THE CHICKEN DIARIES - JULY

Bad Boris met his nemesis this month. A very sad day, but he was the author of his own demise. I wrote in June that he was attacking Richard (even when he was driving the tractor) and harassing the young female hens. Well, things went from bad to worse. We started finding very young chickens dead or dying; Richard could not set foot in the garden without Boris creeping up on him (while mentally sharpening his spurs – Boris that is - not Richard) and his aggressive influence was generally making everyone very unhappy.

Finally Richard decided that things could continue no longer. All I was aware of was a lot of shouting and squawking, which continued to be heard – intermittently – for about half an hour as Richard pursued Boris around the garden. And Boris attacked back. It was a hot day and I wasn’t sure whether my spouse was going to be a casualty of the heat or whether Boris would finally meet his match. I plotted their course from the hen houses to the orchard, to the vegetable garden to the flower beds, down to the pond and up again towards the meadow. Everyone else in the garden – hens, cat, dog, me, kept a very low profile. It was clearly a fight to the death.  I am happy to say Richard won. He returned to the house visibly shaken, dripping with sweat, but victorious. What happened to Boris’s body I will never know. We didn’t eat him; once you name them eating them becomes a real no-no in the Adams household.

From that point the chicken community became much more balanced. His remaining two wives immediately went broody and took to the hen house together to share the period of egg incubation. Between them they were sitting on seven eggs. His children – we were left with eight young Lavender Pekins (six hens and two young cockerels) – became much more relaxed around the garden. Eventually the two mothers between them hatched three chicks and together they all left the nesting area and took their babies into the garden. Which one had done the hatching and which one was stealing the credit will always be a mystery to us, and probably to them as well because they are sharing all the glory and all the work.

However, because they left the nest when they did four eggs remained unhatched and, because the weather has been so warm, one remaining egg pipped – and out popped chick number four. What to do now? We decided to lend a hand and took the chick into the garden to be re-united with the two mothers and three other chicks. This should have been a happy ending, but no; they started to attack it. We tried again. That night we put the two mothers, their three acknowleged infants and the ‘orphan’ into an ark where they would be penned in and could rear their young free from the risk of predator attack.

We thought that by spending the night under one of the mothers the chick would adopt their smell and become part of the clutch. Hen have excellent eyesight and so can spot an introduced chick if it looks at all different to their own. It is quite normal for them to attack outsiders, but this chick, being another Lavender Pekin, was identical to the other three. We were confident things would work out for the little fellow.

Next morning we found its body. Another lesson learned. July has been a cruel month in the poulallier.

HAPPINESS  IS  A  RIPE  TOMATO

Modern day Marmande is famous for one thing. The tomato. Not just any tomato – but one which is named after the town itself. It is for sale in every market near here and I have even seen it in Waitrose. It is a town also famous for one of the last massacres of the fourth crusade (against the Cathars) when around 7000 residents were massacred, but that is another story for another day.

The town celebrates its tomato (and any other variety of tomato it can muster) each July with a festival which takes over the various squares around the town centre for two days with tastings, entertainments, parades, award ceremonies and general good times together with demonstration plantings of varieties of tomato in every colour and shape available within the cloisters of the town’s old church. This year the fiesta took place last weekend. I had completely forgotten about it until I went to my hairdresser (in Marmande town centre) and was puzzled to see that Patrick the coiffeur, who normally dresses entirely in white (a la Segolene Royale perhaps), had white trousers and a tomato red t shirt on. Tomato Fiesta 2012 it proclaimed. And today was the day. I arrived at 9am; by 11 the town was fizzing.

The Marmandaise don’t throw tomatoes at each other in the manner of the Spanish at their Tomatina festival, but celebrate it a bit more respectfully and – naturally – centre the celebration around eating. In the manner of the famous Jurade at St Emilion when the brotherhood of wine makers parade around the town, there is a ‘confrerie’ of those associated with the Marmande tomato (all dressed in red with red hats) who parade to fanfares, make speeches and award prizes. Sometimes the parades are enhanced by guest appearances by the brotherhoods of asparagus, aubergines and goodness knows what else too – dressed in suitably coloured gowns and hats of course. Patrick complained that these days people take themselves too seriously and don’t know how to have fun. Watching the proceedings, I was not so sure.

This weekend it was sunny, after weeks of unsettled weather, and people felt relaxed and determined to have a good time, despite the gloom associated with France’s political and financial situation. It is an unpretentious town, not rich but not poor either, which is proud of its horticultural heritage. A trip to Marmande’s market on an average Saturday is a revelation. Seasonal food, minimal food miles, as little packaging as they can get away with and a quality and quantity of produce which most of us can only dream about.  Such a simple thing, and so straightforward to achieve, but slipping from the grasp of most of the people I know back home.

THE SEX LIFE OF THE CUCUMBER

Richard has found some flourishing cucumbers hiding under our mountainous courgette plants, where they have been surreptitiously doing their thing. He has brought four whoppers into the house this evening. I will make a cucumber pickle with one or several of them, but he was concerned as to how they would taste. If you are not careful you can grow very bitter cucumbers.

The problem with cucumbers starts when the female is fertilized by the male (so what is so surprising about that, you think). If it is fertilized the resultant fruit becomes bitter and twisted – again, shades of déjà vu in the Adams' household. Traditionally gardeners would pick off the male flowers on a cucumber plant to avoid any promiscuity in the cold frame, but modern horticulturalists can now buy plants or seeds which have female only flowers in normal circumstances. When I started growing vegetables I always grew a variety called Pepinex because it had been bred to do just that, and I never had any problems – lovely, straight sweet cucumbers which were a joy to eat.

Nature, of course, is always one step ahead of us. She wants to pollenate her female cucumbers because she needs some of them to set seed and provide future generations of plants. So if a plant becomes stressed – even if it has been bred to develop only female flowers – it will spontaneously create male flowers too so that the female cucumbers can be fertilised, set seed and the species will survive. When I first heard this it put me in mind of the British population after the First World War. We were short of men after the butchery on the battlefields of northern France and I am told the proportion of male babies born in the few years afterwards increased. I don’t think this is an apocryphal story, but other people may know better than me. I think it was nature recognizing a stressed population and doing something about it.

The problems facing us in our kitchen is this; have those furtive cucumbers which have been romping about under the courgette leaves been stressed or bathed in zen like happiness? We had better eat one and find out.

ANOTHER DAY…..ANOTHER VINEYARD

My hobby is garden writing and photography, but my day job is in a French estate agency where I am responsible for business development. In plain English that means I try to sell property and to develop our business into new areas. My big focus at the moment is vineyards and I have just spent a fascinating day visiting three. Two of them were ‘take-ons’ – i.e. I was visiting them in order to encourage the owners to allow us to market them for us (mission accomplished here) and the third was a lovely vineyard we already are marketing – I was visiting this with a potential buyer.

They were three very different animals. The first was organic, as was the last. It had a lovely old house which had been beautifully renovated; a five star gite; vineyard management in place and a super wine. The second was a stunning building which is a state of tragic dis-repair with much loved vines and plum trees. The wine is mostly sold ‘en vrac’ i.e. to customers who come along with their own containers - and goodness knows what happens to the plums. The trees in the orchards looked old, but there was some very good equipment for harvesting and drying the fruit. If someone with some money gets hold of the chateau before it falls down and shook up the vineyard marketing a bit it could be fantastic. At the moment it is not. The third vineyard was absolutely spanking modern. Contemporary house, in excellent condition, newly built chai (winery), very smart marketing and hugely interesting owner who conducted the visit in English (and she does most of the work there herself). I hope my client buys it – but if not I have asked if I can go along and work there occasionally, so that I can develop a fuller understanding of the wine making business.

Last week and the week before that I visited four Premier Cru chateaux in St Emilion. I love St Emilion. These were all entirely social visits and involved eating and drinking and mixing with friends. The lack of presumption on the part of the owners of significant St Emilion chateaux never ceases to amaze me. At one, the owner’s great grandfather (who lived and worked at the same chateau she still lives and works at) is the man who was in his day the leading specialist in grafting French vines onto American rootstocks. His work was an invaluable step in overcoming  a problem caused by the Phylloxera aphid . This immigrant from North America attacks the roots of European vines and almost devastated the French wine trade in the 1800s. American vine rootstocks had developed a resistance to the aphid’s  effects and so by grafting French vines onto American rootstocks the French wine industry was able to survive. Without his work we may not have the vineyards in France which we have today.

The chateau owner is constructing a new building at the vineyard which will be used in part for marketing. I suggested devoting a corner of it to her great grandfather’s contribution to French wines; the thought had never occurred to her. But now maybe she will. I hope so.

WE’RE JAMMIN’

It’s that time of year. The blog has taken second place, our fingers are stained purple, we are scratched to the elbows and the stock of jam jars is beginning to look thin. We are making jam, jelly, fruit vinegar and freezing the rest. What do you do with so much fruit when it all arrives at once?

The first of the glut this year (it does vary) are the red currants. I think I dealt with them fairly smoothly and made about 10 kilos of redcurrant jelly. This is one of the absolute annual staples in our household and has to be made every year. We grow a variety of redcurrant called Jonkeer Van Tets. It is very hardy, beautiful to look at and is extremely easy to reproduce from cuttings.  Years ago when we had our fruit farm we grew a hedge of Jonkeer Van Tets from prunings taken in the winter. The currants hanging in their little bunches look like extravagant ear-rings. We bought a couple of plants when we moved here and now have  about 8. Red currants do well in our soil and climate, but not as well as the white currants (yet to be harvested). They also make a fab jelly – not as red as redcurrant, but a lovely sort of dark rose colour. This year, however, I am going to make a Nigel Slater style fruit compote with them and freeze it.
Second up were the strawberries – we haven’t got very many as we thinned our plants dramatically last winter, giving a lot of runners to friends and planting those we kept in a new bed. The original parent plants were dispatched to the compost heap. Plants only tend to last about three years before needing to be re-juvenated.  From May onwards we get a steady stream of strawberries to add to salads, eat with cereal for breakfast or, quite simply, eat. I have frozen some to make ice cream with later in the year but have made no jam this year.

Next we have had cherries – slower to ripen than I expected and not a brilliant crop in 2012. These are frozen in ‘Cherry and Berry Compote’ (a handy home invention which is very forgiving as to what you can put into it) and made into fruit vinegar. We also froze some whole cherries but did not bottle any this year. There weren’t really enough of sufficient quality. Bottling always makes me nervous and I restrict it to a small range of fruit – I include tomatoes in this definition – because vegetables proper do not have enough acidity in them to make it a foolproof process in my view.

Then the gooseberries and blackcurrants. They have been exceptional. We grow Wellington XXX blackcurrants and they have been best ever – I think because of the rain we have had – and Whinhams Industry gooseberries. These turn a beautiful dark red and are sweet. They both make superb jam and set really easily. I have also made cassis and blackcurrant vinegar. Fruit vinegars are excellent as a salad dressing with Cherry being my favourite. Blackcurrant is an experiment this year and already I have left it to macerate too long so goodness knows how it will turn out. And, of course, gooseberries and blackcurrants both go in the Cherry and Berry Compote.

Plums are now on the horizon…..we grow mirabelles and prune d’ente the fabulous plum which makes the prunes Lot et Garonne is world famous for. We are also about to get our first ever crop of greengages (Reine Claude). Plus nectarines, apricots – but no peaches, we never succeed with these. After that figs, pears,apples, crab apples…then the nuts. And I haven’t started with vegetables. Blogging is an endangered sport at the moment. There simply isn’t time.

RECIPE FOR FRUIT VINEGAR:

Macerate one pound of fruit (cherries, raspberries, blackcurrants (?) etc) in one pint of white wine vinegar. Leave in a glass or china bowl, covered with a cloth, for 3 – 5 days, stirring regularly. Then strain through muslin and add 8 oz of sugar to every pint of the resulting liquid. Bring to the boil slowly, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Boil for 10 minutes then pour into a sterilized hot bottle and seal. I find it keeps all year.