Rural Life

A week with workmen

For the past couple of months, we have been anxious as we watched a bulge develop high on the chimney wall, with cracks appearing too.  In early February, we contacted a large local building company, asking for a visit and quote, and to their credit, they were out very quickly to have a look, do the professional sharp intake of breathe and muttered "merde", and produce a quote in 24 hours.  Since then, there has been an even more anxious wait until they got any necessary permissions and the weather was suitable to do the work. 

At the beginning of last week I was told Wednesday - phew!  Except no one turned up on Wednesday.  Thursday morning, 8am, there was a knock on the door, and while scaffolding went up outside, a mason came and checked the attic for any sign of internal bulges.  He disappeared, and at 9:30am, when the scaffolding was up, so did the scaffolders!  It was very grand scaffolding we thought.

At 10:30am, really serious noises started, and tucked away in my little office, I could hear drilling, banging, the odd crash and rumble.  We had all this (apart from the drilling) 16 years ago, when we had that facade repointed, an intervention where it took a whole day to get the scaffolding up.  What was missing this year was the odd cry of "merde" from the artisans.  Then at midday it all want quiet again, as they left for lunch.  So I ventured out to see what had happened, not expecting to see this!

They were back just before 2pm, so John had a word about what they could see in the hole in the wall, then the afternoon was taken up with the faint hum of a remarkably quiet mixer and odd sloshing sounds.  At 5pm they were gone, although the scaffolding was still there, but by 9:30am on Friday morning, that too had gone!  Now there is a very tidy patch on our chimney wall and one of these days we will feel brave enough to light the fire again (that wasn't a hint, John).  More importantly I don't dread seeing a pile of masonry in the road every time I turn into our road!

I left the trail camera where it was last week, in the hope of better badger footage, but it is clear they are settling into a routine of using the path to go somewhere important and not stopping on the way.  The only interesting video was a cat defecating on the badger path, the interesting bit being that we don't recognise the cat!  So the camera has moved, and there was just the one nice badger shot to show for the week.

Other wildlife of interest was spotting spawn (frog, toad or newt - impossible to tell) in one of the ponds, but clearly near to hatching, as two days later it was just empty casings left to provide food for whatever needed it.  The hares are also out and about.  The fuzzy shot was taken while a cat stood on my shoulders watching the hare, which was a good 30 meters away.  The hares come through the Meadow and Orchard too, but not where I had the trail camera set up - it's nice to see them around.  Clause, the biggest of the cats and bigger than many dogs of my acquaintance, is terrified of the hares!

• 
• 
• 

Those photos are out of order - first is the empty spawn, then the viable, then the hare - editing the image galleries is a perilous exercise on a Sunday!  But to make up for that, here is a happy picture of narcissi, which are particularly lovely this year it seems to me.

 

Don't get too excited!

While it was relatively sunny this week, enabling the mowing season to start and getting early crops planted, I'm sure winter hasn't had its final fling yet!

The broad beans we sowed in November last year are coming up quite well and look mostly healthy.  Inevitably with autumn sown seed there are some losses, but out of the 50, we have 42 up and about which is a bit better than last year, if memory serves.  The first year we had autumn sown broad beans there, I put out over a hundred seeds and 96 produced something.  More recently I have had trouble sourcing seed (which is nuts really).  I buy my planting garlic and shallot sets in the market at la Flèche - the garlic is local, so should be right for the climate, while the shallots come in from Brittany, but they know their onions over that way (hahaha!).  Most of the garlic and shallots are under minipolytunnel - not because they need protection from the elements but because they need protection from cat bottoms and whatever it is that is digging test holes around the Garden.  The trail camera may tell us more one day!

The Asian hornet trapping season starts next week - it may be a bit early, but getting the overwintered queens is important, or they will get the big nests going and kill more bees.  At this time of year it is possible to see the old nests in the trees - the secondary nests are generally high up, while primary nests can be in a hedge or a shed or lean-to.  We spotted one today and walked back to look at it - so high it is nearly impossible to get a photo that is meaningful, certainly with a phone camera.  It does explain where all the hornets came from that ate their way through a huge pile of windfall apples!  It also puts us on our guard for the emerging queens, so next weekend our two traps will be set, as the local observatory gets going for the 2022 campaign.

• 
• 

However sunny it has been, the evenings and mornings are cold, so Poirot spends a lot of time fire worshipping in the evenings, and the snowdrops are quite happy and flowering away.  Spring is still a good month off!

• 
• 

There is something about the sharp, crisp light of a sunny winter's day that makes it easier to see problems - like we finally spotted the hornets' nest today for example.  A couple of weeks ago, I looked up at the west facing facade of the house and decided I wasn't happy.  I shared my fears with John and I got the big local masonry firm out to have a look.  The big boss turned up and looked at the wrong chimney and said it was not problem to fix.  No, on our house - so he looked up and said yes, it needed a bit of pointing, no problem, they can do that.  No, no, not that side, look up from the road side - silence, sharp intake of breath, muttered "lalala" and "merde", then - yes, that needs doing, doing very soon, I'll get you an estimate next working day.  Which, to be fair, he did, and we got it back within 24 hours.  Now we wait for permissions to be granted and then we will be covered with scaffolding for a chimney rebuild.  Yoiks!

There has been so little activity on the trail camera, we have wondered if it was still working.  Last weekend, once it came back from a likely but unfruitful site, I put it up overnight in the chicken run, to make sure it was working.  So now you can enjoy the spectacle of chicken breakfast time, from a chicken's eye view!  So much technology for this -

Until next week!

 

Location, location, location

After three very good weeks with the trail camera, I sadly have to announce a complete failure this week.  We chose a location that was away from the road and surrounded by dense undergrowth, near a water source and with tracks in many directions, seemingly used by animals large and small.  When we collected the camera yesterday, there were 6 files on it, with the least awful photo below.  The others included mainly my bottom retreating from the camera or me getting up close to turn it off.  Clearly that area is not in use at the moment, possibly as the hunt were through last weekend, possibly as it isn't an interesting area at this time of year.  I'll try again there in the spring or summer, but for now the camera has moved on.

So what else has been going on this week?  The gastronomy fest continues, with more truffle influenced meals.  We are using up the last bit of the truffle tonight and that is it until early 2023.  We also had lunch out at our favourite restaurant, and honestly it was hard to move after our 12,55 Euros a head blow out.  I've not had that good a bavette steak for years, while the chocolate mousse was positively intoxicating in its chocolatiness.  

• 
• 
• 

In order to recover from all the rich food, and to keep warm, we have had to spend time in the One Acre Wood, taking down and chopping up a long dead chestnut tree.  Yesterday we did the felling and sectioning.  There was freezing fog and everywhere was covered in white tendrils as the fog froze onto spider web.  When all was still you could actually hear the ice crystals falling off.  Today we went back with the trailer and a splitting axe (or merlin) and tidied up the largesse, splitting much of it to make it usable.  Reading back over past memories, ten years ago I was able to split a stère of wood almost single handed, but this year I managed about 8 logs.  Mind you, that is an improvement on last year, when I could do almost nothing with a dodgy elbow.

• 
• 

We support a cat charity locally called Cat's Garfield - they catch, sterilise and rehome, as far as possible, feral and stray cats in the area.  This weekend they were trying to educate people and raise a bit of cash through an exhibition of photos taken by one of their members, a half-English lady who has just started up as a photographer in the area.  The pictures were lovely and it is also nice to hear the good news stories of adoptions.  What impressed us most was the venue - a converted chapel.  The downstairs was pleasant with nice features, the upstairs was breath-taking.

To close, a final picture of the frost in the wild clematis Old Man's Beard, which surrounds the wildflower meadow and strangles all the fruit trees, and much else besides.  The birds don't seem to be interested in the seed heads, but when the freezing fog does its thing, they are rather pretty.  Fingers crossed for some interesting footage from the trail camera next week!

 

Final post of 2021

Well, we are getting near the end of 2021 and quite frankly I shall be glad to see the back of it.  Covid and its constraints on life as we knew it have been a challenge, as they have made difficult things even more difficult than they needed to be.  Finding a quality nursing home and installing someone in it, trying to earn a living, helping people with the bureaucracy of Brexit (getting a residence permit, exchanging driver's licenses, reregistering cars) have all been that little bit harder than they needed to be.  As we get to the end of the year, we are back to the second guessing what the next restrictions are going to be.  Today we did forays into a number of stores for wild bird seed, chicken feed, and store cupboard basics in case, as there is a definite feeling from the media that the next few weeks aren't going to be easy.

But away from that, and looking at the natural world around us, there are still uplifting vistas, so once out of shops and built up areas, things seem more hopeful.  On Christmas Day we did a lovely walk from The Shack to the One Acre Wood and back, with hardly an engine or an unnatural sound to be heard.  Today at The Shack, we looked across the valley to the Chapel and the world didn't seem so bad (although the weather could have been better I guess).

Nature finds a way (listen to Jetho Tull's Jack in the Green), and indeed we are impressed, as well as slightly concerned, at the persistence of a mole that wants to set up home in the near derelict Studio!  There are mole hills by the steps and next to the terrace!

The trail camera also shows us that we are not alone - so here are a couple of videos from near the Studio.

And this one

Happy New Year - I'll be back on 1st January!

 

Seasonal ailments

Much of this last week has been an uncomfortable blur, courtesy of that old familiar of autumn, the common cold.  I've not had one for two or three years - perhaps one thing that Covid has done for us, is improve hygiene to the extent that we are not in contact with every germ and bug that is doing the rounds.  Incessant hand washing, social distancing, and fear of the big C has kept us free from the annual round of sniffles, snuffles and squits.  On the other hand, when you do come into contact with one of the little darlings, there is no residual resistance in your body and you are a veritable smorgasbord for germs, mucus, infection and all the misery that goes with it.  It hasn't helped that I was in general very run down as well, but from late last Sunday night until sometime last night, I was the victim of "that nasty cold doing the rounds" and I wasn't happy.  This morning was the first time I felt life might return to normal!  A sleeping/roosting bantam is a good metaphor for how I felt!

Yesterday we had our own small backlash from Storm Arwen - nothing like across the UK, where wind, snow and rain have been doing their worst, but dull dark skies, an evil wind and sleet was bad enough.  So it was a surprise and a good example of pathetic fallacy that when I got up feeling a bit more lively this morning, the sun was shining and the sky was blue.  True there was a strong and evil wind from the North West, but so much better than we could have hoped for.  And what do you do on a bright Sunday in late Autumn?  Go looking for firewood.

It was a good excuse to go to the One Acre Wood, bring down a dead tree that had been worrying us, and generally look around and admire.  I found a mushroom, non-edible, and one of a type that I refer to as Grey Slimy.

The One Acre Wood, like much woodland around here is chestnut coppice with oak stands, the odd pine tree, and then anything else that can set seed.  There is a good reason for this - oak is a strategic crop and many woods around here were designated by Napoleon to make up for those trees felled to make warships.  There is a good clay substrate round here and terracotta floor tiles are a local product of renown.  To make the tiles, you need clay, chestnut for the firing and pine sap for the glaze/finish of the tile.  Growing them all together near clay pits makes sense. 

In among all of those sensible trees, we have chequers or common service - the berries can be used to make beer (hence so many British pubs being called The Chequers), which propagate by runners, like elm, as well as by seed.  We have holly (again expand by runners).  We had a couple of rowan, but both are now dead, one felled when Enedis were clearing the lines for no obvious reason other than it was in their way and they didn't care.  We also had one beech tree, which met the same fate - it was in the way of the people felling trees near the line, so was felled as well even though it was 10 meters from the line and in good nick.  I was gutted.  Until today, when I found a 2 year old beech sapling pulling away nicely.

In amidst the awfulness of the cold, I had a birthday, but not a classic one.  However I am now the proud owner of a trail camera, which has proved very good at catching short videos of feet, and cats turning round on sofas overnight.  I am hoping that by next week I might have mastered the technology well enough to have a short video or photos of something more interesting.  Well a girl can dream!

 
 

All quiet on the French front

It has been mostly grey all week, so a very quiet time really - not least as it always takes ages to process all the information I gather on one of my work visits to the UK.  We had an afternoon and a chunk of a day that were fine, so I did manage to get laundry dry on the line.  There was a dramatic moonrise the day of the fine afternoon, which I managed to capture, sort of, as I came in from putting the chickens to bed.

Last Thursday was the third Thursday in November so Beaujolais Nouveau day.  I bought us a bottle to share that night - as the critics have said, lots of cherry flavours this year, but as they haven't particularly said, it is fairly expensive and it is pretty silly.  Still that didn't stop us quaffing a couple of bottles when out with friends for dinner in Chinon on the Friday night.  The lady of the establishment was adamant that if we wanted to experience France, we really needed to try it (we did NOT go with her recommendation on eating tripe however), and bizarrely it was cheaper than the house red.  Finally I had a glass or two as we celebrated beer o'clock a day late at the local pub, but that is now it until Beaujolais Nouveau 2022!

Spooky, the Black Cat in the Country gave me a scare this week, with a gummy eye, so on Thursday it was a trip to the vet.  I have never had such an excellent feline car passenger!  No offensive smells with suitable sound effects before the smells, no "singing the song of his people", no chewing my fingers through the bars of the cat carrier - he thought it was alright.  OK so he tried to bite the vet once, but he does chew quite a lot, and he didn't appreciate having his temperature taken, but he was really very good.  He has reacted well to his antibiotic injection, so doesn't have a return visit tomorrow (phew).  It would be unfair to share his photo showing why he had to visit the vet, so here is a photo of Donald, who was clearly a pirate's parrot in a previous life!  He also drools a lot.

Today's visit in the wet to feed the Boys in the Country was very exciting.  Last week John had discussed with our neighbour about access to the communal well, and the guy offered to get a machine to help find it among all the vegetation.  We arrived to find him in full "Find and Rescue" mode.  He did take a bit of the hedges as well, and took the buddleia back to large size rather than the Godzilla monster size that it had become.  As we have rainwater recuperation tanks, we are unlikely to use the well, but as it is a shared resource, we are delighted that, with a bit more work, our little hamlet will be able to use it (assuming there is any water at the bottom of course).

• 
• 

Apologies for a dull resumé of the week - I'll try to do better next Sunday!

 

Scary things

Happy Halloween!  And to keep to the theme, I will draw out the scary side of everything today.  For a start, I went to a different Super U (local supermarket chain), as I was fed up with the one in Baugé and it's slapdash attitude to restocking things like Chicken Whiskas cat food, rose scented shower gel and its boycott of Duracell batteries.  So I went to the big one at Mazé - it's further away so I won't do it that often, but I felt like a complete hick when I went round it as it was so fresh, sparkling, well stocked and (dare I say it?) a bit exciting!  However, among the condiments I spotted Worcestershire sauce, which as you can see, flaunts that it has been matured for 18 months.  I would argue that it is still nearly raw, and therefore pretty inedible - it needs at least 30 months to mellow!  And as I lived opposite the trade entrance to the factory for over 10 years, I think I am well qualified to point this out!

The classic autumn sunsets continue - yesterday's was rather good, and I just managed to catch it over the top of the charming bungalow opposite.  Autumn leaf colour is also getting good.  We spotted a couple of sumac saplings showing off their best colours - the horror of that?  There are sumac roots encroaching into the Wildflower Meadow - as the nearest tree is over the road, the roots have made it under a tarmacked road, a 2 foot deep ditch and a leylandii hedge to get to where they are!

• 
• 

Our spring time obsessions are cowslips and orchids, but wandering around the garden I find that they are already coming up.  Now I was well aware of the range of the cowslips, or so I thought, but the sheer density of them this autumn is a bit concerning - although something to look forward to when they flower in the spring.  The orchids on the other hand - there were no orchids there this year or last, where these two have been found.  That means that they have hitched a ride on one or more of the mowers or brush cutters, and are now colonising a new area.  They're coming to get us!

• 
• 

And then there was last night - a hint of a social life again.  We went to the village bar to meet some friends and were faced with The Demented Bride, complete with knife through her head and glass shards in her heart, while the food offering wand handburgers!  For the first time in ages, I actually felt a bit festive, although as we arrived at 7pm and didn't get home until gone 10pm, I suspect I actually felt a bit tiddly!

Bring on November!

 

 

Autumn changes

Last week I picked and stored the butternut squashes, this week I picked the best red pepper I have ever grown.  Plus I also pulled two more of the large white radishes - one of them was a bit damaged, but we had a good sized salad with the two (Donald the cat insisted on being part of the picture, posing as you can see).  Now our thoughts are more about next year's crops, and I should be sowing the first of those, broad beans, in the next couple of weeks.  My darling husband acquired a trailer-load of leaf mould for me - lovely stuff that is dark and full of organic matter and will help our clay soil a lot.  It is now stored under a tarpaulin in a number of giant cat food sacks until needed.

• 
• 
• 

During the week, the weather took a serious turn, with the arrival of Storm Aurore.  She was forecast to track further north than us, although the clouds were a clear sign that she meant trouble.  She brought an hour of truly nasty winds which brought down trees and powerlines.  In the centre of the village, we had a couple of power cuts, but otherwise no major issues.  Isolated properties to the east of us weren't so lucky with more major electric lines down and some houses without power for over 24 hours. 

So here is a tip if you are leaving your house for a few days, leaving the power on, and have food in the freezer, and there is a power outage.  Have a half eaten tub of ice cream in the freezer.  If when you get back, you find a slick of ice cream across the bottom of the tub, your freezer has defrosted, if there is still a clear half and a half with ice cream in it, enjoy the rest knowing it hasn't melted and refrozen!!

• 
• 

So Aurore has now passed and the sun is back.  And we have a new toy to help with those annoying branches where it is difficult to get a bow saw in and a proper chainsaw is over the top.   This little gem came with two batteries, two bars and four chains (on the basis that you work 2 chains to a bar and should replace the bar more often that we do as the bar gets clogged and damaged and warped with use).  We spent a happy quarter of an hour raising the crown on an annoying cypress style tree, and half an hour tidying up afterwards (always the way).

• 
• 

Last week I wrote about my embarrassing orchid habit - this is the final one I hadn't managed to get a good picture of, while it still has a flower.  I know it will fall off soon.  The small orchid that was covered in buds now has one flower, and I'm likely to show it off next week.

And yes, that is a cat eating in the background!

 

Normal service is resumed

In fact, as I really need to cover two weeks of excitement and rural stuff, this could be a bit longer than normal!

The week Huguette died and the week after were mostly lovely autumn weather.  This meant I could do a few useful autumn things like make jam.  My Mum's tree was about the only peach tree with much fruit on it, and as they are very dark fruited peaches (almost black if you get a good one), the resulting jam was a rich, dark pink colour.  We got 12 and two half pots of jam, both half pots have already been eaten, plus five jars of quince jelly from the tree in the garden (no photos of the jelly though).

Today has been spent gathering in excess of 150 kilos of juicing apples for our appointment at the fruit press tomorrow.  We could have gathered more, but a couple of years ago we discovered the joys of single variety apple juice - pretentious, nous?  Anyway, we wanted to do that again, as the juice from these apples (probably Canada variety or similar) is not as sweet as a mixed variety juice can be.  You know what next week's blog is going to be about therefore, but here is a tree before it was picked, and here is our helper.

• 
• 
• 

Huguette wasn't the only one to leave us in September, with a close neighbour also bowing out.  His house is now shut up while the family wait for the French equivalent of probate to be sorted out, but the geraniums he tended outside his house are still going strong and a lovely memory of him.

September is a good month for views if the weather is suitable.  We had a run of magnificent sunsets, so after a bit of fiddling, I managed to get my camera phone to get this image, which is pretty dramatic I think.  Morning views of the church are much easier, although the angles are wrong to avoid the neighbour's laundry.  Why not wait for a day with no laundry?  They don't exist, even when it is raining.  I think they don't have wardrobes, so the clothes line is a place to store clothes they aren't wearing.

• 
• 

The badgers at the Wildflower Meadow are getting prepared for winter.  They have cleaned out tunnels and done a bit more excavating - probably without planning permission.  As the ground where they live is pretty chalky, it isn't subtle when they decide that set maintenance is what needs to be done.  If you look closely at the second photo, you can see paw prints in the excavations too.  

• 
• 

As the fruit comes to an end, nuts start to catch our attention.  At the Garden, we have three big trees, then there are another four in the Orchard, and a couple more on the edge of the Wildflower Meadow.  We suspect that if we stopped doing any maintenance, the whole area would be taken over by elderberry, walnut, bramble and old man's beard.  Anyway, the area below the good two trees in the Garden has been close mown to make it easier to collect them, while it is possible to see them starting to emerge from their cases on the low branches.  I picked up 5 nice clean nuts this afternoon, but that is just the start!

• 
• 

The weather has now turned, after the amazing sunshine and clear skies.  Soon I will be ripping up the sweetcorn and the faded tomato plants, trying to ripen off the small butternut squashes and thinking about sowing broad beans for next year.  It feels like we haven't really had a summer this year, and that autumn has been with us for a couple of months now, with cyclamen in the lawn, and falling leaves.  The rewards of autumn are of course sweet chestnuts, fresh walnuts, mushrooms and preparing for the year end festivities.  I expect to be making Christmas puddings next weekend - watch this space!

 

 

Homage - Huguette Gallet

Our village lost a bit of its sparkle last week, as one of our great characters and a good friend left us.  There is a gap in our lives, and I felt it appropriate to write about her today rather than any nonsense about vegetables and fruit.

Huguette Gallet was born in June 1938, and didn't have the easiest childhood.  Both parents died while she was still very young and of course there was the War, the German Occupation and then the years of reconstruction.  She was adopted by a local family and grew up in the area.  She was by all accounts a bit of a handful, but also worked hard to earn some money from as early as she could.

She married twice.  With her first husband, she had two children, a boy and a girl, and with her second husband, two more girls.  She was widowed both times, but her second husband only died about 8 years ago.  As well as four children, she had lots of grandchildren and a few great grandchildren too.  Raising four children was hard and expensive and she worked and tended the kitchen garden and raised chickens and rabbits for eggs and for meat.  She also worked as a dinner lady in the local school.  She seemed to know everyone across all generations, not least due to the school canteen.

She was very fit, despite a couple of accidents over the years.  Even before we met her, we heard stories of her being asked not to train next to the school children as she was beating them, and how she ran a goat into the ground (possibly both apocryphal).  She led an informal walking group on a Sunday morning, and that is how we met her, and through her, an awful lot of other people too.  She was our "open sesame" to French society.  From 2007 we walked between 5 and 12 kilometres with her every Sunday, and through her, got to know all the highways and byways around our village.

She was also an intrinsic part of Friday night Beer O'Clock, as she would potter along most weeks.  If we were with other British people, she would sit and nod along to the conversation, enjoying the company if not always what was said.  If we were alone, we would chatter and she would kindly and tactfully correct our French and share her knowledge.  If she was there with family, we were included in the company and conversation. 

She was inclusive.  She was kind.  She loved animals.  She picked up waifs and strays, both animal and human, and tried to help them where she could.  She was musical.  She was energetic.  She was a member of the Comité des Fêtes with us, she was also a member of the local Heritage group.  She was mischievous and cheeky.  She was a ray of sunshine.  I will miss her.