Plagues and carrots

Being a bit on the hot side for October, we have a plague of flies - thousands of them!  Like something out of a horror story, the other night they were crawling from the loft through into our bedroom through the hole for the ceiling light, so we ran for it and are now sleeping in the gite until things get back to normal.

We're going to the UK on Sunday so while K is working her socks off I am cleaning and harvesting what might go off if we get a frost (which would also hopefully kill some of these bloody flies).

 Spuds, carrots and beetroot all done.

Cabbages ok, with the savoys still in the ground.  Could have done with some more though...

Squashes lurking in the spare room.

Morocco and Scotland

Grow for a wet cold and a hot dry climate to almost guarantee success.
Root veggies (Scotland) looking great, squashes and sunflowers (Morocco) covered in mildew.

 Winter brassicas all netted, and the new hedgeline being dug.

Chooks now in their element in the garden, weeding under the bushes for us.

We have new chooks!  We worked out that if we got another three and sold their eggs, we'd break even with the cost of feed.  Thing is, chickens as well as being chauvinistic, are also racist.  We got one Sussex and two ISA-types and the original greys won't have anything to do with them!  I've just been out to close up the coop and the browns are being kept off the perches because the perches are for Greys, and the shitty floor is for Browns, obviously... One day the browns will come out in a show of solidarity and the greys will respond with wee chicken riot shields and batons, claiming to be keeping civil order.

Also working very hard in the hot sunshine digging a French drain to dry out the kitchen wall, and we're putting in a grey-water system as found here.  It's going to water some of the trees in the orchard (we're putting in some new eating apples this winter for it).  All according my favourite new motto, 'keep it simple and it won't go wrong'.  It's a pipe that ends in a thick bed of wood mulch with a tree downhill of it.  Mulch soaks up water, which cools, and releases it slowly to tree.  Tree drinks water and makes apples for me to eat.

 Some winter stuff (chard, carrots, beetroot) going well in the tunnel and the toms are getting a second wind with this heatwave.  Wee thing centre is turmeric.  Sowing peas, broad beans, salads, and other bits soon.

Although they're being killed off by botrytis or whatever, the squashes are still doing reasonably ok.

So, all in all not bad.  Just need to crack a few more veggies (like the sweetcorn) and dig, dig, dig.  Apart from the no-dig bits...

Main crops

Haven't got any pictures (camera's dead) but please feel free to Google "120kgs of Desiree potatoes".
Should be ok for the winter...

Also harvested the buckwheat and made a right pig's ear of it - I scythed it and the stalks went everywhere, and I left it too long and a load of the seed has "shattered" and been lost on the ground.  Still, it's all a learning experience and most of it is now hanging on a line with a fine net under it (scaffold net again) to catch any seed.
It's funny what a sense of security it brings.  Like Cobbett said, "a couple of flitches of bacon hung up are worth more than fifty thousand Methodist sermons even if accompanied with the horrors of hulk and gibbett".  Food security.

A couple of flitches of bacon is next year's project.

Reasons to have a bucket to shit in.

I've just taken out one of those new fangled flushing toilets and replaced it with a warm, comfy wooden composting one and am feeling green and smug.  Might also be due to finally finishing a course of antibiotics to kill off Lyme's disease and am thinking about another pint of beer.  The original toilet was connected (kind of, see later) to our septic tank, which is a great breeding ground for all sorts of things to make you sick and poison the water table.  Flushing loos also use a hell of a lot of drinking water, which seems mad considering a lot of the world don't have any.  Bit like sticking two fingers up at those who have none in my opinion.  You also get rid of fertile soil (you know, the stuff that feeds us all and keeps us from dying of starvation) every time you flush, and we as a race have managed to get rid of most of the topsoil in almost every area we've ever built up a civilisation apart from China who are a lot more sensible than we, although they too have lost the plot recently to the great god Crapitalism and build mega-cities on farmland that has fed them for four thousand years.  So we've got a composting loo now and will be growing our food with our poo.  It's just going to be a 2 year wait for it to compost, but what's that in a lifetime?  We've been here for two years already and have done bugger all apart from haemmoridge money!

What really matters to every one of us as humans and not two-legged viruses like everyone on Wall St, behind a till in a supermarket, driving along with a cigarette poked out of the window, eating factory chicken, etc on this planet is to be in a state of balance, to take and to give back in equal proportion.

So we're pooing in a bucket.

P.S. The loo I took out wasn't actually connected, which meant there was a pile of old poo under it with loads of worms in it.  This is officially named The Bad Day now.

August update

We have been busy...

 Harvesting big plum tomatoes.

 Digging up onions and putting them on wire racks to dry in the sun.

 Thinking that the sunflowers might be a good idea after all.

 Keeping it all neat, and keeping the caterpillars at bay.

 Scoffing melon, strawberries, plums and raspberries with home made shortcake for pudding.  Every day.

...and making a composting toilet at long last!  Bit on the right holds the cover material.

Gite complete!

Bit like world war one, whereby we thought it would be done in a few short weeks but we were still toiling a year later, covered in mud.  I'd say there is a substantial discount for friends but I don't have any so you can all pay full whack.

We have our lives back!  Now, where were we again? Ah yes, composting toilets, rabbit runs, beehives, pig arks, fencing and hedging....

August = 2 years in France.

How time flies when you're fiddling around trying to plumb sink units in, assuming that the caterpillars can't get your cabbages because they're netted, and shelling peas.

 ONE okra for dinner!  Going to be a bloody small curry...

Cauliflowers are doing well though - must be due to the rain.

 It's a safe bet that we have more runner beans than you, dear reader.  Most of them are for the bean and not the pod.  Not sure why no-one else does this as they're delicious and a hell of a lot easier to shell than haricots.  Probably contain cyanide when mature or something.

 Buckwheat for the chooks looking nice - this is to be a field crop if it works out as planned.

 Same with the sunflowers, which are squatting in the rhubarb patch at present.

Huge Canadian tomatoes coming along nicely - Burpee's Delicious - and are about as big as grapefruit. 

And the aim to grow a curry comes closer now the turmeric's sprouted!  Just need to keep it alive during a decidedly non-Indian subcontinent Breton winter...

Don't fight the system, just walk away and grow some onions.  It's the only way to kill the Hydra.