Rural Life

Normal service is resumed

In fact, as I really need to cover two weeks of excitement and rural stuff, this could be a bit longer than normal!

The week Huguette died and the week after were mostly lovely autumn weather.  This meant I could do a few useful autumn things like make jam.  My Mum's tree was about the only peach tree with much fruit on it, and as they are very dark fruited peaches (almost black if you get a good one), the resulting jam was a rich, dark pink colour.  We got 12 and two half pots of jam, both half pots have already been eaten, plus five jars of quince jelly from the tree in the garden (no photos of the jelly though).

Today has been spent gathering in excess of 150 kilos of juicing apples for our appointment at the fruit press tomorrow.  We could have gathered more, but a couple of years ago we discovered the joys of single variety apple juice - pretentious, nous?  Anyway, we wanted to do that again, as the juice from these apples (probably Canada variety or similar) is not as sweet as a mixed variety juice can be.  You know what next week's blog is going to be about therefore, but here is a tree before it was picked, and here is our helper.

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Huguette wasn't the only one to leave us in September, with a close neighbour also bowing out.  His house is now shut up while the family wait for the French equivalent of probate to be sorted out, but the geraniums he tended outside his house are still going strong and a lovely memory of him.

September is a good month for views if the weather is suitable.  We had a run of magnificent sunsets, so after a bit of fiddling, I managed to get my camera phone to get this image, which is pretty dramatic I think.  Morning views of the church are much easier, although the angles are wrong to avoid the neighbour's laundry.  Why not wait for a day with no laundry?  They don't exist, even when it is raining.  I think they don't have wardrobes, so the clothes line is a place to store clothes they aren't wearing.

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The badgers at the Wildflower Meadow are getting prepared for winter.  They have cleaned out tunnels and done a bit more excavating - probably without planning permission.  As the ground where they live is pretty chalky, it isn't subtle when they decide that set maintenance is what needs to be done.  If you look closely at the second photo, you can see paw prints in the excavations too.  

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As the fruit comes to an end, nuts start to catch our attention.  At the Garden, we have three big trees, then there are another four in the Orchard, and a couple more on the edge of the Wildflower Meadow.  We suspect that if we stopped doing any maintenance, the whole area would be taken over by elderberry, walnut, bramble and old man's beard.  Anyway, the area below the good two trees in the Garden has been close mown to make it easier to collect them, while it is possible to see them starting to emerge from their cases on the low branches.  I picked up 5 nice clean nuts this afternoon, but that is just the start!

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The weather has now turned, after the amazing sunshine and clear skies.  Soon I will be ripping up the sweetcorn and the faded tomato plants, trying to ripen off the small butternut squashes and thinking about sowing broad beans for next year.  It feels like we haven't really had a summer this year, and that autumn has been with us for a couple of months now, with cyclamen in the lawn, and falling leaves.  The rewards of autumn are of course sweet chestnuts, fresh walnuts, mushrooms and preparing for the year end festivities.  I expect to be making Christmas puddings next weekend - watch this space!

 

 

Homage - Huguette Gallet

Our village lost a bit of its sparkle last week, as one of our great characters and a good friend left us.  There is a gap in our lives, and I felt it appropriate to write about her today rather than any nonsense about vegetables and fruit.

Huguette Gallet was born in June 1938, and didn't have the easiest childhood.  Both parents died while she was still very young and of course there was the War, the German Occupation and then the years of reconstruction.  She was adopted by a local family and grew up in the area.  She was by all accounts a bit of a handful, but also worked hard to earn some money from as early as she could.

She married twice.  With her first husband, she had two children, a boy and a girl, and with her second husband, two more girls.  She was widowed both times, but her second husband only died about 8 years ago.  As well as four children, she had lots of grandchildren and a few great grandchildren too.  Raising four children was hard and expensive and she worked and tended the kitchen garden and raised chickens and rabbits for eggs and for meat.  She also worked as a dinner lady in the local school.  She seemed to know everyone across all generations, not least due to the school canteen.

She was very fit, despite a couple of accidents over the years.  Even before we met her, we heard stories of her being asked not to train next to the school children as she was beating them, and how she ran a goat into the ground (possibly both apocryphal).  She led an informal walking group on a Sunday morning, and that is how we met her, and through her, an awful lot of other people too.  She was our "open sesame" to French society.  From 2007 we walked between 5 and 12 kilometres with her every Sunday, and through her, got to know all the highways and byways around our village.

She was also an intrinsic part of Friday night Beer O'Clock, as she would potter along most weeks.  If we were with other British people, she would sit and nod along to the conversation, enjoying the company if not always what was said.  If we were alone, we would chatter and she would kindly and tactfully correct our French and share her knowledge.  If she was there with family, we were included in the company and conversation. 

She was inclusive.  She was kind.  She loved animals.  She picked up waifs and strays, both animal and human, and tried to help them where she could.  She was musical.  She was energetic.  She was a member of the Comité des Fêtes with us, she was also a member of the local Heritage group.  She was mischievous and cheeky.  She was a ray of sunshine.  I will miss her.

 

 

Time to reflect

Autumn brings certain pressures, like doing everything in daylight that needs to be done in daylight (it is getting horribly close to the equinox), making all the jam, jelly and juice before things turn, getting stuff into the freezer, fire wood and getting the chimney swept, lifting produce and enjoying heritage open days (next weekend in France).  It does also mean that there is a bit less pressure on preparing things, while grass and some weeds at least are slowing down.  So our Sunday morning marathon gardening stints are getting shorter, and once the midday curfew for loud engines sounds, we can actually take time to reflect and enjoy the hammocks and see what is/has been working.

We are currently enjoying our sweetcorn harvest, although by this time in a fortnight, it should all be eaten or in the freezer.  The little bits get fed to the chickens.

We are coming to the end of our third season working the Garden at The Shack.  About 30 months ago, it was all like this - impenetrable scrub.

We now have three large potager beds, which can now be rotated reasonably well, so back to potatoes in the bed that has corn this year, corn and beans into the middle plot and aubergines, brassicas and peppers, plus broad beans in the top plot, which I have just emptied (haha - there will be more hidden I'm sure) of potatoes.

Then we have a number of leisure zones - the hammock zone, the sitting and being drooled on by cats zone, the place where the picnic bench will go if I ever spot a cheap one in the sales, and the shaded area under the walnuts for high summer.

At the top, by the redundant spotlights, we have the developing flower border with the Fergus Memorial Rose and all sorts of rescue plants, plus a load of annuals that I hope will self seed, but if they don't I will add more seed next year.

Of course scrub will continue to do what it does and grow and encroach into the tamed areas.  That first picture of dense scrub has engulfed a storage bunker we put in down there and haven't seen for about 9 months now!  It's all a work in progress, but today we felt rather good about what we have achieved, not least as we listened to many different types of bird chirping and very little else by way of sound.

Now I must go and make jam, as there are three and a half pounds of stoned and peeled peaches festering in a bowl that need my attention.  Until next week!

 

Culture and critters

It was 31 years and 5 days ago that John and I had a bit of a party at Tynemouth Sailing Club.  We try to do something nice each year to remember the day - this year we chose to visit the newly opened Museum of Modern Art at Fontevraud l'Abbaye.  After I visited the market at la Flèche for urgent milk and butter supplies, plus the where with all for a picnic, we headed down to la Loire, and stopped at Cunault to eat and admire the river.  In a normal year, it should be very sparse at this time, and it was pretty empty, but even a couple of weeks ago, it would have been higher than this, due to the torrential rains down in the Massif Centrale.

I think Museum of Modern Art is a bit of a misnomer - it is actually a museum to house the donated collection of a couple of magpie art collectors, including items from 3,000 BC to 1960s.  It was eclectic and interestingly mixed up.  Of the sculptures, most of the modern pieces were awful apart from some rather whacky chess pieces.  There were some nice 19th and 20th century paintings, some good drawings and an awful lot of rubbish.  Photography without flash was allowed, so here are two pieces I liked.

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We hadn't been to Fontevraud since about 2005 or 2006, and it was clear that restoration and renovation have continued since our last visit.  The Abbey Church itself is always gorgeous and impactful.  It shouldn't be white inside really, it was designed to be bright and painted and with vivid stained glass, but after the Revolution it was used as part of a prison, so the decoration was removed.  I think it is more awesome in its whiteness, but who am I to judge?

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Chaumont sur Loire has an annual garden festival and keeps the best bits and sculptures in the park.  It would appear that Fontevraud wants to do the same.  The art installation in a disused stairwell was rather disturbing, and moved with the breeze.  The wooden fort in the gardens was totally bizarre - I mean, it looks like a really good fort for kids to play in, but you aren't allowed within 3 meters of it as it is delicate.  Pointless more like!

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As Autumn is theoretically now here, we have to be ready for the major harvests (still digging up spuds but should be only one more week of that I hope).  In the orchard, those major harvests are walnuts and (surprisingly) apples.  They aren't particularly nice to eat and they don't look particularly appetising either, but they do make really nice, single variety apple juice.  I need to get a slot at the press and then we can get picking!

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As I admired the relatively clear areas under the trees, I spotted movement in the grass by my feet.  Sure enough, it was an example of my favourite bug of the Autumn, so here are a couple of close ups to admire (probably) him.

I hope no one is squeamish!