Rural Life

The tail end of autumn

Yes, on Thursday Winter kicks in and there are hints of Christmas in the air too, with decorations going up in the streets.  It is really rather bizarre, as the weather is relatively warm still, many trees still have leaves, and not all have turned colour yet either, and I have the most magnificent yukka flowers out too!

In the vegetable garden, the parsnips continue to do what they do, the chard is amazingly lush, there is a magnificent crop of parsley, and the brassicas continue to be munched by caterpillars.  At least the red cabbages are hearting up, but it will be a while before the cauliflowers do the same - about three months, I think.  The token Brussel sprouts are not really showing any development yet, so John may have to cope with bought ones for Christmas Day!  There are also a number of self-seeded curly endive growing around the edge of one of the beds.  I marked their position so they wouldn't get mown, but the markers were moved as they were in the way for mowing... Anyway, they have reappeared and now I need to try to keep them faintly weed free.

Last weekend I changed the position of the trail camera, and after a false start, as I got lots of images of horsetail blowing in the wind, there has been some activity.  Well, when I say some activity, I think it is fair to say that I have captured activity from three species of bird, and five of mammal!  The place I have chosen is clearly popular with many, but now we are into the challenge of cold season images, so that most are at night, and many in fog - some things are really very grainy, but see below for pheasant, pine martin, hare, badger and boar.  As far as photos go, I also have deer legs, but there are a couple of videos of them which make me think that the faun that was born there in the summer is still in the vicinity.

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It doesn't happen as often as it should, but we went out for dinner during the week, to that fine concept, the "All you can eat Chinese Buffet".  Basically, you pay a price, which depends on age and time of day, and then can keep going up for more until you can't eat any more.  The caveat is that if you take more than you can eat, you pay a supplement, which seems only fair to me.  There is a vast range of starters and mains, plus you can take a plateful of raw ingredients and get them woked to your liking.  There is also an ice cream bar, which we didn't spot until we were too full to eat anymore!  The visit had been planned and cancelled too many times to be funny since last November, so it was delightful to finally assuage my need for caramel pork and noodles!

There are many of these across France, and they all seem to be cavernously huge, on slightly dingy shopping estates.  I will probably survive another couple of years before I need to go back, but it was a lovely change!

 

Finally uploaded some videos!

Recharging the trail camera batteries and a wet Sunday morning mean that I begrudge somewhat less (only somewhat) the hour and more it is taking to load up 7 videos for your delight and delectation.  I've not actually triaged all the 298 video snippets from the camera, I've still got a hundred or so to go through, and I have to remember what I have already uploaded.  

Going through all the files does give me a chance to spot some gems that I don't see when I am doing a quick search in the field on my phone.  This first one would not show anything at all really on the phone, but is utterly delightful, particularly if you watch it on a decent sized screen.  The crispness to the jay's face is amazing!

Then there is this fellow - we often hear him being alarmed around the place and occasionally see him flying around in a way that makes you wonder how he ever gets airbourne!  Not the smartest card in the pack, and certainly not native, male pheasants really are rather beautiful.  It's a pity they are only too aware of it!

But really the stars of this blog are the boar.  This sequence of short videos was taken one evening at dusk, hence being in black and white, but shows the sheer numbers in the group that come round our way before the hunting season disperses them a bit.  They are very interested in a pile of walnuts that John collected on a client's lawn.  He proudly presented her with a big box of fresh walnuts, but her horror at finding this present was astounding.  She implored him to take them away, and so he did, and dumped them in the orchard.  We don't really approve of feeding boar and hoped that the badgers and squirrels in the zone might find them interesting, but they never really got a look in, even if they were interested.

 

 

 

All the walnuts are now eaten, and the camera moves today to a new location which is showing a lot of passage marks, so hopefully there will be a nice variety of movie stars for the next month!

 

Work and Mushrooms

Last week I waxed lyrical about the wonders of the cèpe mushroom, and we have been lucky to find a few over the last 10 days so that I have been able to dry a load in the desiccator for use over the coming months, as well as being able to eat rather a lot fresh.  They make a lovely omelette and work well with garlic, and with garlic and herb butter - such a pity that most of the chickens are currently on strike (nothing to do with bird 'flu, more to do with shorter days, getting older and moulting).  This panful was particularly tasty.

The challenge with collecting mushrooms from the wild, once you have correctly identified what is edible of course, is that humans are not the only beings to enjoy a good mushroom.  There is a small insect, which I think of as the "expensive mushroom fly" which can get there first, and there is nothing you can do about it.  Some people will eat fly damaged mushrooms, but I don't.  I will share with a slug, although not at the same time, but i draw the line at flies.  I found this fabulous cèpe yesterday afternoon, and from the condition of the underside of the cap, it was a very new growth one.  I was so proud of it!  Sadly, when I cut it open to prepare it, as you can see, it was riddled with the beastly fly.  I have buried it in leaf litter in the hope that it will spread mycelium and start a new colony, but I'm not telling anyone where! 

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I have a nasty suspicion that this means the end of the mushroom season for this year.

There are other critters out and about that I wouldn't expect at this time of year - caterpillars!  And not just any, but the dreaded scions of the Cabbage White Butterfly.  I have spent hours with the Cats in the Country explaining the difference between a cabbage white and all other butterflies (cabbage whites are good cat food, all others are banned), but they just don't seem to listen and don't spend enough time on brassica patrol.  I don't think this will utterly defeat my attempts at cauliflowers, but it won't do them any good either.  I picked loads off by hand (and got very green fingers as a result) and threw them away to where I hoped they would attract robins and other birds but kept finding more!  Ugh.

It has been unnaturally warm this weekend - even for northwest France, 18ºC is not normal for the middle of November - so I was finally spurred into digging up the last 9 potatoes.  It didn't help that a lot were sprouting again, and I needed to get shot of all the foliage.  It hasn't really been cold enough for storing potatoes out of the ground easily, but at the same time, frost isn't good either.  They were nice and plump, and I knocked off a load of shoots, so hopefully they will be OK.  They are now in a drying rack in a barn, hardening off, and letting the soil dry off them too.  I guess that was another 15 kilos of spuds for the winter.  I also made my first sowing of broad beans - 66 to be precise - in a bed beside leeks and cauliflowers - fingers crossed they all germinate.  I am eyeing up another bed for a further double row as it was a good-sized packet of seed.

There has been no action on the trail camera this week, so it has come home for recharging of batteries and clearing the SD card.  Next week there should be some video clips, when I have had a chance to look at what is there.

So rather than talk pigs and badgers, I will mention the one and only thing we miss from our old life in the UK - cricket.  We left in early 2005, just as free to air cricket coverage was coming to an end.  It did make the move that bit easier, as previous summers would be spent re-caning chair seats in front of the Test Matches, and occasional visits to local venues for Sunday League limited overs matches.  It was a passion, sometimes an obsession even, but selling out to Sky broke my heart and my habit.  There is a spot in the garden where I can pick up Radio 4 LW, and we still have a couple of radios that can pick that up, but any other form of radio gets nasty noises and licence restriction warnings.  So it was a real pleasure to hear that Channel 4 were showing the final of the Twenty20 World Cup free to air this morning, and a nifty app gives us 1 hour of UK TV per day.  Breakfast was taken watching a fine England bowling performance, and I gather they won in the end.  While pyjama cricket isn't my favourite form of the game, it was still a real treat to watch!

Have a good week!

 

Mushroom Time!

I had an excellent time in the UK (thanks for asking), including four days of interesting visits in and around the Broads, catching up with projects and chums.  The V.I.P. visit to the Museum of the Broads was a particular highlight - so many fascinating exhibits I could have spent a day there!  Norwich is always a nice city to visit, although those that aren't keen on spiders probably kept away from City Hall over the last couple of weeks!  Family time was also very special.

I did also visit a full-size windmill but haven't downloaded the photos yet.

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I've not yet been home a week, but have really noticed the difference to before I went away in October.  There has been quite a lot of rain, although it is still unnaturally warm for this time of year.  That has meant that fungi are finally making their presence felt at the One Acre Wood and in the Orchard and Meadow.  The ones in the Orchard and Meadow are interesting enough and meant that we felt it was worth frequent visits to the Wood in case.

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There have been lots of interesting sightings.

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The red ones are interesting as there is a silly rumour on social media that you always find cèpes near them!  Anyway, having a wood that is full of interesting mushrooms makes one a bit paranoid about "visitors" having it away with anything edible.  Before you accuse me of being paranoid, this did happen once - we surprised a bunch of dubious industrial mushroom pickers, challenged their right to steal our mushrooms, which had no effect at all, and the scale of their picking meant we had nothing at all for three years.  So, while the lot of bolets of the left were fine, I did wonder if these other ones had been tampered with!

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We are ultra-cautious about mushrooms.  Some bolets are fine, others taste very nasty, and some are downright poisonous, so we left all these where they were.  But there is one type of bolet that is not confused with any other, the mighty cèpe de Bordeau (or Pennybun or porcini depending on your country/language of preference).  We have those from time to time, and this last week has been a good week!

We've eaten some and we've dried some to keep the joy going through the year, and we also have a couple in the fridge for supper tomorrow - very good in omelettes!

The boar have mostly moved on, but one came back on Friday night in the rain to eat more nuts - the last few are still there, in case she feels hungry again, but with the hunting season now upon us I fear boar and deer will be much more discrete for a few months.  There is more good footage of boar eating nuts and when I have the time, I will get more videos loaded up for all to enjoy.  In the meantime, have a good week!