Rural Life

Disappointed with Typepad

I have been concerned that over the past week (since I upgraded to Explorer 9 in fact) that I have been unable to present blogs as I would wish nor have I been able to add photos. This is very disappointing as I have invested a lot of time and effort in getting the three blogs I have to represent what I want them to. I will be complaining to Typepad about this. I tried to leave a nice picture of a black iris, but was unable to.

Is is a lawnmower?

John is never tired of saying that here you must expect the unexpected around here.  Yesterday evening we were invited to dinner with some chums who are over enjoying the Easter vacation.  John also used to do their lawns, but they have changed gardener.  As we turned into their drive, we saw our host with a black herbivore of some sort on a rope.  John's reaction is best paraphrased as "I've not been replaced by a goat AGAIN, have I?"

Fortunately not.  Our friends were working away in their property yesterday afternoon when they saw what they thought was a goat walking up the road.  It turned into their drive, so both dashed inside to find their cat to ensure she wasn't spooked by this apparition (Skye is a scaredy cat) - they also hoped it would just walk on by.  To their horror, they found themselves pinned in the house by the animal, which proceeded to demolish one of their rose bushes.  Dave climbed out of a window to go and find the owner, while Pauline tried to encourage it away from the house.  She gave up after she had been butted a couple of times.

Dave found some people who had goats, but hadn't lost one, but never the less came and caught and tethered the beast, so when we arrived, the Black Marauder was tied up with a bucket of water and some nice lush weeds grass to chew on.  Closer inspection helped us to identify that he was a sheep, but one with a bad attitude as he then butted me too.  Sweet he ain't!

 
A little while later a neighbour of Dave and Pauline's turned up to say that she knew who the sheep belonged to, but could they hang on to it until the next day as the owners were out.  As it seemed happy eating the weeds grass, and was securely fastened, that was OK.  We thought the drama was over.

How wrong!  At about 9pm, the neighbour called to say the owner was about to come and claim the sheep, was that alright?  Absolutely - we all trooped out to wave a fond farewell to Sheep.  A little while later the neighbour turned up with the owner in a Fiat Panda.  We were astounded as three children also emerged from the car, and even more curious as to how sheep would be transported the 5 miles or so to its home.  Simple - three children on the back seat and Sheep in the front foot well!  Apparently Sheep is about 11 years old, had dodged a bullet when 1 year old and facing slaughter for a barbecue, and had been adopted by these people.  He was acknowledged to be a bit of a brute, butting people constantly.  this isn't nice when you have horns like this!

 
The bad attitude was explained when we found out his name - in  translation he is called Pink Carnation!

 

Luscious leeks

Since we moved to France, I haven't had too much luck growing onions and onion related plants - garlic, shallots, leeks, chives, spring onions.  However last year in August at the la Fleche market, some gentlemen of a certain age (as we say here) were selling bundles of young leek plants that looked so good I could not resist.  I did also have some space in one bed where the party lettuces had been removed and I couldn't think what else to do.

They stood all winter and in the very cold snaps seemed to freeze solid and looked very sorry for themselves when they thawed out, so I was pretty well resigned to another waste of time, space and money.  However as things warmed up, they have put on bulk and started to look normal, so now we are trying to eat them all before they run to flower.

Because it is getting warmer, they are thinking about flowering and they have suffered a bit, some bits can be a bit stringy, but long slow cooking seems to get round that, and the three that went in the veal parcel casserole last night cooked gently for about 2 hours and just melted in the mouth.  I think we have another dozen to eat, and then that is over for the next 9 to 10 months.  The trick will be to spot those nice chaps at the market again in August!!

 

James Holland, 20th Century Artist

Spring is definately in the air and I should be posting like crazy about all things rural, but another blogging project is distracting me slightly and I would like to point it out.

My third blog is about the life and work of my father, James Holland.  A Kentish artist born in Gillingham, who spent the last thirty years of his life living in the village of Pembury near Tunbridge Wells, James Holland was a noted figure in the Thirties in the art world of London.  He was one of the Three Jameses, producing political cartoons and commentary that was anti-Fascist and anti-war (he never went on holiday to Spain for example, because of Franco).  He saw at first hand the ravages of the Nazi regime and the War that had been necessary to crush it, which shocked him profoundly.  More importantly, he was part of the team that designed and created The Tonic to the Nation - the Festival of Britain - which is being celebrated in London this year, marking its 60th anniversary.

So keep an eye on what is going on here, as well as in this blog, as I promise to have some tree felling pictures soon!  But here is a flavour of the pictures on the other blog.

 

 

Vine pruning

Finally I had a chance today to get round to doing the first prune on the vines chez Gordon and Jackie.  I was only just in time, but on the other hand, as I prune four times a year, it did only take an hour and a half including tidying up and only produced two wheelbarrow loads of off cuts for John to burn when the fancy takes him.  The soft wood prunings are composted but these are dry and old wood and therefore don't compost well.  The scale of the problem is this.

 

Close up, you can see that the new growth buds are really well formed, and I was only just in time for this first pruning.

 

I am pretty ruthless, though probably not as much as I should be, but this is what this particular joint looked like after I had pruned it.  Note also that the wound is crying as the sap rises - it won't do this on later pruning exercises and is a very odd phenomenon.  Next year I must be better organised and do this earlier and then I won't have weeping wounds!

 

Nettle Soup

Well we are past the equinox and finally days are longer than nights and the sun is starting to have some real power in it, so Spring is definitely here.  While it brings good things (blossom, swallows and swifts, butterflies, longer days), it does mean that the weeds start to wake up as well, and I will soon lose part of the garden to goose grass if previous years are anything to go by.

I have wrought revenge on one weed (do it to them before they do it to you?) by eating it, and jolly good it was too!  I have tried making nettle soup before, but have found it comes out watery and rather uninspiring unless you are on a very serious diet or completely skint, but this time I ignored the advice of local cooks and did my own recipe and jolly good it was too.  So in the interests of helping people keep down but still maintain their nettle stocks (spraying is not the way forward as nettles are home to many nice butterflies when they are in egg and caterpillar form), I share my nettle soup with the world - or those bits that read blogs anyway.

Ingredients

• 1 or two medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
• The green bits of a leek or two you were going to throw away, but are still too good for the compost heap - at least a good heaped tablespoon
• 10 or 12 sorrel leaves, roughly de-ribbed (just the central rib - one set of strings too many otherwise)
• a full salad spinner bowl of nettle tops - the last 4 to 6 leaves
• stock - I used a chicken stock cube and the cooking water from the best bits of the leeks I cooked for another dish (leeks wrapped in best ham and baked in a goat's cheese sauce with crunch topping - yum)
• seasoning to taste

Method:

1. Put the potato cubes and the leek bits in a big saucepan with a knob of butter and a spoon of olive oil and heat gently to get them a bit cooked and coated with the fats so they don't stick to the pan
2. Gradually add handfuls of sorrel leaves and nettle tops and move them around the pan so they wilt in the oil - the sorrel will go a bit muddy coloured but the nettles will go a nice rich dark green
3. Add sufficient stock to only just cover the greens - add too much and you end up with washing up water in my opinion - and simmer until the potatoes are done
4. Whizz to get a nice smooth consistency and season to taste
5. To serve, pour in a bowl and add a swirl of cream - I had got to the end of the pot so I did Jackson Pollock cream which isn't so pretty - and serve with garlic croutons and crusty bread

It may turn your pee green but that wears off, just make sure you don't include too much other garden produce with your nettles (bugs, grass, other weeds, butterfly eggs) so wash your nettle tops carefully while wearing rubber gloves - for obvious reasons.

Here is our lunch today!

 

Hints of spring

Last weekend I was out in the garden with the camera, looking for hints of spring and things for dinner.  Sadly the broad beans still haven't come up (well I did only sow them a couple of weeks ago now), but there were lots of other lovely things.  Perhaps one of the happiest signs that spring is on her way are the crocuses that surround the Quince tree - I can't tell if there are more this year but they were lovely last weekend (today they are pretty well over).

 

With spring on the way, the last of the root vegetables need to be lifted and eaten before they think about flowering.  I am giving the parsnips another day or two, but last week I had got some nice bits of stewing pork, so thought it was time the salsify was lifted.  With roots, you can never tell how good the crop is until it is in your basket.  There were some lovely thick and non-branching roots, but they were in the minority.  Most were badly forked.  However they were delicious, so who cares about how pretty they were?

 

We decided a while back that we wanted a couple of apple trees, but with the dry year last year and then the harsh winter, we hadn't done anything about it.  However as our Gamm Vert discount voucher was about to expire, we went tree shopping and got one of the two desired trees.  Reine de Reinette apples inspire the same level of passion here in France as Coxes Orange Pippins do in Kent.  I don't think it works to try to import our favourite apple varieties to France - there is a reason why they do well in Kent, and there is a reason why French apples do well in France - they are right for the conditions.  We have our Reine de Reinette but know we won't get anything this year (partly as you don't allow fruit to develop on a new tree) as we don't have the pollinator tree.  There are four or five recommended, including the dreary but prolific Golden Delicious, but we have decided that a Granny Smith would be best - a nice acid apple with a green skin for better juice, should it do well.  We will have to wait until the Autumn to order that however.  Still here is the new star for the garden.

 

John acquired another new tree for me, and I am very pleased with it, although I have not decided what to do with it.  For the moment therefore it will sit in a pot in the tree nursery.  Isn't this the sweetest baby yew tree you have seen?  John rescued it when he was transplanting roses for a client, who was going to pave over the area where the yew had installed itself.

 

The final image for today is also a harbinger of Spring, and in purely aesthetic terms is one of the loveliest sights of the year - apricot blossom.  However when greed takes over (and the apricots from our tree are the best in the world), we have to admit that it is still about 2 or 3 weeks too early for the blossom, as while apricot blossom is frost hardy to -2 degrees, baby apricot fruits are only hardy to +1 degree, and we still have frosts due for another couple of weeks here.  So the flowers are lovely, but I suspect I am resigned to no apricot jam, ice cream, sauce, chutney, curd, apricots in syrup,frozen apricots or apricots in alcohol again this year.  With any luck, we will get our normal dozen fruit, rescued from the chickens that get eaten before we can even get back to the house.

 

Restaurant Review: le Moulinet, Jarze

After a long break, we are back trying out the local restaurants and comparing the menus ouvrier again, and today it was the turn of le Moulinet at Jarze.  This is a definate truckers' stop on the main non-motorway route from Tours to Angers a little further on towards Angers from Bauge.

 
The menu here is 11 euros, wine and coffee included.  You enter via the bar and then are either directed to the right (macho workers) or to the left (posh restaurant).  Either way, there is a buffet of starters (we thought the chorizo had bite, the rillettes were good and the herring salad particularly fine, the home made mayonnaise was also very tasty) with bread, before you get to the matter of the main courses.  Today there was a choice of three - kidneys in a red wine sauce, chicken leg stuffed with wild mushrooms and roast pork.  There was also a choice of side dish - home made mash, a gratin of courgettes and tomatoes or garden vegetables.  John had the kidneys with the gratin and said it was good, I had the chicken and mash and it was very tasty indeed but rather rich.  The house red to wash it down was very nice indeed.  Cheese was brought round and served (no chance to try everything), and the Morbier was particularly pleasing.  Puddings were a little more adventurous than normal - coconut tart and creme brulee mousse.  The coffee was very strong.

The ambience is very good and there is ample parking.  We have been told it can get full between 12 and 1pm, but we had no issues getting a table, but it is half term in some parts of France.  Well done, le Moulinet.

Another advantage of lunch there, was that one of the routes home goes past the One Acre Wood, which meant that we had a very good excuse to stop off for a walk and to see how everything was doing.  The hazelnut catkins are nearly over, but the snowdrops are still out, and the cyclamen leaves are still visible and pretty, while the primroses are starting to push through.  The newt pond has a bit of water in it - there needs to be more to give the newts a chance to spawn, hatch, develop and move on, this is not enough!

 

However we did break up a union meeting of the local buzzard group, and they lifted off and soared on up, but if you look very closely, you can see three of the four that we startled in this photo.

 

Finally, as we headed back to the car, we spotted evidence of a mole on the move in one of the mole runs I had jumped up and down on, as we entered the wood.  I blame the moles for a lack of cepe mushrooms, hence the need to jump up and down on their runs.  We tried to get face to face with him to explain the error of his ways, but he wasn't having any of it!

 

The janvier blues don't exist

In the UK they can't seem to decide if Monday 17th or Monday 24th January is the most depressing day of the year this year.  The January blues seem to have hit harder this year than previously - I guess a combination of 'flu, roads full of pot holes, VAT rises, austerity measures, redundancy notices and stories about murder on the BBC website is enough to dint the happiest of spirits.

Here in rural France, January is a particularly convivial time.  People send New Year cards and those arrive all through January.  Most clubs and societies have their AGMs at this time of year - a new committee for a new calendar year seems to be the philosophy.  These meetings always end with a glass of something or two (usually alcoholic) and a sharing of a galette des rois or Kings cake (again generally more than one). 

The tradition of the galette is a long one, and round here they are either made of brioche - a lovely light sponge, and frosted with sugar flakes - or what they call frangipane - a layer of puff pastry, almond paste piped thickly into the middle and then another layer of puff pastry and baked to a rich golden colour.  Both styles of galette have in common that each will contain a feve or bean - originally it was a real bean, nowadays it is a small porcelain figurine (highly collectable), and in rare cases a small gold coin.  Whoever gets the slice of galette with the feve is king for the day and also gets a gold card crown.  Such ceremonies go on all through January, we normally get three or four rounds, and who can be glum with that?

It is also a time for group dinners - the Comite des Fetes had theirs in December, but the one for Huguette's walking group was on the 14th January, and last night, the biggest knees-up of the year took place - the dinner dance for the volunteers who worked at the Comice (see previous posts).  As the big centre in Bauge is being renovated, they hired five coaches to transport over 300 of us to away south of Saumur, where in a local centre, the Comice band had set up and one of our local caterers had been hard at work.  Apertifs, a four course dinner, lots of wine and methode traditionnelle (Saumur fizz which is as good if not better than champagne), dancing - what a night!  We caught the early coach home (1:30am) with the pensioners and those who were working or hunting this morning (Sunday), but the hardened party animals stayed on until gone 4am, alternately waltzing and bopping the night away.

With February, we are into the pancake season, so we won't be glum then either, and with March the hard work of the peasant starts again - there is no time for being down in rural France.  To close, a couple of photos of last night's party.

 

 

A fine selection of mushrooms

First off - DO NOT USE ANY OF THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS TO IDENTIFY MUSHROOMS THAT YOU FIND - ask someone who knows, however we thought the following tale of poverty food might amuse.

This year the finances have been a bit up and down (change of government purdah in the UK among my clients, swingeing social charges for John in this country), so we have tried to make the most of the natural food around us and the bounty in the areas that we look after.  It was a good year for plums so we are distilling (a story for another day when I know how legal that is).  It was a good year for quince so we jellied a load, we made juice with a load, we sold a load, and we gave away loads as well.  Round here, sharing surplus produce is an accepted thing and when you give away one load of things, you sometimes find you get given other things (we are almost back to the plums here - but for another day).

We have one couple we are friends with who are not afraid of hard work and know the best ways to make quince juice and quince paste, so when we had a spare 20 kilos starting to turn in the house, we thought of them.  We waited until we thought they were out then dropped off the vast bags of quince at their back door and ran away.  Somehow they knew it was us - the quantity of fruit may have been a give away - so next time Reynald went mushrooming (he is a formidable forager), he had us in mind.

He turned up with a big basket with four types of mushroom.  I didn't photograph one variety - partly because I forgot and partly because when you just look at them, they are similar to toxic varieties, but they were very tasty fried in butter and served on toast.  The other three varieties were coutrolle or parasol mushrooms, morille de sapin or cauliflower mushroom (rare in the UK, don't pick) and a big bag of field mushrooms.  See below:

 

 

 

Our neighbour, feckless Joel, was not to be outdone, and turned up later that day with a bag containing a dozen more parasol mushrooms and a pound of baby puffballs, which were very common this year.  The puffballs and the melange are shown below:

 

 

It took four days of intensive mushroom eating to deal with all of that, and we felt that a week or two off mushrooms might be the thing, however just 10 days later, Reynald was back as he was in the doghouse with his good lady wife.  He had been to his secret place and had hit a motherload of cepes (Pennybuns), and picked 57 before he remembered he had to collect the wife from work.  He was a bit disappointed when he proudly showed off his booty, only to be smacked round the head as it wasn't him who was going to have to prepare all of this, and Yvette had had a hard day at work already.  It worked to my advantage as he was sent round with a big bag, and I had time to eat a load, freeze a load, make soup, and still have enough to take a couple to my Mum's as well.  Aren't they lovely?

 

But what about the One Acre Wood?  About four years ago, we got raided by a bunch of travellers who cleaned out all the edible mushrooms from our wood to sell them at the local market, and did so in such an irresponsible manner that they killed the mycelium that used to produce fine cepes and pied de mouton.  The pied de mouton are starting to come back and there were a few puffballs and a parasol mushroom this year, but nothing more.  So, remember, if you do go mushrooming, there are a few rules:

• make sure you are not on private property - not all private property is clearly marked
• only take what you can eat - it is not legal to pick to sell unless you are licenced
• do not damage the mycelium
• if in doubt, leave alone, as Nature is having a tough enough time at the moment
• if in doubt, don't eat - ask someone who really knows, and ideally share with them to make sure they are really confident about what they are saying