The return to rural life

Having only spent 4 nights here in France, it was lovely to return home yesterday evening.  That said, we've both thoroughly enjoyed our time away catching up with friends and family - enjoying everything from "chateaubriand" as an appetiser with 2 girlfriends at Gauchos in London to large quantities of bubbles as I caught up with my 2 sisters - the first time the 3 of us had been together in 6 years and then we ended our time away with good chums in the Isle of Man where we also got to catch up with family (my father who lives there and Tony's folks who were visiting his 97 year old great uncle!).

Sadly we got home to discover that in the 10 days we'd been away, all the elderflowers had gone - so we've made a note of that (as Tony said "farmers obviously can't afford to go away at this time of year"!!) - thankfully, only 1/2 hour north I found lots of them so was able to make the elderflower cordial I'd been dying to make (apparently if you freeze the cordial in ice cube trays it makes a nice addition to a gin and tonic - something every farmhouse should have on offer!) - the only downside is that the elderflowers didn't come from our yard - next year perhaps....

The rhubarb however is still going strong so about 2 hours ago, I picked some and we've just eaten our first rhubarb crumble with custard ("creme anglaise" as the french refer to it!) - marvellous!

Tomorrow, Tony shall be back on his tractor to rotovate the veggie patch and I shall be picking as many cherries as I can for a manic jam making session - having treated myself to a cherry pitter in the UK I must make good use of it and I think we've probably only got cherries for another couple of weeks - it's all go chez 'Opwood as you can see!

Hope this finds everyone well - will send more pics as we manage to get the place into shape for our first visitors now planned for 25th June - although we love these particular visitors dearly, they're especially welcome as they've agreed to bring 4 cases of spectacular wine from our stash in the UK and much as we're enjoying our rather inexpensive Bergeracs and Pecharmants we're quite looking forward to the 2003 Amarone's and 2001 Rioja's they'll be bringing with them .