One volunteer is worth ten pressed men

Here's our volunteer pumpkin. It could only be from the compost I dug into the garden last winter. Huge in comparrison to the ones I have coddled and nutured it's elbowing the cauliflowers out of it's way ready to go rampaging across the garden with a volunteer potato hot on it's heels.

If pumpkin pictures are just too exciting for you I do have a picture of a tomato. Sad I know but after last year's complete wash out I am thrilled to have nine (yes nine I counted them) little tomatoes appearing on one of the tomato plants. The others have some too but I haven't counted how many I have a short attention span.

We very nearly have peas too! We have leeks that are developing a distinct leekness, onions that might actually come out of the ground bigger than when we put them in, and climbing beans climbing. Also putting in an appearance are salsify, swiss chard, beetroot, carrots, cucumbers and broad beans.

In fact if it wasn't 30 degrees in the shade I would be out there weeding and coddling and praising all the little veggies and telling them just what a bang up job they are doing. But with my eyes screwed up against the sun I can choose not to see the weeds.

Are You There Yet?

Day 1

Still waiting for TS to confirm that he has got to Leeds and is crashed out on my brother's sofa watching Stargate and eating chicken tandori pizza washed down with a pint of really hoppy beer.

I've not managed to kill myself by falling down the stairs, off ladders, chopping my arm off with the chain saw, starvation or hypothermia. But it's early days.

The Best Things in Life Are Free

We are enjoying the most consistently good weather since we arrived yet we are busy preparing for Winter.

I am making the most of the weather and the fabulous clothes washing machine to wash quilts and blankets.

We have accepted the fact that we've neither the time nor money to convert the attic into a second bedroom and have laid down insulation and boards to close it up. This has had the stunning effect that for the first time ever it is warmer in the house than outside. Yes the first time ever. Plus no need to worry about the mongoose any more

The chimney is swept and the heatproof board up to keep the warmth from the Rayburn disappearing up the chimney and bits from up the chimney falling in our tea.

We have sold our trailer, bought a chain saw with the proceeds and surveyed our bits of woodland. The patch at the bottom of the garden, the bit down the lane and the Woods that Legend Spake Of. There are enough fallen trees to keep us in firewood this winter and maybe next. We reckon that if we cut the coppice in the bit down the lane during the winter that should do us a winter too. All in all we're well sorted in the heat and cooking department.

The only drawback is we will have nothing to cook. We have managed to produce enough food to eat something of our own every day but alas just about no surplus.

This of course means we shall need money. Bugger

Homework and Working on the Home

Hedgewizard asked for a review of How to Store Your Garden Produce by Piers Warren and I thought OK why not, but then it felt a bit like a homework assignment and I worried about my grade. So I'll just tell you about it and leave reviews to reviewers.

It's not one of those coffee table books that have you drooling over luscious pictures of chutney taken in a designer farmhouse kitchen.

It's a small paperback about 100 pages illustrated with fairly simple cartoons and it's in two parts.

Part One is an overview of preserving methods. What I like about this part is that things are reduced to their most basic principles eg jam requires 60% sugar by weight to inhibit the growth of bacteria. This gets me past the confusion as to what I'm doing for flavour and what is actually preserving the food and also past the wondering where to get various exotic ingredients and what you call them in French.

Part Two is an alphabetical list of commonly gown fruit and vegetables along with the best ways to store each one and where applicable a recipe for wine, jam etc for that fruit or vegetable.

So there you have it. Whether it would contain enough new information for someone well versed in all this stuff I don't know, but when you compare the £4.95 price tag to say the cost of a magazine it seems a reasonable price to pay to have all the information in one place.

One of the major problems we had in our preserving efforts was our cheap crappy LPG cooker and the things that hold the pans above the gas flame (as we call them in the trade) collapsing under the weight of large pans. All in all it's not very satisfactory.

Now we have a solution or we will have tomorrow for we have aquired a Rayburn (second hand at a v reasonable price). We used to have one on our narrowboat and it was an absolute treasure. It cooked our food, kept us warm, heated the water and even I couldn't break it. It did give the boat a slight list but that was a small price to pay. The big price was paid to get it on the boat. That took four men over an hour and was decidedly hairy at times.

I'm just glad I won't be involved in moving the Rayburn tomorrow. Now that's definetely a Tech Support job.

The fruits of our labours

Left to right gratuitous french beans, apricot jam, apricot pie filling, apricot chutney

Apricot Day

Today 14th July Bastille Day in France but in this house it is henceforth proclaimed Apricot Day.

Yesterday I took delivery of my 10kg of apricots from the grocery van.

Today we have been working subtle and cunning transformations upon them. Have we turned base fruit into gold? Yes sort of, for now we have (dadadadadadadaaaah)

Apricot Jam - the finest (and first) jam I have ever made
Apricot Chutney - the finest (and first) chutney I have ever made
Apricot Wine - the finest (and first) wine TS has ever made

OK strictly speaking the chutney won't be ready for a couple of months and the wine till next year, but apricots have been processed. If the wine and chutney are rubbish then they will never be mentioned again and you will be none the wiser.

The day started with panic looking at too many books and too many web sites. In the end we settled on How to Store Your Garden Produce by Piers Warren, got an idea of proportions ,then winged it. So the jam is simply 40% apricots 60% sugar. The chutney is apricots, onions, cider vinegar, red wine vinegar(didn't have enough cider vinegar), raisins, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove and ginger plus two spectacularly large but completely mild chilli peppers out of the garden. By the time it got to the wine I'd lost track but I'm sure TS almost definately won't of.

So if we don't die of food poisoning there'll be no stopping us now.

Only 5kg of apricots to go

Working for the Man

Our web site gets a surprising number of visitors. Some arrive via very strange searches “Lifestyle France The Olden Days” springs to mind as does “Mr Stripy Tomato Picture”. But generally stick one of the subjects we cover alongside Limousin France in your search and there we are amongst all the estate agents and gites.

In the past we have created web pages linked to the site as a favour for friends. Now I’m being paid real money for doing it. I’m sure my creditors will be pleased.

The problem with being paid money in France is that they like you to say you’re going to be self employed before you start but once you say you are then you have to pay social charges. Fair enough you say and so do I because I have this strange socialist streak from somewhere that says it’s right to contribute (obviously pre Thatcher’s children vintage then). Except that you can finish up paying social charges without actually getting any money in.

It does apparently even itself out in the end i.e. over a three year period but frankly we don’t have three year period money.

So I’ve taken the easy route I’m working via a portage company. This means I go find people who want me to do some work for them but the portage company bills them and pays me less their commission and my social charges.

They get a commission

I get to pay my social charges on a PAYE basis

France gets some money out of me

It’s a win win win situation.

It’s like working for a temp agency but you find your own work so no phone calls from them offering assignments doing things you’ve never done before.

“We’ve got this brain surgery job the rates really good”

“I’ve never done brain surgery”

“Oh you’ll pick it up easily and they’re really nice people”

Plus TS gets to be a kept man his lifelong dream.

You Say Potato I Say What Now?

Only one bed of blighted potatoes left in the ground now.

We dug up one bed of maincrop Desirees this morning. It's not a happy story, about the best we can say is we got more spuds out than we put in. Could of been worse we could of got less or none I suppose. The Charlottes have been great we'll definately do them again next year seems like they nicely beat the blight and the colorado beetles. Perhaps we'll also try another early variety.

My consolation is that everyone else feels sorry for us and donates food courgettes, cucumbers, redcurrant jelly and lettuce this week. Thank you Miranda.

So what now? I have no idea. Time to hit the books again. Clearly the time I thought I was spending aquiring knowledge I was really just feeding my day dreams and when I look in my head for facts on what I could be growing there I just find a film clip entitled "Heroine Swanning Round Potager Gathering Produce".

It's going to be a long hungry winter at this rate.

We will have an ample sufficiency of apricot conserve though (touch wood). Tired of waiting for our cherries to ripen and despondant over the spuds in a fit of retail therapy I've ordered 10kg of apricots from the grocery van man this morning. Now I'm sat here thinking that's an awful lot of apricots.

More research required "Heroine With Shining Shelves of Bottled Produce" film clip is no use.

Back to Reality

I've calmed down now about the whole preserving thing so I won't be rushing out to spend money or anything equally rash. Thanks to everyone for bringing me back down to earth.

Every now and again I am overcome with "My life would be complete if only I had ..." For the last two years it has been "if only I was at my house in France" now I'm here it's moved onto consumer goods.

I don't want to come over all maudlin, sentimental and platitudy but really my life is complete when we're walking the dogs in the woods, grazing on the raspberries and peas in the garden (yes we have raspberies and peas! but not enough to make it to the kitchen yet), playing with the kitten, having a drink and a laugh with friends etc etc none of which is available at the shops.

So I have reconnected with my inner yorkshirewoman and today it's checking out the barn to see if we can make owt for nowt.

You see the barn is stacked up with all sorts of odds and sods left by the previous inhabitants mainly wood but also old tools with handles that have been completely eaten by wood worm, an old woodburning stove that we can't get to for the wood, all sorts of things that could make my life complete.

Stuff I have to buy so I don't have to buy stuff

Now that we are getting potatoes from the garden my thoughts naturally turn to storing and processing the bounty of produce to come. So of course I will make jams and chutneys and bottled fruits and tomatoes and store dried beans. I will freeze peas and green beans and fruits. I will dry walnuts and hazelnuts and chestnuts and make things with them that I have drooled over on the internet. There will be cider and homemade beer and wine.

All this marvellous food and drink for free!

No it bloody well isn’t.

For I shall have to buy big pans for making jams and chutneys even if I do without thermometers and funnels and tongs for lifting jars out of water and cherry stoners and apple corers and sieves, I shall have to buy jars. I shall have to buy storage tins for storing dried food. I shall have to buy a freezer to freeze food. I shall have to buy baking accoutrements like tins and rolling pins and pastry brushes and weighing scales. Brewing supplies like buckets and demi-johns and bottles and caps.

All this is before I start buying food to add to the food, things like sugar and vinegar, spices, flour, baking powder, yeast.

Admittedly much of the stuff is “an investment” and will be used many times. But it could all go horribly wrong and I will have all the possessions but no food. I could buy a lot of jars of jam, frozen peas, tins of tomatoes and sticky buns for that money all made by experts in their field, and have change for a recliner, parasol and a good book.

So at the end of the day I can’t produce food cheaper than I can buy it. All things considered. Unless I consider food miles, freshness, quality of life, job satisfaction and all the worthy green stuff, but I just wanted to moan about all the stuff that has to be bought so I won’t go into all that. I'd only be leaning on an open door or boring or both.

Self Sufficient Egg and Chips

Yay!

We've graduated from sandwiches to hot meals. From dinner to tea (or lunch to dinner if you're posh) in the self sufficiency stakes.

We now have the makings of a meal. We dug up our first few Charlotte potatoes today. (Not counting the one we dug up a couple of weeks ago to see what was happening down there)

No I didn't make chips (just how common do you think I am?) We have had them boiled in their skins with lots of butter and they were yummy and potatoey. I even went so far as to cook duck to go with them in a hastily concocted marmalade sauce (which is far indeed for someone as domestically challenged as I am). But the potatoes were the stars.

And yes we have had them at tea time

Potatoes! The official food of the Breezy Break!

ps Do we leave them and dig them up as we want them or dig them all up now?

We all Have a Dark Side

I was ambling about in the garden today wondering when we would get something to eat out of it (beyond leaves). Thinking well the new potatoes might be ready soon which would be the makings of a substantial meal. I stopped to watch the chickens a bit.

They were doing chicken stuff mainly scratching at the soil and stepping back to see if they'd unearthed anything and chasing the one who managed to get the biggest bug. This got me to thinking about how free range chicken legs are meatier and tastier because they get to do that too rather than being crammed into a barn where they can't move around.

Do you know where I'm going with this?

Yes I'm afraid so. I began to look at "our girls" as food. Not that I would ever eat them no of course not perish the thought. But I might consider eating a chicken that I owned. In fact I might feel more comfortable doing that than eating a chicken that hadn't scratched about in the sunshine and fresh air and had a chance to be a chicken.

Scarey thought for a townie.

Rainy Days and Mondays

UK and France it's just the same. Bank holiday Monday and it siled down all day. This is the third rainy bank holiday in a row between days where the temperature has got up as high as 28 degrees. Go figure.

It's a phenomenon I may have to add to the Olde Breezy Breake Almanac "If the shoppes be shutte rain will fill your butte". Has quite a ring I think.

I used to like rain as an excuse to curl up with a book and do nothing at all. Now rain means I have to work in the house on DIY stuff instead of being out in the garden talking to the chickens and weeding, urrhumph. So I'm torn.

We have our "crops" out in the garden a couple of dry hot sunny days and we're looking at the sky for clouds to save the hauling up of water from the well and trudging about with watering cans but it means breaking out the toolkit and doing real work.

What the world needs is sunny days and rainy nights everyone says so. Someone ought to sort it out.

I think I'd better think it out again

Today I have been waging war on the perenial weeds and any others that got in my way. When we looked at the area that was going to be the veg plot we naively said "Oh look at all those buttercups doesn't it look nice". What fools we were. Everytime I turn my back the buggers advance across the veg beds. Opinion seems to be divided on whether hoeing is going to help or hinder but it's a nice easy job on a hot day and it makes me feel all gardenerly so I'll keep doing it. Plus that hoe cost me nine euros, I'll have to get my wear out of it.


Hedgewizard is making weed tea sounds like just the sort of treatment creeping buttercup things need to me I may add it to my list of things to try.

He's also having problems with moles.


This plant so people keep telling me repels moles. What no one seems to know is what it's called. Anyway we've not had any mole problems (yet) so maybe it does.






My Or du Rhinn climbing french beans are doing just that. They're my kind of plant stick em in the ground green side up and off they go. I may plant some more but I'm running out of dug over bits of garden, unless we move the chicken run to the orchard. I'm a bit reluctant to do that cos I like to talk to them while I'm in the garden. They'd probably enjoy it though. Another thing for the list.


I've sown seeds for groundcherries, amaranth, melons and a last go at tomatoes. No idea where I'll put them either if they decide to grow.

Mmmm we should of got someone with foresight and planning for this job.

God of Chickens

The Dinnerladies are enthusiastic gardeners. Usually they shout encouragement from their run but they are happy to get involved especially when the God of Chickens (Tech Support) is weeding.

I can be doing absolutley riveting things like digging up ants nests, shouting and tapping look at these lovely grubs but no when their hero is in the garden they only have eyes for him.

Their garden time only lasts about an hour though, eventually they get carried away and start trampling the onions and vandalising the peas. So one by one they are picked up and put back in the run and they have to be content with getting the weeds to scratch through till the God of Chickens smiles on them again.

Sometimes You Should Buy Things - Self Sufficient or Not

Bob has been and done some electrical work today.

Ha ha we have hot water that comes out of our taps. Unfortunately it doesn't come out of the shower boo hiss.

Ha ha we have lightbulb holders and switches upstairs (no light though, you need bulbs and we didn't think to buy any). But it's another giant leap forward in the facilities here at Chateau La Pants.

We now have
A toilet that flushes and doesn't bite your bum
Walls around bathroom (but you can't shut the door completely because we forgot doorknobs)
HOT and cold water upstairs and down
Half the wall that is a kitchen done

A satisfactory end to a day that started with a most traumatic incident.

We were bustling about getting ready for the arrival of Bob. Tech Support had taken the dogs out I was drugging the cat when I glanced down at my left bosom. A speck of dirt. I brushed at it. It didn't go away. I brushed harder. It still didn't go away. It was attached. My heart started pounding. Surely not I thought, please no.

I asked Tech Support to check my bosom when he got back. He was surprised but happy to oblige. He confirmed my suspicions A TICK A TICK ATTACHED TO ME uuuuuurghh just doesn't describe it. Even uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh doesn't do it justice.

Luckily we were able to borrow a tick removing thingy from next door but one. The very type of tick removing thingy that I have been meaning to buy since I got here. Thinking of the dogs not me. We didn't have any antiseptic so a dab of Jack Daniels had to surfice.

The shopping list for tomorrow is
Bulbs
Doorknobs
Tick Removing Thingy
Anitseptic

I wonder if they do Frontline for people.

Pees Please

At last we have walls around the bathroom so not only do I now have a pot to pee in but I can pee in it in peace. The luxury is overwhelming. Hot water at the weekend. Bloody hell life is good!

I have been on slug patrol this evening. All our slugs are reddy orange so at least they are easy to spot. I can't bear to touch them so I wonder round the garden with a plastic pot and an oversized dining fork collecting them up (no I don't spear them just sort of manouver them into the pot). Then, since I can't bear to kill them either I relocate them to the woods. Strangely I have no qualms about feeding them to the Dinnerladies but they won't eat them even though they promise to when they are lined up at the wire saying "What you doing? Give us some". They just stab at them a bit then spend ages going "Yuk slimey slugs" and wiping their beaks. (well they do in my world thank you very much ).

Some stuff in the garden is doing really well. You could string a hammock between the spuds , honest. Other suff, well it's crap and just not trying like the leeks or it didn't bother to grow at all. Yes kidney beans I mean you. So tomorrow I am going to start some more stuff off. In pots because I can not distinguish between weeds and veg yet and I'm sick of having myself on that there is a row of food there and not a general blotch of weed seedlings.

I love gardening.

Slugs Ate My Collective Farm Woman

Well you turn your back for a minute. Several days actually. Because it's raining and because there is stuff to be done inside and before you know it your crops are devoured. It's goodbye Collective Farm Woman Melon, goodbye Gigante Liscio Tomatoes and goodbye brave solitary little Heatwave Chilli.

There you are rain and neglect it leads to slugs you heard it here.

We're keeping an eye out for colorado beetles (they call them doryphores here) The only way to deal with them apparently is to pick them off the potatoes and squish them although we might see if the Dinnerladies fancy picking them off and eating them. (Big event this weekend we got a double yolk egg!)

Everytime someone mentions colorado beetle it takes me back to standing in the post office with my gran while she was waiting to collect her pension. There was always a poster of a colorado beetle and details of who to contact if this scourge of potatoes was spotted. This was in a part of Leeds where the houses all led straight onto the street or if they were posh, had a couple of feet of earth and a privet hedge. I always hoped to spot one so I could call out The Man From The Ministry but surprise surprise I never did.

There wasa cobblers shop next to the post office I can smell it now or it could be the dog.

Cool Cats Drugs and Chicks

We took Borg back to the vets today for his check up. This weekend we had been worried about him as he couldn't find a comfortable position to sleep and he looked really depressed.

However over the last couple of days he has managed to sleep and has perked up to the extent that he is giving the dogs black looks even if he can't be bothered to swot them and he is going upstairs to find a sunny spot on the bed to kip. At his age we can't expect a full recovery but as long as he is happy I'll keep drugging his food. I'm getting so good at it that Tech Support is starting to wonder just what goes into his meals as some days he finds he does exactly what he's told without realising.

The chickens have discovered that they can get out of their run. Well actually it's just Dolly and her mate Jean at the moment. Anita and Twink are not so adventurous. Luckily they are happy for us to go and pick them up so no comedy chicken capers yet. Tomorrow we will have to sort out a move for them. Their run is looking a bit bald and the grass is definately greener on the other side. They'll be on the lunch menu next door if they hop over that fence .

We noticed our first little peppers forming today so we are full of anticipation for the culinary delights to come. I've told the tomatoes they've got some catching up to do.

Mostly Crepi

We've been applying ourselves again which for me has meant filling in plaster and putting crepi on the walls. Well one wall so far, there is such a thing as too much application plus I thought I would see if it fell off that wall before applying myself to the others.

I have also earthed up the spuds and hoe-ed weeds with my new hoe which I bought at the same time as the crepi. It's really sharp, I have the cut finger to prove it.

Crepi is fabulous stuff, it has the texture of school semolina pudding (maybe with less lumps), it's equally sticky and covers up a multitude of cracks and other wall related blemishes. What's more it's only five euros for a 15kg tub. This means once you get past the one splat for the wall and one splat for the floor stage it's very economical compared to a plasterer. It is viewed by some as naff, akin to artex I think and you can do artexy things with it if you like but I'm just going for the rustic look. Which is just as well cos my best efforts are pretty much, well . . . rustic.

So we have one lovely white wall plus a rather nice shelfy/dresser thing that Tech Support has been making for the wall that is the kitchen. If we sit here with sort of squinty half closed eyes we can almost see a cosy little kitchen/dining/living room. It has inspired us to concentrate and finish this room so we can have one place where we are not reminded of the zillion and one things on the to do list. It would also be good to repay the hospitality of those who feed us and let us use their bathing facilities fom time to time.

But not today we're having day off.