Autumn is here, but it's still sunny and warm in St André

Well Autumn has arrived.  There has been complete change in the early mornings here with thick mist instead of sunshine.  It’s much chillier when I get up and I have been lighting the woodburner first thing.  However, as the day goes on it seems to get very sunny and hot - it’s been a joy to sit out and still feel the heat on my back this late in September.

My Workaway for the next two weeks, an Englishman via forty years in Australia, has arrived and is getting stuck into the To Do List.  I am now topped up with animal feed and the manure heap has increased by a trailer load thanks to Jac and Ken’s heavy horse, Oscar.

Yesterday, while Bill worked on digging and removing some very deep rooted non-fruiting fruit bushes, I cleared several veggie beds and pruned all the gooseberry and currant bushes – it was a good day.  Today, while my trusty worker was digging out the barn floor and wheelbarrowed the amalgamated hay and manure to the compost bins, I cleared the polytunnel of weeds, swept it out and generally tidied it up – the hens were glad of the weeds I pulled.  We could almost eat our Sunday roast off the floor in there today it looks so good!  This warm, dry weather is a bonus.  It rained last night, giving the squashes a well-needed drink, and it seems to me, that’s how it should be in life, rain at night and sunshine in the day.  Here are some of the squashes already harvested:

On my way to bowls last Tuesday I had a meeting with the very large wheel of a tractor and no longer have the left hand front wing of the Land Rover.  Heavens knows when it will be repaired and how long it will take sourcing parts for a foreign vehicle.  It is driveable, thank goodness, as having sold the campervan two weeks ago, it is my only mode of transport at the moment.  No-one was hurt and you couldn’t see a mark on the tractor tyre!

My bee mentor, Richard Noel, came to visit me for the first time, after months of help and advice on Facebook messages.  He said that my bees were well-behaved and contented and everything was good.  He suggested that I turn the hives 180°to make access for them easier now that vegetation has grown higher in front of the area where they enter.  I shall do that sometime after we’ve extended the area for next year’s increase in hive numbers.
The farmer in the village has obviously offered his land to a beekeeper for their hives as overnight sixteen hives arrived in St André. 

I received the labels for my jars in the post this week and am pleased with the way they look on the jars:

The two lambs and one barren sheep, Lily, were slaughtered here on Monday and the carcasses were taken away for hanging and butchering.  Bill and I collected the meat the evening that he arrived – just over a two hour round trip.  Having had supper, we spent the following hour or so polybagging the joints, chops, kidneys, liver, mince etc. ready for the freezer.  The bags which had been put into the Land Rover were really heavy and the bagging would have been a long stint without Bill’s help – he must have been shattered after the all travelling too, so I was very grateful to him.  It all looks really good quality meat with a great lean/fat ratio and it’s been butchered well, I shall definitely use Dennis again in spite of the distance he lives from me.

One of my bowling friends died this week.  Ken was a lovely man.  He resembled my father and often I would look up while at bowls and instead of seeing Ken, I would see Dad.  A few weeks after I first met him I took a photograph of Daddy in to show him.  I’m not sure he saw the resemblance, but it was not only in his appearance but the way he moved and his sense of humour.

The swallows seem to have left us this week.  

Up until now there have been 30-40 of them sitting on the telephone wires but now they have gone off to warmer climes.

One morning this week there was a seed swap organised at a house in Rostrenen.  Dot hosted it and there was a brilliant spread of homemade cakes – one gorgeous chocolate and peanut butter deep sponge.  We all took surplus seeds and garden plants and left for home with someone else’s surplus.  I have just planted up a very small fig tree in a dustbin for it to winter in the polytunnel.  I also brought home a Japanese anemone and three little asparagus plants which have all been committed to the St André soil.

This was a visitor to my sitting room flyscreen - I helped him outside into the sunshine and was surprised how big he was.

Christmas ferries have now been booked.  I don’t usually travel back for Christmas but am doing so this year, straight afterwards I will travel back with Libby and Charlie for New Year.  I have housecarers arranged and it will make a change being somewhere more Christmassy.  France doesn’t really seem to do Christmas as much as the UK.

Three things I like:  

1.  Having a Workaway here again and getting some jobs crossed off the To Do List.
2.  This lovely September sunshine and really good temeratures for the time of year.
3.  Looking at my cleaned up polytunnel.  Lots of veggies still growing in there, but it's all neat and tidy.

Family, friends and my first honey harvest

August came to an end with Libby and Charlie taking the ferry from Roscoff back to England, after three plus good weeks on holiday here.  I think we only had one wet night and one wet morning through the whole time they were in St André - really lucky.  The sunsets have been wonderful.

 

One of our trips out was to Branferé.  The animals are kept in very large areas, probably the most room I have ever seen given in this sort of place.  Here are photos of flamingo, Charlie and a wallaby, ring-tailed lemur and a red panda.  It was a well laid out place, but the food in the restaurant was abyssmal.

The chicks which were hatched in the kitchen on 25/26 August for Charlie to watch, have been thriving and now have quite a lot of adult plumage.  They have been spending the sunny days out in a larger crate in the garden and just coming back to their smaller brooder at night.

The family's departure was quickly followed by the arrival of my very good friend, June.  We had a more relaxed week, with a few meals out and a visit to Chateaulin, where the bridge is beautifully reflected in the water.  

We then drove on to Locronan where this photo shows the sun shining through the stained glass window in the chapel onto the old stone flags

and later to the beach at Kervel which was lovely.  There were guys fishing for tellines, a small shellfish, which they export to Spain, it looked like very hard work as they pulled their tractors through the sand and shallow water at the edge of the sea.  

It was a beautiful day and we paddled in water that was really warm in the shallows.  

Wherever we went somehow we found ourselves having a coffee, an icecream or a glass of something reviving plus several meals out. 

When I took June back to Dinard on Thursday we spent the afternoon on the prom of Plage l'Ecluse in the sunshine before driving to the airport. 

With help from Lorna again, I harvested my first ever honey from nine frames from my beehives.   

I was delighted to finally pot up 10 kgs of delicious, sweet, runny and very sticky honey, June helped with this part of the operation.  

I hope to add to my hives for next year.   At the end of the week I inserted anti-varroa strips, Apistan, into the four hives to protect my bees.  The strips stay in the hives for six weeks.

All gite bookings have finished now unless there are unexpected bookings which come in. It has been a less busy year than last year.  I have had lots of one and two day bookings, mainly from French guests, which has meant more work than usual for the washing machine and my cleaner, but all guests are welcome.  Luckily, because of the incredibly hot weather, the linen has been dry within a couple of hours of being hung out in the garden.

The vine leaves have been cut back to allow the sunshine to reach and finishing ripening the grapes.  

There are so many bunches, I shall be eating a lot of grapes again this year.  I expect we will also juice a lot for the freezer.  It is amazing to think what a tiny hole, surrounded by stone, that this vine was planted into and how prolific it is now.

It rained this afternoon which was good because the garden needed refreshing and the water containers need filling too.  I can't believe we are already a third of the way through September.  This year has just sped by.

Three things I like:

1.   Harvesting the honey from my bees - a lovely experience.

2.   Having family and friends to stay.

3.   Meeting and making new friends from my new beekeeping interest.