Garden and Kitchen

This spring I've not been able to get out in my garden nearly as often as I would have liked.   Some minor health problems, delayed building work and winter repairs to our holiday accommodation have all taken their toll.

However, today I felt I was starting to make a little progress.   Over the past months I have managed to fit in sowing a few things like tomatoes, melons, cucumber, courgettes etc but I have been sadly behind with the ground preparation as I juggled time to try and fit everything in.

So, first thing this morning I was out in the garden starting to prepare my first three beds.   When I laid out the garden, a few years ago now, I adopted a system of regular beds, all about 7.5m (25ft) by 1.2m (4ft).  I find that the four ft width is great as it's easy to get to anywhere in any of the beds.   I separated the beds with a 600mm (2ft) wide path.    I pondered long and hard about how wide this path should be.   The plan was to let the grass and weeds grow on the paths and simply cut it back with the lawn mower.  So that is where the size of 600mm came from.... It's the width of my manual lawn mower.   I do admit, however, that with almost an acre of lawn to mow, I do have a ride on mower.   That mower also has a trailer attachment, so through the middle of the vegetable garden I put a wider 1200mm path so that, if needed, I could pull a trailer right into the middle of the garden.

Actually, I only prepared 2 and 1/2 beds.  The other half was already planted with broad beans which are doing well.   The beds I prepared will be populated with courgettes, pole beans and tomatoes.

As I was so far behind with ground preparation I decided to cut some corners and used my rotovator to break up the soil.  As I have mentioned, it's been very dry here with no significant rainfall for over a month (20mm in the past two months and nothing for the past couple of weeks) and temperatures have also climbed as high as 30C (86F) on more than one occasion.  Consequently the ground has baked quite hard so cutting through it seemed the best option.

To prepare a bed, I first set about rotovating to produce a better tilth.  Once I was happy with the ground I added a bag of substrate that I'm using to help improve the soil and then a bag of well rotted farmyard manure.   I used the rotovator as a great big mixer to blend all these elements together.  before finally raking the surface.

Having prepared the soil, I then laid in a watering system.  I use a kind of dripper hose system.  It's homemade, but I think it works well.   I seal one end of an old hose pipe and fit a connector the other end.  I then use a special tool I have manufactured to pierce the hose wherever I want the drips to be.    If you imagine a thin piece of wood with a small sharp nail pushed through, you'll have a very good impression of my " special tool"!

Once the watering system was in place and tested, I covered the whole lot with about 5 or 6 inches (150mm) of straw as a mulch.

That all took me right up to lunch time but, after lunch I was due to be away from the garden again.

Today was Hot Cross Bun Day.   Well, I guess I should say, Hot Cross Bun Baking Day.

I like to make Hot Cross Buns a couple of days ahead and then freeze them.  I think it helps all the flavours mellow and blend together.

I've not had much success with my Hot Cross Buns since I moved to France.  I think it's been because of the differences in bread making here which calls for subtle changes to yeast etc.  So, once again today, I decided to try out a new recipe.   This recipe calls for the dough to be made in a bread machine and then the buns baked and glazed as usual.    It was my best effort  in France! although, I did make a silly mistake...  My oven has a pre heat setting which brings it up to temperature much quicker.  It adds in additional heat at the top of the oven.    The problem is that whenever I use the pre-heat I seem always to forget to turn the oven back to normal once it's got up to temperature and, as I'm sure you can imagine, additional heat at the top of the oven really affects things like baking Hot Cross Buns.  So, apart from being a bit dark, this year's buns are fabulously tasty.  As ever, I took an online recipe and then adjusted it for my own tastes.

I'll probably post the recipe on my food blog Ian's French Kitchen tomorrow or the day after.

Tomorrow it's out in the garden again to get things growing in those beds!

Foire aux Potirons

Today was Issigeac's annual Pumpkin Festival....

 Issigeac is a very beautiful Medieval village dating back to the time of the hundred years wars, when much of the present village was built but actually going back even further than that to the Gallo-Roman era and is very popular with tourists and locals alike.

What I really like about these special food festivals is that they bring out lots of people and because of that lots and lots of traders turn out as well.  The local apple grower was there today with his array of apples all grown within a few miles of here.  The florist was selling locally grown Chrysanthemums and the basket man was there with his woven selection.

The regular Oyster man was there selling his oysters raised in the Marennes-Oleron basin,  just a couple of hours drive north of here and the walnuts are the famous Franquette, (Noix du Perigord).  Of course, no Pumpkin Festival would be complete without the garlic man....

Actually, all these pictures were taken rather late in the day.  When I first arrived I was unable to get any photos because there were simply too many people....but too many people to take photos gave a great buzz to the festival and I enjoyed my few hours there.   There are more PHOTOS here

Dangerous thing when you start thinking

I have been quite ill over the past couple of weeks suffering from Vertigo. I don’t know what caused it although it now appears that it may have been a simple ear infection and more importantly I didn’t realise what it was.

Many of my friends across the Internet have sympathised with me and my various ailments as I tried to pin down exactly what the problem was. I knew I was being sick, constantly and I knew I was getting dizzy, sometimes falling over as a result and I made all sorts of perfectly valid deductions which led me inexorably up the wrong path.

I was simply very tired. I had a touch of food poisoning. I had become allergic to one of the many prescribed drugs I need to take. But at no point did I think – oh – dizziness, being sick - that’ll be vertigo.

The situation deteriorated over a period of time until eventually I agreed that a doctor be called. Now I live in France but English is my first language so there were some words I needed to look up in the dictionary to find the equivalent French word in preparation for this rare treat, a visit by the doctor.

And there it was - the French word for dizziness – Vertige - means vertigo - and suddenly everything fell into place. The doctor arrived and I told him I thought I had vertigo. He then checked me out pretty thoroughly before looking fairly serious and saying – I think you’ve got vertigo! He prescribed a remedy that I am taking and which, after 3 or 4 days, seems to be working well.

All this gave me some time to think. Lying in bed feeling awful is a good time for sorting out your brain. So, I thought, I planned, I considered, and when I could, I came back to my trusty laptop and connected with the world outside.

I thought a lot about communications and the fact that I could struggle to my laptop, without the energy to even dress and send off a message which would be received as if I was in the best of health.

I thought a lot about the possibilities of faceless communication, which the internet now provided.

I thought a lot about Internet blogs and groups and forums.

And I thought a lot about how easy it was to be misled by the very medium that was supposed to be opening up communications.

And then I got to thinking about my own posts on various forums, discussion threads and blogs.
About how often I have realised that what I have said has been completely misinterpreted by the reader - sometimes because I have expressed my self badly, and sometimes because the reader and I simply speak a different version of English.

Then I got to thinking about gardening for food and I thought about some of the mantra’s now being pushed out in front of us and how they too were being slightly misunderstood – either by the reader or often by the speaker.

I thought about globalisation and globalisation of the food chain which is almost universally abhorred.

I thought about my own attempts to eat locally, grow my own food, buy from farmers at our wonderful markets, go to the farm and collect food or wine.

But then I remembered a report someone had made me aware of which said that the carbon footprint of a leg of New Zealand lamb being eaten in the US was LOWER than that of a leg of lamb raised and eaten in the US. And while thinking of that I thought of the tea I drink, of the coffee I drink.

Yes, a lot of what I consume is grown locally but some is not and cannot be.

Do I want to give up drinking tea and coffee – a simple solution. I should encourage all my European and American friends to give up drinking tea and coffee immediately. But what happens to the people who grow that tea and coffee, who rely on me drinking it to feed their families?

We have a very involved and complex society and far too many people are trying to give us one size fits all solutions. I think I just want to say:

It’s not that simple.