Rural Life

Expect the unexpected

Life round here is never dull (life in Worcester was generally dull), but the last few days have been rather too exciting.

On Thursday we became the proud owners of a trailer - essential for all those trips to the dumpwhen you are taking down someone's leylandii hedge.

On Friday we narrowly missed being serenaded by a Brazilian blues guitarist at our local pub.

On Saturday, we did our usual marathon stint as volunteers at the village "journee champetre" - the local version of the village fete except it starts at 2pm with a petanque competition that gets very serious as the day goes on and beer gets drunk.  Of course to get to that stage, the local chaps have been working since 6:30am collecting pig carcases and setting up marquees.  From 1pm, people drift past the pig roasting area to check that the spits are turning, that the pigs are good quality and that they have enough garlic, herbs and harissa lathered all over them.  Usually at 7pm people startto turn up in search of kir and gossip - this year the rain started at 5:30pm and didn't give up until about 7:30pm, at which point people started to arrive.  There is then food, and once people are too full to object, the local brass band (the Cadets de Baugois - once heard, never forgotten - take that as you will) and drum majorettes put on their annual show.  Finally there are fireworks and a dance that goes on to the early hours, at which point the men of the village dismantle it all, so you don't know anything has happened by morning.

This year, we made the front page of the Courrier de l'Ouest as a lady choked on a piece of pig and died at about 9pm in the evening - so everything else was cancelled as a mark of respect.  Not the nicest evening therefore.

So on Sunday we went over to visit a horse we are keeping an eye on while its owners are away, and we saw a hoopoe, which was a nice surprise.

Then during the evening our neighbour (feckless Joel) tapped on the door and gave us a huge bowl of perch that he had caught that day and couldn't deal with the full catch.  So as Harry Potter started on the TV, I started gutting 30 perch.

Today was relatively normal - we were cutting down trees in the blazing sunshine.

Life is certainly not dull here.

Farm Gate Milk Prices

What an offer!  Free milk today at the GAEC Croix Rouge - all you have to do is turn up between 10am and 6pm with your own containers and you can fill your boots - so to speak!  But why?  How can a farmer give away milk?

Well, first off, he has a huge container full of the precious white liquid, and the cows are in the fields producing more.  Secondly, the dairy that would collect it has a few problems - various tankers are blockaded into a number of farms around the department, plus there is a lorry across their entrance as well.  Thirdly, the farmer is in any case not particularly minded to let the dairy have the milk at the price they are offering - 208 Euros a tonne or 20 centimes a litre.  With the current exchange rate that is about 18p a litre, but on the natural exchange rate, it is more like 14p a litre.

The per tonne price is the lowest offered since 1982, and just two months ago, farmers were receiving 310 Euros a tonne - as it costs nearer 28 centimes a litre to produce, the expectation seems to be that farmers will take the hit and be happy.  Would any other business be happy to take a 30% price drop and not lay off staff (not easy on a family farm) or dispose of means of production (do we really want cows killed over this?)?  However with little publicity, farmers have once again had to take to direct action.  Our neighbour's son has blockaded a tanker, while GAEC Croix Rouge is giving away milk and while your containers are filled, will tell you at length about the injustices that they face.  Others are filling local ditches and their own urine pits with milk that should be feeding Europe and the world.

But with the drop in farm gate prices, are we seeing a similar (30%) fall in the prices of dairy products in the shops and supermarkets?  No - there is some slight easing on milk prices but you still pay about 1.15 Euros a litre (so someone somewhere is still making nice margins), while highly processed things like Activia yoghurts are in places up to 2 Euros for four, and butter is about 3 Euros for 500 grammes.

So I am with the farmers - pay a decent price for your food and don't compromise on quality and where you can, go direct to the producer!  I am now off to try to make my own cheese, plus sticking to the old favourites like rice pudding, toad in the hole, fish pie... and did you know you can freeze milk?  See below for the local blockade at Montivert - aux armes, citoyens!

Rewarding Volunteers

While we were still in the grip of snow, ice and freezing temperatures, we had a hot date with all the rest of the volunteers who worked on the Comice at Chartrene.  All?  Not quite.  Some decided that temperatures around -8 degrees were too cold and could not be tempted out, some had to work on the Saturday, and others were not invited due to administrative cock-ups.  However there were a good 300 of us in the Centre Rene d'Anjou on the 9th January, prepared to be rewarded for our efforts in August.

I should be clear that this was not a reward for making flowers for floats or for performing the Windmill in Old Amsterdam to massed ranks of rural dwellers.  No, this was for running a bar for half a day during the event and for John helping to dismantle stands after the event.  Others had done similar tasks and more over the two days and the preparations and dismantling.

The party started at 8pm, but drinks and nibbles didn't arrive until 9pm when we were invited to sitdown and enjoy a film of the event - it was well done, no pictures of Windmills in Amsterdam, but perhaps more views of ploughing matches than I was ready for when waiting for my dinner.  At 10pm the speeches started, with thanks to everyone, particularly those who had given up two years of their lives to the organisation of the event.  Then at 10:45pm the food -finally.  At 11:30pm the dancing started, with a short break for a reprise of the Chartrene performance of YMCA, before champagne and cake at 12:30am, and then more dancing.  We left early at 1:45am and the party was going strong - these rural types know how to party and they know how to dance - tangos, waltzes, quicksteps, polkas - for us English types it was culture shock of the most elegant variety.

Apologies for the poor quality of the pictures of the dancing - blame John's mobile phone!

 

Snow in Winter - whatever next?

I don't know about anyone else but I am getting a tad bored with the Arctic high pressure that has settled over North West Europe and seems to like it here.  While bright blue skies and crisp mornings are a pleasure, particularly if you don't have to scrape a car windscreen, walking timorously because of black ice loses its appeal very quickly.  And I defy anyone to find early morning temperatures of -8 degrees C a good thing at all!

We are using up fire wood at a scary pace, although I guess that is what it is there for, but the chances of refilling the wood stack in the next couple of weeks are looking slim.  While we will work with chainsaws in the afternoons in the wood if it is frosty, we won't do anything like that where there is snow on the ground - it is just too dangerous.  And that is what we have - a rarity in Anjou we are told, but 4 inches of snow fell yesterday afternoon and with a high of -0.9 degrees this afternoon, it didn't do much about melting.

The cats have decided that snow is quite fun if they can come in again as soon as their paws get cold, and pink paws get colder more quickly than black pad paws - not a lot of people know that....  The chickens are beside themselves - they don't know where to put their feet, there are no grubs and other yucky things to find, and if there were, they would need to dig in the snow to find them.  The chickens don't do going in the snow.  Or strictly, ours don't - Joel's don't have the choice, although they have spend a lot of time standing on the garden chairs today.

However, one can't really grumble - this is what winter is all about and hopefully the prolonged frost will put paid to all the nasty microbes out there like peach leaf curl and tomato blight and codling moth and fleas (not strictly a microbe but something that needs dealing with).

Keep warm!

Slinky new outfit!

Things have been a bit quiet on the blogging front, partly as the hard drive on my main computer gave up the fight against cat fur and died, and partly as I am away on work travels.  However this weekend is a lull at one of my favourite places (Bants at Upton Snodsbury) before I go and get qualified next week.

While all good French rural folk are able to use a chainsaw by their fifth birthday and are fully convinced of the protective powers of bright blue gabardine, we Brits are not so relaxed (if that is the right word).  However we have had to come to terms with the fact that John cannot be totally responsible for the production of fire wood chez nous and that some jobs are done quicker when two are tooled up.  Consequently Anjouhousewatch has bought me my very own chainsaw and I will be attending Pershore College for the next two days, learning how to use it.

This new skills acquisition has also meant that I have shelled out £160 on a natty trouser/boot combo that makes my elegant lady friends in the UK worry for my fashion sense, while giving me some form of BS/ES norm protection when working.  I have fired up my nice new chainsaw (a Stihl MS170 helpfully called Svennnnnnnnn) a couple of times so I am not a complete novice on the course, but as the picture shows, there are lessons still to be learnt!!

Rural bounty, rural poverty

It is a bizarre balance to life here between bounty and poverty.

On the bounty side of things, there are currently excellent quality chestnuts to be had for free, after the recent rain there may even be some good quality cepes.  Our neighbour has a fishing licence for the year, and frequently brings back large carp, that feed him, his two cats and the chickens for a couple of days.  There are fine quality walnuts going begging, while we are able to take advantage of absent clients' gardens for apples and figs, which would otherwise attract vermin and make a mess.  We get our firewood for free from the One Acre Wood.

Yet life is also precarious for many of our neighbours.  The one with the fishing licence eats well when he can catch a fish, and does have fresh eggs but he lives on the equivalent of £400 per month.  In our village the average household income is 11,500 euros a year.  For fans of my other blog, I will confirm that the average quoted is a median - so half the households have less than that.  There are several houses in the village that are not connected to the mains drains or the mains water supply.

This gives a very different view to comfortable middles class views on things such as mice, blackbirds, pigeons, rats, coypu and muskrats.  If something gets into your stock of apples or nuts or chicken food, they deprive you of a meal or two.  If your roof slates get the acid treatment from bird poo, they have to be replaced at the cost of something else - food, electricity, a pair of shoes without holes in.  If the river floods due to the banks being washed away following coypu and muskrat damage, you live with the mess as best you can, cleaning what can be, but leaving the structural damage, because you don't have the cash.

Another set of neighbours tend a wonderful strawberry bed, hoping to get enough for themselves and also to sell some at market for a bit of cash.  When the mice go through and take a nibble out of each one, any hope of sales is gone.  A good mouser is therefore an important asset, and will be forgiven for the odd indiscretion in a newly turned seed bed, if they can provide the tail and paws of the strawberry thief.  Next door's cat catches rats and gets away with murder on the back of it.

The credit crunch will mean a hard winter for some.  If wise words about the numbers of berries are to be believed, the weather could mean a harder winter for others.  If that is the case, every nut, every stored fruit and vegetable will be needed, and anything that damages those food stores will be dealt with accordingly.  Poisons are indiscriminate and unnatural, and affect a whole food chain - give me a good hunting cat any day.

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!