A Day Out for Work

Today it was up early for a trip to the fruit and vegetable exhibition in Agen. Unlike the agricultural exhibitions I’ve been to in the UK, such as the Three Counties and The Bath and West, this had only stands relating to the cultivation of fruit and vegetables. That said I did enjoy it.

It was a bit overwhelming trying to understand everything that was there; while my languages skills have improved they are still a long way from proficient. I came away with a bag full of literature to read later with the aid of the dictionary.

I did find some interesting bits though – I wasn’t really interested in all the machines that pick and pack fruit. Well that’s not really true, I find them fascinating but they are of no use to me. I found the stand for the Agricultural Office for Aquitaine and a leaflet saying they would offer a discount of 80% against the fees to register as a bio farm. I’m not sure if it is aimed at small-scale framers such as myself but if I don’t ask I will not get.

I also found a man promoting his stone ground flour. His watermill is in a village not far from me so I now have a source of local stone ground flour and a possible outlet for my wheat. So that needs to be followed up over the next few weeks.

There were lots of stands showing packing and presentation materials mainly printed cardboard or plastic. There was one stand however that had lightweight woven wooden baskets, very bio friendly. Turns out they are made from poplar. France is full of poplar and I wondered what it was used for.

There was also a stand that was giving away instructions for producing your own bio-oil and lots of associations with leaflets on the production, prices and markets for each of the fruits and vegetables generally grown in the area. A bit mind-boggling after a while.

Having returned home I was out in the garden and noticed that the ornamental prunus had burst into flower. It has been hot here, 18+°C and the tree has gone from just showing colour on the buds to flowering in a day. The picture wasn’t taken at night; the only way I can get the camera to focus on the flowers was to use the close up setting with flash.

Looking at some of the other blogs I read it seems that the sunsets lately have been rather good around the world. Not to be outdone I thought I would show the one here tonight.