Rural Life

There's something in the air!

And it could very well be pollen!  Actually at the start of the week, when it was still cold and a bit frosty, there was also a certain amount of air pollution around too.  But the skies were bright, and while the air was cold, the blue skies and sunshine brought a certain lightness to the heart.  There was a robin singing his heart out in the top of the fig tree (really must bring that down a few meters before the end of March) and snowdrops glistened at the foot of the quince tree.

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Guess what this is?  No, not a dead hedgehog, nor a damp air filter from a lawnmower, nor an exotic mushroom!  It is the seed head from an artichoke that got frosted.  We've left them thus far as the wildlife people say they are interesting to garden birds.  I'm not convinced - the only garden bird that gets interested is Bridie the Freeloading Bantam, and each time she tries a nibble, she wanders off with a really disgusted look on her beak.

Now the weather has changed - we are still plagued by high pressure keeping any real attempt at rain at bay, but it is warmer and the air at altitude is more humid.  There are hints of interesting sunsets, and the warmth is bringing on the spring flowers, including increasing numbers of orchid rosettes.  Today we spotted our first cowslip flowers, while the row of daffodil style flowers are starting to show promising flower buds which are likely to be open by next weekend.

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Apart from broad beans, I know from bitter experience not to get the seed packets out yet awhile, but my mate Loïc at the market at la Flèche sells really good planting shallots, and I can never resist.  So today we pulled up the Brussel sprout plants - John will be munching his way through the few that we grew, while the chickens will get the rest - and I hoed and turned the soil lightly so that it was no longer solid clay.  I also picked out loads of bits of old masonry, which will do as crocks at the bottom of a toilet cistern I plan to sow carrots in next month.  I then carefully planted as many as I could in the space freed up - 14!  The other 10 will need to find a home elsewhere.  The trouble is I was greedy and picked out the biggest, fattest bulbs I could find, and when planting them, they told me they needed lots of space.  The rest of the bed will have red and yellow onions in, which take up less space, and won't be planted for a good month yet.

The broad beans are coming on nicely, while the cauliflowers are being munched by caterpillars.  The leeks will be eaten in the coming weeks and there is a bit of turning to do after which I may well replant the pea towers.

No images from the trail camera this week.  I will be moving it during the week, as today I got some fine footage of marauding hunters, so a lot of things will be hiding or will have moved on.  I am ambivalent about the hunters, as boar are far too numerous, but the way the hunters waltz through our land with dogs off the leash, when we have three resident cats, hacks me off too.  Next week, I hope to have as yet unseen photos and footage for you - but given there are 1,400 unreviewed files on the SD card, it could take a while and be a bit time consuming, and there are other priorities at the moment in our lives.

 

Animals, and the challenge of being a trail camera

After last week's unabashedly food oriented post, it's back to what people seem to be interested in - animals!

The trail camera was at the side of a patch of scrub during December, which brought a lot of "exciting" footage of blackbirds and thrushes turning over leaves, the odd sighting of the pine martin and badgers, but the main visitor was a hare who has a lair somewhere in the brambles and whose front path came out by the camera.  They are such beautiful creatures!

Anyway, fickle me got bored with blackbirds so I moved the trail camera to by a couple of ponds that are at the bottom of the Orchard, and for a couple of weeks got nothing more exciting than a hunter's bottom (fully clothed I hasten to add), so I moved the camera a short way along the path and waited.  Once again I got a fine shot and video of a passing hunter - I really do need to put a warning sign up that they are being filmed.  It won't stop them coming through but they can't sue me if I post the film; currently they could.

Anyway, despite the hunters passing through during daylight hours, the boar are knocking around at night time.

The deer are also around and pass through singly or in pairs.

 

The badgers trundle through - now picking off my phone the videos I want to download isn't easy, and while there is some nice footage, there is some of a limping badger that I wanted to share and this isn't it, but frankly sometimes life is too short on a Sunday!

I hinted that the life of a trail camera isn't totally easy.  Ours is currently a challenge to a Great Tit, and keeps getting investigated and attacked by that.  Have the sound up if you can too!

And given the fact that the camera is a good meter or more off the ground, if it had been a bit lower, it might not have survived this encounter either!

More excitement from the trail camera next week!

 

Winter activity

January is doing what January does - mostly it is cold, sometimes it is wet too.  Anticyclones at this time of year tend to mean that any moist air is trapped at low levels giving annoying, thin cloud, mist and fog, and if the air is dry, you can see for miles but it is jolly cold.  We've been having a bit of both of those, and quite frankly I am fed up with having cold feet, even when wearing my fleecy socks.  But the views can be lovely!

There are of course the hints that spring will happen - birds have been incredibly noisy the last week, and today there were woodpeckers hammering morse code messages to each other, and a thrush dealing with the last of the walnuts and any snails it can find.  Looking down there are many orchid rosettes appearing - they won't all flower this year, but the corms will be building resources - as well as timid snowdrops and the early signs of the swathes of narcissus that will adorn the top of the Meadow in a few weeks' time.  At the other end of the scale, cyclamen corms are rebuilding their strength after a prolific flowering season in the autumn, but the leaves will start to fade as the spring bulbs take over.

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The trail camera has moved and last Sunday, after I had been and downloaded images, there was deer activity.

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This is a particularly cheeky shot!

The badger is also out and about, but only at night!

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Finally, there was also a boar and a fox doing the rounds.

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The past week has also been Truffle Week, but with a few more meals to go, I will save a recipe by recipe account of 100g of best black truffle for next week.

 

Proper winter weather

It's January in the Northern Hemisphere, and despite 2022 being the warmest year on record, we are currently enjoying proper winter weather.  Okay so we don't have snow, but actually I don't mind missing out on the white stuff as I have twice weekly physiotherapy sessions at the moment and getting to those would be so much more complicated if there was white stuff on the ground.  But proper frosty weather and for quite a few days - it's good for the soil, the trees, makes parsnips sweeter and (I gather) Brussel sprouts more flavoursome - well, it has to be good.  The downside is that low winter sun on a frosty day makes for too much contrast on photos to be really good - for example:

On the other hand, honing in on fine detail can be a bit easier, with all that contrast:

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That is very nice carved detail over those windows!

The gardens can't really be worked at the moment, although when there is a bit of thaw, it's quite good for getting persistent weeds out.  It is traditional to slaver over seed catalogues at this time of year, but I have a big box with loads of free seed packets, so no need to buy new, just try to work out somewhere with enough warmth and light to get the seeds growing once March is here - anything sown direct is too vulnerable to chickens, cat bottoms, slugs, snails, being trodden on, being bullied by weeds, birds, drought, frost, flood, and heavy clay soil.  Weeds do remarkably well.  We had 5 seeds of giant parsnip we were given before Brexit made such things impossible.  We sowed them late (they don't like being stored) so were lucky two germinated and grew, and benefitted from the water the chickens didn't want in the drought conditions.  Finally this morning, John dug one up for our dinner - yummy!

The biggest we have grown in France (our biggest in the UK weighed over 2 pounds, and was 18 inches long of usable parsnip, but that really was a mutant!).

Last weekend I moved the trail camera as while all I had captured was a hunter's bottom, there was clear evidence that around the ponds, something was lurking!

In addition, the badger trail (which is visible on Google Earth surprisingly), is looking even more obvious than usual.

But at this time of year, the larger animals head for wooded areas, although the deer will likely be back in March or so I think.  While there is a lot of bird activity, unless we have the camera trained on a food station, it is very haphazard and difficult to catch, and frankly I have more than enough video footage of blackbirds and thrushes turning over leaves.  So it is the smaller, shyer, and less flashy animals I am looking for - foxes, badgers, ducks, the pine martin, mice, rats, perhaps even a coypu (although I really hope not).  Well, it paid off this week after the move - a badger bottom and a fox face!  Hopefully they will get a bit more used to the camera and I'll get more.

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I also need to get going on my campaign of attracting tits, particularly blue and great tits, as they are very good at eating pine processionary caterpillars and the pine trees have a few too many nests in for my liking.  The needles shed by the caterpillars are extremely irritating, and the rashes and swelling they cause last a good couple of weeks with no real remedy other than wrapping the affected part in wet towels so you can't scratch.  They can be deadly to animals, and have until recently no natural predators as they are a non-native invasive species.  But the birds are doing their thing, so feeders and nest boxes need to be set up in the next few weeks.  The feeders were very successful last year.

So, another frosty week in prospect for us, stay warm!

 

Review of 2022

It has been fun reviewing all the blogs of 2022 to see what were the highlights and what were the determining features of the year.  Weather, local events and wildlife were the standouts for me, as I will explain.

The weather had a major impact on the year, from a sharp late frost affecting certain crops, winds taking down trees, sand storms in the African desert affecting cloud colour to the searingly hot and dry summer, which facilitated the massive forest fire and reduced crop sizes for those things that survived the frost.  Once the rains did start finally, at least we had mushrooms for the end of the year - here are some photographic reminders of all that.

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After two years of Covid restrictions, 2022 had many of the usual events back, including the local trout fishing day, the delayed 600th anniversary of the Battle of Vieil Baugé, a full on Comice, car boot sales and my favourite, the Societé de la Paix Mechoui.

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But perhaps most excitingly, the trail camera lived up to its promise and showed us a wealth of wildlife, plus being more alert to that meant spotting others with a phone camera too, so the real stars of 2022 were the animals!

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Hopefully the animals will all put in appearances during 2023!

Happy New Year!

 

A time of decadence

The past week has been one of gluttony, sloth and the odd bit of exercise to try to make that seem less decadent, but really that is what this season is all about - recovery, putting on a bit of winter fat, reflecting on the past and looking forward to the new year.  The cold broke but it is taking a while for the warmth to build up again in the old stones of our house.  Actually it is rather nice to be curled up on a sofa in the Snug (used to be called the seating area, but now it is seriously snug), with the woodburner going, covered in fleece rugs and with a cat to provide a bit of extra snuggle - it's what winter is about!

There was also the issue of serious puddings - a fantasy of chocolate, praline, salted caramel and biscuit on the Friday before Christmas, and The Pudding on Boxing Day over in Chinon.  Between them, I think these are good for about 4 pounds on the hips!

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Looking around when walking, either to get to the supermarket, or just for the joy of walking, there are still natural sights to delight in.  This leaf with a corolla of damp around it was rather striking at Aldi.  The old tree in an abandoned area of scrub was about 50/50 tree and mistletoe, and for those who say the quality of French mistletoe is rubbish with no berries, I beg to differ.  This is loaded!  The birds are in for a treat.

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There is hope in the vegetable plots.  The broad beans sown in late November are now starting to show, seemingly unaffected by the serious frosts.  Looked at from a distance, it is also clear where I sowed the wheat in a vain attempt to cut down on next year's chicken feed bills.

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While there has been no major activity on the trail camera other than foraging blackbirds - in the main due to a fogged up lens - I did spot a minor catastrophe at Badger Towers.  Whether a boar had been jumping up and down in that area too much, or whether the layer of soil became too thin, or whether frost and rain did their thing, a foot long piece of set entrance fell in during the weekend.  It was tidied up fairly quickly and doesn't seem to have had any lasting impact, but it certainly looked different - and Clause agreed with me.

So the final image of the year is of the best view in France, in my opinion anyway.  Whatever the weather, it makes my heart leap with undefined joy.  What a pity the camera on a smart phone can't really capture the true joy of it!

Enjoy however you spend the New Year cross over, and next time I will review the wildlife year  of 2022, before getting on with the excitements of 2023.

Midwinter musings

Apologies for not writing on Sunday - a mix of yuletide fun and frolics and some wretched football match meant that the weekend didn't go as planned and since then I have been running to catch up.  But yesterday, after securing a rare piece of meat for Christmas Day at the market (whole poultry is a bit rare with the avian 'flu outbreak), getting my fourth Covid jab and sending off the final version of a report I've been working on for a number of weeks, I found that I've caught up.  Actually it works well, as I don't want to blog for the next two Sundays so pushing the publications back a few days is a good thing.

The previous blog talked of the sharp frosts that had hit that weekend and the cold snap lasted another week.  While nothing compared to what the North American continent is facing, it was nasty enough for us in the west, and further east they recorded temperatures as low as -18ºC.  The sustained cold meant that buildings lost any retained heat, and we found ice in the bowl in the cats' kitchen one day!

I read today a short story about the midwinter hare, and ours is certainly out and about a lot at the moment.  There is a trail through the scrub and I guess there is a den somewhere along the run.  The trail camera is at one end of the run and so we are getting a lot of images of the hare and also some short films as it becomes more used to the strange log that has appeared.  More of those next week perhaps, as I really can't face battling YouTube today!

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The hunters have been out and about more than once, so I am not surprised to see little evidence of boar and deer at the moment - I think they have moved to more wooded ground.  We are seeing more pheasant activity however, as they are well sheltered in the enclosed grounds and of little interest to hunters with very powerful guns.  Hares and pheasants seem appropriate for the time of year!

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One thing I did manage to do last week was to assemble the vast piles of pillows, duvets and cushions that departing second home owners have left with us as it wasn't worth taking them back to the UK and facing paying customs duty on them.  My audit showed 6 duvets, 15 pillows, 8 cushions, a bolster and an electric blanket.  This was after a number had been donated to worthy human causes.  This carful (I couldn't see out the back, I was relying on wing mirrors) was donated to a local cat rescue, sterilisation and rehoming charity run on a shoestring but a handful of lovely ladies who work extremely hard for no reward other than cat cuddles.  The electric blanket and the bolster were particularly welcome for kittens.

There are no brussels sprouts for Christmas this year from the plot - they may bulk up in the next couple of months - but we are enjoying butternuts, potatoes and parsley and hope to have a magnificent Christmas parsnip from the garden, now the soil has defrosted!

May your midwinter festival of whatever persuasion be peaceful and mellow.

 

Frosty weather

Last week I welcomed winter and talked of purple risotto and the need for slow cooked and warming food.  The week continued cold, but no frosts until Thursday night, when it was a bit closer to zero, while Saturday morning was a nastily brisk -5.7ºC at 8am - currently the coldest time of the day.  With that harsh frost does come the recompense of sunshine, but also the inconvenience of at least two pairs of socks, wearing gloves when going shopping, not being able to sit for too long without getting cold feet and the chickens' water fountain freezing solid.

Good frost also brings beautiful ice crystals and an edging of white, and is finally knocking out those plants that really shouldn't be growing on still, such as chillies, cannas and rhubarb.  Here is a montage of frosted foliage.

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As predicted, the visit from the hunting dogs last week means I've not spotted boar on the trail camera over the past week, and there isn't much new damage either, so they may have moved on through.  There wasn't really enough for them to eat here anyway, as a marauding extended family group of 15 pigs can eat an awful lot, so it was probably time they moved on elsewhere.  I have seen deer and a hare and a badger on the camera though, so it isn't the totally clean sweep we had earlier this year.

As I said, the advantage of this type of weather are lovely views.  The frost also meant that a number of trees that had been hanging on to their leaves with a steely determination, finally dropped them, very quickly too, on Saturday.  I watched the apples and the quince basically ditch everything in a quarter of an hour - it was strange to watch and made for an eerie sound.  But what is lovely at this time of year, is to see a new view or vista, a new building (actually more like a very old building, but new to us), or an old familiar but in a new way or after a few years.  Our favourite view from the Garden is over to the Chapel at Montplacé, which has been hidden by leaves for many months, but has now been revealed again.

I'm keeping this short this week - I've not had the heater on in my office since Thursday evening, and with it going solidly since this morning, the temperature has crawled up to 16ºC, which is not totally comfortable for sitting in, certainly not around the feet!  Keep warm and keep safe if you have snow!

 

Winter is here!

It's cold, it's dark, there is Christmas music on the radio and threats of snow on the weather forecasts - I think it must be winter.  We have been so lucky with temperatures from a purely selfish perspective over the past two months of autumn.  That has freaked out some plants and trees and the oaks round here still have a good covering of brown leaves, while I hear rumours of things flowering out of season, although not with us.  With high energy prices and exhortations to keep electricity use to a minimum, keeping more than one or two rooms at a comfortable temperature gets harder and that pile of fluffy fleeces is particularly welcome when sitting still.  We have also rediscovered the joys of hot water bottles (wilfully ignoring the advice that they need to be renewed every 3 years at least).  Slower cooked comfort food is also the thing, and yesterday was my first winter risotto, using the liquor from rehydrating dried cèpes as the stock, Paris mushrooms to provide the content, and purple carrots to provide a certain je ne sais quoi.  Served with fried medallions of monkfish, it was delicious.  There was a bit of rice left for the chickens (sort of resembles maggots), and I look forward to seeing if that has an impact on yolk colour, should any deign to lay an egg.

Keeping an eye on the trail camera, there has been a mixed bag of activity in the corner of the meadow.  Inevitably, but disappointingly, there was clear evidence of hunting dogs questing up and down the line of fruit trees yesterday, so I fear it will be a while before we see deer, boar and hares in that area again.  On the other hand, I can understand that farmers get a bit hacked off with boar activity, as we have plenty of evidence of their destructive tendencies and a litter can be up to a dozen piglets, with no natural predators.  The badgers aren't out at a time when the dogs are but, and I could well be wrong, are likely to hibernate for a bit soon.

I also know very little about the private life of the pine martins, so whether this chap is getting ready for a long sleep or not, I couldn't tell you, but it is always lovely to see him around the camera area.

What we are seeing a lot at the moment are standard "garden" birds enjoying turning over leaves and checking boar damage for something interesting to eat.  There has been a jay, a pair of blackbirds, a green woodpecker I think, the inevitable pheasant, and also a thrush.  It is years since I have seen a thrush in the garden, but over at The Shack, I have heard them smashing snails and have found their anvils in and around the vegetable plots, which is delightful.  Not only do they help keep pests down for me, but the broken shells add a bit of drainage to the heavy clay.  So I knew they were around but had to take it on faith in general.  I was therefore delighted to find one posing in front of the camera for me, and also very pleased with the quality of the photo, even when cropped/blown up a bit.

While I am not one of those that advocates you leave your garden covered in leaves, with long shaggy grass and weed stems, I would suggest keeping a small corner untouched to allow thrushes and blackbirds to have somewhere to rummage, because they are getting rid of the things that will eat any crops and flowers next year.

Have a good week!

 

The tail end of autumn

Yes, on Thursday Winter kicks in and there are hints of Christmas in the air too, with decorations going up in the streets.  It is really rather bizarre, as the weather is relatively warm still, many trees still have leaves, and not all have turned colour yet either, and I have the most magnificent yukka flowers out too!

In the vegetable garden, the parsnips continue to do what they do, the chard is amazingly lush, there is a magnificent crop of parsley, and the brassicas continue to be munched by caterpillars.  At least the red cabbages are hearting up, but it will be a while before the cauliflowers do the same - about three months, I think.  The token Brussel sprouts are not really showing any development yet, so John may have to cope with bought ones for Christmas Day!  There are also a number of self-seeded curly endive growing around the edge of one of the beds.  I marked their position so they wouldn't get mown, but the markers were moved as they were in the way for mowing... Anyway, they have reappeared and now I need to try to keep them faintly weed free.

Last weekend I changed the position of the trail camera, and after a false start, as I got lots of images of horsetail blowing in the wind, there has been some activity.  Well, when I say some activity, I think it is fair to say that I have captured activity from three species of bird, and five of mammal!  The place I have chosen is clearly popular with many, but now we are into the challenge of cold season images, so that most are at night, and many in fog - some things are really very grainy, but see below for pheasant, pine martin, hare, badger and boar.  As far as photos go, I also have deer legs, but there are a couple of videos of them which make me think that the faun that was born there in the summer is still in the vicinity.

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It doesn't happen as often as it should, but we went out for dinner during the week, to that fine concept, the "All you can eat Chinese Buffet".  Basically, you pay a price, which depends on age and time of day, and then can keep going up for more until you can't eat any more.  The caveat is that if you take more than you can eat, you pay a supplement, which seems only fair to me.  There is a vast range of starters and mains, plus you can take a plateful of raw ingredients and get them woked to your liking.  There is also an ice cream bar, which we didn't spot until we were too full to eat anymore!  The visit had been planned and cancelled too many times to be funny since last November, so it was delightful to finally assuage my need for caramel pork and noodles!

There are many of these across France, and they all seem to be cavernously huge, on slightly dingy shopping estates.  I will probably survive another couple of years before I need to go back, but it was a lovely change!