Rural Life

Day 1 - the serious stuff

I know you are never supposed to apologise over this sort of thing, but I had hoped to get the Comice story out there earlier than this.  I blame a combination of being VERY tired indeed, extreme heat, the challenges of getting a new van, and a sort of general maiaise (not Covid - but we did check yesterday, we were so off) for not getting down to it sooner.

Friday night wasn't the best night's sleep as we worried about the podium and the rain.  We were on the field promptly, but the forecast was still dodgy so we didn't unwrap things until about 10am when we could see no more clouds heading our way.  There were also magnificent arrangements of dried grasses and grains, some with a bit of red paint to them, to give a classier air to the stage, in time for the hour and a half of speeches to open the event.  I caught up with those on a live stream on Facebook - I really could not be bothered to wait around to see them in person!

The serious stuff on the Saturday morning, other than the speeches, is the Young Farmers' Ploughing Competition - held on slightly adjacent fields, and with its own bar, so the ones on the field were quite quiet.  I don't know much about ploughing matches, so I didn't go and watch.

For those of us on decorations duty, the other thing to do was to ensure that the tables were decorated and ready to welcome diners - there were 580 metres of tables, each with benches on either side, giving a theoretical 1,400 covers.  We certainly needed them on the Sunday!

There was a certain nostalgic feel to the event - while guingettes are becoming popular again, they were more of a 20th century phenomenon.  It was therefore only right that there were a lot of old tractors knocking around and also a few other old implements - this is the chain oil application end of a two person chainsaw that was demonstrated a few times over the weekend.  It did the job, but it was loud, fixed and needed two people to make it work.

Day 1 is also about livestock, with a cow competition and a Percheron competition (a local breed of heavy horse).  The cows and goats were mostly only in for one day, although a few came back for the second day, just as an interesting feature.

While we weren't there too long on the Saturday afternoon, I did insist on going to see the Percherons.  The mares are so beautiful, and the foals often behave so badly!  A bit like a Lippizaner, Percherons are generally born dark and as they grow older, take on a grey white colour.  They are good work horses - sometimes they are used by loggers to move tree trunks around as they do less damage to the soil than machines - and also make reasonable saddle horses for the portly with long legs and supple hips!

After that, we went off to feed cats, water plants, eat food and rest up as Sunday would be a long day.

The Sunday story should be available during the week - keep an eye out for it!

 

So much to do, so little time!

It's the final straight before the Comice.  Most days this week have been taken up doing "stuff", but unless that stuff is already out in the streets and fields, it is embargoed.  The weather has meant less progress has been made on some aspects than we would have liked - the wind and rain made working on straw bales nearly impossible.  It was possible to progress items that will be installed on the fields in due course, as we are working on them in a disused piggery, so we have shelter, power, space and quiet (unless we have a bluetooth speaker with us to blast out radio).  And when I say we, it isn't just John and I, it is all sorts of other people, including my next door neighbour's granddaughter, getting involved.

Next week I will find links to blogs I have written on previous Comices (Comici?) to show what the fuss is all about.

When not working on decorations, I have been keeping an eye on the new trail camera.  The boar are still around and a deer or two have passed by - they look rather odd from a higher angle!

On Thursday, I caught a different strange animal on the camera - one that I would not expect to see on our land before September.  I wasn't delighted, but I think I remember seeing a couple around this time last year too.

We think that the cristophine might be contemplating flowers - today there was a slightly different growth on a couple of the main stems.  It has grown another three feet or so in a number of directions so there is certainly enough oomph in it to think about flowering and fruiting I would suggest.

The sweetcorn got a real battering in the winds during the week - two named storms at this time of year and this side of the Atlantic is a bit odd.  While we were not near the strongest gusts, the gaps in hedges and trees funnel the wind in weird ways.  The big fields of maize are closely planted and dense, while our wee area of sweetcorn is only three rows deep, but it has all survived and the silks are out and starting to turn brown, which is good!

Digging up the week's potatoes, I met one of my garden helpers.  From the size and shape of her, I think she has been doing very well on slugs, and certainly none of the potatoes have slug damage, so I think she is rather effective, if not the prettiest person on the plot.

Anyway, I must now go and deal with a rather pleasing problem.  Back in the days before Brexit was even considered, my mother in law bought us a Victoria Plum tree, to take the place of the medlar tree that didn't seem to like our garden (shame as the flowers were gorgeous).  It wasn't cheap and we had to source it in the UK, as they aren't a thing in France.  Since then we have nurtured it and protected it and been rewarded with at best a dozen fruit in a season, and only if we can get to them before the chickens.  This year is different.  This year it is loaded and we have supports under many branches to help it cope.  This afternoon I have promised myself I will make a batch of plum crumbles for the freezer, as well as one for tonight, so I'd better go and pick and stone some fruit and get baking.

Have a good week!

 

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!

 

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!

 

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....