Rural Life

Introducing a new bird

One of our Marans, Black, was never right from the day we got her.  While we managed to do something about the massive bald spot on her chest, her depression and other problems couldn't be sorted so easily and she died on the 19th September.  This upset White rather - she has always been a sensitive soul and goes broody by moon phases (so boring that) - and she produced 3 shell-less eggs in quick succession before getting back to her old form of over-feathery greedy gut-bucket.

This left us with a problem, as we like to have three as a social group, but we were also hoping to start letting them freely range in October to sort out the slug problem.  This meant that if we were going to replace Black, it had to be done quickly.

Bauge market is a good source of chickens, with two poultry vans each week so you can make sure you get the colour, breed, and type of bird you want (currently there is a run on quail and young guinea fowl).  We went along on Monday afternoon and sussed out the two boxes of Black Marans, and as both boxes looked good, went to the van with the shorter queue.

We gave our new girl a good looking over before we bought (learnt our lesson from last time), and had her ceremonially stuffed into the requisite cardboard box with holes, tied up with blue string, and took her home to introduce to the others (White and Spot).

Black 2 is a young pullet, probably about 4 weeks off laying, so she is quite small but fully feathered and with a short comb still.  It took her half an hour to find her way out of the box, and while Spot was a bit shirty with her, White ignored her as she was still in mourning for Black 1. 

They are still sorting out the pecking order in the run, but at night Black 2 is happily allowed onto the sleeping perch to provide extra warmth.  White is now out of mourning and is also keeping Black 2 in her place, but she is a bit crafty and has found a perch that neither of our plump girls can get on to while she puts on bulk and grows up herself.  While Black 2 gets the odd nip on the neck, it is not the wings out, feet up, fierce fighting that would mean we have a problem, so we think we have got away with it.

The one problem with these three pretty chickens, is that unlike the hybrids intended for the Battery Units, which I disapprove of, they do seem to be rather on the dim side, but that is a story for another day.  Anyway, below are Black 2 refusing to come out of her box, White doing what she does best (eating) and Spot doing what she does best (being dim).

 

Interesting Mushrooms

It was a bit of a toss up as to whether to categorise this posting as rural stuff or food and drink, but in the end I erred on the side of caution in case anyone takes this the wrong way.

As we head into a damp-ish September, the countryside around us is starting to produce things that can be consumed, and things that can't.  The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is upon us here, and the hedgerows are bursting with things, some good, some not so good.

In the good category this year are hops, nuts (hazel and cob nuts, as the walnuts and chestnuts won't be right for another few weeks yet), blackberries (but hurry to get them before the birds, and before the start of October when the Devil gets them), a few wild medlars, apples, and the right sort of mushrooms.

In the bad category are wasps nests, bad mushrooms and giant red slugs.

Our wood can be brilliant for edible mushrooms, particularly penny bun and various sorts of bolete.  Currently it seems to be a little to dry and a little too shaded to produce much other than death caps and other, more insignificant, non-edible mushrooms.

The curiosity of the crop so far this year is a grey capped bolete, which grows to a good size, and turns blue the instant you cut it or tear a piece off it.  As far as we can tell it is a boletus radicans, which is one of the very few inedible boletes.  Another bolete that does this is the boletus erythropus, which looks a bit scary as it is quite red in places (in French it is a bolet a pied rouge).

Rather than risk it, we are waiting for the best of the boletes to sprout in the One Acre Wood - the boletus edulis - which is well worth waiting for.

Below is a boletus radicans showing how blue it can look when cut.  After the photo, it went straight on the compost heap.

 

Large scale pig roasts

DON'T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU ARE A VEGETARIAN!

That is the best I can do as a content warning!  If you go further and are offended, that is your problem.

One of the key features of rural summer French festivals is the pig roast.  We were impressed enough at seeing four done for our village summer dinner festival, but the Comice is on a totally different scale.  That was a 21 pig salvo!

Naturally the pig roast supervision was done by the same chap - Jacky.  When we first met him, we thought he lived a fine outdoor life and that was why he had such a deeply tanned skin.  Having seen him around a few places this summer, we actually realise that the colour of his skin is due to the fact that he has been hot smoked during the summer!

Each pig has many cloves of garlic pierced through the skin, and is kept moist by being swabbed at regular intervals with a mix of oil, garlic, harissa and herbs.  This makes the crackling inedible according to the French, but we find it is strong and tasty, but does induce rather odd dreams!

For a dinner starting at about 8pm, the pigs go over the fires at about midday and turn slowly on their spits while the fire pits are kept going with a fine pile of firewood (realistically enough to keep us going for a whole winter in the case of the Comice 21).  As each is required, it is removed from its fire-pit, then from its spit and chopped into delicious portions.

When we lived in Worcester, it seemed they thought themselves kings of the pig roast - sorry guys, but that is Jacky of the Baugeois!

A French Agricultural Show

Last weekend the smallest village in Maine et Loire organised and played host to the biggest event of the year in the Baugeois - the Comice.  Chartrene only has 57 inhabitants, so to lay on something of this size, they called for volunteers from the neighbouring villages, in order to get the required team of 300.

Our village played its part - setting up, dismantling, running one of the bars, providing car park attendants.  We also took part in the intervillage games - this year with a more artistic feel than the normal "It's a Knockout" style event.  Bicycles were decorated, our float was done up with a windmill and donkey and was replete with miller, miller's wife and children, and everyone was encouraged to sing "Meurnier tu dors" otherwise they were pelted with chicken food and confetti.

My contribution was the song and dance routine, where we decided to stick with the windmill theme, but this time it was "A Windmill in Old Amsterdam".  Finding clogs for the team, making mouse masks for my dancing mice and creating a plausible windmill took a fortnight.  During that time we also had to rehearse, let me find my voice following a UK induced cold, and also track down a backing track for the song.

We did it - the team and I - shown below, and the village came third in the Intervilles, so we are quite proud.  The float is also shown.

In two year's time, it is our turn.  We hope to introduce some English culture into the event (afternoon tea would be good!), and while we do not have time to create a wicket anywhere, we feel an adequate welly chucking pitch can be arranged!

Mushrooms and the Cat Saga

To the more mundane first - well we thought we had the cat saga sorted, but then feckless Joel turned up again.  Honestly, there is no point in doing a dramatic farewell and flouncing off in a fit of pique and then turning up again three days later and apologising to every one!  Ninette is still next door therefore, or rather is back next door as she has spent the past 3 days between our garage and the vet's being spayed.

She has come through fine - the stitches are due out next week.

But Mushrooms?  What is that about?  Well, autumn seems to have arrived early this year (my virtual chum, the Mossy Gnome has also pointed this out).  In our case, this makes temperatures a bit more comfortable for preparations for the Agricultural Fair or Comice at the weekend (more on that next week), but isn't ideal for the chilli peppers, the green peppers, the aubergines and the frankly embarrassing quantities of tomatoes in the garden.  The pumpkins seem to be coping although a few have got to nearly ripe stage, but I don't fancy pumpkin soup, when I have the world's surfeit of tomatoes to eat and deal with.

Again that is all fairly normal stuff.  It is out in the woods that bizarre things are happening.  The secret wood is now full of bolet a pied rouge - brown capped bolletes with a red foot and a terrifying habit.  When you cut them up to cook them, they turn blue almost instantaneously!  The blue colour goes if you leave them for an hour or so, or if you cook them, which is what we do.  The texture isn't as good as a cepe, nor is the flavour, but they are nice cooked to crisp-ish in butter, and then swirled in a little cream and either horseradish cream or tarragon mustard (but not too much or you lose the mushroom flavour).

We would expect to start finding mushrooms of this type around mid-September and through to the first frosts in November, so August was a bit of a shock.  It does seem to be only the Secret Wood however, we have been round our One Acre Wood and there is not a sign of anything yet.  The One Acre Wood is higher up and dryer however, which might explain the difference.

Spot the bolet in the photo below!

The kitten saga is nearly sorted....

Well, the kitten saga is nearly sorted out.  When I last wrote, our garden was awash with small, cute flea-bags.  We had notices out everywhere and about a week ago it was all looking as though it was sorted.  Friends of ours had reserved the male and female with white socks, the black one was going back to the person who originally chose her, but had to go into detox so sent her back, and fluffy Fifi was going to a village 5 miles up the road.

So far so fine.

Tuesday, the feckless owner of the mother cat, had friends round, got bladdered and gave away the two with socks and Fifi, shut the black one in the house on her own and left the Mummy cat outside where she could get into trouble in so many different ways.

Wednesday, the detoxed one took his kitten back.

Friday afternoon, the feckless one left a note on his door bidding us all adieu, and drove off leaving both his cats and both his chickens behind without food or shelter.  Either he has gone on holiday, gone to kill himself, or run away.  Our friends whose reserved kittens were given away on Tuesday, and who are understandably rather upset, are planning retribution in the form of giving Momma cat a kind and loving home, where she will be fed, watered, sheltered, loved to pieces, de-flea-ed, de-wormed and neutered.  A bizarre form of retribution I grant you, but one that I am willingly aiding and abetting.

So here, feckless Joel, is your last chance!  Si vous ne reviendrez pas pour soigner vos animaux avant jeudi soir, vous ne trouverez plus Ninette!

There - my conscience is sorted out, and on Thursday evening, Ninette will have a loving home - she really is very sweet and deserves better than a chair in our garden.  See her below, in a blissful moment with Fifi and one of the Louis.

Feral kittens in the Baugeois

It is that time of year when all undeconstructed female cats produce huge numbers of lovely fluffy bundles.  Our two have been dealt with, so in theory we don't have that problem however next door's girl cat has produced a litter of very lovely kittens.  We think the father is next door's boy cat - and that fact is the sort of thing that will set me off on a major rant.

The litter was 5 kittens, but one didn't make it and one has theoretically found a home (and not just our garden), however if you live in the 49150 postcode area of France and would like a totally adorable kitten, contact me!  The feckless owner is doing nothing about rehousing them - source of another major rant.  They are ready NOW!

How can you resist this?  Further lovely photos of them can be found here.

The Side Effects of Wind Power

No - not a post about Jerusalem artichokes and their ozone-busting side effects.  Nor is this this a rant about how scenery is destroyed by putting a wind turbine in it - I'm actually rather a fan, having seen impressive sites in Spain, Blythe, France and Lanzarote.

But do you know how they get them to their home site?  Do you know how big the individual blades are?  And if you think about it, you can see why they have to be done in one piece!

There is a smallish wind farm being developed near Cholet, and the windmills are made on the Dutch border (where else?), and somehow, the various bits have to get to the Marais.  Each windmill has three sails.  The planners checked the routes for special convoys and decided that it would be no problem to take the sails through near us.  What they didn't allow for was street furniture, street lights, trees and a partially demolished bridge, or the curvature of the sail on the lorry.

When they arrived at the Demi-Lune roundabout, they got stuck for about 19 hours, until a tree had been chopped down, street lights taken down and road signs dismantled.  After that each sail took a mere 9 minutes to manoeuvre around the Demi-Lune, stopping the traffic in 5 directions.  The wind farm is having 10 windmills, each with 3 sails - there were a lot of traffic jams around us for about a week.

This shows the size of the things (50 meters long excluding lorry cab) as they edge round onto the road out of town.

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.

Baby Newts

I might have mentioned before that this is the fifth wettest year on record to date, so it is hardly surprising I guess that the two seasonal pools in the One Acre Wood are still full of water.  When I say water, I think I really mean brown oak leaf tea or even primordial soup - it doesn't bear any resemblance to what comes out of taps or wells, that's for sure.

It might look disgusting, but it contains a lot of wild life, including mosquito larvae (I have the bites to prove that Mum at least is still around) and daphnia.  The real novelty for us however, is that these old clay pits are actually ancestral ponds for common newts.  We can't prove it, but there are also some more colourful versions knocking around that could be fire salamanders, but they are impossible to photograph.

The pits were dug to take advantage of the clay that the watershed is made from, also explaining the mix of trees we have in the One Acre Wood - chestnut for firewood for the kilns, oak for building, service for brewing and a very little pine for tapping for resin to give the local tiles their lustre.

This is the first year we have had water in the ponds until June, so the first time we have been aware of having newts.  Very soon now their external gills will fall away and they will scatter through the woods and fields around to do whatever newts do.  We caught this one to identify it and take a photograph and then gently released it back into the pond, to carry on doing what baby newts do - ideally eat all the mosquito larvae they can find!