Rural Life

Mistletoe time

In the UK, a small sprig of mistletoe, ideally with a few berries on it, is hung over doorways to encourage people to kiss - or so it seems to me.  The Tenbury Wells mistletoe fair used to be the main market for wholesalers to flood the market with this parasitic plant.  Much has been made in the past few years of how little home grown mistletoe there is and how this is due to the dearth of mistle thrushes and the clearance of old orchards.

However it is thought awful to use french mistletoe, as that lacks berries.

Hmmm.  We have 3 clumps of mistletoe in our wood (it doesn't need to grow in orchards).  The one high in the Rowan tree is covered with berries but is a good 35 foot above the ground in a very spindly tree.  The other two clumps are on hazel coppice and therefore close to the ground, but not old enough yet to produce berries (I gather 5 years of growth is required).  The better one is shown here.

The poplar plantations that you see in the area are often covered with huge balls of mistletoe.  In part this is a sign of poor management of the plantation as the mistletoe "roots" damage the wood.  We were commenting to a friend about all the mistletoe around but that it was so high in the trees, and she said that the way to get a good big ball of mistletoe, was to get a hunter, early in the hunting day, to shoot a ball out of the tree for you!

A seasonal thought that!

It's cold!!

Over the past few days here, the temperatures have plummeted.  Yesterday we didn't get a positive temperature until after 2pm and the high was 0.9 degrees Centigrade.  Now I know that isn't much when you compare it with what they are having to put up with in Quebec, but it is more than cold enough for me.  Especially as the goats need looking after.

These are not our goats - they are adoptive goats that we look after when their owners have to go away.  Bessie and Lucy are about 10 months old and Nanny is nearly 2 (Lucy is her kid).  They are dwarf goats and their duty in life is to keep the grass down in their meadow, but they much prefer acorns, oak leaves, brambles, trees and maize to boring old grass.

In this cold snap, they are doing fine - there are still loads of acorns around, plus they have a bale of hay to nibble on if required, loads of grass still and we pop in (theoretically) every three or four days to give them some extra feed and make sure nothing is bothering them or that they haven't trashed anything.  Currently we are having to go over more frequently to ensure they have unfrozen water.  Their bowl doesn't defrost during the day, and their stream has now frozen over as well.

They are extremely podgy and have very thick coats, so they aren't suffering, whatever the goat care mafia might say.  It is just the need to keep fresh water available that causes the worry.  Below are pictures of all three during the summer.

Too wet to walk

We did a bit of a road trip last week - not a particularly green thing to do, but it had to be done for work reasons.

For part of the time, we did our third ever trip to Wales, this time the South Wales valleys and the Brecon Beacons.  I know December isn't a good time to do this sort of thing,  but we did hope that the weather would be kind enough to give us an hour or so's respite to walk up a Beacon and get some good fresh air.

Sadly every time we stopped the car at a likely lay-by, the heavens opened.  Even with boots, walking tents/cagoules and warm clothes, we felt it was too dangerous to set off across unknown territory.  The scenery was stunning however, as demonstrated by the photo.  Next time.....

And now comes winter

What a difference a week can make in the wood.  From there being some faded colour and lots of brown leaves on the trees, particularly the young chestnuts, only a few of the oaks (not sure if it is the Sisal or the English ones) are hanging on to a last few leaves.  The views across the wood have changed dramatically once again and with the honourable exception of the far north west corner, you can see pretty well every part of the wood from the wood pile in the central glade.

This time of year makes tree identification a bit challenging, when you are working with buds and bark only, but it is a great time to take stock of what we have and what we want to do with the trees.

We have identified a load of large but mostly dead chestnut stems that will come down for firewood either this year or next - felling them will also regenerate the tree boles and bring on a load more shoots and poles for future years.  We have identified a whole load of Wild Service that we can either play with a bit, trying copicing and pollarding techniques, or we can fell for wild fences - the wood is pretty useless for most things, including fire wood.

There are a bunch of hazels that need to be managed - either copiced for future poles, woven to create barriers, or nurtured to produce more nuts in future.

We don't do much with the oak trees except tidy up the lower trunks, getting rid of ivy and small branches, and pay our respects in the appropriate manner!

Autumn blues

It's that time of year - not quite time to start preparing for Christmas but too far from summer.  It is a tricky time of year to have a birthday - although many thanks to my mother for pushing me out on a date that many would say is totally memorable.  If you are of a certain generation, you certainly know what you were doing when I was born!!

This autumn, with the dry weather and sudden cold snap, we have had fabulous leaf colour - no need to go to Canada (apologies to all Canadians) when you have autumn colours like these - and this was past the peak!

For tree twitchers everywhere - the particularly yellow tree just left of centre is an elm!

But like I say, the leaves are gone, and it is that time of year - so what to do to cheer me up?  My erstwhile work colleagues have some pretty awful ideas - how about a nice Skype conference?  No thanks!  I am depressed enough as it is.

John has come up with a much better idea.  The oyster beds of Cancale are not far away and (no really!) by the sea.  What better way to cheer me up than time by the sea, breathing fresh sea air, and eating prime oysters, and perhaps catching a jazz band in St Malo?  I can't wait!

Mutant Pumpkin

It has got cold here - really cold.  At least we are in the village, so it doesn't get quite as cold as out on the farms, but even so we have had two nights of frost already and "they" are predicting a frost of minus 4 degrees Centigrade tonight.

As an aside, this is in sharp contrast to this time last year, when my diary notes temperatures of 18 degrees Centigrade during the day, the ability to sit outside for lunch, and the fact that we drove off to Spain for a few days without jackets.  Currently Spain is under threat of snow, as is Corsica - climate change or the natural variation?

So the question is, what to do with the monster pumpkin I have grown this year?

The reason it is an issue, is that all the proper plants I had going did not produce any fruits at all.  The monster is on a feral plant that grew up on the edge of the chicken run, germinating in about mid-July.  This fruit did not set until mid-September and to my eye is not yet ripe, but it weighs a lot as I found when I cut it off the now dead plant this morning and moved it to the garden bench to dry off.

Will it be edible and sweet?  Please let me know what you think!!

Next year's broad beans

I really don't like black fly, so I tend to sow my broad beans in the autumn, put up with a few losses to bad weather, and then I am generally picking my first broad beans in May or (in a bad year) early June.  This year we had lots of lovely warm salads of baby broad beans, asparagus and wilted spinach - all from the potager - and the memory of these delicious lunches goaded me into getting to work.

I had designated the raised bed that had the (failed) tomatoes, aubergines and peppers as the right bed in the rotation for the broad beans.  The bed had lost a bit of soil and some fertility to the last crops, so I topped it up with a broken bag of terreau universel (grow bag to British readers) and about half the contents of the dust bin full of sieved home made compost.  I raked it all in and firmed the bed down a bit.

I then made two six inch wide trenches the length of the bed and within that dibbed a double row of holes for beans.  The seed I used was home grown saved seed, but the original strain is Aquadulce Claudia from Marshalls.  These are good robust plants, ideal for overwintering, and producing long pods with up to 9 beans (well 9 was the record this year, but it was an exceptionally good year).  I dibbed 76 holes and sowed 2 beans per hole, then watered, then covered the trenches with soil/compost mix.  The seeds are quite deep but that should protect them from frost and mice.

Finally I covered the bed with wire cloche frames - they don't do anything to protect from the weather, certainly not while the seeds are germinating.  Their more important function is to keep the bed free of cat bottoms, as the raised bed looks like the biggest and most luxurious cat litter tray invented!!  The frames will come off when the bean plants are about 8 inches high and are strong enough to resist cat bottoms and free ranging chickens. 

However by the time we restock with chickens and have them well enough trained to be free range, I should actually be picking beans!  Now that is a lovely thought!

Spaying kittens

It had to be done, with two girl cats in the house, we couldn't face the unwanted suitors or the possibility of kittens, so once they were past their suspected 6 month birthday and we had mentally girded ourselves, we booked them in.

Spay day was Tuesday 6th November.  They had been up playing most of the night, so we were tired, but they went into their cat carriers without any problems.  It is a quick drive to the vet's and then we left them, with me being rather weepy to leave them there.

Six o'clock in the evening we collected them and were given our instructions on after care.  We were also given two packs of special neutered female cat food - aren't those medical reps lovely people?  When released into the calm of the bedroom, they were as wobbly as new born lambs, so we left them in peace with a pile of jumpers to snuggle into.

Maigret has been quite clingy since the operation but is  bouncing around quite happily, and while she looked frighteningly thin when she came home, has filled out again a bit as she has re-hydrated (she is slim by nature it seems).  Poor pudgy Poirot has had a much more difficult time, and has gone off men completely.  She is starting to be interested in play again, but anything out of the ordinary and she dives back under the nearest bed or curtain.

We know it is for the best, but for the moment, it is hard, and their shaved tummies are a constant reminder of what we have put them through.  However below is a reminder of them in their entire and unshaved state!

Autumn jobs

Today was quiet for office work, so we took advantage of the clear blue skies and a need for exercise to undertake a few of those autumn jobs we haven't got round to up until now.

The saddest was that today was D-day for the two remaining 'beige chickens'.  They have done awfully well and saw off a few more slugs and the last of the bolted lettuces, but we hadn't had an egg from Gutbucket in weeks and Madeye was not coming out of her moult.  Both were having the odd problem getting into the wooden compost box to get their daily worm fix, so it was time to go.  The Humane Dispatch Society's piece of kit lived up to its promise, and they had a quick, clean end.

The most remarkable job for the day?  Dead-heading the roses outside the house by the road, as there are still new buds coming through.  Both the yellow and the red rose have buds to come, have blooms at their peak and were smelling beautifully fragrant.  The rose experts at Doue la Fontaine told us that the sun would bring out the perfume and they were right.

We also put a compost mulch on one of the borders which seems to have soil that is practically dead (though up until this year it had been very productive).  We have added a pound or so of matured wood ash (in its raw state, it is far too caustic and needs to weather for about 3 months before application) and two wheel barrows of prime compost from the bin, well turned by the chickens and full of worms.  That should improve things for next year.

I dug through a bed that had root crops in, but seemed to be full of weeds, to find a surprise pound of rather nice looking carrots - guess what we are having for supper!!

Finally John marked off the worst section of "lawn" and applied weed and feed, so that we will be in a position to reseed in February.  As John will be selling himself as a lawn expert, we really could do without a patch of lawn that is white with plantain flowers!

It has been a useful afternoon's work.

Mushroom weather

In 2005 and 2006, we had loads of wild mushrooms in our wood.  Some were not edible but interesting, some were not edible and not interesting either (unless you are that way inclined I guess), but the best ones were the 3 or 4 varieties of edible mushrooms.  We had cepes, bolets and pied de moutons a plenty.

The picture above from November 2005 shows a good selection of cepes and bolets, ready to be taken home and eaten with friends.

I have muttered before in these pages that there don't seem to be many mushrooms around, but perhaps today the weather will change that.  Between midnight and 9am this morning we had 16mm of rain and there has been more since then.  Fingers crossed that the season is about to begin!