sticky joys

The last three days have been dominated by jam making, jam filing and jam throwing away. In short, I made 24 pots (assorted sizes) of plum jam, both red and yellow plums, and threw away 5 random pots of 'stuff' mostly without labels. These included a couple of 3 year old containers labelled 'hot tomato chutney', probably unsafe. Net gain to jam store: 19 pots. Total jam store, 115 pots that I could see, total pots likely to be consumed by JP = 10; he only eats marmalade.

There is something immensely satisfying about making jam, especially from your own fruit. It is not just that the result looks very pretty, or that it can be sold or exchanged or even eaten. It is the idea of conservation, of preservation for winter, of independence from those evil agro-industrial companies that produce 'jams' heavens only knows how and with what. My jams are at least equal balances of sugar and fruit with, if the fruit is low in pectin, the juice of a lemon (organic of course). Somehow the judgement required in assessing exactly the setting point (without thermometer) on a cold saucer seems a witch like skill. The whole is a blissfully sticky job, many tea-trays and tea cloths covered in jam spatter, then paraffin wax when it comes to sealing the pots.

Fruit processing can be a messy job but is much helped by a decent radio programme – France Inter or France Musique – and the occasional foray into tasting. Plums are amongst the easiest of fruits to prepare, just halve and pop into a pot with an equal quantity of sugar. I let them marinade overnight. The secret that recipes forget to mention is that the plums should be cooked soft before being brought to a setting boil otherwise you will just find yourself re-boiling the lot, having potted and then discovering it will not set.

The rejected preserves were mostly pesto – just basil with olive oil and pine nuts, no cheese as that goes sour – and apple mint jelly. Both suffered from the same defect. For some uknown reason basil and pine nuts absorb olive oil like sponges, so however little one puts in a pot, eventually the oil spills over. It smells fine, unlike when one puts pecorino in the mixture which goes sour very fast. The pots I rejected dated back two years. The basil was one solid lump, smelt all right but I was dubious. The jelly had gone from the mint, leaving a hard, unlovely lump.

In fact I have found a cheat's way of making pesto: first cook your pasta, troffiete or linguine or whatever, drain well and keep warmish. Then, in a large frying pan, put olive oil, ground pine or walnuts, finely shredded basil leaves. When these have melted, put in the pasta to warm up, lastly add grated pecorino.

I have totally given up on mint jelly as a larder stand-by. I just make sure there are a few pots of apple jelly, not too old, and mix in the chopped mint the day before. This may be difficult in 2012, so far all the apples have dried on the trees. My French friends are still dubious about mint jelly.

Apart from the plums, the fruit on the trees looks very sad. The peaches are few and small. The Comice pear tree has totally dried out, lost all its leaves though its branches are still supple. It might revive if we get this week's promised rain. The other pear trees bear their usual crop of black-spotted inedible fruit. There is only one pear tree whose fruit I appreciate. It has a hard, brown skin and needs long slow cooking with a few cloves stuck into the flesh. Then it becomes a tender pink. It is what I was served with roast pork in Holland – and that was a long time ago.

A week of heroes

My present number one hero is Didier Angibaud, the vidangeur, more familiarly known in English as the pig slurry man. This is the man who came at short notice to empty the leaking swimming pool and transfer the chlorinated water into the golf course reservoir which was desperately low.

The swimming pool was steadily leaking into the fields which, at nearly two euros the cubic metre, was unacceptable as an option for any length of time. Nor was the water doing any good to the fields. The grass grew high and rank. The sheep refused to, and were not allowed to, graze it. The pear tree may have benefitted but that is doubtful. Anyway, the water percolated into the septic tank inspection chamber and chased out a lot of flies. Not desirable around holiday homes. And we had probably lost 50 cubic metres already before deciding enough was enough.

Fortunately, having taken the executive decision to close the gîte pool we were able to offer our holiday makers the use of our own larger, heated pool with wave machine. Even more fortunately the temperatures have been so high we have not had to heat this pool but it has swarmed with a variety of small children.

Didier owns a couple of heavy tonnage tanker lorries more usually employed in emptying septic tanks and pig slurry tanks. The contents he can 'resell' as fertilizer, assuming the recipient fields are not too far away. When he comes to clear our four septic tanks the 'boues' are usually emptied into some discreet place in the woods. He was pleased by the neat solution of emptying the pool water into the Black Pond in the woods, mostly because he could do this from the roadside.

It took him about seven trips to empty the pool. Mathematical persons present reckoned he put 75 cubic metres into the Black Pond. Of course the water pouring down the side of the pond did soften the bank. As we were watching, a cherry sapling loosened its hold on the earth and slowly sank, upright, towards the bottom of the pond.  It is still standing there and will doubtless flourish. With any luck the chlorinated water will have killed off the pond weed but will not affect the insect pond life. Insects can go elsewhere – weeds are stuck.

Number two hero is the Wonderful Arnold who had been watering the greens using the horse tubs, filling each by hand, hauling them from green to green with the tractor, then watering each green by hand. This had to be done to keep the greens alive until the irrigation system could be cobbled back into use which also required more water in the reservoirs. And various, expensive, complicated taps and valves until the pump can be properly put back into working order this winter. The pump and I are not friends.

And my third hero is our pool man, M. J-F Bonnin who comes every fortnight during the summer season. He came one morning early, disrupting his schedule, with temperatures just about touching 30 C, to put the winter cover on the pool to secure it, just in case some adventurous children got into the pool garden, despite all my devices, and decided to walk across the pool. Nephew Freddie tried that once, on a simple pool cover. He did not get very far. Obviously M. Bonnin is looking forward to replacing the torn liner and doing all the associated works – but he is being very prosaic about it, not gloating at all.

So far, 2012 has seriously been an annee de poisse, an unlucky year – and we are still in August. If it does not rain soon, the natives will get restless: no rain in the last ten days of August, no champignons in the early days of September.  And this morning, August 20^th, one of JP's ancestors (a Wedderburn) decided to fall off the wall, doing considerable damage to his plaster and gilt frame but non to the decanters on the table below. Presumably he was a wine buff.

'Greece', Blues, Bugs

The delight of friends coming to stay is that one sees La Chaise through fresh eyes, especially if those friends' eyes have not visited for some time. All of a sudden one forgets leaking roofs, thistles, sulking pumps and the lack of follow through on the assumed sale of lambs. The beauty of the place returns.

Thus it was that I went with Caroline (and my stick) to 'Greece', the hilly part of our fields at the end of the property, an area officially known as 'Fontenelles' otherwise 'Little Springs'. The 'Little Springs' were turned into a large pond, with pump, in the hollow of the valley some 20 years ago in the course of which the caterpillar digger nearly drowned and had to be towed out by two tractors. (Another story, another time.) We called the hillside 'Greece' because of its rough grass, visible chalk stones, evil thistles, juniper bushes and rampant herb plants. It was also a hillside that ( before sheep ) showed a large variety of wild orchids when climatic conditions were propitious.

The herb plants, mostly wild majoram and ground creeping thyme ( serpolet), still flourish though the junipers are beginning to die. Caroline and I went down there because the herbs attract almost as many butterflies as the Buddleia by the kitchen door. The difference between the two is that the Buddleia predominantly attracts Fritillaries, the day-time flying Humming Bird and Hawk moths. 'Greece' has the Blues, the Adonis, the Common, probably the Short-Tailed and the Large, never mind the commoner butterflies, white or yellow. In fact, on a visit in 1990, Eric Rudge – who knows his butterflies – catalogued eight different types of Blue. Dave, from York (where are you Dave?) photographed one by means only known to him and other butterfly photography experts. 

We wandered up the hill-side to Green 5 from which we had a wonderful view back to the Farmhouse buildings. The Blues were busily everywhere, dipping on the ground spreading thyme, on the higher majoram flowers, ignoring the vetch and the clover. Around us the age old junipers were dying with a high rise form of thistle threatening to take its place. Possibly the carduus nutans, which is hairy,though the picture in my wild flower book shows something more like eryngium maritimum, which is a more naked plant, both described as rare-ish and the latter preferring sandy soil to the chalk which we have which suits the former. Whichever – it cannot be swiped dead by a walking stick.

Then Caroline pointed: amongst the Blues there was a totally black butterfly, only one, and sooty black. We hurried back to consult my butterfly bible and Caroline decided that what we had seen was a variation of the very common White Admiral – ab.obliterata, a White with all its white obliterated by black. We were very impressed with ourselves (and the Collins butterfly book*) so had a few more glasses of wine than normal, on holiday, that is.

It was only a day later, when Caroline and family had headed safely off towards the Channel coast, that I discovered I had come back with another, better known, insect from 'Greece'. A few aoutat - harvest mites in English or chiggers in American - had hitched a lift on my skin and were busy feasting on my blood. Ironic, given that I always warn our holiday tenants to wear shoes and socks when walking in the fields because of these beastly little mites which are the larvae of microscopic acariens. I was wearing espadrilles but a skirt and no socks, silly me. As a consequence I was itching for days until I realised what had bitten me. The little xxxxx always bite where clothes are tight, e.g. under bra,belt and knicker lines. At first, before one knows what they are, the horrid possibility of fleas occurs. The only remedy is a long, hot bath, an anti-histamine, and a glass of wine – this last for the morale.

Dear Caroline, if you read this, and you have suffered from bites – it was not the bedding, it was the bugs......

*Butterflies and Day flying Moths, of Britain and Europe, Collins 1989

Love flies

Last Thursday, August 9^th, the day of Saint Amour, the ants of La Chaise had sex. It is an expression I dislike intensely. It puts love-making, or pro-creation, on the same level as the consumption of an ice-cream cone. In the case of these ants, lasius niger most likely, for one gender the act is death-dealing, for the other a sentence to a life-time of hard work. The males die, the queen females burrow nests and pro-create until the end of their life-time which can be as much as 15 years. Both lose the wings that so briefly take them into the warm air of a summer evening.

In French it is called 'la nuit des folles amours des fourmis' . Mating is such a boring, anglo-saxon word. I doubt whether 'having sex' can be translated into French, anymore than the idea of 'teetotal'. The ants' mad night of love lasts 24 hours, maximum 48, and hurts no human.

Unfortunately most urban human holiday makers, even French ones, are not too keen on flying ants, or any other insect, not too indulgent about their (invisible) sexual activity. In previous years we have noticed the ant phenomenon whilst having supper on our terrace. A few thousand or so ants get burnt by the supper table candles, then take their courtship dance elsewhere. This year, the ants decided that their Prom would be held on the field side corner of the Farmhouse pool where it is hit by the last of the evening light. The pool was already leaking salt water into the fields. We noticed nothing at the main house until there was a frantic call from the Farmhouse. 'You must do something'.

It was a most impressive sight, unless you normally live in the Versailles suburbs. Then it is alarming. The ants covered the tiled rim of the pool to about a metre either side, never mind those that were drowning in the water. Obviously one cannot count individual ants but I would guess they were in their many thousands, hundreds of thousands. By this time their mating ritual had been accomplished and most were wingless. With a brief prayer of excuses to the God of Ants, I took a bucket of pool water, a mop and swept them all into the grass. Then I used the pool skimmer to fish the rest from the water. I hope some of the queens survived. At least the holiday makers were happy, but only because they thought I had 'done something' though nothing actually useful. And the flies were watching us.

For a long time now I have noticed that there seems to be some relationship between ants at La Chaise and certain of the thistle plants in our fields. The ants make a nest under the roots of the thistles, so lifting the plant somewhat above ground level. As I swipe the flower head off the thistles with my stick, I wonder a little about this seemingly weird relationship.

Alright, I know the thistle is the national flower of Scotland but I do not know why. JP's family has adopted the thistle as the family insignia. Now I read that aphids are apparently particularly partial to thistles and ants are very fond of the sugars produced by these same. So the ants nurture both the plants and the insect. It means that ants are farmers really – like us, only smaller, more numerous, more serious.

A Bulgarian connection

The sun was making one of its many false attempts to get summer going so I sat in my favourite Perigueux cafe with white wine spritzer, pencil and newspaper open at the cross-word. The car was parked under a tree in the official car-park. The earliest of the habitual summer beggars were hanging around the parking ticket machine. All was well, all was as usual. Then my sun warmed concentration was rudely disturbed by the arrival of three very noisy men, sub-species large biceps with tattoos, dark glasses and hair mowed on an excessively low cut.

One of them ordered three beers, three black coffees and one brandy in passable French. Three mobile phones were taken out of pockets, cocked, checked and placed on the table along with their elbows. All this kerfuffle, whilst mildly annoying, was not the root of my displeasure, nor was the high decibel level of their conversation. No, what really perturbed me was that I could not place the language they were speaking. Even when one started shouting down his mobile phone, my ears could not send any remotely recognisable words to my brain.

Working on the (arrogant) assumption that I would or should be able to recognise elements of northern and southern European languages, I offered myself the idea that they might be speaking Russian or Serbo-Croat. They looked like possible Russians or Croatians from ' LA central casting', definitely Eastern Europeans. (I excepted the Romanians for whom I have a vague affection merely based on the fact that I have a Romanian name - long story, not a good ending, for another time). 

So, having decided they were Russians, my mind abandoned the crossword and started to speculate on what they could possibly be doing in Perigueux. The trouble with living in an isolated place and not inter-acting with a wide range of people frequently is that one succumbs to sloppy, prejudice laden thinking. I did not think that three men with those kind of looks would be interested in Perigueux's Renaissance architecture, or the remains of the original Roman city. The food, maybe, but I could not visualise starched napkins spread over those burly thighs.

Suspicious, I decided to take a closer look at the 'beggars' as I went back to my car. Beggars are rather a summer phenomenon in Perigueux, presumably they drift to the Côte d'Azur for the winter months. There are some that I recognise, especially the ones hanging around the car-parks who have constituted themselves handy-persons for putting the exit ticket in the machine if the car is at the wrong angle. To me that's worth 20 centimes. Those at the ticket issuing machine are a bit more of a nuisance. But if you are in need of small change for that wretched contraption, they can usually oblige but will get the best of the deal. Banking was never free. The beggars near the cash machines are an embarrassement and have to be ignored.

As I drove off I concluded that, apart from a few North Africans, it was the usual crowd of indigenous beggars, not people who had been shipped in by baddie Russians, skimming a percentage off the takings. A few kilometres out of the Perigueux conurbation, back in the country, there was a car in a lay-by with all four emergency lights flashing. Next to it stood a man wiping his brow. The car's registration plates looked vaguely British. 

 

Guilt at my probably baseless slurs on the 'Russians', vague goodwill created by the mild warmth of the sun, made me pull over to see if I could help. In a mixture of English and French, sweating, the burly not so young man explained his problem. His credit card would not work at the petrol station and he was nearly out of petrol. 'Uh-Oh' went my brain, 'we've been had....'. My hand-bag was safely on the floor, strap hooked round brake (accidentally). And my Audi is intelligent, it locks its doors as soon as it has been driven a hundred yards or so. 'I am from Sofia' said the man, 'you know it is capital of Bulgaria, I am Bulgarian'. A five euro note got me out of that trap.

The rat-catcher's daughter

 

 

We brought our first female Labrador,  Czeta, over from England on the car ferry from Portsmouth. She behaved beautifully except when left alone in the cabin, locked in the shower room for hygiene's sake. Then she howled and JP was summoned by the steward. As long as people were in attendance, she was fine.

And she was fine in the car, too, especially since Harry and Clea were leaning over the back seat to talk to her through the grill. (This was before compulsory child restraints). About an hour away from home, we stopped at a friend's house to say 'hello' and let Czeta out for a short rampage and the necessary physical functions. As still inexperienced Labrador owners we did not realise the extent of the breed's omnivorous characteristics. Czeta licked clean a plate of rat poison pellets.

Total panic. In our first year at La Chaise we had called in the rat-catcher who had skilfully placed his delicious pink granules in strategic places. Within 24 hours we were finding feral cat sized rat cadavers in the barns and out-houses, on what would hopefully one day be a lawn. JP became a one man rat burying platoon.

Full of this memory we looked up the nearest vet who was some 10 kms away – did I mention this was a Sunday? – and rushed over to him. He injected Czeta with a purgative and said, if she had not 'voided herself', either end, by the following mid-day, to go to our local vet. We drove home as fast as prudent, conscious of the fact that there was a dog in the boot who might either be sick, or shit, or die, within the next few hours. To cut my dear readers' suspense short – Czeta lived a longish and happy life and eventually gave (controlled) birth to eight puppies, one of which became Edward, the Black Prince.

But we became faithful clients of the rat-catcher – which is a bit of a misnomer as he placed poison, rather than traps. He certainly never proposed to come with gun and rat-catching dogs. After the first blitz we had many fewer rat corpses to deal with and very seldom saw any mouse remains. We followed where he placed the poison in the first few years, noticed how carefully it was situated where domestic animals – ducks, children or dogs - were unlikely to be able to get at the tempting pink grains. Then we let him get on with the job, even when we started bulk stocking winter grain for the sheep. Once a year either he would call us when he was in the area, or I would call him and ask him to come by. He came with his pails and his poison, did his job, got paid and went away.

However, this year the usual telephone call was late and slightly odd. A chirruping voice said the rat-catcher would be in our area the following day – would it be possible to call? Naturally I said yes and thought no more about it. Duly the following day the usual small white van arrived and I went to greet him. Only he was a she, slight with long curly hair, a short skirt and tight tee-shirt. She opened the back of the van, got out the buckets of pink poison, the neat tube containers and her dungarees. I recovered slightly as she was pinning up her hair and stepping into the dungarees.

'Umm' I queried, ' where is M. le rat-catcher'? She replied cheerfully, working on another site, 'shall I start with the farm?' I said yes and went back to the kitchen to recover. About an hour later she knocked on the door, back in her civilian guise, and sat down to make out the usual bill. Curiosity got the better of me. 'Who are you?' She looked surprised: 'well, I am Amelie, M. le rat-catcher's daughter. I am working with him now.' Oh, says I weakly. 'This is a much better job, more fun,' Amelie confided as she pocketed the cheque, 'I used to be an accountant.'

of cherries,roses and hailstones

Counting sheep has been abandoned as sleep inducement. I have replaced it by self-hynosis and deep breathing....flat on your back, start by relaxing the toes, go up the leg, etc etc. This sometimes works. Counting sheep now just reminds me of things I have not yet done, such as getting their ear-tags, or filling in forms, hardly sleep inducing. Last Friday no sleep magic would work as the roof was hammered by a mega hailstorm. Seriously large hailstones hit our aged roof tiles so badly that I had to take a torch and change the bucket under the official leak.

An official leak is one of which I am aware and for which I have not yet summoned a roof tiler. It is almost a superstition with me now: keep one roof leak and you will not have many scattered ones. We have been here so long that our roof will have to be re-done a second time which, for me, is seriously weird. As someone who comes from rainy countries I expect a roof to keep out rain, hailstones and other undesirable features of the climate. Never having lived anywhere longer than five years – before La Chaise – I am not used to replacing things such as roofs, never mind replacing them twice. Nor am I used to the attitude whereby you – or rather a handy-man who does not suffer from vertigo – goes up on the roof to temporarily re-jiggle the tiles until the next proper replacement falls due.

For us, that time has come. Fortunately roofing practice has advanced greatly since we had our first two roofs installed – the original and its replacement. To start with it has been conceded that there is really no excuse for roofs to let rain in, that there are methods for stopping the rain coming in. The fact that some of these methods are from outside the Dordogne, indeed possibly even from outside France, no longer devalues them. So shortly I shall have the joy of summoning various roofing contractors to ask for estimates. I shall be scolded, tutted over, told I should have done it x years ago – indeed should have done it differently in the first and second place. But that is an expert's privilege.

Meanwhile the hailstorm has totally done for the cherries. All those not already damaged by unseasonal frost, or intermittent heavy rains, or greedy birds, are now on the ground. It has also battered the roses which are looking quite bedraggled, especially the prolific climbers on the garden fence and gate. Already their flower heads had dragged them down, now they are totally beaten down, beyond repair by pruning.

Fortunately, the red rose hedge round the Farmhouse and the pool garden, with its intervening lavender bushes, has resisted superbly.