Rural Life

A day out and lots of garden work

We've had a busy and a social week, meeting up with people over to see their second homes, as well as getting a bunch of stuff done ourselves.  We declared Tuesday a Holiday, and once we had done the very important job of choosing a new mattress and ordering its delivery (we've had the current one for 25 years, a change is allowed!), we set out on a jaunt of frivolity.

Our first job was to find somewhere for lunch, and clearly in the tourist areas, Tuesday lunch is not a popular meal.  It took us a while to find the Quatre Saisons opposite Langlois Chateau in St Hilaire/St Florent on the south bank of la Loire.  It was worth the search.  While the menu on the board looked delicious and may have had too many choices to make life easy, the menu du jour was cheaper and excellent.  Pan fried sander fillet with salad, chicken supreme with rice and beans and a nice wine jus and the most amazing vanilla pudding that I still fantasise about.  All served in a nice room overlooking the Thouet and served by the chap doing the cooking.  We were very pleased.

After a brief retail therapy stop at Decathlon, we drove on to Turquant.  This really is a tourist village, but again the out of season Tuesday effect meant that people were few and far between, although I can imagine it is the seventh circle of hell on a sunny Sunday in July or August.  It is an arts and crafts centre, and while the gallery was nice enough, the shop set of caves were a better display of the talents around.  Even so, the delicacy and chichi-ness of it all were not really to our taste, so while we could appreciate the talent, we were not tempted to put paws in pockets.  Not least as there were no ants for sale - they are big on ants in Turquant!

From there, our final stop was with a friend and wine producer in Restigné to buy red and rosé wines and hear about the challenges of selling a nice little vineyard as a going concern.

Now we are trying to catch up on all the gardening work we need to do but the weather has not been helping us with.  On Friday I topped out the broad beans, as there were enough small beans set to make me feel the time was right.  I guess there are something over 100 plants and only one had blackfly on already, so I feel my timing was impeccable.  I had some assistance with this slightly back breaking task, as Monsieur Clause supervised while squashing a number of sprouting onion sets.

Getting the potatoes in is slow work.  Through all of March and the first week of April the ground was too wet to work.  Then John got the cultivator out and cleared some space, but also pulled muscles nearly everywhere, so had to rest up for a couple of weeks.  Yesterday he felt up to giving it another go and I was able to plant another 18 chitted potatoes.  We now have half the available spuds planted, although I think we might not get them all in this year.

After some 6 weeks in place looking along a much frequented path, I brought in one of the trail cameras to see who is around.  After some quick copying and editing of the SD card, it is now back out again, in a different location, with the aim of admiring boar having mud baths.  Anyway, a trundle through the files reveals that we have just as many boar and deer in the zone as ever.  That the badgers are still knocking around, as is the fox and a hare and a probably pine martin.  It also revealed that images and videos of us walking away from the camera are beyond unflattering, and that goes for the boar and the deer too!  I have deleted all evidence for us, but the animals don't have those editorial controls.  Here are some of our neighbours.

The new cameras are less intrusive but still need to be checked out closely!

Have a good week!

 

St Malo and the spring tides

Ramadan started last Sunday, when the moon was dark and new.  It is the new moon that helps create the great tides, the spring tides, the ones that create a Severn Bore and the ones that make the Mont St Michel an island again.  St Malo is just round a headland from the Bay of Mont St Michel, but in that geographical zone that sees some of the biggest tides in the northern hemisphere. 

I needed to get away for a few days for a change of scene and air, so it seemed only fair to go visit St Malo, one of my favourite places, and to do so when there are some of the highest tides of the 12 year cycle - a coefficient of 116 in fact (and if anyone can explain the calculations of tide coefficients, I would be grateful).  And a very high tide is generally followed by a very low tide (to get that big tide coefficient), which meant a lot of rockpools not normally seen, would be available for inspection.

The Intramuros of St Malo is on a rocky outcrop sticking out into the estuary of the Rance, surrounded by ramparts, with the port entrance guarded by forts, including more than one with a Vaubin influence.  Here is what it looks like when the tide is about half an hour off its height and has a coefficient of 113.

The fort is on the second island out.  Between the seagull and the white pole there is a vague piece of metal - that is the rail for the high diving board on the tidal swimming pool.  What swimming pool?  This one!

The first island (the Grand Bé) is a bit of a wildlife sanctuary and also has the tomb of the French poet Chateaubriand - yes, he is also famous for the steak and has a town named for his family, as he wasn't the first of that name.  The second island is the Petit Bé and has the Vaubin fort, and during periods of normal tides is not always accessible by foot, so wasn't a brilliant posting for soldiers in the past.  But on special days, you can get right out to it with no hint of damp on your feet (the Grand Bé is accessible at most low tides).

The rocks around the back of the Grand Bé, facing the fort are covered with mussels and oysters, as they are generally not 3 meters above the sea.  On that Wednesday, the difference between high and low tide was something around 14 meters.  The view of St Malo from the islands is lovely and shows the fortifications rather well.

St Malo is a working port.  There is a fishing fleet that goes out and when I was hovering around watching them bring in the catch, it was mainly scallops.  This is tightly regulated in terms of number of days, size of shell and size of catch.  Many go straight to the restaurants in the Intramuros (I had delicious scallops on a bed of leeks, with Mediterranean vegetables one night) and along the coast, including the Thermes Marin (a thalassotherapy centre).

I didn't know it at the time, and was lucky to capture it in a photo, but there was a rather novel ship in the main port.  Not the big orange thing, but the one with the tall masts - it is the first of a new fleet of cargo ships that take high end, low weight goods across the Atlantic using only wind power.  There has been one doing the circuit St Malo, the Lesser Antilles and New York for a few years, but only taking about 40 tonnes of goods.  This new one takes nearer 150 tonnes, if I remember the TV report correctly.  It left harbour while I was there.

Leaving St Malo on Friday morning to come home, I took the route along the coast road to Cancale, stopping a couple of times, including once at the Anse de Guesclin to admire the bay and the island.  With a beautiful sunny morning, mild weather and nearly alone, it was hard to tell I was in Brittany.  I could have been anywhere, even the Caribbean! 

So now I am home, with a cold nose and good hair thanks to all the fish I ate, well buffed joints from an afternoon of thalassotherapy, and hopefully a better attitude to life in general.  But the Breton influence isn't totally over - while checking over the Garden this morning, I discovered one of my cauliflower plants had decided it was Time!  So we picked this beauty and tomorrow I'll make a cheese sauce!

Next week there will be wildlife photos and news as one of the trail cameras has come home again.  Have a good week!

 

And if you thought last week was wet....

It rained last Sunday as I wrote last week's blog, it rained again on the Monday too.  On Tuesday, when I went over to Chinon for a visit, the fields by the autoroute were under water in many places, la Loire was full, but not dramatically so, but the Vienne was well over its banks and had closed quite a few roads.  When I was there, it was perhaps 4.3 metres over its usual level and hadn't reached its peak.  Fortunately for those in the area, it didn't reach the high end of the estimated flood levels and started to recede later on the Wednesday.

We were therefore interested to see what awaited us at la Flèche on Wednesday morning, when we were there for the market.  Parking was surprisingly easy, but I'm guessing that was an access issue.  Le Loir was seriously over its banks, with many riverside gardens flooded, the overspill carpark by the bus station underwater, and a number of roads flooded.  It was even more astounding that parking was easy, when one of the carparks right by the market was also underwater - I've never seen it that high there.  Perhaps half term made things easier.

With the rivers so high, it is only logical that our various ponds are also filling up.  The two main ponds at the bottom of The Orchard are doing wonderfully well - the level in the upper one is just at the limit of the overflow pipe (so it may well have been higher) while the lower one is at what I would call a sensible level.  With the winds on Thursday, we lost a chunk of one of the surrounding trees, which is now in the pond, and will need to be dealt with in due course.

Finally, yesterday we made it to the One Acre Wood and as expected, found the two small, ephemeral ponds there were full of water too.  They form in the pits dug to find clay for making tiles, and there are vague ditches that lead into them, but not the main ditches that mark the boundaries of our piece of land.  When these ponds form, they are a magnet for newts and salamanders.  Yesterday the upper pond was totally still, today both pond surfaces shivered with the antics of either marsh gas or hidden amphibians doing their thing.  You can also see a wild animal trail going to the right of the pond, and there is now a discrete trail camera keeping an eye to see who visits.  I'm not totally hopeful - the last time we had a trail camera there, it caught a chaffinch and that was it.

The pack of three new cameras has arrived, and one is now installed by the ponds at the bottom of The Orchard, a place that has always put on a good show.  Another is at the One Acre Wood, while the third did a sterling job showing us who was eating all the cat food we put out for the Barn Cats.  It was pleasing to see that in the main, it was the three boys eating it, but there are two others who are popping in of an evening for a good feed.  One we know as Minnie the Moocher, the other is a big fluffy thing we do not know.  Anyway, mystery solved and the spare camera is here, waiting for my next inspiration.

Today is sunny and not raining.  It is really too wet to do anything too useful in most places, although the portion of the wildflower Meadow that John has decided will be an asparagus bed was actually fine to rotavate today.  I'm not planting shallots or onions until we have had a couple of mainly dry weeks (which looks possible after Wednesday), but I could lift the last carrots and parsnips, along with a couple of leeks, so I can spend tomorrow making soup for the freezer.  There are also signs of rhubarb from one of the crowns we have, so that also inspires us.

Today we allowed Rebus the Psychokitten out into the garden for a bit of a run - he is so full of energy and just needs to run, perhaps he is in fact half whippet?  The chickens aren't totally happy with us, while Bridie the Freeloading Bantam has taken to a high perch in disgust.  Such is life!

 

Just an average February

February can be a rough month - if you are older than about 18, there is no real excitement, and certainly by my age, Valentine's Day holds no thrills any more.  The weather can be lovely, sometimes for longer than a couple of hours, and it can be vile.  We had some sunny intervals today, but it was blowing a hoollie and while it went some way to drying the laundry, things are now hanging all over the bathroom as there was a heavy shower.  We must have had an inch of rain in the week, and while that has done good things to the water levels in the ponds, we didn't actually need it.

During one of the nicer hours of weather, I managed to scramble round onto the deer path at the back of the second pond, to get a whole different view.  The pond is clearly leaking water somewhere, so while I had those lovely big fish in there last year, I can't see the pond ever being able to support 10 to 12 inch long fish again.  I'm not sure what has made the pond leak, but I'm sure the environmentalists will tell me when they visit in the spring.

With the longer days, the chickens have more time to consider their raison d'être, and one (I'm fairly sure it is Jacque the Ripper) has started to lay eggs again.  She is pushing out 6 per week, which is nice and enough for a meal and an addition to a pudding but I really need Mack (the Knife) to get back into the swing of things too before I can put away the egg box I take to the market on a Saturday.

I've decided we need to work our way through the leeks we have been growing, not least so the land can be prepared for other crops in the spring.  I lifted 4 rather nice ones and a runt - I could have done without the feline assistance, but Donald made it clear I had no choice.

I have a regular walk to check out all edges of the land and see what is going on.  There are little cul-de-sacs that I go down to check on the various ponds, that are like little spurs off the circuit.  One bit we always go past is a large walnut just uphill from the ponds that seemed to die last year.  It has a number of broken branches held up in the canopy - what the arborists tend to call widow-makers - one of which came down during the week.  While John tidied it up, I looked at another branch that appears to be long dead and needs to come off.  It was well festooned with rather unpleasant fungus.

Last night we pretty well finished this year's truffle fest - there is just the truffle infused camembert to eat up.  They were very aromatic, but the quality was a little patchy.  It was the first time storing them in rice and then using the rice in a risotto has really worked for me, so that was a real plus.  However the stuff going on in life in general has perhaps made me a little less inventive than normal.  It's been very enjoyable, but I hope to do much better next year.  Truffle and prawn risotto is always a winner though!

Anyway, that's all for this week - have a good one!

 

Truffle time again

January can be an OK month, with galette parties and AGMs for various societies and the hangover of Christmas bits to get through, but February, while shorter, seems to be more depressing.  Often overcast, often cold, often moist or even dank, there are a few signs of spring but most mean you end up worrying about frosts killing off blossom and new shoots. 

To lighten the mood, we tend to buy 100 grammes of black truffle and spend up to 10 days with a meal a day generously sprinkled with black gold.  The date varies - normally depending on the spot price and what John's suppliers are up to.  This year Truffle Arrival Day was the 1st February, and the 105g we received are very aromatic!

Obviously the first day we have the classic scrambled eggs with truffle, this year supported by local whole grain multi-seed bread that is delivered to our door every Wednesday.  Other meals have included poached salmon on linguini with truffle, emmental omelette with truffle and truffled mash.  Photographing food is challenging, not least when steaming slightly, so most of those meals don't have a good photo, but the scrambled eggs do and you will have to imagine the rest!

The signs of spring are there - we just hope there isn't a harsh and prolonged cold spell again.  The catkins are elongating on the hazel stands, puffing clouds of noxious yellow/green pollen if you brush against them - my sinuses are twitching already!  The less cultivated plum trees have very "pregnant" looking buds, so I fear that we might see blossom in the next couple of weeks - o so pretty, but o so vulnerable.

As well as being Truffle Day, the 1st February was also pompom removal day for our little kitten.  When I say little, he now weighs in at 4 kilos, while being whippet thin, so I think he is going to be a big boy in time.  As well as the main objective of the operation, the vets also sorted out an umbilical hernia he had.  It wasn't giving him any trouble and in relative terms was smaller than when we got him, but it seemed worth sorting now, rather than when it caused a problem down the line. So our little boy has been wearing the Cone of Shame - and perhaps because he is a boy, he has submitted to it, and lies around looking mournful, or bashes around looking like a grey Darth Vader and trying to cause the same amount of chaos.  Just another week of this to go!

I walked back from an appointment in town and took a footpath that leads past a garden I used to mow - the one with the lake.  I wanted to have a good look at what had been done before the screening trees and scrub get their summer coats.  It was sad to see that several trees had gone, and I would never have permitted the scale of mud on the grass walk around the lake, but it is their house now and nothing to do with me.  I also stopped at the stone bridge over the river and looked along to the village.  The river is quite full at the moment, and with the light in the right direction, I could see meanders and riffles in the current that should slow the flow and make the river more appealing to aquatic life.  I was delighted to see that.

We have a relatively quiet week ahead of us, apart from a post-Comice party, so hope to get more winter gardening done.  Today I planted the last of the garlic I overbought, and have also set to chit half of the monster packet of seed potatoes I bought in a fit of enthusiasm.  That means that we will need to prepare a bed for 54 seed potatoes, for planting on Good Friday or so - a task that should keep us off the streets a bit!

Have a good week!

 

New shoots, new beginnings

Many thanks to everyone for your kind wishes over the past week.  The funeral ceremony went well on Friday, with a nice party afterwards, as Mum would have wanted.  Now I have to roll up my sleeves and get down to the paperwork and clearing stuff out.  That's my retirement sorted out then!

After the freezing cold and dull days, the weather has warmed up significantly, catching quite a few things on the hop.  I saw a Brimstone butterfly this morning, which is crazy, and a demoiselle fly as well.  Neither will prosper I fear.  We spent a lot of time today at the gardens looking around and taking stock and listening to the birds.  It was while doing this at a different vantage point to normal that John was horrified to see the little b@st@rds below.

These disgusting critters have no redeeming features at all - they are pine processionary caterpillars.  They are a non-native invasive species with no natural predators in this hemisphere (although greattits and bluetits will eat them now) and the spines, which shed very easily, are extremely toxic to animals and humans, causing if you are lucky, an itchy rash that lasts (from experience) for at least 15 days (they can do much worse).  John sprayed the blighters with an insecticide we use on the chickens, and when I am next there, I will wash the area with boiling water and then cold water to flush away the spines.  The only good thing about seeing them today is that they are about 2 months too early, so we have to hope that a nice sharp cold snap kills them while turning into moths.

On the other hand, the winter sown crops are starting to grow visibly, so it's not all bad.  The broad beans sown just before Christmas are now mostly up and looking healthy - once again I have dodged the bullet that many around here are caught by and the seeds were not all stolen by voles!  The first batch of garlic went in more recently and is now showing too.  I planted more today, so we should be safe from vampires in 2024.

When we planted our quince tree, we put crocus and snowdrop bulbs around it - perhaps 20 years ago now?  Anyway, the crocus did well for a while but are long gone, as are most of the snowdrops, but one clump comes back year after year, tucked in close to the tree trunk.  Today they are looking wonderful.

The new beginning?  There are new people at the boulangerie La Fontaine in Baugé!  So far we have sampled their croissants and their almond croissants - both found to be very good.  We have also tried their flatbread - they tried to explain it to me, the different type of flour that they use, the different way it is cooked on a hot plate.  I looked at it and my immediate thought was stottie cake!  It's not as fluffy inside as a stottie, so rather thinner - perhaps a mix of stottie and pitta bread.  It is totally yummy though - particularly warmed with farm butter and tuna rillettes.  So when you are next in Baugé, try them out, because these people need to be encouraged!

Have a good week!

 

A look back at 2023

Happy New Year's Eve!

I thought I would review the year, reprising my favourite photos from this blog, one for each month of the year.  Sometimes it was quite hard to select one, but I was hard hearted, particularly about stripy piglets!  So here goes.

In January, the trail camera was well placed by the ponds to track the activities of the animals that use the back path, as well as the hunters who seem to think it is their god given right to go through there as well.  Daylight photos were better, and this one picked up wonderful detail of the young stag's face.

Our annual truffle fest was a bit later than usual, in February, but we made the most of the 100g of black gold that John ordered up from further south.  While I photographed every dish I made with it, this one reminded me the most of the wonderful flavours.

By March, the trail camera had been moved to The Garden, as we had spotted some rather large holes and wanted to know what was doing the rounds.  This was important as it is where we have our kitchen garden area, and we don't need badgers digging up our prized potatoes or deer sampling tomatoes or corn.  The holes were down to rats - hardly surprising in farming territory - but the camera stayed for a while to enjoy the antics of Mr and Mrs Woody Woodpecker, chasing the last of the walnuts among other tasty morsels.

In April, our patience finally paid off and we were able to harvest the first of 6 cauliflowers.  There is a lot of argument here in the expat community as to why cauliflowers are so expensive when they can be purchased for under a pound at Tescos (other supermarkets are available).  Well, these beauties had been in the ground taking up a lot of space for 7 months, should have been fed, should have been netted against cabbage white butterflies, and are very particular about what soil they will tolerate!  I think cauliflowers are cheap at 5 euros, given the required effort and investment.

By May, the trail camera had moved again, this time to a higher up path between two walnut trees.  We captured images and video of a coypu, which we weren't delighted to find rambling around the area, and the back heels of deer as they passed through at speed.  My favourite of the resident animals also came through quite a lot - the hare - I just love them!

After a long wait, June brought the bee orchids into flower.  With a phone camera, it can be a bit tricky getting the flower in focus, but for once it worked.

In July, we started to get smug about the potential parsnip and carrot crop - I had sown a long row, with parsnips every 6 inches or so and then carrots quite thickly in between.  My thinking was that parsnips are slow to germinate and in the ground for ages; carrots don't germinate that well either, but are eaten long before the parsnips need the space and the nutrients.  Well we are still eating both in December (and frankly into January next year too), but it worked well and I've never grown such good carrots, and not grown such long parsnips for over 20 years!

August was all about the Comice in Vieil Baugé - while there had been lots of preparations since the start of the year, painting panels with music and with dancers, painting dancers on piles of hay bales and making and stringing up bunting, August was the final push and the event itself.  The rain on the Friday night and early Saturday morning meant that it was an anxious time getting the podium ready for the first speeches of the day, but we did it!

And then it was all over and September had to be devoted to dealing with the mass of fruit at every turn - pears, plums, quince, apples and figs.  We actually had more figs and better figs than we have ever had before. I made loads of jam, we ate loads raw, and then I also made a rather good piquant fig sauce which has been wonderful with foie gras (if you like that sort of thing).

An experiment that dominated the year, was growing the tropical fruit cristophine.  Although a fruit and looking a bit like a bumpy, prickly pear, it is actually used as a vegetable, and grows from a ripe fruit.  You can't actually take out the pip and expect it to grow, you have to sacrifice a whole fruit so it has nutrients to get it going.  If it is happy, and ours was very happy, it grows enormous!  Ours was perhaps 20 feet in every direction from the growing point, at its height in October.  It is also very productive and I think we eventually got nearly 50 viable fruits off it, weighing roughly 400 grammes each.

In November, we added to our cat family.  It wasn't intentional, but when a small and rather cute little fellow bounces around the garden, and then looks very sorry for itself when wind and rain come in, I can't really turn my back.  Facebook searches and a vet check didn't produce a registered owner, so we adopted young Rebus, who is really rather a sweet little boy, albeit with some very pointy bits (teeth and claws). 

He is a lot bigger now! 

So December is nearly out.  Christmas Eve was notable for magnificent sunsets all across north west France at the very least.  As much of the month has been dull, grey and wet, this was a wonderful moment to cherish and record.  Earlier in the day, we had been able to fly one of our kites and enjoy blue skies, but the display at teatime was more impressive.

Tomorrow is a new year, and for me something of a change, as I become a pensioner and will have to use my time constructively.  I don't believe in New Year resolutions as I believe they are mostly borne of self-loathing (get fit, get thin, stop this, stop that) and set you up to fail.  Instead I hope to have targets to achieve in the year, but they still need a bit of refinement to make sure they are S M A R T!

A very Happy 2024 to you, with hopes of peace, prosperity, love and freedom.

 

Merry Christmas and all that jazz

Finally it is Christmas Eve.  The winter solstice passed in murky conditions on Friday, but the day before I found a lovely big clump of mistletoe in one of the apple trees - something just right for the Solstice and for Christmas as a pagan symbol of renewal and mystery, and a thing to be avoided in UK pubs over Christmas due to all the kissing.

On Friday night we had our quiet drink in the pub for the end of the week - actually it was heaving, which is a good sign.  We recognised a couple of people, but not many - also a good thing, as the new landlord will need to bring in customers to make it work, and many of those we know in the area are old or work very hard during the week and don't have much money to splash.  Long may it continue (fingers crossed).

Much of the week has been dull and murky, but Wednesday was nice, as is today.  I took advantage on Wednesday and had a wander around the lanes of Baugé, admiring old cottages, weird walls, a plaque showing where the Huguenot temple had been in the period between 1625 or so and 1685, when being protestant became illegal again.  That was the moment many refugees headed for east London, to set up their silk weaving businesses in the Spitalfields area.  Anyway, the plaque is pretty well illegible, but the Tribunal is clear of scaffolding this Christmas, so there is a photo of that instead.

On Thursday we dug up the first of the frosted parsnips, to give away for Christmas dinner - we will dig ours up tomorrow, so they are as fresh as possible.  The tops have looked very good all year, so we were excited as to what we would find.  The first one was big, but there was a small top near it, which I dug up as well and was pleased that it was also a good looking specimen.  I had to cut the bottoms of the roots off, but they were pleasingly long, given our clay base for the soil.

Before today I have marzipaned the cake, the pudding is made, the foie gras is cooked, the shopping is done, and all that remains for tomorrow is a ritual offering to the Oak Tree, digging up carrots and parsnips for us and cooking the festive bird (a locally raised duck).  That meant that this morning we were entitled to play, particularly as there was a bit of wind.  We dug out the cheap kite we bought four years ago, clipped the crossbar back in and spent a happy half hour flying it in the Meadow, while not falling down the badger's set entrance.  Mr Banks got it right, we reckon!

So, may your kite fly high and not get caught in trees, may your gravy be without lumps and your Christmas pudding ignite with the first match.  Have a wonderful Christmas!

 

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!