Rural Life

Lockdown III, marginal release - weekend jobs

Having stood in a queue for 20 minutes this week to get fruit and vegetables, it really does bring home the value of growing your own sometimes!  We are in what is called the hungry gap between finishing what we grew last year - I had to buy spuds for the first time in 8 months yesterday - and being able to eat what we are growing now - I am hoping for a few broad beans next weekend.  I am relieved that the butternut seeds are starting to come up and there are signs that the chilli seeds are also sprouting, but without a decent greenhouse, things get leggy very quickly, so I will need to be on top of potting on or I will get nowhere.

As Father Mark was at the market selling tomato plants, I indulged in a few - he grows old varieties and things you won't always find elsewhere.  I got three cherry tomatoes which should have dark or black fruit and a couple of general culinary use tomatoes.  On Wednesday I hope to buy the bulk of my tomato, pepper and aubergine needs at the market, where the prices are about half what I paid on Saturday, but the varieties are a lot less interesting.  As we are due storms for about a week (according to Meteo France anyway), I planted the tomatoes out under paraffin bidon cloches.  We don't use paraffin as a heat source, but neighbours do and we recover the plastic containers for just this purpose.  The vegetable areas are almost looking serious now!

John can be seen preparing seed beds - he has carrots, beetroot and two types of radish sown, and carrots are coming up already.  The seeds are about 6 years old in general, so it is a bit of an experiment.  Less of a trial are the potatoes, and they are coming up now too - today I counted 24 out of the first 32 as showing some growth above ground, which is good to see.

Today's light lunch was very pleasing - eggs from Mac and Jak, baked in ramekins with asparagus from the garden at home.  OK so the splash of cream wasn't us, the butter was from Benoit (see yesterday) and the tarragon mustard was from Super U, but the main ingredients were down to us!

 

Lockdown III, marginal release - raw milk and brooding

Sounds like a vaguely iffy 1980s lounge music combo, doesn't it? Raw Milk and Brooding.  Fortunately those days are over.  Anyway I said there had been debate on raw and farm milk with chums on the internet, so on Wednesday when I was at la Flèche market, I asked the lovely Benoit if I might photograph him, to share the glory with my blog readers.  He was surprised, but happy to oblige - of course sadly you are deprived the benefit of his face as we all have to keep wearing face masks, but here is Benoit, purveyor of milk, butter, cream and cheeses.

Despite my bags being in the way, there is not actually a lot to see in his van apart from a few bottles of milk and a couple of cheeses.  That's because for his regulars, their requirements are stashed under the counter.  It was a great day for me when I became one of those, and a block of salted butter appeared when I arrived at his van!  The milk is a more recent thing - I used to buy the odd bottle, but mainly bought from another farmer, but then I became inducted into the circle of those who provide their own bottles and again each week as well as my block of butter, I swap an empty Waitrose Orange juice bottle for one full of full fat raw milk.  Bliss!

Will you note the colour of the butter and the depth of cream on that?!

In other news, while we only seem to have red currants, black currants, strawberries, raspberries and Granny Smith apples this year in the garden, that is not the case in Chinon.  There the warmth and protection afforded by the tuffeau wall has meant that the black peach tree there has lots of fruit set!  There will be jam of one sort this year!

And finally, I thought it was a bit quiet yesterday evening when I released the chickens for their daily vandalism spree - no Bridie to be seen.  I wondered if she had been chased off by the naughty ginger boy next door.  I checked the shed when I put the girls away last night, but she wasn't there so I was a bit worried.  This morning she was not waiting by the run to peck me mercilessly while I put out food and water for her (she has a very sharp beak!), so I was even more worried.  I went for a good check in the shed, and finally spotted her, well camouflaged by chainsaw chains.  See if you can spot the freeloading wotsit, trying to hatch another batch of infertile eggs!

 

Lockdown III, Day 22 - I'm not planting any more potatoes!

It being Sunday and a day of "rest", we were back at The Shack carrying on the labour of love (or greed) that is getting the crops in for this year.  The final third of the potato bed was so much harder than the previous two - I'm not sure why!  There were more roots, more bits of branch, more stones, more cat poo, less wind, less cool air and therefore more breaks for rest and water, but it is done - 16 more spuds planted, and that's it.  I have 12 good quality, chitted, seed potatoes left if anyone in the area wants them - certified stock and purchased at Jaques Briant.  I'm not saying their stuff is any better than anywhere else, just that is where we got them.  Let me know.

In one of my many moments of resting before the next bout of root extraction, I took the time to look up and found (yet) another spectacular view across the fields of Anjou, but one that will soon be gone.  The walnuts are about the last of the trees to get their leaves (along with a number of one variety of oak, possibly sisal), but I reckon that this view will be blocked by leaves in a couple of weeks time.

While I was getting the potatoes in, John was tidying, mowing, rotavating and making a nice seed bed for sowing a few carrots and beetroot.  If you don't look too closely, it all looks rather ordered and like we know what we are doing.  I can guarantee that in another 4 weeks it will be knee high in weeds again, but for the moment, we are feeling a bit smug.

Once everything was put away in an orderly fashion, we popped into the orchard to try to enthuse ourselves about getting that tidied up (fail), and on the way back to the car I noticed this little fellow sunning him/herself.  It is really good to know that we have such creatures around the place, and who will help with the inevitable plague of critters that will try to eat our fruit and vegetables before we do!  It's a slow worm by the way, for those who've not seen one before - probably about 10 inches long in total.

We treated ourselves to a trip to the One Acre Wood on the way home, partly to retrieve the ropes for the hammocks which have been tied round a few oak trees for about 10 years.  We have identified a spot in The Garden by The Shack where a hammock will fit most nicely, sadly only the one hammock, so there will clearly be a few "discussions" about who gets to loll around in it, but that is something to look forward to for May.  Anyway, the lily of the valley are finally out, which is a joy - so I leave you with flowers for today.

 

Lockdown III, Day 21 - a very busy day

Yesterday was my day for visiting the Azay One - I guess I am lucky we are allowed in to see her actually, given the hammering nursing homes have taken in this whole Covid thing.  We are only allowed in for an hour, we have to sit around a sanitised table, wearing masks (well, apart from the Azay One), and have to complete and sign two attestations on arrival.  Visits in rooms are not allowed.  Still, all went well, but it is always a tiring day, so no blog yesterday, but I did take this photo late yesterday evening after I had locked up the chickens.  Simple flowers and blossom attract many insects and it was heartening to see the variety last night on the Granny Smith apple blossom.

This morning, while John laboured, I went to the market at Baugé for a supply of good things - although the queue for fruit and vegetables did make me question my devotion to buying from small providers and local produce for preference, as it took me three quarters of an hour to get to the top of the queue!  At least the weather was good but social distancing had gone out of the window!

The afternoon was devoted to outdoors things, including mowing for a client, watering our produce and cosseting the boys in the country.  Now we are home and I need a gin and tonic so I will add the photos and call it a day.  I may be more voluble tomorrow.

Lockdown III, Day 14 - food and fertility

Apologies for yesterday, but I did warn you that there mightn't been an update - visits to Azay-le-Rideau take time, emotional energy and a bit of recovering from.  But this morning I was up and about and ready to seize the day, so relatively promptly to the market in Baugé.  If there is one thing that would convince me to grow our own vegetables, if I didn't already, it was standing in a queue for 25 minutes this morning for the fruit and veg stand!!  Unfortunately we are in that gap in the year when we don't have much variety, other than leeks and sorrel, so have to buy in things like citrus, carrots and (joy of joys) mangetout peas.  The queue for fish was much shorter and the options almost overwhelming - in the end I got a couple of pollock tail filets, which will take a sorrel sauce very nicely.

This afternoon was spent at The Shack (we will catch up on the funeral that we recorded shortly), and while John spent a happy couple of hours tinkering with ride on lawn mowers, I finally got round to sowing a couple of patches of bee friendly flowers in the Fergus memorial shrub bed - none of the shrubs are big enough this year to take up the whole plot, so it is better to fill the gaps with flowers than leave the couch grass to take over again.

I like to start planting my spuds on Good Friday and then make sure they are all in by the third week after Easter - well Easter was a bit of a blow out this year.  I had to work Good Friday, then the Azay project had to take precedence, so it is only today that I finally started on planting the potatoes, with the first 16 in.  It is jolly hard work, not least as the plot hasn't been used before, just rotavated and left, so it is all to do.  I'm hoping to get another 16 in tomorrow morning, but first I get to see if I can still move!!

During one of my rest moments, I watched various insects working their way along the row of flowering broad beans - this one is a dark blue carpenter bee (I think - masonry bees are smaller and make nests in inset screw holes in our woodwork, while the carpenter bees seem to like living in our back wall).  I applauded her industry!

Once the planting and sowing was done, and I had tidied away my stuff, I beat the bounds and admired the apple tree in blossom - either Canada or Russet I believe - the apples don't look particularly nice, but if the tree and the other one like it do their thing again this year, we can do a single variety juice pressing in the autumn, and this variety of apple makes a really tasty apple juice.

More tomorrow!

 

Lockdown III, Day 11 - a bit about food

Yesterday was a special day, as there were enough eggs from Mac and Jak (2 - one each for us) to see whether they were getting it right.  We also had a couple of shop bought free range eggs to test them against and to make a normal meal out of it.  "Our" eggs are on the right - smaller, as the girls are still very young, but with nice bright yolks and whites that were very upright.  They also tasted better than the shop bought, perhaps as they were that bit fresher, perhaps because we are biased!

Today I was daring and went outside the permitted 10km, so had to have an attestation, in order to make essential purchases - well I really can't miss la Flèche market two Wednesdays in a row!  It was heaving as clearly everyone else had the same idea, but all were wearing masks, and in 95% of cases, wearing them correctly too.  I staggered back to my car laden with cheese, milk, butter, croissants, bread, paté, vegetables, kippers and fresh crèpes.  What a wonderful feeling!  The town was looking very pretty, so while I was too busy shopping to photograph the market, I did take a picture of the river and the pressure-fed fountain.

The cold winter weather was good for the fruit trees, and they have responded in most cases with lots of blossom.  Of course now the harsh late frosts are savaging the blossom and affecting any set fruitlets.  I am hoping that I will have saved some fruit on the Victoria plum in the garden as the blossom has never been so good as it was this year.  My tactic was horticultural fleece, held in place with clothes pegs.  We think of it as a small tree, but it needed about 20 metres of fleece just to look like this - clearly not as small as we thought.  Time will tell for the fruit.

Now to go and sit in the late afternoon sun with a cat or two and 6 chickens who are not quite as in disgrace as they were this time last week.

 

Lockdown III, Day 9 - that orchid rant

It's been a long day and I had to be out and about rather earlier than normal so got the full benefit of the hard frost and scraping the car, but when you are faced with a view like this when you arrive where you need to be, really it's not so bad!

Back in March, I introduced Mac the Knife and Jak the Ripper - our two new chickens.  I think one was hatched a bit earlier than the other, but anyway, yesterday, finally, when I let them all out for their daily vandalism session and checked the coop, I found our first new Black Chicken egg!  Isn't it sweet?  As there was another today, I know what we are having for lunch tomorrow!!

Back in November, when we were all enjoying Confinement Lite or Lockdown II, I noticed that one of my miniature orchids was doing something interesting.  I posted a few photos of it before the end of the year - you can see a nice "branch" with lumps on it which might turn into flowers or more "branches".

Well, now we are in April, and my mother's rather larger orchid has had a whole new flower branch and two large flowers, which have been out for a number of weeks in the interim.  Yesterday, we finally have an open flower!  Talk about taking your time!  I've bought more orchid "compost" or a bag of dodgy looking bits of bark, but don't like to disturb things while they are doing their best to bloom.  On this basis, I will be repotting in October!!

O so pretty and o so tantalising!

 

Lockdown III, Day 8 - down at The Shack

Sunday morning is generally our big time for doing work at The Shack - there is a period of 2 hours between 10am and midday when we can use petrol motors, so John can play with chainsaw, rotavator, strimmer, brush-cutter and other noisy things, while I supervise cats and do "stuff".  Yesterday and overnight we had the first proper rain for ages, so the machines didn't come out to play but we did have a good check round and cuddled cats.

I sorted out my box of seeds about a month ago, throwing out most opened packets and anything over 7 years old (!).  Those between 5 and 7 years old and interesting (10 packets of seeds for kale and while it may be a super food, I'm still not going to grow it) I took to The Shack along with a stack of 6 - 8 inch pots.  A couple of weeks ago, I filled 7 pots with my miracle horse poo and leaf mould mix from the bin, and sowed the whole packet of each of cat mint, dill, coriander, basil, lettuce Webbs Wonder, chard Bright Lights and Autumn King carrots.  It felt rather good to be quite so profligate!  Anyway, despite pretty awful germinating conditions - first unseasonably hot, then unseasonably cold - today's inspection showed that so far at least the chard and the carrots are coming up!  Yes, I have spotted there is an interloper among the carrots - it has been removed.

Inspection of the bed planted with garlic, shallots and Hispi cabbage showed really good growth on the shallots, well apart from a Donald shaped gap!  I'm sure the delayed ones will catch up in due course and no one was rolling around on the wet soil today!

Things aren't so good on the fruit front.  While I have a small Victoria plum tree in the garden at home that is wrapped round with fleece at the moment to protect the fruitlets, the big tree at the end of the wildflower meadow does not have that luxury.  You can see the fruitlets are nearly black and when I picked one off and dissected it with my thumb nail, it was clearly unviable and frosted.

The cherry blossom has also been affected - I'm hoping that it is just that the petals have been fried by the frost and that the fruit will somehow survive, but with more nights of frost over the next week, I fear my ability to stand and scoff a kilo of cherries while allegedly doing something useful in the meadow will be severely curtailed this year.

Tomorrow I am likely to have a rant about orchids.  Just to warn you.

 

Lockdown III, Day 7 - by way of explanation

With this lockdown being announced for the 4th April, there was a certain inevitability that I would be informed on the 3rd April that we finally had a date when a room would be available in a carefully chosen nursing home.  So much to be done, so many arguments and discussions to be had, and of course lots of work to do as well.  And then lockdown itself to contend with.  Hence going dark for essentially 3 blogging days (I don't think posting an Armadillo really counts), while, depending on your point of view, someone entered prison or a caring and safer environment.  As I left on Thursday, I admired a group of ladies of a certain age, sitting on the sun-drenched terrace wearing rather fetching boaters, drinking lemon squash and keeping each other company - I didn't feel quite so bad!

Nibbles has felt the undertones of what has been going on and this morning both sulked and lived up to her name - hopefully that sort of behaviour will wear off soon and she will go back to ignoring me and sleeping or seeing off young intruders from the garden.

And as if cat shaming isn't enough, I am now going to chicken shame.  We have 5 - yes FIVE - full sized chickens and a small freeloader, so why did I have to buy this today?

Finally a comment on lockdown rules or my notoriety locally - I'm not sure which.  Yesterday I was driving home at about 6pm after having visited a client.  As the visit had been outside the allowed 10km, I had an attestation on my phone as well as my ID card, so when I saw the police block as I drove between the Chateau and the Tribunal in Baugé, I pulled over as indicated and started to prepare.  I put on my face mask, turned off the music in the car, prepared to get my ID and phone - but the lovely young policeman just looked in at me, and said with smiley eyes, "no don't worry, on your way, Madame!"  I was a little upset at not showing off my lovely new WARP (Withdrawal Agreement Residence Permit) card, but having said that, with Vieil Baugé stickers on the car and being convinced I'd met him before, I guess I wasn't surprised! 

 

So here it is! Christmas!

And a very Happy Christmas to you all!

For many it won't be a normal Christmas, or what they had planned, and for anyone in that situation, my heart goes out to you!  For us it will be pretty normal, as it is generally just us two with cats and chickens, and phone calls/computer time with friends and family around the place.  Boxing Day sees us being social and that is where we will see the difference, as we will have to be home by 8pm for curfew.

We would normally broach Christmas cake on Christmas Eve - something to look forward to!

(This is actually the one we are giving as a present, but it is prettier than our one!)

Tomorrow we will be out and about picking the sprouts I've been growing for John - they are a bit bigger than this now, amazing what a difference a week has made!

We will also be having major cat cuddles with the Boys in the Country.

And we will go to the One Acre Wood to make offerings to the Wood Gods and enjoy the fresh air and views.

However you spend your day, enjoy the moment and don't regret what might have been.