Jam and Jerusalem - Summer 2017

10 September 2017

This time a week ago we were deep in the airline cattle class experience. This, as we all know, is the very private hell which involves 'Innovative Sleep Positions in Economy Class' fieldwork and 'Long-Haul Despair - Signs, Symptoms and Treatment' research. Turns out, even a plastic cup of middle-of-the-night tepid water or OJ can make a difference to flagging morale in eight out of ten Economy Class passengers.

Summer 2017 in France is behind us, but we are left with a kaleidoscope of memories and mental images. Oh, and about a thousand digital ones.

The major projects at La Fromagerie largely complete, and the barn now 'habitable mais rustique' (a phrase I have used many a time to describe her charms), G and I were able to craft a holiday that involved more than trips to Mr Bricolage and Leroy Merlin and instead, use the barn as a base from which to explore other aspects of la belle France.

So, I spent the first two weeks of an indulgent six-week holiday hiking 'toute seule' along le Chemin de St Jacques de Compostelle, picking up where I left off four years ago, almost to the day. When I say, 'picking up where I left off', I'm not kidding: I took a train and then walked from the nearest village to the exact spot (next to a barn, beside a road), where G had found me resting, all those years ago. Seemed poetic, really.

Barn near Espalais

Van Gogh and me, we have an understanding

Vincent would approve

Time for a nap

Éauze

There's a prize for the best caption

Suffice to say, walking le Chemin was as restorative, challenging and recalibrating as ever. The route presented a rich feast of stunning landscapes under wide-open skies; of green-filtered forests and fields of sunflowers and maïs; of anonymous hamlets and villages, drowsing in the heat; of simple bucolic picnics; and, to top it all, the reliable, cool welcome of ancient, trail-side stone chapels and churches.  Evenings were in direct contrast to the delicious solitude of the days: dormitory accommodation, communal meals, everyone talking (in French, almost exclusively) at once as we swapped tales of challenge and triumph, blisters and sure-fire remedies, and étape distances covered or still to come...

After completing ten days of ma seconde partie du Chemin, I travelled back via community bus to Pau, and then on to Brive by covoiturage in time to collect G from the station. Three days later, it was his turn to begin le Chemin at the beginning - the beautiful Le Puy en Velay - leaving me to sample the delights of La Fromagerie on my own for the very first time.

I had a list of things that I planned to do over the holiday, and was in danger of completing them on day #1. Was I overcompensating for the quiet? Er, quite possibly.

In any case, over the next five days, I set about making my first-ever jams and preserves. The first batch of jam was made with store-bought Noir Ambre plums. I halved the sugar content given in my recipe and - of course - it took forever to gel, but no matter. Next, convinced that we were unlikely to see a ripe fig before leaving the country, and keen to profiter from the tiny green jewels that were already visible all over the tree, I made a green fig preserve. For this, I used a cunning combo of a traditional South African/Afrikaans recipe and a Turkish one, so the figs were preserved with cloves, ginger and cinnamon...oh, and masses of sugar.

Despite the fact that most people had 'no fruit' after a severe frost, our area had apparently been spared. The apple trees were almost literally groaning with fruit and three laden branches had come down and with them, a huge number of apples. Perfect for a batch of apple compôte and some apple purée...

I quit sugar...soon - pinkie promise.

The vine is creeping up on the gable end of the barn

The rain chain in action during a sudden downpour

The ground cover roses and lavender were exuberantly happy among the stones bordering the terrace

More exciting for me even than my jam factory was my next project: an insect hotel. I'd first seen one in the formal gardens of Cahors, four years ago, on ma première partie du Chemin, and I've been intrigued ever since. I guess the look of the things attracted me first, but I really like the idea of providing a sanctuary for wild, solitary bees and other insect lone rangers. Of course, acres of forest and meadows and fields all around La Fromagerie as far as the eye can see makes an insect hotel somewhat superfluous: a folly for the folly, as sister S put it.

I spent many happy hours gathering bits and pieces around the place, so that almost everything in the insect hotel would have a La Fromagerie story to tell: shards of roof tile, apple tree twigs, iron straps and hinges, gravel, bamboo stakes, wood, as well as acorns, pine cones, bracken and chestnuts gathered on my walks. I bought the centrepiece, and a piece of pine plinth, from which I fashioned the boxes. I'm rather chuffed with the outcome, though I am not at all sure that the bees will check in since they have many more natural options.

Insect hotel

In between bouts of insect hotel and jam creativity, I cleared and weeded and took mounds and mounds of garden waste to the déchetterie; walked miles and miles; planted two new hibiscus to replace 'fatalities'; read my book and listened to loud music; spent time wandering through the quiet back streets of Brive; cleaned and tidied the dépendance; watched storms develop and advance across the horizon; and let the peace percolate gently through my veins.

The coffee machine is a hit

Wild and woolly

Bustling Brive

During summer, many of the shops in Brive have little bistro tables and chairs outside

There's never anywhere to store the bicycles, so let's use the stairwell

Once G had returned, refreshed from his walk, together we enjoyed several more weeks of indolent sloth. Ha! Not really.

We:
* washed the car ready for its service
* chopped up the apple tree boughs that lay across the garden, and raked up all the apple windfall (a fool's pursuit, because no sooner had we done that, than more fell to the ground. In fact, the soft thump of apples falling is a familiar sound - day and night  - throughout the late summer.)

* oiled the chestnut shelf in the dépendance
* planted a plum tree

* fitted an extractor fan in the gable wall of the dépendance in the hope that it would provide relief in the heat of the summer (hmm - not very successful - too noisy and still very hot on the sleeping platform during the hottest days)
* made curtains for the triangular windows in the dépendance and installed two bedside rugs
* made supports for the peach tree and bound a branch which had been damaged by falling apple tree limbs
* ate way too much bread and cheese, drank many a miniature beer, and enjoyed an unseemly amount of peaches and figs (yes, in the end, they ripened faster than we could eat them) straight from the trees
* planted two old-fashioned roses around the dépendance

Rose #1

Rose #2

* planted lots of ground cover portulacca and mesembryanthemum, more lavender, gaura and romarin

Gaura and rosemary, mesembryanthemums and lavender...these are a few of my favourite things. Before...

...and after (with insect hotel in background)

The newbies have a way to go to catch up

* explored two of the three local signposted walks that leave from the Juillac cimetière and loop around, up hill and down dale, back to Juillac village again

La Tourmente

Juillac, end of Summer 2017

* moved the pile of rocks (again!)
* paced out and marked out the site of our new herb garden, to be established next time
* ate more sun-warmed figs and peaches (and bread...and cheese)

Rare sightings of the lesser-known hunter-gatherer fruit bat

You can never have too many figs

* assembled shelving between the cabane and barn
* bought a new outside table and chairs to accommodate bread and cheese and figs and peaches :)

Local colour

* cleared away the rogue ronce.

Man vs. ronce - the 2017 rematch

We also spent a happy evening with friends at the night produce market in Ayen; visited family up north, near Poitiers; enjoyed apéros with friends twice (at their place, then ours); attended a concert at Juillac church featuring near-extinct traditional musical instruments, and another at Lascaux church given by a local choir (and attended by the local cat, which wandered in and out, settled on a lap here, a lap there, and scrammed in haste with every burst of applause); dropped in on the annual Concéze festival in time to hear a great local band; celebrated our birthdays at local restaurants that served regional fare; and enjoyed the good company of friend C, who came to stay for a few days and took us to the station on our last day.

Peaches, apples, anyone?

On the wildlife front, we observed deer in the fields below; raptors wheeling, circling and defending their aerial territories; silver strands of spider silk floating way up high overhead; tiny field mice and golden lizards darting by; innumerable butterflies and bees humming background bass notes; swallows and swifts and martins gathering in flocks, and doves in solitary silhouette; and lastly, we were visited by the Jekyll-and-Hyde cat from the neighbour's pink house, now alone since her elderly owner passed away in May. She was keen for company, but snarled and bit when you tried to stroke her. Charming, but wild (as friend C so rightly said).

*NB Cat lovers please do not fret: we established that she is being fed and is in good health.*

Our French neighbours continued to show enormous generosity. J-M had harvested our raspberries early in the summer and frozen them for us, and he and his brother Y competed with each other, leaving us gifts of tomatoes, peaches, plums, and even a large tray of hand-dug potatoes.

Framboise harvest, La Fromagerie 2017

Encouraging new and inventive ways to cook with potatoes. 

It's a land of plenty in so many ways, and, as they say, heaven can wait.