a feral, but when it fruits, they are lovely white fleshed peaches with tremendous flavour.  In 2007 we had 35 of the most fabulous fruits, but last year we had none.  The peach tree is currently covered in deep pink blossom, so we are again hopeful.

The pear, cherry, quince and medlar trees are all holding fire for the moment, but look like there will be a lot of blossom, while the Worcesterberries and Black Currants are also looking promising.  The fig looks like a collection of dead branches, but it is still a relative baby.

So let's hope for a good fruit year, so that home grown goodies help us through this boring credit crunch and depression.  Apricot curd is like potted sunshine and is fab on a warm croissant or a slice of brioche.  Here is some of the blossom with a busy bee to help matters along.