Harvests and chicks

It’s been a busy week with produce, picking and preserving, sowing seeds and planting plants.   The grapes have all ripened at once and I know I won't manage to harvest and use them before they start to rot so I am already sharing them with the hens.

 

It’s the middle of September and so hazlenuts are ready for harvesting.  I planted three bushes on my roadside verge in 2012 and this evening collected 684g.  In the supermarket they are priced at €6.95 a kilo, so it’s a very cost saving crop.  Usually the nuts are in clusters of three, but they can apparently grow in clusters of nine.  My largest cluster was of seven nuts.

This was a collection of some of my produce that I took over to a friend who invited me for lunch last week.  I just love this time of year when everything is so prolific.  She gave me some lovely earrings, I'm wearing them in the photo below.

 

I broke my slide and had to wear my hair in a plait for a couple of days until I got to the supermarket for a couple of new ones.  I felt rather like an ageing hippy!

The carrots hiding amongst the tomatoes in the polytunnel are huge as they'd been growing for ages.  Luckily they are not at all woody and are delicious when cut into batons cooked and finished with butter.  

Here they are as part of my duck lunch with some of the berry jelly I've been making, as a sauce with blackberries in it.

 

The rabbits also enjoy the ends chopped up.  They're all getting on so well now and go into their house relatively easily when it's dusk now too.

While out walking I picked loads of elderberries, blackberries and crab apples.  I made them into jelly straining them through a jelly bag into a large glass jar overnight.

The Quiz at St Gilles Vieux Marché was last Wednesday evening.  We were a reduced team of three but struggled through to third place.  We were almost a reduced team of two after my neighbour with all the horses in the village tried to reverse from his work driveway into Phil’s car.   I witnessed the event as I was ready and waiting to be collected from the calvaire.  How a collision was avoided I am not sure but thankfully it was and only Jean-Louis’s pride was hurt and he did apologise profusely.  A friend at the Quiz brought me some peaches from her garden tree and I have Kilner jar preserved them in a light syrup.

The sweetcorn seeds that the same friend gave me produced my first ever cobs and I really enjoyed them.  I remembered reading somewhere that the time between picking, cooking and eating had to be a short as possible to prevent the sugar turning into starch.  I managed to get this down to about 25 minutes and they were all lovely - dripping with golden yellow butter.

I collected a motley assortment of birds this week who are settling in well with my other hens.  They were from someone going back to the UK but she didn’t want to take them with her.  She was, however, taking back twelve cats!  

My surrogate mother hen is taking good care of the two chicks she hatched nearly two weeks ago now.   They started off in a puppy crate, as in the photo, but now I have moved them into the far end of the barn so they can be free without worrying about the older hens bullying them.  I'll introduce them to the rest of the flock when they're grown enough to look after themselves.

 

Yesterday we had our first rain for weeks.  Just a short shower during the day but longer at night.  It freshened everything up but the night time temperatures are still high and it's difficult to sleep.   More hot weather is forecast for the coming week so summer isn't over yet apparently.

This week I visited an osteopath on the recommendation of my rheumatologist.  He worked me over and said that if he'd done a good job then I shouldn't have to go back to him, so fingers crossed.   My usual physio came yesterday for my weekly session.  She's cutting down on her working hours running up to total retirement and I am one of only two clients for whom she will continue to do home visits.  We've changed the day to Friday now so that will take some getting used to after about five years of Tuesdays. 

Another change is that the Book Group I have attended for six years has finished.  We had a lunch in Bourbriac to mark the end and discussed our last book, Snow White Must Die, sitting outside in the sunshine with a post-prandial drink.   Thank you Katherine for hosting it all this time - I enjoyed our monthly meetings.

The previous week I had a mammogram, just the usual two yearly routine one, which is apparently ok, although they do send it off for a second opinion and I'll get the report probably next week.  They found several calcium deposits but nothing to worry about so far.

Three things I like:

1.   My new baby chicks - they're so sweet.

2.   All the baking and preserving I'm doing at the moment - very satisfying.

3.   Going to sleep in the garden while basking in the afternoon sunshine.