Rural Life

It's become cold!

Yes, we have finally had our first frosts.  I have a dim memory of this week back in perhaps 1969 or so when it snowed, and I also remember trying to drive through Flers in Normandy and negotiating drifts six inches deep, so it shouldn't be surprising that we have had two white frosts now.  Of course the cold makes everything very clear and crisp as we settle into a winter anticyclone.  That can make taking photographs a bit tricky.  This one of the turret on the back of the chateau in Baugé came out very nicely.

It was rather more difficult to get a decent shot of this hidden piece of the old town wall and turret, not least as I was down a narrow lane, with little room for manoeuvre.  The contrast with the light is really too harsh.

The weather brings out magnificent sunsets but they bring their own challenges when taking photos - this one worked OK.

The crisp clear air and frost makes it much easier to see the nests of the vile pine processionary caterpillar - last year we didn't have many, but this year this poor tree is riddled with them.  I now need to invest in attracting great tits to the garden as they are the only predator that will take the revolting things on.  I am anti pine processionaries as I am sensitive to their spines, while they can do really nasty things to cats and dogs.  They are a non-native invasive species, brought in with lumber in the past and have spread across the country.

The frosts have finally done for the cristophine vine, and it now looks very sad and ugly.  We will have to unpick it from the frame and compost all that vegetable material, and then feed up the area with manure and organic matter, as the frame is too solid to move to a different spot for next year.  John cut out the last large fruit yesterday, which had got itself well integrated into the netting and had started to sprout.  It will likely be the parent of next year's vine, although there is a spare if needed.

With the autumn and the very short days, farmers are more limited in what they can do - although I have seen quite a bit of twilight ploughing going on recently.  But give a French farmer a bit of thinking time, and their thoughts turn to their grievances and how to get their message across effectively.  Sometimes it's calendars with scantily clad peasants, sometimes it is taking large piles of lettuce and setting fire to them (never entirely sure how that works), sometimes it is dumping large piles of manure in supermarket parking areas (and removing every last trace at the end of the day as it is too good to waste), or spraying slurry on things.  This year, protests have taken a new turn, literally.  They are out in the evenings turning village signs upside down.  It is done carefully, and the markers are still there and easy to see (the village name sign is the start of the 50kmph limit for built up areas, so it is important), but they are upside down.

The argument is that French agricultural policy is upside down as the constraints put on local farmers are such that their products are more expensive than cheap imports from countries without limitations on the use of chemicals, fertilisers, a lower minimum wage for seasonal workers, lower husbandry standards, etc and while people say they want farmers to work to these high standards, they are not prepared to pay the extra so that the farmers can live from their work.  So they want a land free of pesticides, but won't pay the necessary premium for organic produce.  They have a point - Solidarity!!

Well, it is jolly cold in the non-heated extremities of the house, so I am going to call it a day and head for the fireside.  Rebus the kitten is doing well, is a bundle of energy and is going through the rather annoying teething stage - my hands are taking the brunt of it at the moment.  It won't last - or that's what I tell myself.

 

Keeping an eye out for old familiars as well as new experiences

Autumn is definitely prime mushroom time, and while there have been no more cèpes since a flush of them perhaps a month ago, there are loads of fungi popping up in the One Acre Wood, demonstrating the biodiversity and the health of the underground mycelia.  Today there were green ones, purple ones, different shades of brown and a couple that might be compared to field mushrooms except they weren't in a field!  The two types that I illustrate here should not be eaten.  The little brown ones pop up all over the place and can be difficult to spot, but I think they are quite pretty in their own way.  The other ones are deadly but are very beautiful.

If you keep your eyes open, there are still some stunning flowers around.  A neighbour has a passion vine growing on their house and there are still blooms which are so impressive.  The forecast frosts for next week will likely kill them off for this year.  The cyclamen have their last flowers glowing against a background of vibrant foliage which will last through until March or April next year and serve to build up stores in the corms.

Following on from last week - we had the parsnips and carrots in a slow cooked oxtail stew and they were great and made a lovely soup for the following day too, as I cooked way too many vegetables.  The kitten, Rebus, is a boy, and was about 13 weeks old when we got him, so 14 weeks for his vet visit.  He is now chipped and legal and partially vaccinated.  The "operation" will be in January.  

Friday was a day of new experiences.  One of the best trainers of race horses over hurdles in France is based near us, and so we wangled an invitation to visit the stables and exercise area with a couple of owners.  What a magnificent set up!  The stables were large and airy, and the exercise area was discrete and beautiful in a large clearing in pine forest.  We watched about 20 horses put through their paces on the flat - impressive to see 10 at a time charging past at a fast canter.  After a coffee and visit to the stables, we then walked back to the gallops to watch another 12 do work over hurdles and fences.  The enjoyment of the jockeys and the horses was evident, with the particular horse we were visiting very proud to show himself off, be patted, be told what a good and handsome boy he was, and to see his evident relish at stretching out at a comfortable canter.

So that made for a lovely morning.  Then in the evening we hit the town at Chinon, starting with a drink or two at the excellent establishment XV, followed by an extremely good dinner at the restaurant Un Air d'Antan.  This small restaurant does not have an extensive menu - the night we were there, there was a choice of three starters, three mains and three desserts plus a cheese plate.  The challenge with choosing what to have, was that everything sounded so good!  We didn't cover all options, but the two starters we did taste were a mushroom tarte with a small side salad and a pumpkin and chestnut velouté with crushed hazelnuts on top, and both were excellent.  The (probably) home made bread that was served with them was also delicious. 

The main courses were things that had been simmering during the day - while we could smell the Blanquette de veau (which we didn't have), the beef cheek had clearly being cooking gently for hours as it fell apart, while the fricassee of chicken was falling off the bone as it arrived!  The chocolate fondant for pudding was also magnificent.  In the winter there are not many tables, more in the summer when there is an outdoor terrace.  The atmosphere is convivial and it is a bit like eating in someone's front room.  We heartily recommend it.

This morning I finally made it into the poplar plantation at the bottom of the Meadow.  Hunters and boar had cleared a path that wasn't totally easy to follow, but was possible.  The resident woodpeckers weren't too pleased to see me.  Some of the trees are dead and creating interesting feeding stations for them.  I leave you with an image of that for this week.

Have a good week!

 

November musings

This isn't a classic autumn, with lovely colours, sharp, bright days, and cold nights with a log fire.  October was the warmest ever recorded in France, Europe and indeed the world, so the sudden shock of cold that is needed for the marvellous reds and yellows of autumn hasn't happened.  Instead we had a warm and relatively dry October, and since the start of November, we have had two named storms and at least 66 millimetres of rain.  Of course that is nothing compared to up in the Pas de Calais, where they have unprecedented floods, but it is quite enough here.  Our ponds (other than in the One Acre Wood) are filling with water finally and there are waterlogged fields, testimony to the areas of clay pan in the valleys around here.  There is some autumn colour, but really only offered by field maple.

While in the UK not wearing a poppy is near criminal behaviour, here in France, you can choose to wear a cornflower, but have to look hard to buy one.  However, every village in our district has its own Remembrance Parade, before everyone converges at Baugé for the big one.  The local Cadets get to play a lot of jaunty marches and the fire brigade and police need to attend as many of the parades as they can get to, and pity the poor standard bearers for the Anciens Combattants, not in the first flush of youth in any case, and then needing to parade their standards at least twice!  However the stigmata of war are to be found everywhere if you know where to look - small shrines to fallen planes or murdered resistance fighters, bullets and marks in walls, hidden arms in roof voids or skeletons in cellars, and a repurposed Nazi bunkhouse doing time as a garage.  It is therefore more than just the uniformed groups that are out and about whenever the 11th November falls, not the nearest Sunday, but the real day, to remember, to demand the end of war, and to think of those that have fallen.

Despite the lack of frost so far, I couldn't wait any longer and dug up a couple of parsnips.  In my defence I found a lovely oxtail in the market, and you can't slow cook oxtail without a nice parsnip or two and carrots.  That's tomorrow's joy as we have the rest of the cristophine and cauliflower cheese tonight, plus I set the slow cooker off at about 10am for oxtail and at that time today, these beauties were still in the ground!

Although the leaves are still on the trees, particularly the oaks, we made a start on this year's firewood campaign.  In late summer I check round to see which trees are either dead or mostly dead, and mark them up for felling, and then through the winter, we will cut down perhaps five and process them, taking the long dead stuff away, and leaving the lengths of recently living wood stacked in the One Acre Wood to mature. 

Three years ago, the plot next to the One Acre Wood was clear felled and that has made a difference to the light and the wind patterns.  Added to that, the desperately dry and hot summers, and there are actually nearer 20 trees marked for felling.  Yesterday we took a huge one down that had a good position to fall nicely - an easy one - as it has been almost a year since the last felling.  It came down nicely, but with a huge bang - it had fallen directly onto an old stump!  Close inspection of the trunk showed evidence of a fence nail from some 18 years ago, before we bought the Wood.

Another bit of evidence of how mucked up this year is, is a late flush of kittens.  Normal kitten time is the summer, with them being discarded by the road or in woods between late June and mid-August as people go on holiday.  So to find a young kitten, perhaps 14 or 16 weeks old bouncing around the garden and the courtyard in November was a bit strange.  A plea on the local Facebook site did not bring forth a worried owner, rather someone else who had the same kitten bouncing around, two gardens over, and wasn't able to take it on.  Another neighbour had taken it to the vet to see if was identified (a legal requirement here in France), but no.  He also tried to take it to a shelter, but was told no.  The shelter I support I know has run out of space as well.  What to do? 

Well, as an xx year old Mad Cat Woman, what could I do?  Rebus - current gender unknown (but will be neuter as soon as possible) - has landed and made itself very comfortable.  Nibbles is unaware and so not fussed, but Poirot and Zola are unimpressed.  It's going to be a long winter!

Have a good week!

 

Looking for happy things

I find late October and November difficult - the change in the hour doesn't make the difference, it is the generally short length of day, the mess and the realisation that it will be at least 4 months before it warms up again.  Every 10 years, it gets worse, with the lurking of a "significant" birthday.  Twice we have managed to avoid that - but the holidays involved were expensive, and we didn't have as many cats!

Storms Ciaran and Domingos don't help either - I hate the way that strong winds bluster around the house and garden, howling and rattling and shaking.  The amount of rain also makes visits to the chickens and just generally around the garden fraught with dangers of slipping on mud, and of getting wet if I don't time it right.  So I look out for things to cheer me up.

This year, something that just keeps giving are the cyclamen, both the pink ones that have run away from gardens (or have been helped in their mission for world domination by mice and shrews) and the more delicate but wilder white ones.  We have white ones in the One Acre Wood and each year there are more leaves, and now, with maturity, there are ever more places where one, two or a whole clump of flowers poke up between the fallen leaves.  Later, I will drive myself mad counting all the sets of leaves that indicate where there are corms, but not just yet.

The garden escapees are bolder in colour, and stronger flowers.  Between the Garden and the Orchard, there is a disused green lane, which is a haunt of boar and deer, and is gradually being taken over by false acacia.  During the late spring, the hidden garden shrubs put on a fine display of flowers, but at this time of year, the lane is filled with pink cyclamen flowers, hiding among the ivy and detritus, and lifting my heart when I see them.

Today, the sky has been swept clean by Storm Domingo and underfoot is wet and squelchy, so gardening didn't appeal.  Instead, armed with my phone and escorted by Monsieur Clause, I took a long ramble around the Meadow and Orchard.  The phone has an app that is somewhat addictive, which identifies birdsong in real time.  Standing in the sunshine at one edge of the Meadow, I was told I was listening to robins, chaffinch, great and long-tailed tits, a common firecrest and a Cetti's warbler.  I also watched a small group of jackdaw mobbing a buzzard that had the temerity to be in the zone.  The rain has refilled the ponds a bit, or the three I could look into anyway, the access to the fourth was too overgrown.  I fear it is too late for my huge fish, but many other things enjoy the wetland.  Walking back up the Orchard, I found some weird fungi - not as dramatic as Devil's Fingers which are black or red, but still ghostly and strangely disturbing.

The trail camera isn't behaving at the moment, so my only photo of wildlife this week is this huge, orange, flesh-eating, jelly slug.  I had hoped to plant some tulip bulbs in that old WC cistern, but it might not be the best idea I have ever had, if that is what lives in it at the moment!  I'll have to find a plan B.

The big news in the village is that someone has bought the lease of the pub and plans to open soon.  No hint of when soon might be, and sadly they are changing the name of the pub too (I wonder if I could persuade them that is bad luck?), but it will be good to have something happening in the village during the next long, dark months of late autumn and winter.  I'll keep you posted!