June 2011

 

05/06/2011 

And even more cherries.  The blue bucket full of black cherries was destined to become the first batch of glacé cherries while the colander of the griottes made a second batch of cherry vodka.  Patches decided to oversee the proceedings.

 

06/06/2011

I had so many cherries, the only way to deal with them was to make cherry juice – that used up around two 10l bucketful's to fill the press and resulted in this collection of bottles of juice to put in the freezer.

 

 

 

 

Hiding in the background are the cherries ready to be stoned for the glacé cherries and a bowl of large cherries with stalks that I had stoned and am marinating in brandy with the aim of turning them into a Christmas treat.

At the end of last month I took my lawnmower and my rotovator in for repair/service.  as a result the new grass in the orchard took on a Monet-esque look.

 

 

And while wandering in amongst the poppies and the weeds I came across these.  They are hare droppings and later that evening I spotted 4 hares running round my soya field.

 

 

11/06/2011

Not the best photograph in the world but I didn’t have time to change the camera default setting  so it insisted on using the flash to light up the foreground.  Thank goodness for photo manipulation programmes

 

 

 

12/06/2011

The blueberries have done really well this year although I do need to find out how to prune the bush as the weight of the berries bent the branches right down to the ground.

 

 

A tour round the garden brought these two lots of caterpillars to light.  The first is a caterpillar of the Scarce Swallowtail which is on the bronze fennel, while the second is a group that I’ve yet to identify but I think might be saw fly caterpillars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

13/06/2011

Jewel is her usual mad self and decided to file herself beside me while I was working on the computer.

 

 

 

16/06/2011

The apricot tree outside the front door didn’t produce many fruits this year but made up for it in the size of the fruit it produced.

 

 

18/06/2011

The first batch of glace cherries being divided into 300g batches.

 

 

 

 

Having drained the glace cherries from their poaching syrup I was then left with a large pan of fruit juice and sugar.  On the basis of ‘waste not, want not’ I decided to use this to make a jelly.

 

21/06/2011

The last of the cherries and the first of the greengages!

 

 

 

 

 

 

22/06/2011

And the last of the cherries processed.  I made 2 batches of glace cherries starting with around 4 kg for each batch.  This resulted in approximately 3.6 kg of glace cherries.  The first lot of poaching juice I spiced and bottled as a sauce to pour over ice cream, while the second lot I spiced in the same way and added a couple of small bottles of homemade pectin in an attempt to set the jelly.  The jelly on the spoon looked well set but that in the jars looks as fluid as the sauce batch!

25/06/2011

The extreme heat and drought left the gooseberries struggling this year but the blackberries seem to have not been too bothered.  The coin is a 2€ piece

 

 

 

30/06/2011

And the final day of the month was spent on a 1200 km round trip to collect my son A from university in Aix-en-Provence.  We stopped on the way back to take in the stunning view of Carcassonne in the evening sunshine.

May 2011

06/05/2011

Cherry time!  This year nearly everyone here had a bumper crop including myself.

 

 

 

 

10/05/2011

While wandering around near the pond I found another bee orchid with a slightly different pattern to the one in the garden.

It’s now marked and I hope it will flower again next year.

 

 

 

 

11/05/2011 & 12/05/2011

While clearing out the barn I decided to get rid of a bin of old wheat.  When I opened the lid I found some very surprised mice.

 

They all buried their heads in the grain bar the look-out mouse.

I carefully emptied out the bin and there were 12 mice living in there.  I think they were trapped in there a the lid was firmly on.

 

 

 

16/05/2011

Jewel brought in another friend, a western whip snake as before but a bit bigger this time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17/05/2011

A walk round the pond revealed the headless corpse of one of the moor hens from the pond.  I’m now wondering if I have a mink around or if something else killed it.

 

 

 

The hayfield was also ready for cutting over the weekend but I’d not had a chance to check out the baler but was able to get someone else to cut and bale for me this year.

 

 

 

18/05/2011

This year I scaled down the collection using the small tractor and the large trailer rather than the hay waggon.  When I used the hay waggon a couple of years ago I ended up having to use the kitchen steps to get up onto the waggon and then had to leave a gap in the bales to enable me to stack the bales.

 

With the trailer I could get around 22 bales on at a time from ground level.  So while it seemed like a longer process, it was actually much quicker.

The first load was used to build a set of steps to reach the hay loft.  And before long the field was half done.

 

 

 

The field as cleared and stacked the next day with a little help from neighbours J & C and I helped them collect and stack their bales.

 

 

 

20/05/2011

Today was designated a cherry picking day

 

 

 

 

 

21/05/2011

And yet more cherries!

 

 

 

 

 

28/05/2011

Meet the new additions.  This is Pandora with her cria Brandy.

 

 

 

 

 

While this is Tabitha with her cria Bethany.  Missing from the photos is Mr Frizzle.  They are the start of my Suri herd and I travelled up to Brittany to collect them and while they were there they ere entered into a show.

 

 

31/05/2011

And this is what I came away with.  Brandy, Bethany and Mr Frizzle all won their classes and Brandy went on to be Reserve Champion Suri

April 2011

01/04/2011

April started with Jewel bringing home a new playmate.  It’s a juvenile western whip shake which played dead on the kitchen floor but once out in the sunshine moved so fast I could only just photograph it.

 

I started work on the new garden area – the weeds are yet to germinate though.

 

 

 

 

And May Day came a month early!

 

 

 

 

05/04/2011

Time to make a few more garden stakes.

 

 

 

 

06/04/2011

Wood preservative goes on and in the background a rose arch for the garden.

Cutting up a barrel to make a couple of small ponds.

And the pump house before it gained it’ living roof.

 

 

 

07/04/2011

Clear blue skies, a portent of the drought to follow and some newly spun yarn hung up to dry.

 

11/04/2011

Living roof in progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

12/04/2011

And in place.

January to April 2011

 

28/01/2011

During the dark evenings I’ve been getting on with carding and spinning and have nearly finished the 4 practice fleeces I have. 

 

 

 

 

 

06/02/2011

The polutunnel produced lettuce and rocket in February.

 

 

 

 

 

16/02/2011

Sunny weather brought the cats out to play. 

 

 

 

 

 

28/02/2011

The bay tree at the back of the house was getting far too high and blocking both the access to the chicken house and around the rear of the house.  Height greatly reduced but I will wait until the end of the year to thin the many trunks there, some of which are 6 inches in diameter.  It smelt wonderful while cutting it.

 

 

 

03/03/2011

Working through the nuts collected last autumn.   I’ve found that using the hammer to crack the nuts rather than nutcrackers produces a much higher proportion of whole nuts.

 

 

08/03/2011

A bit more dry weather and the whole of the potager has had it’s first going over with the rotovator.

 

 

 

25/03/2011

The foul drain – not only was there the problems described earlier but it turned out that the pipe was compressed to about half diameter too!  I think I’m becoming an expert on septic tanks but hopefully this will have finally cured the problems.

 

27/03/2011

I’ve always loved Fritillaries, these are fritillaria uva vulpis.

 

 

 

 

31/03/2011

The first asparagus and this year I can cut a few too.