Rural Life

Respect for farmers, and other gardening moments

Last autumn, with rising prices, and war in the East (still going on of course), we looked at ways to protect ourselves from some of the worst possibilities and knowing how much the chickens eat, we thought growing our own might be a good idea.  We had a strip of not exactly the best vegetable plot that didn't have anything in it, and sacrificed half a yoghurt pot of "blé" or chicken grain to the experiment.  Germination was OK, not brilliant, but then the autumn was quite dry really and it is quite possible that local critters helped themselves to some of the seed.  As it wasn't sown in rows, and was also pretty densely distributed, it was nearly impossible to weed, and I defy you to distinguish between wheat, barley, oats and grass.  So we let it do what it wanted, didn't water it, didn't weed it, but did talk to it.

Today I sweltered in the hot morning sun to harvest the grain.  It was hard work as it needed secateurs and as I cut each handful, I then had to triage out the weeds, the grass, the false oats and the heads of wheat and barley that had no seeds in, had been eaten or had gone a bit mouldy.  The resulting harvest is shown here:

Of course, 90% of it is straw - useful for chicken bedding except ours sleep on a broom handle slung across the run.  Then another 5% of it will be chaff, assuming I can get it off somehow - winnowing is fine in principle but, well, you need to have it all broken down a bit first!  So 5% of it will be grains that the chickens may or may not eat, depending on how bolshie they feel - perhaps 3 yoghurt pots or 2 days?  Was it a worthwhile experiment?  I'm not so sure - but lots of learning obviously.

A farmer will sow into drills, having prepared the land rather better.  She will have proper seed rather than repurposed chicken feed, but it will be on the land for 7 or 8 months.  And it can't be any old rough bit of land, or the plants will not grow strong and true.  Timing the harvest is a matter of keen judgement - too early and it will not be ripe, too late and critters will have taken a good portion, and add the weather into the mix, particularly unpredictable storms - not to mention when you can get your hands on the combine harvester and drivers to actually do the harvesting (they are mostly owned by co-operatives or contractors).  Growing grain isn't as easy as it looks!

Carrots can also be a bit tricky but ours are looking OK in between the parsnips.  Not too many parsnips - I think there are about 14 in the mix, but that might well be enough if they do well.  The carrots are a mix of colours, although knowing my luck, it will be the orange ones that make it!

 
 In an excess of hope over reality, I buy cheap bulbs from Aldi, and sometimes I remember to plant them in good time too.  This year I got a packet of fancy gladioli, and at least three of them have come up true and are flowering!

Something that we don't plant, but we don't weed out either is stonecrop and it just lurks around being dull.  This year it has decided to flower and is looking very pretty on the steps to nowhere, guarded by Winnie the Gargoyle, who is also supposed to stop intruders.

Limited action from the trail camera this week as the WiFi watch had run out of juice today, but it is always nice to see the hare passing through.  When passing in daylight, you get some decent action shots too!

Have a good week!

 

Something of a passive week - and the earth moved

Modern cars are marvellous - when they work.  I love my Peugeot 2008, but he has an awful lot of bells and whistles, and he is very communicative.  His latest communication was that the level of additive in one of his filters was dangerously low and I needed to do something about it.  Of course, with bells and whistles, you have to take the car to a garage to make any sense of it, and I have a quote for putting said additive into the required spot, but from 10 days ago, when the car started to tell me this, the garage couldn't actually put said additive in until sometime next week.  I was sent away with my quote and dire warnings about keeping my kilometres to a minimum as a problem would be even more expensive to fix (I believe them as a replacement wing mirror (new) was 650€ - I went previously owned).  Anyway, that meant that I got to play on public transport for my trip to the big city (Angers) this week for my rendez-vous with my rheumatologist. 

It was actually quite fun and relaxing letting the bus take the strain.  At a higher level, I could see over hedges and across fields that I can't as a car passenger, and shouldn't as a car driver.  The journey took about the same time as it would if I had driven myself, although the wait at the bus stop for it to arrive added on time.  it was less stressful as it wasn't me driving and of course I didn't have to find the entrance to the car park I use that seems to move every time I visit the city.  Overall a positive experience, and as I had to wait for the return bus, I could sit in a café and enjoy a pot of tea,  watching the world go by.

The big event in our village this year will be the 148th Comice - a sort of village fete/agricultural show/fertility festival/excuse for fun and games all rolled into one.  Most years I do a blog about floats and animals and the like, if you look back through August posts.  Since November last year, I have been part of the Decorating work party.  We have brainstormed ideas, then spent happy Thursday evenings making bunting, lots of bunting, panels with music, panels with silhouettes of dancers, templates for painting silhouettes of dancers on covered straw bales, bunting (did I mention the bunting), and table decorations for the sit down meals.  On Friday there was an open meeting to engage even more volunteers - an event like this needs about 240 volunteers in the run up and over the weekend of the event, and for taking stuff down too.  That is in addition to the municipal staff who have to do the 'at height' bits, and the farmers who provide the fields, the straw bales and other more arcane services.  These two photos are unashamedly nicked from the Comice Facebook page, while you can find more on the website.

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Along with most of western France, we have been on orange alert today for storms - it's been hot, consistently hot, for about 3 weeks now.  Not the seriously awful 35 - 42ºC we were going through this time last year, but consistently 28 - 31ºC in the shade.  Last week there was a bit of rain, which drove up the humidity to seriously unpleasant levels, bringing on a heat related malaise that I never want to experience again.  This morning was a bit cooler, but this afternoon the promised storms hit.  We reckon about 12mm rain here at home (probably more at The Shack as it is a bit further north and on the track of the storms), and for a while, a more comfortable temperature, but it will take a while to cool down the inside of the house.

And then of course on Friday, there was the earthquake - no pictures of that!  But at 18:38 on Friday afternoon/evening, as I was sitting perspiring on the sofa with a cat at my side, there was a bit of noise, and the sofa seemed to wobble.  I thought that there had been a particularly overloaded tractor and trailer going past, or wondered if the structural integrity of the sofa was about to fail.  Social media soon put me right.  We are so pleased we got the chimney fixed last year, or that would have come down I think.  Anyway, no damage hereabouts, although people are blaming poor internet and dodgy electricity on it.

The trail camera has been rotated about 90º to the west, as something was setting it off in the early morning, but with the rising sun falling straight on the camera, I had no idea what it might be.  I think this is the culprit and it is not one of ours!

The stag is out and about quite a bit, always handsome to see, and doesn't he know it!!

While the boar have been busy doing what boar do, at least twice a year, and then brought the latest batch to visit.  I have got a nice little video, but with the storm bouncing around making internet connections a bit hit and miss, really couldn't be bothered to fight the fight to get it up.  Perhaps for next week.  But here is a cute, stripy person.

And of course, not just one....  Have a good week!

 

 

 

Kitchen garden progress

Summer arrived with a bit of a rush, with temperatures building significantly during the last week and it also got heavier and more humid as the days went by.  Friday was agonising, as it was so sticky and hot, and while the clouds gathered, there was no rain during daylight hours.  This wasn't the case at Chinon where they had 40mm in an hour and one of the popular pubs got flooded!  All we had was this until late in the evening, when it finally started to rain - not vicious downpours but nice steady soaking rain - 10mm in all chez nous.  We could have done with more, but it did help to top up the water barrels.

Of course, when it is hot, and you get rain, a lot of it tends to evaporate again, making the air even stickier than before so Saturday was a write-off - given over to sitting flopped and moist, complaining that my phone screen wouldn't work with wet fingers.  We fed the Cats in the Country, but even walking around the plot to admire what a bit of rain does was nearly too much for us.  It did help the ancestral ponds a bit and the carp seemed somewhat happier, but it wasn't a long term solution for them.

Today there was a cooler breeze from the north west and it was possible to work in the plot, picking things, pulling things up (so much easier when the soil isn't doing an impression of first fired clay), planting things and thinning seedlings.  We got off to a very slow start really on vegetable gardening this year, not getting any potatoes in before Easter, not setting off any seeds until May, and not really having a plan.  To some extent we have caught up although courgettes will be late, and butternut squashes even later.

This bed has the overwintered broad beans in it - those sown at the end of November are nearly done and I have cleared a third of them.  Those sown at the end of December are just coming right.  There are also red onions, black mangetouts, shallots and white onions, as well as the courgettes I planted today, four aubergines and three chillies I bought at a car boot sale in early May and six tomatoes rescued from Aldi.  The soil is pretty heavy clay so hard work.

The next bed up the hill is mainly given over to potatoes this year - second earlies.  But to the right there is winter wheat we sowed in the autumn when we were worried about the price of chicken feed, while to the left and right by the potatoes is a line of carrots (mixed colour heritage) and parsnips.  In a separate bed to the left of them are this year's attempt at sweetcorn.  As last year was an abject failure, we aren't holding our breathe, but 40 out of the 52 stations sown are up and I will fill in the gaps, or attempt to, by transplanting the extras as I sow two seeds per station.  It may work, it may not, but 40 sweetcorn should be enough for us!

The next bed is the one that is highest up the hill, with quite light, shallow soil, and is the one we have used the least.  It is still a bit of a work in progress.  On the left, it is given over to butternut squashes, while on the right, we have the bean pen, where we are starting to sow borlotti beans - there are 29 up so far on the far right and John sowed a load more today on the left.

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I'm rather proud of the butternut squash plants which I grew from saved seed that had been sitting around in not the best conditions for a couple of years or so.  The root balls had nicely filled the pots without going totally mad.

A new experiment this year is growing a christophine or cheyotte - a tropical plant with nice fruits that make a good gratin and the plant has a climbing habit, hence the posts and wires.  The leaves look worryingly similar to bryony, but the fruits are distinctly different - a small green squash, somewhat pear shaped but a bit flatter and with a bobbly skin.  No idea if it will work here in the Loire Valley, although the fruit this grew from came from a polytunnel up the road in the Sarthe.

Finally, for those that made it this far and don't really have an interest in growing vegetables, here is a photo of a handsome fellow who walked past the trail camera this week!

Have a good week!

 

Summer has arrived.

There is a massive and stable high over the British Isles and a depression in the Mediterranean, and in between, here in northern France, we are enjoying summer conditions, and have been doing so for two weeks now.  It's good for the hay crop but not so good for germinating fodder beet I gather.  It is actually marvellous at the moment for getting seeds to come up.  Last weekend the big excitement was the hourly popping up of new butternut squashes and courgettes, while this weekend the excitement is over jalapeño chillies.  Over at the Plot, heritage carrots came up in a week and parsnips are showing their first seeds leaves after two weeks, while nearly half of the sweetcorn sown last week is now up.  All this makes me feel very good.  In addition, the roses are fabulous - here is a magnificent one called Orange King, bought as a memorial to a much loved ginger cat.  Last year it had perhaps 3 rather dingy flowers, this year it is amazing!

The wildflower meadow is now definitely past its best, with the oxeye daisies nearly over, the linseed gone to seed, the pink clovers done, the pretty orchids mostly faded and the lizard orchids taking over in their rather dull fashion.  In a couple of weeks, we will need to think about mowing the meadow to keep undesirables at bay (old man's beard, bramble, small cherry trees), spread the seed from this lot of flowers and allow a better growing environment for the late summer and autumn flowers including field scabious.  At the moment, the knapweed is still pretty spectacular where it is to be found, and some late bee orchids provide a bit of interest in the shade.

The trail camera has had its batteries boosted and I have spent some time starting to go through the downloaded files - but it takes an age to work through the video files to decide what is worth keeping or not, and I have to be in the right mood.  There was no doubting that this rather nice clip of Woody doing his thing in the spring was worth keeping!

There was a pretty definitive viewing of the coypu too - he has a look to my mind of a stuffy colonial colonel wandering around chuntering to himself, but perhaps I am influenced by the old Animal Magic series and thinking what sort of voice Johnny Morris would have put to this fellow.  

It is always a joy to see the hare, and with the long evenings and the current placement of the camera, you do get some rather sweet close up videos such as this one.  That nose!  Those ears!

I think this is also a hare, but the eyes are a bit different.

Other old friends (fiends?) are back in the zone too - our chums the boar are back and making a mess in one of the ponds.  The pond with the fish, so I would prefer it if they didn't make too much of a mess, those poor fish have enough problems to cope with at the moment!

Again, rather nice photos as the light was good when they were passing through at 8:45pm one evening.  I'm glad I wasn't there to see them, but then I guess they wouldn't have come through if they thought I was there!

Anyway, it is time to enjoy a summer afternoon in the garden under the abri, as we spent time getting the cover out, mended and installed for the summer yesterday.  Sing along to the Kinks - Lazing on a sunny afternoon, in the summertime!

Until next week....