Meet Gertie

Here is Gertie, our newest addition to the Family.
We have been thinking about another cat since Pixel died, and Gertie here proved totally irresistible. As you can see, she has one blue eye and one green and an appetite of a cat five times her size.
Both Hugh and Rupert are totally terrified of her at the moment, they are just a pair of ninnies. Hugh will just about tolerate having her on the same sofa as where he is dozing so long as she keeps her distance. Milly just ignores her and keeps out of the way. Rupert is sulking and refusing to talk to me. Ho hum, they will get used to her.
Gertie has decided that my sewing table, right next to the stove is the place to be, so I have padded it out with a bit of fleece. However, if she continues eating at her current rate she wont fit in here for much longer. She retreats here regularly to kip, then ventures out to eat, explore and play some more.

bank holidays and "making the bridge"

French bank holidays are usually on the actual date rather than the nearest monday as in the UK. So, today, the 11th November is the French Remembrance Day, and this year it happens to fall on a tuesday. Your average French man or woman doesn't think it is worth going into work just for the monday, so they usually "make the bridge" or faire le pont.

I knew this.

I also assumed that, where I work, to take this bridging day would require one of my slowly accumulating holiday entitlement days - which I am saving up for Christmas/new year, or when someone comes over, or we want to go over to the UK.

What I didn't know, and no-one had bothered to tell me was that at the hospital one is entitled to faire le pont automatically, and get paid for it, and (as far as I have been able to make out) keep hold of ones holiday entitlement!

So I blithely rolled up for work on Monday morning.

I thought it was a little strange that the lady on the gate took a while to raise the barrier and gave me a long look, but thought no more about it. Neither of the patients I had booked in to come first thing to the department arrived - oh well, perhaps they forgot, have another cup of tea and I'll chase them up on Wednesday. I went across to the offices to photocopy some stuff but they were all locked-up and dark. Starting to get suspicious (quick, eh?), I finally ventured out to one of the units, fortunately the one where our local mayor works (she is a nurse there). Her first words to me were 'what are you doing here?' They sat me down over a cup of coffee and explained the situation as outlined above - only a minimum staff of nurses and auxiliaries work bank holidays and bridge days. I realised then that there were no doctors about and very few cars, and it all began to make some sense.

Having got up early and gone in, I decided to finish the morning, but I have been told that I must take a day in lieu, so I will probably take next Monday - not bad eh?

pigs & hedges

Last weekend we took possession of our half of a pig, raised by some friends locally and shared with another local couple. The Friday afternoon killing and cleaning session was interesting and I took some photos, but I don't think they are suitable for showing on a blog!
Here is a picture of our half pig, a considerable lump of meat that was too heavy to carry in from the car, so we resorted to the wheelbarrow. We spent most of the rest of the weekend cutting up, boning, salting, boiling, mincing, roasting, bagging-up etc etc... We now have a 7 kilo ham salting in the pantry. This will be air-dried over the next few months, and should be ready for consumption in mid 2009 (we hope).

The freezer is bursting at the seams with joints, chops, diced pork, bacon joints, stock & sausage meat. We are just coming to the end of the brawn that we made from the head and the boudin noir that was made (by our friends) from the blood. I also had a go at making rillets - cooked shredded pork with lard. There are a few of jars of these left in the larder as I only made enough for 5 jars. The one we sampled was delicious, so I shall make more next time we have a pig.

It was an interesting, if exhausting, process and another time we shall have more idea of the amount of work involved and the sorts of end products we want to produce. We have also reverted to salad lunches as a reaction to eating too much meat recently!
More garden pictures.
Above is the short section of beech hedge we planted about 6 years ago, using plants grown from seeds collected in Bold Venture Park in Darwen, where we used to live. The colours of the beech trees this autumn has been spectacular, as you can see, even after having been trimmed.

Below is the start of my first attempt at laying a hedge - this six metres took me a whole afternoon. This is the hawthorn hedge that we planted a few years ago round the orchard. I want it to be a reasonably tight and stock-proof hedge (although we actually have a 1 metre high wire mesh fence separating the sheep from the orchard now - you can just see the fencing at the far end of the orchard. It is now completed round both the top and bottom sections of our sheep field). When we let the sheep into the orchard a few years ago they did so much damage to the trees that they are now banned, but I have ideas about geese...

The hawthorn is probably still a bit small for laying but it is getting very untidy so I decided to lay it this year. This winter, Pete and some of our friends are going to lay the main hedge along the side of the property that we planted 8 years ago now, but this is more my scale! I also need to go and buy a billhook, as I used a small axe to do this bit and it really was not the right tool for the job. You can see how much more I have yet to do, and that the hawthorn on the other side of the orchard is bigger than the side I have started. We will be lifting the crown and opening out the trees on the boundary bank to the right of the picture, so that should encourage the hawthorn to grow a bit better.

Today we have planted more of the fruit bushes in the fruit cage, but the light went before I could take photos. The tally so far is 23 strawberry plants (three different varieties), 10 raspberry canes (4 varieties) and two different gooseberries that we have transplanted from elsewhere in the garden. There are still red, white and black current bushes to go in. We also need to have a go at deterring the moles who obviously enjoy hunting the millions of earthworms in that bit of the garden. Not keen on poison, but other anti-mole ideas will be welcomed!