Sick trees & yogpots, rhubarb a go-go

Without wishing to pile a heap of 'I told you so's onto Head Gardener shoulders, with great dignity he agreed with me that donkey manure might not be quite such a good medium for starting little seedlings off. In my head, I think it is because donkey-wee is too strong. I don't know why I should think this, but I keep seeing a donkey weeing in my head when I think of the donkey compost. It may or may not be imagination, but it doesn't matter because my doubts have been realised. Despite instructions from Head Gardener as to how to prepare the manure, and his endeavours to plant a few pots out to show me how to do it, he met with a high failure rate as well. Actually not so much of a failure rate, more like zilch, zero, nil, not at all. This photo is of MY pots, and I did have a few brave seedlings come up.

Upon receiving new instructions from Head Gardener, I am to start all over again with purchased seed compost bought from a shop. It is hoped that sometime this year we will manage to produce something to put in our newly dug ground. It would be nice to get going with self sufficiency this side of Christmas.

And another thing. I had to do some strimming today, and felt miserable beyond belief that I had to cut down a very healthy swathe of nettles. For the duration of the cutting I could not get Andy's nettle beer (Denise's husband over at Malarkey Manor) out of my head. I felt as if I was letting the self sufficiency team down, and only managed to stem the building-up of guilt by telling myself that we will get to do recycling of nettles and other 'wild' produce in the fullness of time.

Like when we actually have a proper kitchen, like when we have a roof over our heads, like when we are in post-camping mode. It might take a long time. The roofers are managing about two days a week at the moment. We anticipate August, if we are lucky, for the roof to go on, and then we have to fit out the half barn to live in. Probably next year, then, for nettle recycling and dandelion jam, and the continuing retraining of ourselves to eat things from the natural world rather than from a supermarket shelf.

And then a walk round our front garden drenched us in a bucket of cold water figuratively speaking. For there, on one of our peach trees, instead of healthy green leaves, there were twisted up and gnarled ones. An Internet search came up with 'peach leaf curl' which 'cannot be done anything with once Spring arrives, and perhaps the tree will live, or maybe it won't.' I tell you, to actually get to eat your own food takes a heck of a lot of effort. As I have mentioned before, everything else is racing for the food table you have so graciously provided, and it would seem that all we will get at the end is what everything else doesn't want.

I have made a note in my diary to 'spray peaches in November, then again in January, and pick up all leaves in Autumn so the peach leaf curl culprits can't over-winter at the foot of the tree. I suspect my diary will get full of such instructions.




Head Gardener has a passion for figs. I don't. One huge tree is enough. I made thirty pots of jam last season, which was quite a feat on a caravan gas ring. But, HG thinks we should have more trees, so went on a raid for some fig cuttings (Black Fig) to supplement our two figs which are Turkey Browns. Unfortunately, No, No, don't be like that Vera!!! FORTUNATELY (that's more like it - a positive attitude is what is called for....after all, I might eventually get to like Black Figs, once I have got to like Turkey Browns. If one eats enough of them, surely they will grow on one!)it looks like most of his cuttings have taken, probably inspired to root by the Hormone Rooting Powder which was used on them.

And now, our FIRST MAJOR SUCCESS! Rhubarb!!!!! Brought from the UK last year, they survived in their pots somehow until they were planted out last October. And crikey but don't they like their new home. Galloping away with an enthusiasm which is astonishing, they are trying ever so hard to push out flowers, which I equally as diligently remove. But they don't seem to mind, even letting me have some of their stems to make our very first rhubarb and apple crumble, which was gorgeous.

We managed to enjoy the rhubarb before everything else woke up. Even the slugs and snails hadn't really had a go at it. And so this day draws to a close, and we feel suitable pleased with ourselves, because we are self sufficient in rhubarb at least. Hopefully the coming months will enlarge our self sufficient diet.

The rhubarb that refused to go to sleep

This brave little plant is a hero. It has refused to go to sleep at all. During the winter it has continued to keep growing, albeit slowly. And OK, so the recent frosts have singed its leaves, but it has refused to be made to go dormant. It wanted to see and experience its first winter here at Labartere, having been dragged here in the back of a removal van from the UK last June. And it was hard for this little plant. Sometimes it went thirsty, and it took to dropping its leaves in a sorry-looking wilt, saying, "Water me". Most times its pleas were heard.

And for all the rest of the summer months it had to stay in its pot, the pressures of moving diverting us away from its needs. But finally our resident plant-guru realised its needs, and into the ground it went but without any other nutrients being added other than what was in the soil itself which couldn't have been much: these are un-manured hard-farmed fields. The other rhubarbs weren't too pleased about their new residences, and two retired to sleep very early on in autumn, one stayed awake for a few weeks longer and then that went into dreamland as well. But this one didn't.

Deer came and went, but none munched on its leaves: I am sure it snuggled down so they couldn't get at it. Or perhaps the deer have not, as yet, tried le rhubarb Anglaise. They had a morsel of everything else around it, but then they were French plants and they are French deer. Still it stayed awake, experiencing frosts, tempests, a smattering of snow, and torrents of rain while its three other companions gave in to winter sleep.

But I think it was the sun which kept it awake: it must have developed a stoicism for weathering the not so good times knowing that all would be well when the sun came out to warm it up.

A bit like us really!






The planting of the brave rhubarb and its not so brave friends.




And part of Duck Pond Wood with its first smattering of Spring flowers.

Doggy romps and French recipes

Its hooligan time here at Labartere as Boolie, Fleur and new Lady Dog charge about amongst the stuff in the courtyard playing chase with each other. Round and round they go. In here, round there, through there, oops didn't mean to barge into those legs nor tip over that ladder or make a mess of the once neat pile of ballast. Snap! someone upsets someone else, which sends Bools heading in my direction with his 'It wasn't me, Mum' expression on his face. B

ut two girl-dogs, wow! How his life has pepped up. Including the offer of having a go at fatherhood with Val's lady Springer-girl early next year to make Springer babies. Also possibility of Fleur getting her way as well. She's trying hard enough. Still visiting. But banned from tarpaulin-adventures. The new Lady Dog, belonging to the roofer? Well, Bool's would have to have a ladder to make her pregnant. She is quite a tall dog. As for Fleur - he can kneel down to oblige her, but of late she has been taken to rolling around underneath him, possibly to show him that there are other ways to get the job done. This is a very willing little lady dog.

I have mentioned before about French supermarket shopping - everything is written in French for a start, and the French people don't eat like the English do either. For instance, their view of cream is that it is hot milk with an egg yolk mixed in and then left to go cold. It's quite nice. In its own way.


I came here with a head full of known and tried recipes, plus a tattered old notebook of valued dishes, most of which have had to be dumped because for one: I can't translate the ingredients into French, and for two: I can't find the ingredients when I do manage to do the odd conversion. So I can either hunt down English suppliers, which most of the English seem to do here, which seems to me an intolerable waste of time, or I can go au naturelle and do French cooking. And joy of joys: looking at recipes in a French maggie, and actually recognising the ingredients by name. OK, so don't know where to find them yet. But I have seen them somewhere. So now I have to go on a hunt to find them, but at least I can ask someone the whereabouts of a missing ingredient.

Ah. A Thought. That would require, would it not, some French words? MMmmmm. Perhaps a stumbling block to my intended cooking project. Perhaps, maybe, ummm, .... now where did I put that old recipe notebook....


Updates: Builders rolling along. Rhubarb sprouting. Dreadful blackness over the Pyrenees. Bools slept on bed last night because he was cold which left us all squashed up like the contents of a tin of sardines - will have to stop him from doing that as Lester spent most of the night crammed up against the window, I had minimal space in the middle while Bools, bless him, took up nearly half of the bed and would not move AT ALL. But it was a cold night. So we were probably all the warmer for being in a huddle. Mud is slightly moister today, sun is asleep, methinks the Pyrenees are posting up to us some of their dark weather, et au revoir pour ce moment.