Realising we’re so far behind in real farm life given we only got here mid May (and then disappeared off to the UK and British Isles for 10 days) when all our neighbours had already begun planting having prepared their patches whilst we were still packing up our lives in Cayman......and having had a little rain last night, Tony got back on the tractor to tackle the veggie patch with the rotovator just minutes before more rain! Having started, he decided to continue on in the rain until he realised how soft the soil actually was when wet and decided that calling the neighbours to have the tractor towed out of the veggie patch might be incredibly awkward so came back inside to help pit the enormous bucket of cherries picked yesterday (you can see how many there are given the comparison of the size of the bowl in relation to the piggery!!)
It occurred to me after very recently getting back in touch with a very good friend, Sparkly Tiara, (do check out her blog....http://homeofthesparklytiara.blogspot.com/) that I should clarify our intentions here in France....
Initially as we get settled back in, our intention is very definitely to soak up as much as we can of our surroundings and perhaps be a little flippant and frivolous with our findings - a good example is our allowing about another 20 kilos of cherries to go to the birds - not ideal and certainly if/when one day we’re relying on the farm to produce some sort of income we shan’t be quite so casual about it, but sadly this year, an unavoidable consequence of our 10 day hiatus away from the farm at critical cherry picking time!
For the longer term, both Tony and I do feel that one day the people who will be winning life’s game of monopoly will most certainly be those least reliant on others to grow their food for them or pipe air conditioning into their apartments and so once we’ve recuperated (both had a bout of flu during our recent travels), rested, eaten our fill of cherries, then we shall be looking to perhaps tackle a far more serious experiment - one such as Barbara Kingsolver and her family successfully tackled (read about it in her excellent book, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) which was essentially to only eat food grown and produced within a 100 mile radius - each member of the family were allowed a wild card which I thoroughly approve of to ensure we continue being allowed to enjoy coffee with our croissants in the morning! Wine was another of their wild cards but we certainly won’t waste a wild card on wine when we hope to be producing that ourselves one day too!
So, I hope you enjoy our journey both the frivolous summer we intend to have and beyond as we start to really learn how independent we may one day become - Tony’s already researching chickens given the fact that even if we end up back in Cayman as the weather turns cooler, apparently it’s only 8 weeks from hatching to eating if I can bring myself to upgrade from cherry pitting to chicken killing...........watch this space!
No comments:
Post a Comment