La Basse Cour

Sunday, 15 November 2015

Walnut Harvest

This post was written before the tragic and terrible events in Paris on Friday November 13th. In the light of what happened, writing about our mundane life here somehow seems irrelevant. Yet maybe it is by continuing with just the mundane things in life that we can best stand up to the perpetrators of the massacre in Paris. Gérard said to me this morning that we are reaping what we have sown in the Middle East over the last 75 years, he's right of course but looking back doesn't help going forward.

So, I'll continue to post more ironic and mundane observations on life here. And avoid politics.

And religion.

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Walking Monday: 3.8km

Cycling Tuesday: 9.2km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.25km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 9.2km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

Swimming Friday: 1.10km

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Moles this week: Pip 0, Tim 1 (a particularly difficult one at last who kept digging under the traps)

Moles Year to Date: Pip 7, Tim 5

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So, after the great fruit and vegetable glut of 2015 the weather has provided perfect weather for the walnut harvest - another record breaker. Our tree has a huge gash in the bark of the main trunk where a branch split away many years ago and leans over at about 15 degrees but it is huge and still growing well. The walnuts mature during September and fall over a period of about four weeks, over time we've learnt to ignore the first 10-15% of the nuts that fall - the tree naturally sheds the small, damaged and defective ones first. This year we concentrated on collecting only the large ones but still ended up with a huge crop, so for three weeks at every opportunity with warm weather the accumulated crop gets spread out in the sun to dry.

We haven't weighed the crop but each box contains about 8 kilos and we have 6 boxes so that's around 50 kilos.

After open-air drying we are finishing off this year's crop on the heated floor:

The crop will need another month or so to fully ripen, conveniently that will be just before Christmas. In the meantime we have about four kilos left from the 2014 crop to finish.

Thursday, 5 November 2015

Corbyn and Anglo-Saxon Economics

Cycling Tuesday: 9.2km

Swimming Tuesday: 1.15km

Walking Wednesday: 3.8km

Cycling Thursday: 9.2km

Walking Friday: 3.8km

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I've written before about the Instinctive French distrust of "Anglo-Saxon" (ie: American or British) banking and economic values and the slightly hesitant steps taken by the socialist government here to introduce more elements of free-market operation. The BBC's Emily Maitliss did a good analysis of the French view of life in 2012 as countries slowly began to emerge from the financial crash of 2008. Her thesis was that the French were quite happy with the large size of their state sector, the proof of the value of their system was shown by the comparatively small rise in unemployment during the economic crisis compared to the reckless economies of Great Britain and the USA.

The problem since then has been that the unemployment rate here has stayed stubbornly elevated as the economy has recovered and government spending has ballooned to 57.5% of GDP - according to The Wall Street Journal it is only in Cuba and the Federated States of Micronesia that the Government spends more as a proportion of GDP than France. The comparable figure for the UK is 42.2%.

But it's not all bad and I have to admit there are a number of advantages to having so much regulated by the state. In 2014 EDF (the state electricity supplier) wanted to increase the price of electricity by 10% but this was over-ruled by the government and the increase was pegged to 3%; prices in the UK went up by about 12% in the same period. Theoretically there is a free market in electricity supply here but 95% of residential properties still stick with EDF and governmental control.

SNCF (the majority state owned railway) has a terrible reputation amongst some of my friends who commute in Paris but the long-distance services (TGV) are very good in my experience. The line to Brittany is being upgraded which will bring Paris within 2 hours 30 minutes of Vannes and it will be less than 2 hours to cover the 350km from Rennes, the hand-wringing over how to finance new developments like HST2 in the UK isn't a discussion item here (maybe because the EU funds part of the cost as we live in such a backward underdeveloped part of Europe ........ :o)

If you can handle the bureaucracy (well at least it gives people a job) and the errors (latest trial for us is the bureau des impôts (the tax office)) there is a certain attractive simplicity to having the government responsible for so much - and of course complaining about it provides a simple entry to social discussions with neighbours.

Which brings me to Jeremy Corbyn and the term Corbynomics, used by the press at least in the UK as a term of derision for the new Labour Party leader's economic policies. State renationalisation of the railways, a regulated energy sector, more government borrowing to finance capital investment on infrastructure, nuclear disarmament and "people's QE" - policies that haven't been talked about in the UK for years, far less implemented, have suddenly being put on the table as a tangible alternative. If Jeremy survives the media scrutiny - and survives the rift in his party - it will be interesting to see how the electorate views such a different approach to the paradigm presented by the other conventional parties.

Of course, if he was called Jérémie Corbyn the French electorate would find his policies reassuringly familiar .......

Monday, 2 November 2015

Summer - in November

Walking today: 3.8km

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The lovely October weather has extended into November at La Basse Cour. It has been over 20C on the 1st and 2nd here and we've had warm sunshine all day.

The garden has had its season prolonged and the cool August and early September followed by the dry and warm October means we've had some confused plants! The blueberries have come into flower again (normally March/April), the climbing French beans have flowered for a second time and produced ripe pods, the roses are in flower and we've got a decent picking of strawberries.

Here are some pictures I took today, 2nd November:

The Morning Glory still in full flower, it's been producing 20-100 flowers a day continuously since June so probably around 5000 blooms in all.

Geraniums, gazania and daisy in the raised bed by the hanger.

Our Japanese camellias, which do flower normally in the autumn, have produced their best display ever (with some paint spatters on their leaves ....).

Our quintessential red geranium balcony boxes still in full flow.

Dahlias and abelia on the pink bed.

Barbara's brilliant annual dahlias putting on a great show in the barn border.

Ruby chard in the potager.

It can't last of course, although there is rain forecast for later in the week the temperatures show no sign of dropping to the monthly normal anytime soon. In the absence of frost we could keep on with the late flower show until December.

Sunday, 1 November 2015

Back to another sunset

We've been in the UK for six days on a working party with Adam and Charlotte. In no particular order between us we:

Moved a piano (great purchase by Charlotte, looks really good, bit out of tune but will be fine)

Had our eyes tested at Specsavers (all fine)

Painted a wall and two fireplaces

Made a pair of curtains

Adjusted two doors after the summer painting

Fitted two curtain rails

Fitted a door to their en-suite bathroom (never had one - strange ....)

Took down two fences and took them to recycling in the trailer

Built two new fences and fitted a new side gate

Took up some paving and laid gravel

Cut down huge amounts of overhanging branches from the garden, pruned an apple tree and took two trailer loads to recycling

Cleaned all their windows

Fitted a new washing machine

Unpacked and assembled a new oak table, two sofas, two dressers, six chairs and a chest (another trailer full of cardboard to recycling)

Had a hair cut (Barbara)

Watched Adam play hockey in Havant (lost 2-4 but he played well)

And, we all went to see the English National Ballet's production of Romeo and Juliet at the Mayflower on Thursday night - Barbara organised it as a surprise for my birthday present!

Back on the overnight ferry to St. Malo and, as we got onto the ferry and out of the car we met our nearest English neighbour, Sue, on her way back from Devon.

It was a lovely day when we got back here, sunny and warm - 21 degrees this afternoon - and there was a great sunset again:

Saturday, 24 October 2015

Last post on painting - I promise

Walking Friday: 3.8km

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Last blog post about painting - you can have too much of a good thing!

Here's the southern elevation of the house before, during and after refinishing:

The scaffolding riggers (combined age 122) were in their stride by the end and we knocked down the four full bays in under four hours.

I had a nasty attack of vertigo after we'd put up the scaffolding after so Barbara was responsible for all the painting of the top half of the wall and all the fiddly woodwork right at the top. Odd really as the top platform was only at about 5m, feels high to me but isn't really.