A Peach of a Harvest

Walking Monday:   3.8km

Walking Tuesday:   3.9km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.15km

Walking Wednesday:  3.8km

Walking Thursday:  3.9km

Swimming Friday:  1.25km

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I'm not very good at keeping detailed records of our gardening and the crops we grow. Barbara's better at it and we work out our crop rotations from the diagrams she draws each year in the diary and the lists of varieties and sowing dates.

One thing that is clear however is that for most of our crops 2015 has been a record year. During September we had so many courgettes, beans and peaches that we put out a "Help Yourself" table and barrow at the end of the drive. I've not seen this anywhere else in France and it's fair to say that it was initially treated rather suspiciously by passers by, they did get the idea however and we got a couple of thank you notes and positive comments from neighbours.

It's hard to pick out individual highlights from the harvest but for sheer luxury picking perfectly ripe peaches from the old tree takes some considerable beating:

The tree had seen many better days before we took over and was split with a big section of rotten wood at the base of the trunk. It looked so likely not to last long that at one point Gérard suggested taking a graft off the remaining healthy part to replace it when it succumbed to the inevitable. Some frankly trial and error pruning with the help of a book and the need to reshape the tree to open up the view from the barn door didn't bode well but the tree reacted by producing plenty of healthy growth and a good crop of flowers in March. Favourable weather and plenty of insects set the crop well and warm weather followed by a damp August produced a massive crop - easily twice the quantity in any previous year.

Here's a sample of the crop, this is one day's picking:

We've frozen peaches, bottled peaches, made peach chutney, frozen more peaches, eaten a lot, cooked a lot, given many away to neighbours and we have a whole fridge full of fresh peaches slowly ripening. The concensus from neighbours Claudette, Sue and Nicole is that they are very high quality and have a great taste. We agree, of course.

Here's another day's harvest .....