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.

 

Well, it's good for the ground water...

Thank goodness I got the last of the potatoes up before the vegetable beds turned into a fair facsimile of a battle field!  We have rain - it has rained for much of the week, since last Sunday, and is forecast to continue raining until at least the 5th November, but more likely the 10th November.  I think that date is also pretty arbitrary as the 11th is a holiday here and of course the day for Remembrance.  It could rain until Christmas!  The only thing that seems happy about that is the cristophine vine.  At one stage, we thought there were just 9 more and then it could go.  Today we totted up 12 good sized ones, including the one shown below which had been hiding, plus another 6 small ones that are unlikely to stay small, and are in any case a size that one might see in the shops.  It is a phenomenon.

It rained during the night, it was raining this morning when we got up, it is raining now, but for about an hour and a half, it stopped and we had sun (and a strong wind).  I was able to check the trail camera, which appears not to be suitable for rain forest conditions - something going on there.  I was able to spot a recently hatched butterfly - a comma I think - sunning itself on an apple tree.

Monsieur Clause was able to sun his portly self on the steaming roof of the wood barn - at one stage he looked like he might jump down onto me, and as he is a good 7 to 8 kilos, I was not so keen so moved out of range.

And then more rain came along and we headed home.  I have taken advantage of the poor conditions to do a bit of boring work, but soon I will not be able to find any more excuses and I will have to start on the hundred odd tasks of housework I have been avoiding for the past 10 years.  Dusty corners are sneering at me, and spiders' webs are growing in number, size and density.  There are still 4 kilos of chestnuts that need peeled, steamed and peeled again - and I know I will be pleased when they are done, but it is SUCH a boring job.  There is a final jam batch that I am trying to avoid too, but in a few minutes, I will be able to avoid it no longer, and jamming will begin again.

I am very jealous of the Cats at Home - they can just lie around, snuggled into fleeces and cushions, and sleep the next four months away!

Two cat photos in one post - that show's how bad the weather has been!  Stay warm, stay dry!

 

Mixed up seasons

Earlier this week I had to be out and about earlier than usual, visiting a house and garden.  I found the early sunshine tricky driving east, as it was in my eyes.  In addition, after a few months of not needing to, I had to remember how to demist the windscreen of the car.  It was all a bit different, but once I got to my destination, something made it all so very worthwhile!  The large yukka in the garden was in full bloom and catching a beam of morning sun - what a beautiful sight!

The warmth and the sunshine were lovely, but other things are harbingers of winter and the days are certainly getting shorter.  This morning we were at the One Acre Wood to see if there were any more mushrooms - spoiler alert, no there weren't!  What was amazing were the quantity of holly berries - there were trees we have never seen with a single berry covered with them.  I don't know if it means a harsh winter or that this year was good for fruit (and it certainly has been a good year for fruit), but it is very jolly.

It is a sign that Christmas is approaching and indeed the Christmas puddings are made and wrapped in greaseproof paper and foil, and tucked away in a box "maturing".

As well as the trail camera (more on that in a bit), I have succumbed to a mobile app for identifying bird song - the Cornell Lab one, I am sure others are available!  It is fascinating as it will identify up to about 300 birds found in northern Europe based on their song.  You set it to record, and as it goes, it matches song to bird, so you can follow along in real time to see who is having a chunter out there.  It is mildly addictive and I am sure pretty accurate, although I very much doubt we have a green sandpiper at The Orchard.  It does also show that I am shouted at by Robins pretty well continuously, and wherever I am too!  It also managed to identify this wee flock of long tailed tits that were doing the rounds in the gardens by us.

The tree is dead by the way and not in our garden.

So yes, the trail camera - I went to check it yesterday and the batteries were low, so it came home for battery recharge and so I could download and check the files.  I can triage a bit when it is in situ using bluetooth and an app, but the images on my phone are very small and indistinct.  I had thought that the night of the 30th September, there had been wind and I had loads of photos of waving grass, but no, the boar were in.  (And goodie - the software links are working again!)

Actually things seemed to enjoy charging through as some young deer did a similar thing.

The badgers are also still out and about, but don't charge around like the boar and the deer - much more laid back.

So there we have it - a week in the weird season.  Today I dug up the last of the potatoes, eyed up a parsnip, but didn't give in to temptation and picked a courgette.  To find a nice one of those at this time in October is just madness!  Have a good week!

 

Preparing to hunker down - edited

Last week there were the first portents of serious autumn starting to happen - sadly not so much with vivid coloured leaves.  I'm hoping that will yet happen, but fear that leaves will just go brown and fall with none of the flaming yellows and reds of a good brisk autumn.  The trees need frost to trigger the colours, and the first forecast frosts for us are tonight and tomorrow night.  Yesterday was a mad rush of getting the delicate plants under cover, both normal houseplants that have been out enjoying the weather, and those in pots that live outdoors but need to be kept frost free.  Somehow when a shelf or a window sill is left empty over the summer, it acquires a load of other stuff, which then has to be moved. 

The giant cristophine vine also warranted some protection as there are still some 15 viable fruits on it, and after a couple of days, it's going to get warmer again.  We used to buy cheap garden shelters, but they were always getting caught by the wind and shredded, so we invested in a more permanent pergola for which I make covers.  We still have a couple of cheap covers hidden away in the shed in case they came in useful, and one is now protecting the cristophine.

As you can see, there are still viable fruits, and we prefer to leave them on the vine to ripen up fully.  By our reckoning, so far we have picked 18 fruits and there are still at least a dozen that are eating size on the vine, so it makes sense to try to keep it going until they are all ready.

On Thursday evening, as I was putting the chickens to bed, I heard a bit of tap-tap-tapping in the area, and looking across could see one of our neighbours trying to get the new slates onto the roof of the building he is renovating before the rain came.  He was assisted in his task, as it was after 7:30pm so pretty dark, by the fact the building is right by a street light.  Even so, he gave up as I think the shadows were falling unhelpfully, but all was not lost, as the promised rain turned out to be a scant 1 millimetre!  He and his woman are doing a pretty amazing job on the roof.

Today I finally had no more excuses and got round to putting together the Christmas puddings.  The raw mix as in the photo will stand overnight, fermenting, then will be stuffed into bowls and steamed for 10 hours tomorrow during the day, before being laid down until Christmas 2023 and 2024.  It's not technical, it's just finding all the bits required and chopping, peeling, shredding and juicing.  Once all the bits are ready, you just shove them in a bowl and mix a bit, and make wishes.  The magic happens in the 24 hours after, as they rest and then are steamed.  But the steaming is tomorrow's job.

This morning I got the steamer out and the mix into two basins and they are now cooking away, and keeping the kitchen warm.

It's not just us hunkering down - when I took the lid off the water butt to fill watering cans, I found two friends sheltering on the side of the barrel.  Not natural playmates I would have said, but they seemed happy enough and not too cross with me for disturbing them.  I put the lid back on when I had all the water I needed.

So that's it for the Monday update - apart from the fact that England won, France lost, and while today and tomorrow are cold, it will warm up again on Wednesday so the cover will come off the cristophine.

Have a good week!

 

 

Hints of Autumn - finally

Here in France, Autumn is late, very late.  I am happy to be indoors with my computer as the temperature in the garden is over 30ºC at the moment.  Earlier, I was digging up potatoes - hard work in temperatures nearing 25ºC in the shade and the soil is pretty solid clay.  I can't totally complain, as look what just one seed potato produced!  They are huge and unblemished, and will take some baking later in the year.

But other, more autumnal signs are there - including my first bright orange, evil, jelly slug of the season, spotted mooching around between the raspberries and the wood store.  They are deeply unpleasant to my eye, but also seem to be harbingers of mushrooms.

I saw this fellow yesterday, plus there was a giveaway headline in the local paper this morning that mushrooms were appearing, so we just had to go for a walk in the One Acre Wood before doing any work at the Garden.  For once they were not wrong - there were mushrooms a plenty, but many had gone over or had bad slug or fly damage.  We found three nice ones for lunch - a delicious cèpe and comté omelette, made with free range eggs from the garden.

It goes without saying that if you aren't confident about identifying mushrooms, don't pick and eat!  We only eat what we know.

We also need to prepare to pay our rent for the Garden, Orchard and Meadow.  The payment is in a number of forms - obviously providing all the necessary luxuries for Donald, Spooky and Monsieur Clause the cats is part of it, keeping the Meadow under control with an annual mow as per legislation is another part of it, and then there is the tribute of a shoebox of walnuts too.  Knowing that the boar like the good nuts best, well they aren't totally stupid, we have to gather them as soon as they fall, before drying them so the inner skin isn't unpleasant and bitter.  We think we have the required tribute spread out in the sun!

The Meadow got mowed finally this weekend too.  Between Wildlife Trusts, the RSPB and the LPO, it is difficult to spot at time when you can do this without being berated for being a vandal and putting life at risk.  Seed heads, chrysalids, eggs, nesting time, flowering cycles, shelter etc. are all cited as reasons to not mow.  The reasons to mow include seed heads (some things aren't supposed to be allowed to spread, including ragwort and thistle), brambles, old man's beard, not required saplings, improving conditions for low growing wildflowers and those that need a short sward to flourish (including cyclamen and wild orchids), and a legal requirement not to cause a nuisance. 

I prefer to mow in September, but we didn't have a working mower available until now.  It should also be noted that some bits of the Meadow didn't get done last year for no good reason.  Anyway, it was jolly hard work in the hot sun, and at the end I was half human, half wild carrot seed, and it doesn't look good as the saplings didn't get properly trashed, so I will have to do some of it again during the week, but finally we can see across the Meadow again!  There are large banks of scrub for shelter for my friends the hares and for any pheasants that the fox  hasn't had too.

There are no new wildlife photos to share this week as last Sunday the hunt went through our land and the valley.  They don't come into the Garden, as it is well fenced off but do treat the Orchard and Meadow as their own.  While I recognise very clearly the need to control the number of boar, as there really are too many, what annoys me about the hunters is their sheer arrogance as they stalk through other people's property.  Plus I don't trust them not to fire towards us in the Garden if they spot something interesting.  We sang and whistled very loudly while they were close by.  Once they have done a sweep through, we see very little large wildlife for at least a couple of weeks, until they find their way back to us.

I leave you with the flowers of autumn, the cyclamen that pop up everywhere it seems and spread gloriously through our gardens and the Wood.  They always make me smile.

Have a good week!

 

Dangerous beasts

For a few days last week, we had a ferocious door keeper - actually it was quite tricky at times to close the door as we didn't want to squash him or her!  While last year we saw practically no mantis, this year there have been quite a lot and this one has decided our front door area is their stalking point.  If I am in the way, then I too am a stalking point.  Either mating or cold will eventually kill them off, but until then, I enjoy the company.

Rather less fun was the hornet sting last Sunday, which is still a bit painful and blew up overnight on Sunday to rather unpleasant proportions, and made yoga moves a bit challenging.  My experience, if it helps anyone else, is as follows: the pain of the sting is like a searing hot needle into the arm.  Get the hornet off you, as they can sting more than once - to be sure, have a large person jump up and down on the blasted creature as well in retribution.  If you know you have sting allergies, get yourself to a chemist or doctor asap or use the EpiPen you carry or take the antihistamines you have been given.  There is a rumour that a cider vinegar compress as soon as you can will also be helpful - I didn't spot that advice until a bit too late.  Hydrocortisone cream will sooth, but needs fairly frequent application, and an anti-inflammatory such as ibuprofen will help with the swelling, but count on pain for four to six days.  All in all I don't recommend the experience.

The trail camera has been in to have its batteries recharged - the new camera is heavier on batteries than the old one, and seems to use up the rechargeable batteries in three weeks.  It is back now keeping an eye out for boar, and indeed the boar are about a bit, keeping an eye out for walnuts.

More interestingly, when I was going through what was on the memory card, were a series of short videos of a fox with something - frequent reviews of the set of 6 videos tells me that it was probably a blackbird.  I've loaded up a few of the videos for those who don't mind watching nature red in tooth and claw.   For me the interesting aspect of this, other than that foxes don't like feathers in their teeth, is that foxes, like cats, play with their prey.  Now TypePad and YouTube don't seem to be playing ball anymore so I am hoping that if you follow this link, you can see video number 1 - but do press any back arrow to come back to this post, same for the other two links, if you can spot a back arrow or back function that is (I really hate technology at times).  Then if you follow this link, you can see video number 2.  And finally, if you follow this one, you can see video number 3.

The cristophine vine goes from strength to strength as this unseasonably hot autumn continues.  We have harvested off 8 fruits now, and counting today, it looked to me like there were a further 23 that might do something if we don't get a frost, including 6 that actually need to be eaten in the next week as they are fully ripe.  One tendril has disappeared 15 foot up into a birch tree, and the canopy the leaves provide over the structure we made for it are fairly waterproof.  It is a thing of wonder - well, to us at least, as other British gardeners over here in France seem to be singularly uninterested.  French people with relatives in the overseas departments are fascinated.

I'm not sure whether the recent full moon was the Harvest Moon or the Hunter's Moon, but it has been spectacular.  Here it is rising between houses.

We are still working our way through the quince harvest.  I have poached more and of course we do have some eau de vie de quince from a successful year about 3 years ago, so I have come up with Cocktail Maison - two small measures (a 2cl shot glass) of eau de vie, three good small measures of quince and spice syrup, and full to the top with fizzy water.  It slips down very nicely!!

Cheers! Until next week.

 

 

 

 

Preserving the crops

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness?  We've had a couple of early morning mists, so far, but they burnt off very quickly once the sun came up.  Mellow fruitfulness?  More like aggressive ripening and rotting to be honest!  We are currently in the middle of a burst of preserving such as I don't remember having to cope with before.

The peaches have been ripening and plopping off the tree for a while now - anything that hits the ground is immediately pounced on by ants and wasps and bees and their friends and relations.  What is still on the tree has a slight miasma of dark mould from the aphids that lived on the leaves during the summer, so eating from the tree is not entirely pleasant and the fruit still on the tree is only partially ripe.  That didn't stop me yesterday and I picked and peeled some two kilos giving me enough for 4 and a half pots of white peach and rum jam - very tasty!

So that's the jar on the right.  On the left is a slightly more sinister jar of spiced fig sauce, which is good with meat dishes.  That was the result of a raiding party on the fig tree at the bottom of the garden that has declared war on me.  We had a first crop of figs in June - they were tasty, particularly baked with sweet mincemeat and a bit of honey.  The second crop has gone slightly mad, with exploding figs everywhere.  The blackbirds that normally get half the fruit can't keep up.  The chickens are eating what they can and feeling the effects too I think.  The fig sauce was an attempt to cope and also to deal with some of the many, many chillies we are also getting from the Cayenne chilli plants (the jalapeños aren't ripe yet).

While the peach jam was gently simmering away, I picked a further kilo and a half of figs, chopped them up and made another four jars of fig jam (no surprising additives in that).  They are a nice ruby colour.  The major jamming session will be during the week when I attack the quince problem.  Normally our tree has about a dozen fruit - enough for a liqueur and perhaps 10 jars of jelly.  This year we stopped counting at 50.  They are turning quickly now, so I need to get moving and preserving.  I am also trying new recipies for other things to do with quince - watch this space.

But it's not all jams and jellies, because everything else is going nuts too!  During the week i froze a dozen sweetcorn, and once this blog is done, I have this lot to work through.

To be clear, that is a dozen tomatoes, three courgettes, 2 cristophines and 31 cayenne chillies, from a half hour foray of picking.  There is going to be a very big pot of hot tomato and courgette gunge on the go shortly.  The rest of the chillies will be frozen for later.

One of the cristophines was eaten last night as an accompaniment to fish kebabs.  I split it into quarters, boiled it, then peeled it (the skin isn't edible and has an annoying latex when raw), chopped it up and sautéed it with a home grown red onion, before adding cream to be glutton-ish.  Delicious!  I will do a similar thing with two more tomorrow, but adding in lardons to make a main meal.

But now I can hear the rumbling of yet another thunderstorm, so I need to go and round up a couple of quince for tonight's pork and quince tagine - I'll let you know how that goes.

 

Let's talk cristophine

Or chayote if you prefer.

We first came across them when we were in Guadeloupe in 2019 and were over on Grande Terre visiting a sugar factory.  As it was the major festival for the islands (Mardi Gras - why did we not spot that?), we were evicted from the factory museum so went for a meal at a restaurant by the sea, as you do.  The starter, the proprietor was very proud to tell us, was cristophine gratin, and it was delicious.  So we looked around for cristophines to buy to try cooking ourselves, which we found.  Then how to deal with them?  A Florida cooking and gardening website was our friend and talked us through the process - easy and tasty, what more could you ask for?

Once home of course, you forget, but then a few months later, I spotted them on a local market stall in January, and asked the chap about them.  He had a few and had planted them in one of their polytunnels to use the space during the summer and was now selling off the crop.  So each winter, we have profited and bought from him.  Last year, we spotted a strange plant along a chum's fence and asked about it, and he said he had been growing a cristophine as someone gave him a sprouted one - that set us thinking!

We let a couple we bought at la Flèche sprout, and while one had the growing tip knocked off in one of those gravity related accidents, the other kept going.  it was in a pot on a south facing window sill for two and a half months, getting stupidly large, until mid-May and all danger of frosts were gone - then we planted it out at The Shack.

We also planted a couple of runt tomatoes next to it, because, well, you never know do you?  During the summer, it reflected on things then decided to grow.  So we had to start to provide supports.

The plant kept growing and so the support structure had to get bigger and bigger.

In early August, we spotted the first flowers, which got a lot of interest from the local insect population.

That was very exciting, but what we didn't realise was that there are two types of flower - male and female.  The males appear first and while not impressive, are pretty, yellow and numerous.  The female flowers appear singly and, as with courgettes and squashes, with a tiny potential fruit attached.

We only spotted the female flowers last weekend, along with a couple of fruit.  We now think there are at least a dozen fertilised fruit on there, and perhaps more to come.  Some are also getting towards an interesting size!

The main plant is huge and still growing in all directions.

And what about those two runt tomato plants?  Well it would appear that planting tomatoes and cristophine together is a match made in heaven and they too have turned into triffids.

"Feed me, Seymour!"

Until next week, assuming we survive!!

 

 

So much to do, so little time!

It's the final straight before the Comice.  Most days this week have been taken up doing "stuff", but unless that stuff is already out in the streets and fields, it is embargoed.  The weather has meant less progress has been made on some aspects than we would have liked - the wind and rain made working on straw bales nearly impossible.  It was possible to progress items that will be installed on the fields in due course, as we are working on them in a disused piggery, so we have shelter, power, space and quiet (unless we have a bluetooth speaker with us to blast out radio).  And when I say we, it isn't just John and I, it is all sorts of other people, including my next door neighbour's granddaughter, getting involved.

Next week I will find links to blogs I have written on previous Comices (Comici?) to show what the fuss is all about.

When not working on decorations, I have been keeping an eye on the new trail camera.  The boar are still around and a deer or two have passed by - they look rather odd from a higher angle!

On Thursday, I caught a different strange animal on the camera - one that I would not expect to see on our land before September.  I wasn't delighted, but I think I remember seeing a couple around this time last year too.

We think that the cristophine might be contemplating flowers - today there was a slightly different growth on a couple of the main stems.  It has grown another three feet or so in a number of directions so there is certainly enough oomph in it to think about flowering and fruiting I would suggest.

The sweetcorn got a real battering in the winds during the week - two named storms at this time of year and this side of the Atlantic is a bit odd.  While we were not near the strongest gusts, the gaps in hedges and trees funnel the wind in weird ways.  The big fields of maize are closely planted and dense, while our wee area of sweetcorn is only three rows deep, but it has all survived and the silks are out and starting to turn brown, which is good!

Digging up the week's potatoes, I met one of my garden helpers.  From the size and shape of her, I think she has been doing very well on slugs, and certainly none of the potatoes have slug damage, so I think she is rather effective, if not the prettiest person on the plot.

Anyway, I must now go and deal with a rather pleasing problem.  Back in the days before Brexit was even considered, my mother in law bought us a Victoria Plum tree, to take the place of the medlar tree that didn't seem to like our garden (shame as the flowers were gorgeous).  It wasn't cheap and we had to source it in the UK, as they aren't a thing in France.  Since then we have nurtured it and protected it and been rewarded with at best a dozen fruit in a season, and only if we can get to them before the chickens.  This year is different.  This year it is loaded and we have supports under many branches to help it cope.  This afternoon I have promised myself I will make a batch of plum crumbles for the freezer, as well as one for tonight, so I'd better go and pick and stone some fruit and get baking.

Have a good week!

 

Harvests and cameras

After weeks of nurturing, watering, weeding and worrying, the first serious harvests are starting in the potager.  We've been digging up a couple of potatoes from the first block of 18, for a few weeks now - well this is the seventh weekend to be precise.  The potatoes are second earlies and were planted in three blocks over a period of about 4 weeks, and the first block are very ready to be harvested.  By taking just a couple of plants a week, we have enough and more for us to eat over the week and don't have to worry about storage and drying off.  The next two blocks will need that level of attention, but that is a way down the line, post-Comice.

Today's basket of goodies includes potatoes, carrots, a few onions that I missed yesterday when lifting the main block of red onions, a couple of courgettes that I didn't cut yesterday and a couple of little gem lettuce that looked like they were thinking about bolting.

We've also had aubergines - I think 5 so far, or it may be 7, and half a dozen courgettes already and of course there are the red onions to look forward to.

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This is only the start too - there are as many set borlotti beans as we had all season last year, and the bean vines are covered with more flowers.  The butternuts haven't yet got into their stride, but there are quite a few female flowers developing.  The tomatoes have some good looking trusses on them - fingers crossed that they ripen and don't get struck by blight.  And there is the cristophine vine, which gets bigger as you watch it and now has a vast structure set up for it to rampage over.  Perhaps one day there will be flowers and fruits too - in the meantime it provides shelter for a couple of tomatoes that I rejected for the main plot as they were runt plants, so have gone totally mad as companion plants for the cristophine.

Another bit of companion planting that we did as an experiment also seems to be working.  Parsnips are very slow to get going, so "they" recommend inter-sowing with something that is quicker off the mark and doesn't stay in the ground as long.  I put the row of parsnips at the edge of the potato bed, so one bit of companion planting I guess.  I sowed parsnips every 4 to 6 inches and in between sowed carrots.  As you have seen, the carrots are doing fine.  Many of the parsnips are also doing very well too and their leaves can be seen over the potatoes and swamping the carrots in places!  They've got months more growing time to go too.

So to the saga of the trail camera.  It developed a fault.  Basically the switch inside the protective shell got disconnected, and despite having had it less than two years, it was out of warranty (I know EU warranties are 2 years - I did point that out to the supplier, but I know when I am on a hiding to nothing).  It had been attacked a few times by boar, a pine martin, a few garden birds and a few hornets, so it had a hard life!  Anyway, I couldn't cope without one, so blagged a discount code off the supplier, who were very good and allowed me to apply that discount to something that was already discounted, and also made sure it was sent through express, so the new one arrived on Wednesday and was installed on Thursday - once I had read the instructions with the help of a magnifying glass!!  We rigged it up in a tree close to where the last one died to see what was happening and test it out.  Boar are what is happening - they must be on their second litter of the year, and they do just love the shallow ponds for wallowing in.  The fish aren't so keen, but as there is little water, despite the rain, the fish are dying off, so I guess the boar can have their fun.

We'll see what more porcine fun appears over the next week.

In the meantime, the Comice approaches at a terrifying speed and I need to concentrate on painting dancers and doing lettering (some of it very big) so that people have an idea what is going on.  I've done the logos on the two arches (photo is of the smaller one), now for the lettering....

Have a good week!

 

Being a good peasant

Apologies for not posting yesterday - I was indeed being a good peasant, and had just got my hands on 4 kilos of very ripe yellow plums - if I didn't jam them yesterday, they would have gone in the new burping barrel, and that would have been a waste.  I had also turned down a tray of apricots in favour of free plums for jam making, so had to get cracking.  But taking the stones out and chopping up 4 kilos of plums takes time, then you have to gently cook them, before adding the sugar and pushing to setting temperature.  Still, we started the half jar today at breakfast, and it was jolly yum, so definitely worth it and you will have to believe me!

And once that was done, I thought I was on a roll, so I spent an hour peeling the tiny shallots for pickling (no photo), at which point it was time to do all the bits for crab and comté soufflé for dinner.

At the start of the week, I was able to enjoy this wonderful vista over a vast field of sunflowers - in general they are nearly over but I was able to catch this field near its best.

Close to, some of the flower heads were huge, and while still flowering at the centre. birds had already started to peck away at the ripening seeds.  I picked out a few myself for sowing next year (just 8) and they were slightly sticky to the touch but fat and well filled.

Midweek I was able to spend a bit of time working in the potager and was able, after doing a bit of watering, to thin out the carrots a bit, particularly those that were quite close to the nicely developing parsnips.  I sowed a sort of heritage variety of multicoloured carrots - apparently all shades between white and black, via yellow, orange and red.  So far those I have thinned have been firmly in the white to orange spectrum, which is a shame as black carrots are so dramatic!

The woodstore by the potager is very useful for drying off crops once lifted, such as shallots, onions and potatoes, before they go to storage or are used.  It has the standard tin roof, ventilated wooden walls and a sandy floor.  This seems to be an ideal home for antlion larvae.  I've not dug down to see what they look like, but we have a lot of depressions which are very characteristic and very intriguing.  If I were 50 years younger, I would probably dig one up, now I am more live and let live.

The week has also been about Comice preparations.  I spent Thursday afternoon in a disused piggery with a laptop, projector and a load of paints, trying to trace the logo onto part of a giant panel.  It all went well until the scaffolding holding the projector shifted just a smidge!!

Saturday was Bunting Day - I helped on the morning shift, stringing up bunting down the main drag of the village to get people in the mood for fun.  It's amazing how lots of small triangles of fabric on a piece of bailing twine can make everything seem so much more festive!  In the afternoon our house got bunting on its façade too, which I can see a small bit of when in the back garden - it's the small things that can give so much pleasure!

Next week I'll try to be more timely, but there is a lot more Comice preparation to do!