Seasonal activities

I'm slowly getting through the autumnal stuff that comes with October.  Now even in the One Acre Wood, we have cyclamen coming up, which says that things are becoming more normal, although our chestnut forage proved that the impact of the summer heat and drought will be felt for a while yet - the nuts are tiny.  Also there was no hint of mushrooms in the wood, so we have to content ourselves with enjoying the flowers.

I have had to get to grips with the quince issue this week and found time to make a massive batch of 9 hour poached spiced quince, which now need to be turned into crumbles for the freezer.  I have also made (finally) the first batch of quince jelly for this year - 10 and a bit pots are cooling downstairs as I type.

Last week I had to dash off to see the photo competition exhibition and watch the winners be announced.  The theme was spiders' webs and heritage, and hadn't inspired me to participate.  The winning photo was nice enough, but many of those that had been printed up were pretty samey and with only 91 entries, clearly I wasn't the only one to lack enthusiasm.  Next year's theme is Ruins, here and elsewhere - now that is something to get our teeth into!

This week was also the second week of the Challenge Communale in boule de forte.  The Comité des Fetes Girl Power team did fine the week before, but we were beaten 10 - 4 in the next round, so didn't make it to the finals this year.  Bizarrely, none of us were too upset!!

The week brought rain, and fairly decent quantities too, although it has now stopped again.  It does concentrate the mind rather on garden activities and also doing something with the quince that decorate part of the lawn and the outdoor dining table.

That nudge meant we did actually get round to making a weed proof base for the nascent polytunnel, and during the week, we may even get around to putting the plastic sheeting up too.  We need somewhere weather proof for the big pot of jalapeño chillies and a table someone gave us for potting things up on, which is currently blocking the wood store.

The autumn weather has brought on yucca flowers on our rather rampant plant - there are these spikes doing nicely and another 4 which will take over in a week or two assuming no frost.  I find these flowers wonderfully alien and opulent among the weeds and dying vegetation of the deciduous bushes.

Things are starting to quieten down now after a manic spurt of making up for not doing stuff as it was too hot.  The nights are drawing in, as are the mornings, so we have to make the best of less than 12 hours of daylight - dawn doesn't arrive here until after 8am which can make getting up challenging.  For the moment, it is warm enough to not require any heating but that will change as the days get ever shorter and the stones of the house don't have a chance to absorb as much heat from the sun.

All the more time really for making more quince jelly!!  Have a good week!

Phew - that was a week!

And yet but Friday, all seemed relatively calm!

Monday was the start of the work on removing the old wood burner and getting the new one in.  The taking out was a bit traumatic for us, not for the work that needed doing but from the ominous crashes and bangs that punctuated the morning.  By the time the guys left for their lunch, there was a pile of debris outside in the courtyard that stank of soot and old smoke.  We looked at the tubing aghast as it had cost us a few thousand to have it installed, admittedly about 15 years ago, but even so!

Monday night we could only see a few holes and some bits that were keeping the fire space clear of cats and their explorations - clearly we put the wind up the salesman when we said there were elements to prevent cat intrusion in the chimney area!  But by Tuesday lunchtime, there was a beautiful, new, shiny wood burning insert, with no chance of cats getting into the area above the insert.  On Thursday, the boss turned up to check his team's work, light a fire, and get us to sign lots of paperwork.  It is very effective and efficient, and when the temperature outside is about 25 degrees C, that is exactly when you want a nice hot fire going!!

 Another excitement for the week was the start of the Challenge Communale in boule de forte.  Each club, plus the council is invited to put forward a couple of teams to play this uniquely Angevine sport.  The Comité des Fetes puts in two teams, this year again we came up with an all women team and an all men team.  I play on the women's team (Girl Power) and last year we got to the finals.  This year we were pitted against one of two teams from the Council (elected members, not staff), and won by an embarrassing margin (10 - 0).  I was busy, so no photos!  The men's team played the following night against one of two teams for Heritage Preservation, taking it all very seriously ... and lost.  If they had won, it would have been an all Comité des Fetes second round, so perhaps good?

Today I was able to harvest a few autumnal crops - a handful of potatoes and a small pumpkin.  The potatoes were rather small - this is due to the lack of rain during the summer and not being allowed to do much watering because of the drought.  Crisps and chips will be smaller this year and baking potatoes at a premium I think.  Still this collection will do us nicely for the week.  I am not sure if it is unusual to be harvesting cucumbers in October and it's the first year we have grown them.

The bed of autumn and winter greens is coming on very nicely.  The chard will need to be thinned soon, which will give us a nice salad to eat.  I've already been snacking on baby spinach leaves and they will also need thinning soon.  The lamb's lettuce, or mâche, will grow slowly and some may be ready for Christmas.

Something else that may be ready to eat during the week is our first cristophine!  Normally by this stage we would be fed up with them, having been picking them since mid-September.  This one snuck up on us rather, as we only spotted the first female flowers about a week ago, but then it is well hidden in the canopy.  It has been a bad year for this tropical perennial, as it has been far too dry and too hot as well - it likes temperatures between 20 and 33 degrees and either side of that, it is out of its comfort zone.

Another weird one are the jalapeño chillies, which would normally be searingly hot to eat.  This year they are full of flavour, but very tame.  We do still have some cayenne chillies in the freezer to add heat when required, but we had high hopes of these and are slightly disappointed.  I guess they would have preferred cooler temperatures too.

Anyway, the nights are drawing in, and we are told there will be a sharp drop in temperatures after Wednesday, so we take advantage of the light and outdoor events while we can.  Today there is the exhibition of the village Heritage Preservation Society's annual photo competition up at the church, with prize giving in about three quarters of an hour, so I had better round this off and put on some shoes and go and be seen to participate.

Have a good week!

A manic drift into Autumn

Apologies - I totally failed to post last Sunday and last Monday and today nearly didn't happen either.  After 4 months of either very wet weather (first half of May), or really hot weather (the rest of the time), people finally decided in September that things had to start to happen.  That's fair I guess, as climate change indicates that this last summer will soon become the norm rather than an exception and we will have to learn to live with it.

Mixed in with the fun of visitors, rock concerts and European Heritage Weekend have been preparing for having our fire insert changed, getting a house sale through for someone, helping someone to move into a residential home, helping someone else with various issues to do with life in general, failing to deal with the quince harvest, and finally getting some movement on our plan to buy (rather than rent/squat) the Meadow and Orchard.  It has been hard to find a moment to stand back and look at the bigger picture!

It was lovely to catch up with old friends, and fun that it coincided with a rather loud but jolly night of Rory Gallagher music, courtesy of Tribute Bourbon - a local rock combo, at the village pub.

As part of the visits with chums, we went over to Chinon for lunch, the antiques fair along the river bank and a look at the Collégiale Sainte Meme.  While I have been into the auditorium bit of this repurposed church, Heritage Open Days gave us a chance to go up the tower and look in painted rooms that are not normally open to the public - fascinating and very beautiful.

 The Romanesque ceiling with beams and spiders' webs was also very impressive.

The last time I wrote, I commented on my rather meagre and disappointing sweetcorn crop - at least those cobs were disease free.  When I went to get the last 8, two of them were infested with smuts.  While the Mexicans regard kernels like this as a real delicacy and strive to grow them, I find them disgusting to look at and touch, but the chickens are happy to sort them out for me!

We planted our quince tree in the garden not long after we bought the house and now it is a mature specimen.  It always produces large fruits - I'm not sure how, as we never water it.  This year we have had a bumper crop - earlier in the year I lost count at spotting about 60 on the tree, but I think there were many more than that.  One fruit seems to have damaged one of the chickens when it fell, and as the larger one in this photo weighs just under 3 pounds (well over a kilo), you can see how it might hurt if it falls on you.  Newton wouldn't have found gravity, he would have found a hospital if he had been sitting under our quince tree!  The smaller specimen is about the size of a large orange for scale.

While this autumn is extraordinary in its warmth and dryness, it is also living up to the usual promise of beautiful skies and sunsets.  We watch cloud formations come and go, but to date bringing no rain worth speaking of - perhaps this week, when we could do with dry weather, that will change.  Here is one good sunset, even if the photo doesn't quite match it in quality.

This week sees the new fire installed, my friend moves into her residential home, and I am back playing boule de fort for the honour of the ladies of the Comité des Fetes of Vieil Bauge.  I'm hoping that somewhere in the week I will also finally get a bit of time to start dealing with the quince mountain, assuming I can find enough jam jars!

Have a good week!

Getting back in the swing of things

September in France is all about new beginnings as well as profiting from the hard work of earlier in the year.  With a lull in the hot weather, we were able to turn the soil in the old broad bean bed and get in the first of the winter crops, so that there should be something available in February or March in the garden.  We have one bed where we can (normally) grow cauliflowers, so once the rotavator had done its job, we added a bag of well rotted horse manure and I planted 10 cauliflower plants.  They will now be in the ground and carefully nurtured for about 7 months, so if you complain about the price of caulis, remember how long they take to grow and how much space each plant takes, and only produces one head of curds!

As the medium term forecast for the autumn is quite benign, I have also planted a load of salad/leafy crops to make October and November a bit more interesting.  The seeds went in last Sunday, so it was encouraging to see that the Bright Lights chard and the spinach were well up and some signs of the mâche (lamb's lettuce) coming through as well.  If I am watchful and we are lucky, we should be eating baby leaves in October.

But what of the existing crops?  Well today I picked the best of our sweetcorn, as a snack to accompany lunch.  Disappointing puts it rather mildly - as these were very short cobs at about 3 to 4 inches long, sparsely populated too, but very sweet and tasty.  It just wasn't a good year for them, and I did sow about 2 weeks too late.

The cucumbers seem to remember now what their purpose in life is and have about 4 fruits set on them.  Reading the packet details, the variety is a slim version, and hails from Poland.  I have to hope that they do fatten up a little bit more than this, as it isn't totally appealing at the moment.

My fight against Asian hornets continues - this is the time of year when workers are on a feeding frenzy of finding sugar, while young queens need to really stock up on sugars to get themselves through the winter.  The exceptionally hot summer hasn't been good for them, as once the temperature inside the nests exceeds 40 degrees, they die off.  As we have had four periods when that has happened, we hope that they have taken a big hit.  The other noticeable thing is that as food has been more scarce and conditions not to their liking, any specimens that have been spotted are a bit smaller than usual.  On the one hand this is good, implying a weaker set of insects that may find it difficult to get through the winter.  On the other hand, there have been instances where they are able to escape from the selective traps that are set for them, as they can squeeze out of the holes designed to let bees and flies escape.  I have topped up the bait in my number 1 trap and have caught at least three of the beasties.

The star plant of September is the cyclamen and they are cropping up all over the place now, including random spots on the side of the road.  These clumps are at the entrance to the Orchard, and always cheer me up.

Yesterday was the annual Mechoui of our local boule de fort club - a lovely Saturday given over to gluttony and fellowship.  This year was a little subdued - the long, hot summer has taken its toll on people, and indeed the menu for the meal couldn't be finalised for a while until they got permission for the fire needed to spit roast the pig.  Our glorious Leader hasn't been in the best of health so he was less lively and couldn't make his usual general toast.  But having said that, the punch kicked above its weight, the wine was delicious, the starters were excellent, and the spit roast pig was all you could desire.  Once we got home at 6pm, we lolled, trying to digest and rehydrate after a decidedly warm afternoon among friends.

That is lunch and here are the happy punters.

Another feature of September is a rush of arrivals who didn't want to come over during school holidays.  The week ahead looks extremely busy with people, concerts, meals out, antiques fairs and the like and the blog will probably not be published until Monday.

Have a good week!

Vindicated on the Rentree!

Last week I said that things would start to happen as the Rentrée came into effect, and I wasn't wrong!  The water bills arrived - one of which looks seriously wrong, so will need me to rant at someone in the coming week.  The gym classes restarted and by the end of the week I was physically broken, although pleasantly surprised that I hadn't totally lost it over the summer.  An issue I have been working on for the past 6 to 8 weeks got broadly resolved, and when I was given the final confirmation by phone on Thursday, I actually cried with relief, much to the concern of the person on the other end of the line, who thought I was nuts.  And then Poirot decided to add her own brand of grumpy old lady cat troubles into the mix, which I won't go into for the moment.  Rebus is channelling my physical and mental exhaustion for you!

In amongst all that, I found time to harvest some food from the garden to create a nice healthy supper.  We only have 3 tomato plants, but Coeur de Boeuf are pretty reliable and excellent in the kitchen as there aren't many seeds in the lovely large fruits.

It has been a very mixed year for fruit, with many things cooked on the tree, but I have managed to make a few jars of peach jam, and could make more, if I can find the time.  The quince are likely to be outstanding this year, although I have yet to dissect one of the fallers to assess the quality of the flesh.  This is one of many huge examples, which weigh in at about 750 grammes a piece.

My raised bed for "soft" herbs has worked to my satisfaction.  The parsley and dill protected the rather fleshier sorrel from the worst of the sun, and both shop bought and seed grown chives are doing well, while the tarragon is quietly doing its thing.  The dill is now over and I hope spreading seed to sprout in the spring.  The parsley will keep going until the middle of next year.

Rather belatedly we have put out a small tank of water for wildlife in The Meadow - our consciences were slightly needled by the thought that at least 3 baby coypu hadn't made it and while I don't mind predators getting them, I didn't like the thought of them dehydrating to death.  Keeping the water relatively sweet and without mosquito larva is of course the challenge, and before the French government put an end to John's occasional spending binges on Temu (rule - never more than 20 euros total including postage), he found a small solar fountain to do the job.  It's not the most powerful piece of kit, but is doing what we need, and will be put away at the end of September along with the tank - assuming it rains before then of course...

In a real rush of Rentrée activity, there is so much going on this weekend, it has been a struggle to choose.  Yesterday there was all the usual Saturday stuff, plus the Forum of Associations where you sign up for sports and other activities, and the Boziacus festival at Boce.  Today there are two vide greniers, the classic car exhibition and spare parts sale, a walk and run in support of cancer charities and the Comice at Lasse.  In the end the last one won for us, as it was near something else we needed to do and had Tractorcross - so like motocross for bikes, but with tractors.  Not small tractors either, not the totally huge ones, but decent sized road going tractors racing round a muddy and sinuous track - excellent fun!

I'm hoping for a gentler week before the Méchoui of the Boule de Fort society on Saturday, but I suspect it is a vain hope.  We'll see.  Have a good one!

It's the Rentrée

It's that time of the year when the days are getting noticeably shorter, traffic becomes more dense at around 4:30pm, and people start to look busy and important - the Rentrée!  

News programmes are full of it - the challenges of finding the right, new school bag for Emile or Clotilde, all the choices of pens, exercise books and gym shoes, and how to budget if you don't earn much and have 6 children to equip (actually the State is pretty generous in those circumstances).  Services that have been moribund as everyone is on holiday suddenly come to life and expect you to jump because they are back from leave.  And the bills start to arrive - tax, council tax (taxe foncière), water, while you wait for the heating bills to kick in from October.

This late period of August has also finally brought rain and a relief from eternally blue skies with a frying sun.  While the cyclamen have started to bloom from late July over the past five or more years, this year they have only started to come out in the last 10 days.  Some corms have shown quite how pent up the urge to flower has been, putting on a ridiculous display.

In fact, in the last two weeks we have had the same amount of rain as in the whole of June and July!  This is making a huge difference in the potager.  We finally have female flowers on the cucumber plants!

I doubt they will do anything, as now we have no male flowers, but at least there is the potential for fruit, which there wasn't before.  The rain has altered my careful rationing of water for the tomatoes, so that with all the extra moisture, they have grown bigger and split their skins.

Some things cannot be helped.  The apples are falling, the pears are nearly over, and some of the walnuts, while healthy, are looking ready to fall a good month before they are due.  Size of nut may be an issue, but we shall see.

On the bright side with fruit, the quince are having the weather they were bred for some 2,000 years ago in Persia and are looking huge and relatively bug free.  Now we have to hope for some autumn sun to turn them sweet and yellow before autumn gales blow them off the tree.

The increased cloud also makes for beautiful sunsets, something we have been missing these last few months, but for me are a feature of Anjou.  I caught a couple of fine ones this week, first this one looking West.

Then this one, looking East.

So, back to school, back to work, back to gym classes twice a week - whatever your Rentrée, I hope it is a good one.  

While holiday is good, it is nice to get a bit of routine back into life (although not too much), and to be able to talk to services about things that are needed, without being told that the person concerned is on leave and won't be back for 3 weeks!

 

Comice 2026 at Bauge

I said I would be a day late with this, and so I am - no apologies.  It takes time to sort out the images and a video for publication in this space!  For a weekend for us, the focus is away from daily concerns and all about the fruition of plans and work of many months.  Our biggest concerns were the weather and how well 135 fish (painted paper, plastic or material) would survive the travel to the staging point and then the actual procession of floats.  It makes a change!

The theme this year was Bauge en Fete, and instead of mildly incomprehensible games between dodgy teams, each village was invited to present a 5 minute entertainment of some sort.  Only 6 out of 15 rose to the challenge, with a rather splendid kick off by our hosts of a Spanish song accompanied by flamenco dancers.

I'll say right now that the placing of the stage might be magnificent if you are on it, but if you are watching, with the sun directly behind it, it was uncomfortable at best and nearly impossible to photograph.  Le Vieil Bauge produced a tableau with acting and singing about the trials of a fisherman (our beloved President), and if you are so inclined, you can watch the video here.

The chap heckling the fisherman blithely confessed to losing his place in the script and having to wing it a bit.  Apologies for the poor quality of the video.

Sunday is all about old tractors, amateur ploughing competitions and the procession of decorated floats.  This is something I devote a lot of time to during the year, helping with design, making flowers, drawing up the cardboard templates and sticking on flowers, then attaching everything to the float.  The trout bunting was a novelty this year too.

Anyway, as ever, the procession is lead by the local Fanfare, the Cadets de Baugeois - an award winning team in their own field.  I have known one or two of them since they were babies...

The first float is always the host village, so no surprises, here is Bauge itself.

The host can also get bits of their community to do floats too, if they are so inclined and this year, the Fleurs d'Argent, the club that organises activities for senior citizens, put in a contribution.

I can't really remember the order of most of the floats (although it is a very serious thing), so I will go mainly alphabetically.  Boce hosts a festival called Bosiacus, which has a very Viking and savage theme to it, hence the float.

Chevire le Rouge is a village of poetry - honestly there appears to be an association of poetry villages across the country.  They do also celebrate St Medard, so this is their village festival - there was a song attached to this too.

Clefs have not been participating much in Comices recently, so it was great to see them back in the procession of floats.

Cuon will be holding their annual and much respected Vide Grenier next weekend, but the float does not reflect this.  Instead they went with a pig roast - yummy!

Next is Echimire, and not quite so political a float as they did last year - I hope the scars are healing over there!  They were very much in a dance theme.

Fougere has in the past run bicycle and moped races, so their float reflected that.  They have also recovered the float body that has a hidden motor and the head of the driver appears at "floor" level.  They had a team to help with hill starts, of which there were a number!

Next up Pontigne, who next weekend have their open air cinema and family fun day.  I'm not sure the float reflects that but it is awfully jolly.

St Martin d'Arce annoyed me a bit because they don't actually have a trout fishing festival, just a lake in an area that was forest until the big fire 4 years ago.  But they still had to have the biggest trout!

Vaulandry were also in the mix with a village get together and a very dashing flashy wig for their tractor driver!

Le Vieil Bauge had as our theme Peche a la Truite, for our trout fishing day each May.  The paper fish were painted in part by the kids in the after school childcare and partly by mature volunteers who just loved showing their creative side! We do  have the nicest tractor I think!

 
And a bit more detail, because I can.

The final float is always that of next year's hosts, so le Guedenieu brought up the rear and we are all off over there in 2027.

After that there was a demonstration of acrobatic basketball, before the tombola was drawn and the feast began.  We never got to see the ranks of spit roasting pigs - I think they were somewhere where the fire brigade could keep an eye on them as we are on high alert for wildfire still.  But we did enjoy our portion of the feast!  We were able to eat on long, long tables under a vast array of marquees.

And after dinner, there was a band playing cover versions - not bad at all - but we were weary, so went home and saw some of the laser light show from the bathroom window before bedtime!

So that's it for another year - always fun, but always very tiring!

Have a good week!