Halloween!

Winter, it appears, is impatient to overcome Autumn in the Gers; we have already had two hard frosts with minus 4 Celsius reported and all the outside and majority of the poly tunnel vegetable plants are now only good to rip up and feed to the pigs.  Thankfully we had the best pickings before the cold hit and there are plenty of green tomatoes that aren't completely frozen to make our annual batch of chutney.

Up until 3 days ago, the day time temperatures had rarely dipped below 20 degrees and the nights, although fresh, did not require the wood fired boiler to be commissioned.  We are now toasty warm with the heating on and we are tucking into our newly cut winter log pile!

We have a great system for log cutting; last winter we cut and stored masses of roughly split logs in1 metre lengths at the end of the barn where they spent the spring and summer drying out. We haul the logs up on a trolley to the area in front of the house where we have a free standing log saw (we had the blade sharpened recently which has made it cut real well). The logs are then sawed in half (the wood fired boiler takes up to 53cm logs) and any that still need more splitting are swiftly dispatched on the neighbouring ash block before being stacked with Alpine precision under the log cover we made last winter.  Like this we can deal with probably 4 or 5 cubic metres (a "stere" in French) in a day including some help from Ben if he is in the mood!  Daddy gets the axe thoroughly embedded in the log that needs splitting and Ben then hits with all his might with a block hammer which suits his size - no injuries to date............

The claustrophobic pigs are now "as happy as" in their new enclosure - they are all much friendlier and the escapee piglets are now far more relaxed; they are even tame enough to give them a good scratch behind the ears.  

The new enclosure has two areas; divided by another fence and the cabin acts as a portal from one area to the other.  We will rest each area of land for 6 months at a time and we installed an automatic drinking fountain that we found in the barn.  The fencing which has finally been effective in retaining the pigs is made up of stretched (using the tractor) sheep fence with a strand of electrified steel wire at 10cms and 25cms from the ground.  Being at nose and shoulder height, it stops the pigs burrowing under the fence using their snouts as spades.  We hear the odd squeal when they get too close to the perimeter so we believe they will never give up the digging; perhaps we should name them Steve Mcqueen and James Garner!  We have to watch out for short circuits as we often find toads sparking away on the low wire. Oops.

We have also done a cockerel-swap with some neighbours to broaden the gene pool. So far our new cockerel has been too haughty to do anything other that strut about and make a few halfhearted attempts at playing kiss-chase with the girls.

The other day our neighbour told us the Jerusalem artichokes that had been lodging in his veg patch were ready so off we trooped to dig them out. They have to be the ugliest vegetable ever - the epitome of knobbly! We have peeled around 1kg (enough to test the patience of a saint) and made a soup of them with the Halloween pumpkin scoopings and a butternut squash.  It remains to be seen if they live up to their reputation.

Talking of pumpkins, we had a huge crop - every shape and size you can imagine and masses of butternut squash which are all now hanging in nets in the barn;

The Jerusalem artichokes are perennials so we are putting the left over tubers in an area that was previously used for a hopeless bunch of strawberry plants that we were given - at least it is relatively weed free.  They will be joined by asparagus and artichoke plants in permanent beds

With the recent frosts, we are getting the last of the harvest in - yesterday the kids helped picking the second half of the maize crop - Ben just loved karate chopping the cobs off the stems then kicking over the straw!  In a couple of days, all that will be left in the veg patch will be some recently sown winter wheat, a patch of winter field beans, leeks, parsnips and onions sets.

Autumn is the time to plant fruit trees and bushes and we have invested in a large strawberry bed (48 plants) and more raspberry and blackberry plants. They are all supported on a large 1.9m high frame and we moved the black current bushes we managed to propogate from last autumn's prunings to their permanent homes. The plants are bedded under a special cloth to keep the weeds down and to retain moisture and the drip feed irrigation installed for next year. Once all that lot along with the fruit trees we planted last autumn (4 apples, a fig, kiwis and apricot trees) are mature, we will have buckets of soft fruit hopefully!

Finally, we have started renovating the mill room; it is a big job but we are in need of a second living space as the kids are growing up fast and living in just a kitchen is tough; especially in winter.  Last year the electrics were installed and a new floor laid down over the canal so now it's time to fill and plaster the walls, renovate the millstones and tile the whole of the ground floor - gulp. We hope to have it done for Christmas but deadlines like that are set to be broken so we'll see how it goes.