Mad Dogs and English Woman…

So from moaning about how cold it was to the jump from 15C to 25C, today at 18:00 the patio thermometer is registering 39C!!  To be fair the front of the house faces south and is a suntrap but…  It’s also where I’ve been working for most of the day   Lots of tea breaks required, very definitely my sort of day; and that really sums up the day too, a sort day walking things to their proper places now that the ground is dry.

Still no news on hay-making although if the weather forecast remains as given at lunchtime we could have a weather window of 4 days starting tomorrow.

Last night at the bee group I attend we had a talk on permaculture so part of this afternoon has been spent mulching the bare earth in the potager and flower beds with the excess of grass clippings I have.

An Internet search on the use of clippings seemed pretty evenly split between it being a good idea and it being a bad idea so consider it an experiment in progress.  Nature abhors a vacuum I was always taught and that’s why bare soil never stays bare for long.  The hope is that the layer of clippings will be thick enough to stop weed germination but not thick enough to turn into a slimy layer.  Hopefully too, they will also break down over the year and help improve my soil – it really needs something to improve it.

Along with the hay-making a lot of grass cutting and weeding round the house is required as you can probably tell from the picture above.  A month ago the flower bed shown was weed free and the area all round it neatly mown but with a bit of (weather) luck, by this time next week it will be again.

And The Bad News Is.

Well, we’re a week away from mid-summer and the hay is still not cut!  The weather is still weird, but I have decided to be brave and put away my winter clothes and bring out the summer ones.  The hardest thing at the moment is switching between 29C one day and 15C the next.  Goodness know what it is doing to plants; the harvest this year will really depend on the following 3 months weather.

This year the apricots have failed completely, of the 2 almonds I have, the earlier one has a little fruit while the later one has none.  The peach and the 2 nectarines have all developed leaf curl despite winter treatment but did set fruit although one of the nectarines has lost nearly all its fruit during a storm last week.

On a brighter note the quince tree looks like it has a good crop so quince jelly this year and both the wild cherries and my late cherries look to have a really good crop.

It’s the vagaries of the weather that persuaded me to try and preserve enough for 2 years when there is a glut so I still have bottled peaches and apricots in the store and some in the freezer.  If this weather weird-ing is to become the normal I think I’m going to have to think more about longer term preservation of a greater variety of fruit and veg to cope with the more erratic harvest that will occur. 

I’m also trying to move away from freezing everything but only if the alternative method tastes as good as the frozen so for instance I’ll bottle my plum tomatoes but unlike the French I won’t bottle my green beans.

So, Just How do you Make Hay when the Sun Doesn’t Shine?

 

Weather Weird-ing, I think that sums it up the best.  The Meteo service in France are telling us that the average temperature for May here is running at at least 10C down and we’ve also broken the record for rainfall too.  I can’t believe it’s almost June and I’m still filling the hot-water bottle.

Haymaking is also on hold; the grass has grown and was ready for cutting a week or so ago but the rain and the low temperature even when the sun does peek through means it’s impossible to make hay.

But the good news is that summer is supposed to start next week!

Work, What Work?

continued from post The Wheel Turns Even Faster…

So now I have no income stream – not that I really had one before.  Once the cost of producing the crop and the cotisiation to MSA so that I could sell the crop is taken into consideration I’ve probably broken even over the last 6 years and that was due to a good crop and price for sunflower seed last year.

While I’m still tied to the farm with the alpacas I want to develop various craft items; felted alpaca, knitted and crochet items and basically anything else that might sell.  Once I have the freedom to spend time away, then I can look at any local work where my limited French isn’t too much of a problem.  One advantage of going out to work is that I’m sure my French would improve rapidly.

In the short term I’m aiming to increase my harvest from the potager and work towards becoming more self-sufficient food-wise.  In addition I’m hoping to finally have time to renovate the house, in fact that is a priority.  I’ve also come to the conclusion that long-term planning is a waste of time as goalposts seem to be moved every time you get within striking distance, so going with the flow is my new mantra. 

So another ‘new life’ is about to evolve; bring it on, onwards and upwards as the saying goes, it’s time to learn more about other things, and with luck I will also get round to blogging about it too, (I think I may have said that before but hopefully I will this time.)

The Wheel Turns Even Faster and Life Changes

 

Well it’s been nearly a year since my last blog, and that was after writing that I was going to try and blog more frequently :-/ 

So what’s up and what’s new?  Like most things in life there is no simple answer, it is a collection of things, some depending on others and sometimes circling back on themselves.

I’ve been in France for 6 years now and reached a point where I was able to take stock of where I was and where I want to go.

First up was realising that 11 hectares isn’t big enough to be a viable grain farm, especially when only 5.5 hectares is really farmable.  My guess is that most of the best bits of the farm land that originally went with my property were sold off between the previous farmer dying back in the late 80’s and when his wife died and the farm was finally sold 6 years ago (French inheritance laws have a lot to answer for!)

While 11 hectares might not be large enough to provide a living as an arable farm it’s rather a lot for one person to manage so I decided to sell off the grain field and generate some income to update the house and improve the 6 hectares that remain.  Along with the realisation about the financial viability of the farm I also realised that my back and my hands are not going to hold up for ever.  While I can utilise barrows and lifting gear for my back, whatever I did to the base of my thumbs a few years back has never healed properly and increasingly I find problems with gripping things tightly – I’m beginning to think I’m falling apart. 

So along with selling off the grain field I’ve made the decision to sell my alpacas too.  While in summer they are very little work, in winter I was finding carrying the hay bales and nets over each day a bit more difficult than before.  So in short, rather than wait until I reached a point where it is impossible for me to do the work I’ve started on an exit policy!

One other benefit from selling the alpacas will be to give me more freedom to travel and to go out to work.  Whilst I said the alpacas are very little work in summer, they require almost constant supervision, as a couple of them have the habit of poking their head through the fencing and getting stuck.  Not too much of a problem when it’s cool but if the temperature is in the mid to high 30’sC in the shade and they are out in the sun….  It doesn’t bear thinking about, so I try not to go out for more than an hour or so.

That brings up the question of where to go next?  Location wise I hope to stay right here, I love the situation of the property, south facing, lovely views, well away from main roads and with super friends close by; so I now have to come up with a new plan to ensure I can stay.

to be continued.

I’m Still Here!

 

Le temps passe vite, el tiempo vuela, il tempo vola, or good old tempus fugit; however you write it, it goes past far too fast.  Tomorrow, in the northern hemisphere is Lughnasadh, an ancient harvest festival celebration.  Harvest!  It barely feels like spring has finished as the weather has been so strange this year. 

In the garden this year it’s the weeds that have definitely come out on top.  The rains made the soil un-walkable on, and then the sudden switch to 35C baked the surface to rock and reduces me to a wilted being, while all the time the weeds revelled and grew.  So guess what I will be doing for the next month!

I thought we’d got through the spring without my youngest cat, Jewel, bringing me home any of her snake friends but I spotted her outside throwing this one around.

I’d purchased one of those long handled grabbers/litter pickers earlier in the year solely for the purpose of picking up any of the snakes she brought back.  They usually feign death so I placed it on a log and went inside to grab a camera.  I thought it would have crawled away while I was getting the camera but to my surprise it was still there when I returned.  It carried on just lying where I’d put it and I began to think that it had really died through Jewel throwing it up into the air repeatedly.

I carefully picked it up again and took it to the house where I was going to put into a small vivarium I have.  There it would be away from Jewel who was desperately trying to play with her ‘friend’ and if it was dead I’d decided to pickle it in alcohol.  No, not to flavour drink, but to preserve it!

Well I got as far as the kitchen where the change of lighting from bright sun outside to shadow inside meant I didn’t realise I’d dropped it.  Hitting the cold tiles was the cue for it to make an escape bid.  Thankfully my eyes adapted fast enough that I caught it again and was able to let it go here Jewel didn’t see it.

As with the previous snakes, April 2011 and May 2011, this was a juvenile western whip snake but quite a bit longer, around 45 cms/ 18 ins.

Anyone for Beans?

 

(25/May/2012)

Just before Christmas I managed to plant a couple of rows of broad beans and against the odds I’ve just harvested them. 

The “against the odds” refers to the past winter which was the coldest around here for 60 or so years.  We dropped to –18C and were well below freezing with snow lying on the ground for over a week which I covered in the previous post. 

The beans were severely frosted. The exceptionally cold winter was  then followed by a record breaking warm March which brought out all the insects too early and then a record breaking wet April that was also 5C below average temperature too.  This resulted in a very low pollination of the fruit trees and of the beans.  Most of the plants only had 2 or 3 pods on them.  I still managed to harvest these:-

I’m hoping that the early spring sown row will yield a few more but even they look as though they’ve been having problems.

The sunset on the 25th was spectacular with the towering clouds being coloured glowing pink and orange.  Again the camera rarely captures what the eye sees.