Rural Life

Quiet days of August

Last week was the flurry of excitement that is the annual Comice here in Baugé en Anjou, and since then, things have generally been much quieter.  Local people are either on holiday or preparing for the Rentré next week - the start of September that brings a new school year, a new year for the sports and arts clubs, people going back to work and taking things a bit more seriously, being able to get an artisan to answer the phone, the tax assessment results, getting the chimney swept and starting to think about winter heating.  It's a big thing here, probably bigger than New Year, and taken most seriously.

For us, it should mean that the holiday makers disperse, making it easier to park at the local markets, less frantic calls from people who can see weeds in their lawn or furry pears on their trees (actually known as quince, but there we go), and a slightly less fraught diary.  In fact, in previous years, September has been a month where I have had something on every weekend, and sometimes more than one thing too.  This year seems more sane - only a pig roast in a couple of weeks' time and perhaps being able to visit things for European Heritage Weekend.

The gardens are relatively quiet - chillies are ripening, as are the meagre corn cobs, borlotti beans are flowering and setting and the potatoes need to be lifted.  With August, some of the loveliest flowers arrive - cyclamen.  They are mainly pink but some are white, and over the years, the clumps get larger.  The ones in our lawn started as the odd flower here and there and now have spread.  It's the same in the One Acre Wood.  These ones are at The Studio and seemed to come up overnight.

Although the weather remains frustratingly dry, there are more clouds in the evening now, which make for colourful sunsets.  I'm never great at taking photographs of these, but I am getting better, and this one was a pleasing one.

I've not taken many photographs this week, and the trail camera was pointing at an area that looked like it was a badger playground.  Well if it was, they weren't playing last week.  The camera has moved and there are no photos to share from it, so I will have to round off with a photo of young Monsieur Clause, who is looking very sleek and pleased with himself at the moment.  I think he is having a good mousing season.

I'll take more and better photos this week - I promise.

 

Peach Blossom

Last month I published a blog with a picture of apricot blossom - I can now happily report that the tree is totally covered in tiny fruits about the size of a small broad bean.  Assuming no more frosts - which should be the case now, last year's late and disastrous frost was in the second week of April - we will have to think about thinning the fruit as it develops.  In 2003, we didn't do that, and a large chunk of tree got over-loaded with fruit and broke off.  It was a waste of fruit and damaged the tree.

Since then the peach has been covered in blossom, and this morning I lost count of small set fruits at about 40 on the one branch.  As the peach tree isn't very big, I will also have to keep an eye and thin fruit if necessary.  Fortunately Rob the Pig Man reckons that his free range pigs will be very grateful for any fruit thinnings.  It could be necessary with the pear as well.

The final two trees to break into blossom are the quince and the medlar.  Quince blossom should be at its height in a few days time, while the medlar could be a little bit later.  I don't want to second guess the medlar - it is the first year we will have blossom on it - but to my mind the quince is the prettiest of all fruit blossom.

Until I can get a photo of the quince, you will have to make do with peach blossom!

Apricot Blossom

The fine run of weather in England and Northern France has brought things on nicely after the cold and snows of February.  Actually the cold and snows of January and February have done good things for the fruit trees.  Things like fruit trees, black currant bushes and similar actually need a defined period of cold and frost in order to get the real rest they need for the next season.

It looks like all our fruit trees needed that cold spell and have benefited from it.  I have never seen the apricot so covered in flowers, nor the peach for that matter.  The apricot was a good two weeks later flowering than last year, which is no bad thing, and may mean we get some fruit this year - last year we got 2.  Given that the tree is HUGE, 2 is not a result.  In 2006 we had over 200 of the most delicious, succulent and scented fruit you can imagine - memories of that keep us trying, rather than turning the tree into firewood.

The peach tree is a feral, but when it fruits, they are lovely white fleshed peaches with tremendous flavour.  In 2007 we had 35 of the most fabulous fruits, but last year we had none.  The peach tree is currently covered in deep pink blossom, so we are again hopeful.

The pear, cherry, quince and medlar trees are all holding fire for the moment, but look like there will be a lot of blossom, while the Worcesterberries and Black Currants are also looking promising.  The fig looks like a collection of dead branches, but it is still a relative baby.

So let's hope for a good fruit year, so that home grown goodies help us through this boring credit crunch and depression.  Apricot curd is like potted sunshine and is fab on a warm croissant or a slice of brioche.  Here is some of the blossom with a busy bee to help matters along.

A late spring

There is no doubt that this has been a hard winter, and for my chums in the UK, the problems are still very much with them as more snow falls today.  Here in the Baugeios, it is a blustery early spring day, with sunshine, clouds, quite a stiff breeze and temperatures up around 10 degrees C.

With it being so nice, I have spent odd moments today walking round the garden, in between frantic bouts of e-mailing to sort out next week's business trip.  The first of the broad beans are finally starting to push through over two months after they were sown - that felt like a real victory as I was convinced that even with the killer fiends (cats and chickens) that we give garden space to, that the mice would have had a feast!  But they are late - and I fear we won't be able to stir fry baby broad beans and asparagus tips fresh from the garden together this year.

Round the quince tree, there are the first snow drops coming out - probably about 8 flowers in all, and on Monday they were living up to their french name - Perceneige or "breaking through the snow".  However looking through my photos of the quince tree last year, it was surrounded by lovely crocuses by mid to late February.  Today I noticed the very first signs that some crocuses might come though and don't expect to see flowers until March.

Last year, Easter was about as early as it could be - indeed the last time it was so early, the English and French had a major battle here in our village in 1422 and the English lost and the course of the Hundred Years War changed in favour of the French.  All the blossom was early too - hardly surprising as both Easter and fruit tree blossom are closely linked to the moon, and our pear tree always flowers at Easter.  Consequently when we had a sharp frost in the first week of April, we lost all the fruit - the only thing that seemed to do well last year were apples and they are always later.  Easter is later this year and I hope the fruit trees take heed and don't flower too early - with this recession, we will need all the fruit we can get!

Here is a pretty reminder of how nice a big block of crocuses can be from last year.

Growing Globe Artichokes

I have been particularly fond of eating globe artichokes since I tasted my first one at a restaurant at Cros de Cagnes in the Alpes Maritime back in 1975.  I have been trying to perfect growing them since we got our allotment in Worcester back in 1996.

For Worcester I bought a number of plants from Marshalls, having had a spectacular lack of success at trying to grow them from seed.  Of the 10 Marshalls plants, 5 survived the worst of Worcester weather and two in particular just took off, producing a number of heads each per year, plus loads of offsets, that we never got round to doing anything with.

With this house, the urge to get a few artichokes going came very quickly and in the first spring we had the house, I bought four from a guy in Bourgeuil market, all of which were particularly happy planted close to a south facing wall and in well drained soil.  They don't produce heads every year - they are probably too closely spaced.

This year we dug one up and and divided it into 8 plants which have been planted in another equally well appointed border - 6 of those plants have survived the tender ministrations of cat bottoms and seem to be doing fine.

Of the three that remain, one has taken advantage of the extra space to produce 2 totally perfect large heads and one smaller one.  The first of the large heads is shown in the photo, and I am told was lovely with melted butter (I was away on business when it got to its perfect ripeness).  The second and third were eaten a week ago, and very good they were too - this time with vinaigrette.

The remaining plants will be lifted and split at the right time to improve their productiveness and increase our stock of plants.

Wild French orchids

As June starts to crank up the temperatures here, the orchids are ending their spectacular flowering season and dying back.  They started quite early this year with loads of common purples at the Jarze wood, and in the One Acre Wood - which was sadly neglected through May due to rain and other projects - seemed to have had two fine examples of the genre, which are now just dessicated flower spikes.  Next year we hope to see them in bloom once again.

With John doing a lot of lawns currently and doing several of these by walk behind mower rather than ride on, he has been able to spot the rosettes of orchids and not mow over them but has given them a chance to flower.  A few people who didn't know they had orchids, or suspected but didn't know what they had got, have had pleasant surprises.

Perhaps the flashiest of the lawn based orchids, though not the most colourful, is the lizard orchid - this example is nearly 2 foot high!

Rather prettier but smaller and harder to spot is the bee orchid, shown here, and small at less than a foot high.

Eating broad beans

Finally after months of agony and hard work, the crop is ready to eat.

To remind you, I planted the seed in early November, intending on an early crop to reduce losses to black fly.  The beans were germinated and up in early December and in February I posted a picture of two elegant wide rows of young plants, despite some frost damage.  In late April they were covered in flowers and I was worrying about whether there were enough bees avoiding the best efforts of the cats to keep them away from the job of pollinating.

We need not have worried - once again we have a bumper crop and only have two plants with a bit of black fly (which the chickens think are totally the best thing ever - they are odd!).  We are currently enjoying young and tender beans so they just get boiled for a short while and then a little butter and mixed with whatever else we are eating.

Soon they will become a bit more coarse and then we will have to peel the beans as well as taking them out of their pods to make a lovely dip that rivals guacamole or cooking them gently for about 4 hours with smoked bacon to make a lovely rich and satisfying paste that goes well on French bread.

Naturally we will also be saving a number of prime pods to save the seed for the next crop - this strain is developing so well, we would be mad to lose it.

See how wonderful the fresh beans look, and 8 beans in one pod too!

Peach Leaf Curl

We have one main peach tree and a few ferals around the place.  When the main peach tree has fruit (and it is itself a feral grown from a mouse's winter food store), they are lovely white peaches and because they are fresh off the tree and not picked until they are ripe, have the most wonderful flavour.  One year we had 40 peaches!

Last year was a disaster for fruit like peaches as it never really got warm after April, and this year will be just as bad.  The blossom got frosted, there wasn't much of it anyway, and when there were flowers, there were no bees.  I think I have found 1 tiny fruit ready to develop on the tree, so will use this year as a year to do the formative pruning I have had in mind for a while.

With all the rain around this spring as well, all the local peach trees, not just ours, are suffering badly from peach leaf curl.  While there is a spray remedy, I don't like to use it because of the wild and not so wild life in the garden.  The British remedy of taking the plant into a green house or covering it with protective fleece doesn't work here, where the trees get big.  However we have found that after the first flush of nasty and distorted leaves fall off, you do get a nice flush of normal leaves to nourish the tree.

In case you have never seen it, the photo below shows the ravages of peach leaf curl - a rain borne virus.

Nearly Broad Bean time!

Late April and the broad beans are in full flower.  In fact they are even starting to set, so provided the baby beans don't get too badly attacked by a cat pretending to be a Raptor from Jurassic Park, it shouldn't be too long before some are ready to eat.

Conditions are ideal currently for swelling the pods - not too hot and nice and damp (brilliant for growing lawns but other things are suffering).  While the cats are doing their best to keep bees away from the beans, as they are only outdoors for a couple of hours a day, it is not too much of a problem.

The potential problem with broad beans, and also why we sow so early, are black fly.  We don't spray - partly due to vague organic principles, but mainly due to feeding the chickens with any garden scraps that are doing the rounds, particularly if there is a chance of a bit of extra protein.  Instead, once the beans start to set, we pinch out the growing tips of the plants.  It is recommended to do this after the fourth group of flowers, we do it where it feels right.  The chickens get the growing tips and regard them as a treat, and as there are no new succulent growing tips, the ants that farm the black fly aren't that interested.  Well, it works for us anyway!

Broad bean recipes to follow once we start harvesting!

See these entries to compare the growth - November and February.

Update on tree planting

Earlier in the spring, we tried to offset our carbon footprint by planting a tree.

Actually that is overly pretentious - we were in a garden centre with a bit of spare cash and saw a medlar tree for sale and I had to have it.  That is much more the truth!!

Anyway, in a previous post I showed the large leaf buds on the medlar tree - it has been so cold since then that they have only opened slowly and we are still waiting to see if we will get any blossom this year, however in the photo below you can see the tantalisingly slow progress of our new tree. 

Hopefully the roots are spreading out nicely underground, as it is wet as well as cold here, and the root system will be more important for the future health and development of the tree than any pretty leaves or flowers that I can see!

Tree planting

Back in February we bought and planted another tree.  To keep the aim of a productive garden going, it is a fruit tree.  Because the theory is that we spend most of the summer in the garden, we have also stuck with the philosophy that the tree should be attractive, as we will have to look at it a lot.

To that end, we have bought and planted a Neflier (french) or Medlar Tree.  Currently it is only about 3 foot high and without branches - technically called a whip.  It is planted between two chestnut stakes, commensurate with its size, and is in a smalled boxed bed in the lawn in line with the young quince we planted 3 years ago to celebrate our arrival as permanent residents here.

We are assured that it has handsome leaves and lovely large blossom, while the fruits themselves are brown.  It should provide an attractive companion to the quince.

We do have wild medlars growing in the One Acre Wood, and last year were able to taste this rather odd fruit as it softened.  However the fruits on the wild version are so small that it makes it difficult to share them with friends or use them in recipes.

The photo shows the leaf buds on the young tree - I will update with photos of the developing tree as it grows.