The first sightings of a real live edible crop

We have tomatoes (on the plants given to us by our new neighbour friends) and cucumbers on the plants bought on Friday - exciting stuff!  One of the plants given to us by the neighbours is an heirloom variety of some sort and they’ve told us how to save the seeds for next year which we hope to do.  This particular plant produces large oval shaped tomatoes and they’ve had them weigh up to a kilo in previous years - we can’t wait to see that and only hope the support we’ve provided the plants is sufficient.

Interestingly, they’ve told us that if you simply put a stake in the ground - the tomatoes will be fine but will produce less flowers than if you run lines across the field and allow them to spread out - they are after all vines and tend to produce far more flowers and therefore far more fruit if allowed to stretch out sideways.

Today, we’d hoped to head into the ‘big town’ to buy a trailer and a fridge/freezer however we were told last night that it’s another bank holiday today and so only a few places will be open so we’re trying to figure out if the places we need will be open (some are open all day, some only half day - no rhyme or reason as to which and why!!) so we can make the most of the journey into the big town otherwise we’ll leave it for tomorrow.  To be honest it can be a bit of a challenge getting used to the hours when you first arrive ‘en France’ - as an example, bank holiday or not, our local bank isn’t open on Mondays anyway and certainly never during lunch!  Whilst in full time employment, bank holidays are awesome - when trying to get farming supplies - bank holidays can be a bit of a hindrance!

I am fascinated by the amount of ‘religious observance’ holidays in France where church and state are separated and it’s essentially a socialist country.  10 days ago there was a bank holiday for Ascension and today the holiday is Pentecost - a bit of an enigma certainly in our area where the catholic church is barely surviving.  I’ve found some english speaking churches on my travels and have heard about a french “happy clappy” church about 45 minutes away but have yet to actually find it (a few years ago my father and I could be found driving round the area for about an hour trying to find it but it remains well hidden - at least from me - to this day!).

So as for our plans today, we may just have a second cup of coffee, check on the baby vegetables in the field and stay home just to be on the safe side!