Rural Life

January blues

This week saw the (admittedly commercial) unhappiest day of the year - the third Monday in January, when your pay packet has nearly run out, the weather is pants, the days aren't really noticeably longer and your waistline hasn't recovered from the Christmas and New Year festivities. 

Bizarrely it didn't really affect us as being worse than any other day in January, even if it had been decreed Red for electricity purposes.  Instead, it is the sameness of the days at this time of year that gets to me.  In general (this year anyway), days are either cold, foggy, and uninspiring; bitingly cold and bright and faintly inspiring until I get too cold; or wet, muddy, mild, and annoying.  Each type does have it's beauty however, and the wet weather on Friday lead to this rather arty shot, as I stood by the second pond, in the rain, listening for birds.

The foggy day before the rain started, we were in the One Acre Wood, felling future firewood, and I spotted this rather dramatic fungus on old, decaying wood.

As as a point of optimism, one of us trod on this cowslip that was attempting to flower today, so spring will happen in due course.

With the wet and warmer weather, the electricity spot prices are falling, so Red days are behind us.  That means I can have the heater on in my office and work through the files from the trail cameras and start to load things on YouTube.

This week I focussed on the camera pointing up a well trodden path at the edge of the Meadow, lined by fruit trees on one side and a bank of brambles on the other.  Some of that is being removed, but not all, as it is a good shelter (when contained) for birds and small mammals.  There is a path we have punched through the bank of brambles on the left as you look up the hill.  Many of the photos are limited, not least as it was in place during the shortest, darkest months, but it is always nice to see a pine marten posing!

The path is used from time to time by boar passing through on their way to do damage somewhere else.  They may spend the day down in the marsh behind the plantation trees, or somewhere further afield.  The big poplar plantation along the valley has now been felled, so they aren't there, but there are pockets of woodland not too far away.  Family groups will roam quite long distances.

The deer find this point rather appealing as it gives them a few good exit routes and opportunities to keep an ear or an eye out for any predators (hunters in the main) that might be in the zone.

 If you watch this next video closely, you will see there is a deer in the field next door as well!

 

There are birds, as you can see above, in this corner of the Meadow, and not just small brown types, but you do find larger things too. like this flock of female pheasants out for a stroll.

There will be more from the pheasants when I put up the videos from the next camera I brought in, which was placed in the new path to see if anything was using it, other than us.  And I guess that means Spoiler Alert, the pheasants use it!

One of the benefits and comforts of mid-winter is a good log fire.  We have an insert with heat exchangers to the upper rooms in the house, so when it gets going, it helps take the edge off the first floor.  There is a nice fire downstairs now, so I think I will go and sit with it, rather than gazing at a computer screen!

Have a good week!

 

Sunshine and optimism

Everything seems better with a bit of sunshine - so despite needing 15 minutes to chip ice off my car on Tuesday morning before an early site meeting, I still found it in me to be captivated by the gentle pinks of dawn on a bit of fading cloud.  With two sunny (and very cold) days during the week, we could muster a certain optimism and tolerate a lack of electric heat during the day (the whole week was Red, meaning hugely inflated electricity prices during the day for those of us with specific supply contracts).  Certainly this prolonged cold snap has to be good for all the fruit trees as it kills off dormant bugs and gives the trees a proper winter hibernation.

Such frosty starts are also a good excuse for taking arty farty photos of foliage with frost on it.  Everybody does it I'm sure and mine are no better than anyone else's, but this is my blog!

This week brought the first full moon of the year - someone told me it was the Wolf Moon.  Whatever its name, it was rarely visible due to the persistent fog we had for some of the week, but one evening just after 10pm, on my way back from turning on the bathroom heater, I was able to catch an image through the window.

The following day was dark and foggy and very atmospheric when we went to la Flèche for the weekly market.  They are removing all the car parking by the market area, apparently thanks to a consultation with the public who preferred a pedestrian area.  The market stall holders aren't happy, and I expect it won't be used that much other than by the stall holders for relieving bladders (as now) and the local winos (again as now).  Currently it is just a rather depressing and damp work in progress, as le Loir had broken its banks.  This was all a good excuse for another atmospheric photo!

Currently four of the five and a half chickens think that it is the right time to lay eggs, many eggs.  I ought not to bake cakes, but I think I am going to have to, in order to reduce the surplus.  They are also very hungry - here they are finishing off what Bridie didn't eat before they were released (if the bantam wants the pick of any feed, she has to have hers separately or she gets bullied).

Friday was another stunning day, and while cold, it was particularly nice to go out for a stroll and take in the scenery.  It also set me wondering how the old centre of our village had changed, and what someone teleported in from 1925 would see as different (ignoring cars and tarmac).  Sadly my conclusion was that such a visitor would be shocked by the lack of shops and commerce and the lack of children, but would be pleased that there wasn't much mud.

The week ended with the annual ceremony of the local mayor wishing the population a Happy New Year and telling them about what has happened in 2024, and what is likely to happen in 2025.  This is always an interesting occasion, and in years when there aren't local elections, the chance for a bit of bashing of national politics (which is entirely correct this year).  The impact on local life of a bunch of far right and far left politicians being incapable of seeing what is in the nation's interest has cost something like 15 billion euros!  The local knock on effect is to delay a number of projects, including a centralised kitchen to produce the meals for all of the local schools, and determining the level of support for the clubs and societies that help to combat rural isolation.

It was also a chance to celebrate a young man from the village who had taken part in the Best Apprentice competitions and won at Department and Regional level, so got to the nationals (which he didn't win).  His specialism was welding I think and the shiny object was his competition piece.  He received the medal of Vieil Baugé for his achievements.

Because of the cold, I haven't had the inclination to sit with the computer in a freezing room and load videos onto YouTube, so you will have to be content with a picture of a badger this week, in the knowledge that I have nice badger footage to load up during the week, if it isn't all Red!

Have a good week!

 

Getting 2025 underway

We have a rose bush beside the well wall, it faces south and west so benefits from any heat the wall retains from sunlight, and despite a dodgy moment in 2006, when the wall was repointed, so it was cut down to nearly ground level, it has continued to thrive through the years.  it gets mugged each summer by the grape vine, but carries on through and on New Year's Eve, it still had a lovely display of blooms to see 2024 off in style.

So far this year, we have had some 85 millimetres of rain, which makes everywhere soggy and slippery.  The two old clay pits in the One Acre Wood are as full of water as we have ever seen them, and we are hopeful that there will be tadpoles of some sort or other (newt, salamander, frog and toad) in due course.

The fish pond is filling up nicely, but with no rain forecast now for 10 days, it will all drain away again quite quickly I fear.  I am not minded to restock the pond anyway.  But it is good to see it so full again, as it is a welcome resource for the local wildlife.

One winter task we have started, is to clean out and refresh as required the two bird boxes we have installed to attract great tits or blue tits.  They are the target species as they eat pine processionary caterpillars, so we have the two boxes positioned near to a good food source!  Both were used last year, although we think one was abandoned before any eggs were laid, as the nest was very limited.  The other one looks like it was much more comfortable, so was perhaps a good starting point for a few of the local birds.  The nest has now been removed and both boxes will get a quick go over with a weed wand to kill off any undesirables, but not so much that they are burnt inside.  Then they will go back up and we'll see if they get used this year.

We have sun at the moment, which warms the heart, and the stones of the house as well a bit.  I'm sure sunset is later today!!  In any case, the sunlight makes us feel better, if not warmer!  Finally we are getting the preferred winter conditions of sunlight and sharp cold, and if the easterly wind (or bise, French for kiss!) would only drop, I would be inspired to strim and prune and do useful things!

Local clubs and societies are also greeting the new year, with AGMs better held in winter when no one has a good excuse to avoid attending.  The Comité des Fêtes had ours on Friday night, followed by the obligatory "verre d'amitié", followed by a bit of a banquet for the volunteers who made it all possible last year, by helping with events.  We had choucroute garnis (not my choice), but didn't start eating until gone 9pm, so sleep was evasive on Friday night as I tried to digest and to cope with the effects of fermented cabbage.  I suspect dishes like choucroute, cabbage soup and kimchi should be regarded as bad for global warming...

Even if the food wasn't totally our favourite dish, such evenings are priceless as we share gossip and good vibes with our neighbours and friends.  They are one of the things that make living in rural France such a joy, and enthuse us to carry on our involvement in the Comité des Fêtes.  Many of the people there had another AGM the following day, though that was only followed by a verre d'amitié and cake, probably quite a lot of cake...  

Now to get through January, planning lots of garden and land management activities, and hopefully doing some of them too!  Two trail cameras have been checked over in the last 10 days, so next week there should be film of boar, badgers and pine martens.  Have a good week!

 

2024 in review

As complaining about Dunkelflaute is probably getting rather boring, I thought I would take the opportunity, in this first blog of 2025, to look back at the year just ended to see if it really was that grey and sad.

It didn't start well in January, with my new found status of orphan, when the world stopped for a while and bureaucracy took over.  I would love to say that all is sorted but French Red Tape and notaires take forever to deal with very simple things and it will be another wee while before I can close the books.

But life does go on and with February, we had our annual truffle fest, a bit later than normal as it took a while for prices to stabilise and for me to be able to concentrate on all things culinary!  I now have some really good truffle staple recipes, so that the failures and the "why did I bother?" moments are reduced.

In March we were harvesting the last of the vegetables sown or planted in 2023, which really was a rather good year for gardening.  The multicoloured carrots were a revelation, although for some reason there were no black ones, even though the seed packet firmly showed that there should be a full spectrum of colours.  The leeks were excellent too, but perhaps a bit too prolific!

It was a spectacularly wet year, and at Easter, there was the added excitement of potentially excessive and damaging floods in Chinon.  The Vienne rose inexorably, and as la Loire was also in flood, there was nowhere for the water to go.  While there were calls for evacuations, the floods peaked perhaps 40 centimetres below the danger level, but were still very impressive.

May is the peak season for wild orchids and I go mad trying to spot and photograph each bee orchid that flowers on our land.  The challenge is to get the best photo, in focus, nicely framed, and ideally with a gleam of sunshine.  It was quite a long season for them this year and there were some very lovely examples.

The trail cameras were in permanent use during 2024 and there are a few very rich locations for them to capture the wildlife that share the space with us.  Summer months also bring babies, and this year the coypu (sadly) did very well, bringing up four cubs, or whatever you call a baby coypu.  Ugly, that's for sure, even if most baby animals are cute.

While much of the gardening in 2024 was disappointing at best, we did get a very good harvest of onions for the first time ever.  We are still eating them indeed, which is pretty impressive.  I don't know why they did so well - the shallots and the garlic were complete disasters, but that is how it turned out.

August is Comice time, and 2024 was Vaulandry's turn.  I ended up spending a lot of time on the village float.  As part of an overall theme of "the call of the forest", we went for the story of Hansel and Gretel and the gingerbread house in the forest, complete with witch.  The weather wasn't helpful, with rain on the Saturday and overcast conditions on the Sunday, but the final product was pleasing.

September is the annual pig roast for our boule de forte society, and is something we always look forward to.  Once again, we were lucky with the weather - I do remember one year when rain took over and made things a bit odd, but for once 2024 played ball and it was a lovely day.

The year has been wet and there have been quite a few named storms.  Kirk was a particularly unpleasant one, mainly for the volume of water it dumped on us.  In order to attempt to get a sensible reading of the amount of rain, one of us had to empty the rain gauge when it got to 35 millimetres as it clearly wasn't stopping anytime soon!  A field above the land we rent had been harvested but not resown, and there was nothing to hold back the rain water so it took the roadside down.

Gardening was difficult in 2024, with heavy and waterlogged soil, lack of sunshine, lack of decent summer temperatures apart from a week in July, and therefore all manner of challenges to deal with.  The number and size of slugs was incredible and they got everywhere!  This one was trying to get to the last remains of the mango seed I managed to germinate before I evicted it - roughly 4 inches or 10 centimetres long and too big to interest any bird, other than perhaps a buzzard.

The figures are in for sunshine in 2024, and the local press talk about a deficit of 400 hours of sunshine across the year.  I did count at one stage towards the end of the year and got to 17 days without a glimmer of sun.  It's not healthy and we keep checking ourselves for rickets!  December ended the year in murk, but we have seen the sun in January, so let's hope for a brighter 2025!

Happy New Year!