Lasagne

We left for Paris in a sleety, cold and winterish rain to collect our furniture, books and the rest of our lives that we hid away many months ago, leaving behind my just germinated baby plants in the best of care in a sun-heated greenhouse. Within two days, horror struck and I received a text message from "the best of care" in Mailhos to say that temperatures had jumped to 33° on the Sunday and in the greenhouse every young green stalk was baked to a brown crisp.

We returned with 178 boxes of books and four truckloads of near to useless furniture which sits in the barn hoping for a home while I had hours of work ahead to rebuild the stockpile of aubergines, peppers and tomatoes. That done, I opened some boxes and my books made me feel a little more at home but the big work remained in the garden.

After the months of winter/spring rain that have inundated Bearn, temperatures suddenly leaped and Mailhos became a jungle. In the one week we were away, nearly every flower and fruit tree bloomed; every plant grew crazily including grass, vetch, rye and oats in my vegetable garden. I missed the peonies flowering and just made it home to see the cherries in all their beauty while the pear, plum and apple were already beginning to form fruit.

But lets go back to that mixture of grass, vetch, oats and rye. It stands thickly at a height of half a metre and on Thursday last, we both knelt down to tackle a bed of two metres by two by hand and spent two days  clearing it. Calculating the size of the garden and my ambitions for 2013, at such a rate, the garden could be cleared by early December - just in time for the first frosts....

So we decided to make Lasagne....

Recipe -

You take a very thickly overgrown patch of impossible, green growth and you cut if down to toe level.

Gather up the grass and keep it to the side. Take lots of mover’s cardboard boxes that you have just emptied of books and remove all plastic tape. Lay these down over the cut grass making sure that each box overlaps the other so absolutely no light can find its way through. 

Water well to flatten the boxes.

Scatter with a thick layer of grass cuttings until the cardboard is no longer visible. 

Pile on a good layer of compost and a few handfuls of horse manure...

and finish with an icing of sieved wood ash from the fireplace.

Water once again...

and protect with with a thick layer of straw and get going on the next!

By my own calculations - depending on the greenhouse, the cardboard-eating worms and luck, I should have cleared beds soon and be ready for summer...

Nettles

As the rain beats down soaking the soil beyond recognition,  there is little to do but hang out in the greenhouse watching aubergines try to germinate, repair the damage from terrorist night mice and watch wasps battle for their queen. In the garden, peas are flowering almost against their will, fava beans sprouts are looking doubtfully at the grey sky and baby radishes are barely holding on to their roots in such a deluge but nettles are loving it. They are growing everywhere in masses, offering us a delicious, nutritious vitamin C/iron packed alternative to the the last faded winter carrots and hollow turnips on the market stands.

Although I love nettle as they are appreciated by butterflies and bees alike and are a fertilising treat for my tomato plants all through the growing season, one sting and my whole body zings for days as if I was bitten by a powerful cobra. To harvest an evening meal, I need to be armed with a thick pair of gardening gloves, long sleeves, trousers with heavy wool socks and a scissors and even then they find a  way to pierce through the tiniest tear or gap.

Once in the kitchen they still need to be handled with kid gloves until blanched in boiling water to erase the sting. I still fear a fresh leaf has escaped the scalding water and is going to zing me to death on my first mouthful.

I`ve been told that if you hold your breath while picking them, you feel none of the sting but thats all crap (at least in my special case). Jean Francois can be breathing out or in and pick them with his bare hands without feeling a thing but he does have special lizard like skin that must protect him.

 I still know that a few hours later he always acts a little woozy so the nettle sting must just have a delayed effect on him. I also have a strange neighbour who whips himself every morning with fresh nettle plants to counter his rheumatic problems!

Right now I'm making nettle pesto to spread it on my breakfast toast and its almost better than the summer basil pesto I dream of...

Nettle Pesto with Sun Dried Tomatoes

30g breadcrumbs

200g young baby nettle heads

30g grated pecorino or an aged sheep`s cheese

2 crushed garlic cloves with salt

200ml olive oil

4 medium sun dried tomatoes

salt and pepper

Scatter the breadcrumbs on  a baking tray and toast in an oven set to 180 degrees until golden and dry.

With your gloves on, wash the nettle heads well. Blanche in boiling water for  a mere minute and drain through a sieve over a bowl (to save the precious green water to drink) before plunging them in a bowl of cold water. Remove and dry in a salad spinner.

Put the nettles, breadcrumbs, garlic and cheese in a food processor and spin while trickling in the olive oil until you have a bright, runny paste.

Transfer to a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Thinly slice the tomatoes into ribbons and incorporate into the pesto.

Progress

Spring is so late this year so thank god we didn't return earlier.

Mid-March and the first seeds are sown - aubergines, peppers, beetroot and lettuce. I'm forced to create individual little warm houses with freezer bags for each plant to precipitate germination as I doubt my greenhouse will ever reach the necessary 20/25° they demand right now. Only the frustrated and nestless wasps seem to like being in there!

My brother John has offered himself up as a slave for a week in return for large servings of confit de canard and warm spring sun and at least his plate has been full. I am an excellent slave driver and both boys are so wrecked by the hard work that by 5pm they escape to the local thermal baths for sauna and salt water swimming and perhaps a local girl who might be a lot sweeter than I am with them.

My hen harrier couple were seen flying over two evenings ago but without my chickens pecking around, I'm not sure how attracted they'll be by the feeding potential of Mailhos. 

Plans are being hatched for the new chicken family but weeds need to obliterated, seeds germinated, branches controlled and trees put in place and once we can see clearly, the family (without dear Honeybee I think) will return with some new additions.

Suite Bearnaise

Mailhos was in full spring bloom within days of our arrival.
Following artic temperatures just days before, we have just spent our first week caked in sun block and shaded by sunhats under a glorious sunshine with far warmer températures than what we’ve experienced on our 9 months of roving. I arrived with sciatica pain streaking from my bum to ankle and Jean Francois with a banjaxed left knee and a historically dodgy ankle, worn even more by an excess of concrete pavements and too many long haul flights with minimun leg room. Our hopes for beginning to get the garden into shape were pretty low but in four days we’ve managed more than imagined.

The garden is such a silly mess. I have 700m2 of beds of what was once a healthy, dark and couscous like soil now covered in an impossible layer of ground ivy and couch grass. Every dandelion I meet is a godsend in comparison to the the thick layers of intricate roots that have to be gouged out by hand from an already beaten soil that has withstood 3 months of constant downpours from November through to recently and was not protected by a green cover crop before our bizarre departure in May.

Jean Francois airs the soil with the grelinette while I follow on my hands and knees armed with a kitchen knife  tearing out as many of those bloody roots as possible.

before

et after

Vines, hortensia and wisteria have been pruned and rasberries tamed.

Vine anémones are shooting up just about everywhere. Blue tits are nesting in the lime trees. Hedgehogs, bats and grass snakes are waking from their seasonal slumber,

Cranes are migrating north from the south filling the skies with their elaborate and noisy calls...

 and wasps are trying against all odds to build a new home in my dusted out greenhouse.

before

et apres

The plumber has passed to repair all frost damaged pipes. The carpenter came to be paid. The painter came to be paid.  Work is starting on making my kitchen a little bigger and a little more practical.

In all our time away, its only my chicken family who have really suffered. 18 of them were shared out among 3 different friends. So far rooster Blue and Aurore have dissapeared with the fox . Blind fish got squashed by a hoof of a horse and my dearest Honeybee has flown away to hide after being frightened by a rabid and nasty neighbour’s dog. She’s been gone for a week today and although someone saw a golden chicken walking alone on the Rivehaute road, Thursday at 10am there has been no sighting since despite our combing the area and posting reward-promising posters. Farmers here look at you agape  when you enquire about a lost (and loved) chicken… 

A Book...

There was that big End and then la Grande Silence but Mailhos is not dead!

Firstly I have a book coming out this week in the gallic tongue but soon enough, I hope in English.

The book weighs 590g and has 244 pages recounting the tale of Carol and Jean Francois trying to be farmers from the début in 2006 up to the serene year of 2011… with recipes, chickens and many daft stories.

News is that Mailhos didn’t want us to leave and is missing us and as our work is unfinished, we are returning home to the Bearnaise countryside in the new year to continue our adventures.

Right now the garden is a jungle of weeds and slugs where nature has taken our place both inside and outside. The swimming pool is a green sludge of happy frogs and salmanders while muscat grape vines and wasp nests have left me barely enough room to turn my head in the greenhouse.  

But its not too sad because there are so many happy birds and animals using Mailhos as a haven, especially during the forthcoming hunting season.

So right now the caravan is on its travels and wearing out the husband so he will never want to leave our enchanted life for any long period again with a return in Spring to repair the damage of time and  damage the repair our bones have undergone…. 

*(available from Mollat, FNAC, Amazon fr and Amazon uk and any nice bookshop in Paris)

Peyrehorade Market

Peyrehorade is our nearest gascon town situated on the banks of the reconciled gaves or rivers of Oloron and Pau in the departement of the Landes. Its the town where the rivers navigation can begin and for that reason pleasure boats line the quai waiting for an enthusiastic tourist to pass.

15km from Mailhos, its market is held every wednesday morning hail rain or shine in winter or in summer since the year 1358. I notice that many of our neighbours don't venture so far to buy food and prefer to stay within the confines of their own Bearn. Personnally I love it as Peyrehorade maket bustles and brouhahas unlike the smaller village markets surrounding us and despite the presence of one of the two Monsanto GMO research centres in France being situated within its confines and the biggest local station of corn collection...!

Above the market, the ruins of the chateau d'Aspremont overshadows the town below,  covered in a thick layer of clinging ivy dating from the 16th century. Below, on the banks of the river, lies the once majestic Chateau de Montréal which was abducted and disfigured, internally and externally by the local major and transformed into his personal haven. 

Every wednesday morning, the oldest Landaise market bursts alive as local producers, artisans and street pedlars pose their stalls hiddledy piggledy from the place du Sablot to the place Truquez where the concentration of basque, landaise and bearnaise berets is greater than any other market in the South West of France. 

In the midst of such energy lies the Bon Coin where pigs trotters and tripes are served while the rest of us are dipping our croissant in our morning coffee and under the market arches, dead and live chickens, geese, guinea fowl and ducks are sold to eat or to lay.  

I just buy a cabbage and a few blushing turnips from a little old lady and good, fresh bread from Didier Lemonnier who hides his organic status so that more people will come chat with him. 

After, we cross the bridge to Mr Barthouil's salmon smoking factory to buy a little smoked eel before heading home by the Abbey of Sordes to see if the spring salmon run has started on the river. 

Hail hallelulah, three have passed the young sentinels at the abbey and will be safe in spawning grounds before the fishing season opens on the 10th....