Rural Life

Harvests and cameras

After weeks of nurturing, watering, weeding and worrying, the first serious harvests are starting in the potager.  We've been digging up a couple of potatoes from the first block of 18, for a few weeks now - well this is the seventh weekend to be precise.  The potatoes are second earlies and were planted in three blocks over a period of about 4 weeks, and the first block are very ready to be harvested.  By taking just a couple of plants a week, we have enough and more for us to eat over the week and don't have to worry about storage and drying off.  The next two blocks will need that level of attention, but that is a way down the line, post-Comice.

Today's basket of goodies includes potatoes, carrots, a few onions that I missed yesterday when lifting the main block of red onions, a couple of courgettes that I didn't cut yesterday and a couple of little gem lettuce that looked like they were thinking about bolting.

We've also had aubergines - I think 5 so far, or it may be 7, and half a dozen courgettes already and of course there are the red onions to look forward to.

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This is only the start too - there are as many set borlotti beans as we had all season last year, and the bean vines are covered with more flowers.  The butternuts haven't yet got into their stride, but there are quite a few female flowers developing.  The tomatoes have some good looking trusses on them - fingers crossed that they ripen and don't get struck by blight.  And there is the cristophine vine, which gets bigger as you watch it and now has a vast structure set up for it to rampage over.  Perhaps one day there will be flowers and fruits too - in the meantime it provides shelter for a couple of tomatoes that I rejected for the main plot as they were runt plants, so have gone totally mad as companion plants for the cristophine.

Another bit of companion planting that we did as an experiment also seems to be working.  Parsnips are very slow to get going, so "they" recommend inter-sowing with something that is quicker off the mark and doesn't stay in the ground as long.  I put the row of parsnips at the edge of the potato bed, so one bit of companion planting I guess.  I sowed parsnips every 4 to 6 inches and in between sowed carrots.  As you have seen, the carrots are doing fine.  Many of the parsnips are also doing very well too and their leaves can be seen over the potatoes and swamping the carrots in places!  They've got months more growing time to go too.

So to the saga of the trail camera.  It developed a fault.  Basically the switch inside the protective shell got disconnected, and despite having had it less than two years, it was out of warranty (I know EU warranties are 2 years - I did point that out to the supplier, but I know when I am on a hiding to nothing).  It had been attacked a few times by boar, a pine martin, a few garden birds and a few hornets, so it had a hard life!  Anyway, I couldn't cope without one, so blagged a discount code off the supplier, who were very good and allowed me to apply that discount to something that was already discounted, and also made sure it was sent through express, so the new one arrived on Wednesday and was installed on Thursday - once I had read the instructions with the help of a magnifying glass!!  We rigged it up in a tree close to where the last one died to see what was happening and test it out.  Boar are what is happening - they must be on their second litter of the year, and they do just love the shallow ponds for wallowing in.  The fish aren't so keen, but as there is little water, despite the rain, the fish are dying off, so I guess the boar can have their fun.

We'll see what more porcine fun appears over the next week.

In the meantime, the Comice approaches at a terrifying speed and I need to concentrate on painting dancers and doing lettering (some of it very big) so that people have an idea what is going on.  I've done the logos on the two arches (photo is of the smaller one), now for the lettering....

Have a good week!

 

Being a good peasant

Apologies for not posting yesterday - I was indeed being a good peasant, and had just got my hands on 4 kilos of very ripe yellow plums - if I didn't jam them yesterday, they would have gone in the new burping barrel, and that would have been a waste.  I had also turned down a tray of apricots in favour of free plums for jam making, so had to get cracking.  But taking the stones out and chopping up 4 kilos of plums takes time, then you have to gently cook them, before adding the sugar and pushing to setting temperature.  Still, we started the half jar today at breakfast, and it was jolly yum, so definitely worth it and you will have to believe me!

And once that was done, I thought I was on a roll, so I spent an hour peeling the tiny shallots for pickling (no photo), at which point it was time to do all the bits for crab and comté soufflé for dinner.

At the start of the week, I was able to enjoy this wonderful vista over a vast field of sunflowers - in general they are nearly over but I was able to catch this field near its best.

Close to, some of the flower heads were huge, and while still flowering at the centre. birds had already started to peck away at the ripening seeds.  I picked out a few myself for sowing next year (just 8) and they were slightly sticky to the touch but fat and well filled.

Midweek I was able to spend a bit of time working in the potager and was able, after doing a bit of watering, to thin out the carrots a bit, particularly those that were quite close to the nicely developing parsnips.  I sowed a sort of heritage variety of multicoloured carrots - apparently all shades between white and black, via yellow, orange and red.  So far those I have thinned have been firmly in the white to orange spectrum, which is a shame as black carrots are so dramatic!

The woodstore by the potager is very useful for drying off crops once lifted, such as shallots, onions and potatoes, before they go to storage or are used.  It has the standard tin roof, ventilated wooden walls and a sandy floor.  This seems to be an ideal home for antlion larvae.  I've not dug down to see what they look like, but we have a lot of depressions which are very characteristic and very intriguing.  If I were 50 years younger, I would probably dig one up, now I am more live and let live.

The week has also been about Comice preparations.  I spent Thursday afternoon in a disused piggery with a laptop, projector and a load of paints, trying to trace the logo onto part of a giant panel.  It all went well until the scaffolding holding the projector shifted just a smidge!!

Saturday was Bunting Day - I helped on the morning shift, stringing up bunting down the main drag of the village to get people in the mood for fun.  It's amazing how lots of small triangles of fabric on a piece of bailing twine can make everything seem so much more festive!  In the afternoon our house got bunting on its façade too, which I can see a small bit of when in the back garden - it's the small things that can give so much pleasure!

Next week I'll try to be more timely, but there is a lot more Comice preparation to do!

 

A few weird and wonderful things

I'm tired and lacking inspiration - the last couple of weeks have been focussed on writing a final evaluation report for a funded project I have been following since 2017 (!).  How do you condense the highs and lows of such a diverse and successful project in a reasonable amount of space?  Rhetorical - no need to come back to me on that.  So yesterday when I pressed the send button at 7pm, I wasn't in the mood to write a blog.  To be honest, I'm not sure I am today either, but looking through the photos of the past week, I did spot some weird and wonderful things, and I share them here.

The black day lily is coming towards the end of its flowering season, but was looking particularly fine one evening this week, with flowers that were almost velvety.  It has been abused for at least two years, living in an old metal beer keg, but seems happy enough.

I've been abusing semper vivums for even longer - they do remarkably well in the funny plastic pots you can get that strap on to downpipes.  There is little soil in there, and when they do what they do, very little way to get any water into that soil as they make a seemingly impervious cover to the pot and beyond.  Then, just occasionally, they go absolutely mad and flower, looking like some sort of extra-terrestrial.  This year's display is particularly fine.

We share our lives with cats, six of them currently.  Nibbles has been with us for 14 or so years, having decamped from living in difficult conditions with a tortured artist who had the hovel next door.  She has certain bizarre traits, one of which is enjoying drinking her water (and the grottiest, dirtiest water she can find in general) from her paw.  A video is better, obviously, but you get the idea.

Once I have finished doing time on the computer at the end of the day, and before cooking dinner, we sit out under the abri, perhaps having a small drinkie-poo, and relax.  We encourage Nibbles to join us - she has hyperthyroidism and is on a drug regime that should sort her out, but the condition has made her a bit lazy.  She also lost a bit of weight so it is pleasing, I guess, that she can put enough pressure through one paw to make an imprint on my leg!

It is hard to get decent photos of moths and butterflies, but I was delighted to get this snap of a tiger moth on our cristophine vine.  It sat there very patiently as I balanced the cat I was carrying at the time, got my phone out of my back pocket, unlocked it, got the camera app going and then took the picture.  Of course, with it sitting still, you only get the tiger stripes and not the vivid orange underwing colour, but even so, it pleases me.

Each evening, when I have done the watering, I got up to the car park over the road, stand on the edge of the field and look out.  If I think I'm not being watched, I might also do a yoga salutation to the sun, but I have to be convinced!  I do always look up to admire the sky - it's a big sky at that point, open to the south and west for kilometres without power lines or buildings, and makes the spirit soar, particularly after a glass of chardonnay.  There was a day where the weather was changing last week, with cloud coming in from the west, with wispy swirls and higher masses all looking like harbingers of something new.

In a normal week, my lack of inspiration would have been solved by something from the trail camera.  Sadly it appears that being attacked by boar and various small birds doesn't make for a long life, and I am having to look for a new one.  But I still have loads of stuff to check through, so perhaps there will be videos next week, or I might just decide to stay away from computers and live life a bit.  Have a good week!

 

Budget bulbs and the Tour de France

I don't follow much sport nowadays - I used to spend much of the summer in front of the TV watching test cricket, but the sell out to Sky and the move to France scuppered that.  The French aren't quite so intent on giving over mainstream TV to sport on a weekly basis but there are a few events that they go nuts for.  Obviously key football tournaments come into that category, as does Six Nations Rugby and I imagine that as host of the Rugby World Cup later this year, that will be wall to wall too. 

There are two events that I follow with a passion though - the Dakar Rally during the first couple of weeks of January, and the Tour de France during the first three weeks of July in general.  We are on day 9 now, and a day where the stage finish is at altitude, finishing with 4.3km of 11% climb going up the Puy du Dome sometime near 6pm French time.  I need to watch!  The area is interesting as it has been blocked off from visitors and spectators as a nature reserve, so my usual chuntering about why stupid people jump out in front of the riders will not apply today.

This is the end of the stage.

We are currently enjoying lots of flowers, including dramatic summer bulbs bought from the Pound Shop in England when such things were allowed, and also from Aldi.  They provide a bit of drama at a period when many of my favourite flowers are coming to an end.

Today at the potager, I lifted the shallot crop - rather disappointing given the size and quality of the start bulbs, but they will make a good couple of pots of pickled shallots which are rather nice with cheese and cold meat.  I transplanted into the space they left, some little gem lettuces that we had set off in a seed bed and were far too close together to do any good.  I'm hopeful as the soil is quite moist, but nothing ventured, nothing gained as they say!

Anyway, I've got a report to write, so just a short update this week. 

 

All quiet here in our bit of rural France

Well, I say all quiet, but the countryside is rarely quiet.  There are frogs that make the most awful noises, sometimes just for the fun of it.  There are birds, so many birds, so many different songs, from the eerie cry of a buzzard having fun on the thermals, to the quiet but intense song of a robin - it sounds so melodic and sweet, but I think in the main they are saying "b*gger off, we want to explore where you are for a feed".  Annoyingly, after the quiet of lockdowns, there are planes, all sizes and at all different heights, from the air force boys who went over at about 200 feet last weekend, through the light aircraft from the local aerodrome, to the jets up high taking people to and from Scandinavia and Portugal. 

But this week it has been the Moisson - the grain harvest, with the combines out in the fields of wheat and barley, followed by tractors and massive trailers to take the grains, then more tractors with bailers to turn the straw into vast wheels, and finally lifts and more tractors with the big trailers to take those round bales away into storage.  It doesn't stop for weekends or lack of light - once conditions are right, the competition and demand for the machines is such that they are on the move 24/7, and bad luck if you are near where they are working overnight!!

Last weekend was fiercely hot and humid too - with temperatures up over 30ºC by lunchtime and not below again until after 6pm.  Two days of it was enough to undo the good that the rain the week before had done to the ponds, and sadly at least one of my fish has expired (no photo required).  It also blasted the ripe broad beans from the second sowing, and as it was too hot to pick them, they too got fried.  We rescued some beans and have sown them in some land that needs a bit of green manure, but whether that will work remains to be seen.  It was a disappointment.  The photo shows the fried out pods along with three carrots from the perpetual rounds of thinning them out, with one almost worth eating!

On a more positive note, and surprisingly with the cooler weather, I spotted a couple of my favourite butterflies yesterday - two swallowtails were enjoying a quick snack on the buddleia.  They are often found on lavender round here, but I've not seen them enjoying the buddleia before.  Of course it was pretty impossible to get close to them so these two photos are the best I could manage.

There was also some fruit!  Yesterday while doing the rounds, I spotted that the mirabelles were ripe, so went back for a bowl and picked all that I could, leaving those with a bit of damage or rot for the local critters, but for once getting some for us.  Enough for a 4 portion mirabelle crumble - wowzers!

We have not been responsible for any looting or destruction, but we have found evidence that it has been going on.  This year's thrush anvil is surrounded by empty and broken shells and it is hard to spot the stone that is being used.  I do love this as a sight, as I am very fond of the thrushes, and they do a good job.  Apart from a couple of well munched tomato plants, so far we haven't had any major snail damage this year to small plants, and this is why!

I like black flowers - I know they aren't natural in this part of the world, but i really enjoy them, even if they aren't really jet black.  This year I succumbed to temptation and bought an exotic petunia (just the one) called Black Glitter - the glitter effect comes from tiny white flecks on the flowers - you can't see that from a distance, but you can admire how happy it is in its beer barrel.  Another that is happy in its beer barrel is my black day lily - this really is stretching the definition but it is how it was sold to me!

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Not quite the grapes of wrath, but certainly very happy grapes and magnificent bunches on our vine this year.  Any marks are due to them being brushed past by a car as we drive into the courtyard.  The vine is loaded with them, so I am looking forward to making large quantities of grape jelly - no point making your own wine around here when you can buy excellent professionally-made wine en vrac (not bottled) for 2,80€ a litre!  Also these aren't wine grapes, but table grapes, although with pips so not polite eating grapes.  The chickens love them too.

On a serious note, the riots in the urban centres are frightening and disappointing.  Looting a carton of milk from your local convenience store that won't open for a while now as the owner tries to repair the damage, and your family have to find the money to travel to another, more distant shop is insane.  Similarly trashing and burning down the youth centre where you happily spend time in the winter and during the long holidays makes no sense.  It has nothing to do with the death of a young man, driving a Polish registered car in a bus lane without insurance or a valid drivers licence, and sadly paying for such minor delinquency with his life.  A minority of people are destroying holidays, livelihoods, neighbourhoods, reputation and ensuring that festivities people have been looking forward to for ages are cancelled.  I hope it stops soon.

Ideally by next weekend, if not sooner!  Have a good week!