I’m writing this post with a heavy heart.
One of my teeth decided it really wants to see the dentist again so I booked a flight back ‘home’ (?!?) where I will stay for two weeks. It’s bitter sweet as I’m obviously looking forward to get home: see Barrie, the cats and my friends and do stuff I used to do. And I can’t wait for a very long good old soak in the bath tub! I haven’t had a bath in 11 weeks – and I’m telling you, I can really do with one!
But being here and knowing that I’m leaving is no fun. There’s all the vegetables I am growing and the plants in pots which will now probably all be devoured by deer and/or snails and if they survive that, then there’ll be two days of scorching heat. That’ll kill them for sure. I think I’ll plant some of them out tomorrow, in a shady area where I know the soil doesn’t dry out and hope for the best. Gill, my vendor and new friend, will pop in once in a while but I can’t ask her to come every day and water the veg.
Anyway, let me show you what I’ve been up to so far before it all disappears again …
I’ve learned from stories that the couple who sold the property to Gill and Collin lived here for 14 years – under the radar apparently – and were pretty much self-sufficient. I was told that their car was broken for a long time and they haven’t gone shopping in 18 months. 18 months!!! I’m not sure if I can believe that but I’m willing to believe that Roy & Gill (another Gill – this area is full of Gills and Jills for some reason), gave them a lift to the shops once a month. That is more realistic I’d say and I will aim for that. I think I’d go insane if I wouldn’t see a shop for 18 months. That would be too much of cold turkey for me.
Unfortunately, I can only guess what their veg plot must have looked like. When I arrived, it was just grass on top of grass with the odd neglected fruit tree in between. It still very much looks like this but I started to make a dent in the overgrowth and created two beds.
The easiest solution would have been the no-dig method, which is basically a) mow grass and pull weeds, b) put a thick layer of card board down and c) cover it with manure and compost. Easy peasy. I love this method. I’ve used it in England and it works really well.
But here, I decided to try out the Biodynamic French Intensive Method. The reason for this is very simple and reflects on pretty much everything I do here: We don’t own it yet. I don’t want to spend money on things I can’t take with me if the sale should fall through. And since I can’t take soil and manure with me, double dig it is!
If anyone is interested, you can watch the how-to video right here. I think it’s a very soothing video, I watched it a dozen of times but of course it’s never as easy when you do it yourself. It is/was a lot of hard work but you only do it once and then you never dig or rotate again. You just add compost every year and the beds rise and rise while the little paths in between stay the same. Can’t wait to see what they will look like in 5 years!
So, I’ll just create more and more double-dig beds, one after the other, plant a few more fruit trees and see to the ones that are already here (peach, fig, apples and prunes) and create at least one Hügelkultur bed. That’s the plan. Not having to go to the shop for a month and still have decent fresh food sounds pretty awesome to me. If there’d be enough left to maybe make some kind of profit with, that would be most awesome!
I know I said in my last blog that I’ll probably never run out of water. But getting the water to the vegetables is just as important. There is a well nearby, I’d say 30m or so from the veg beds – but you also need to get the water up and then over. My first project was to build a little structure so that I can lower buckets down and pull them out again when full of water (10 litres weigh 10 kilos after all!). I’m quite proud of my little thingie, it works really well but it would take me ages to water the veg beds once of even twice a day. I do still use it though every time I have to re-start the well pump.
The couple have actually left a water pump behind, it was just lying on the ground next to the well, half eaten by an ant colony. I wish I took a photo because it’s hard to believe that this pump actually still works. I pulled it out of the ants nest last year and opened and cleaned it this year. It was still full of ants and an insane amount of spiders and muck. But when I turned it on, it worked! I consider this a miracle. Probably not so special if you haven’t seen the old rusty pump sticking out of the ant colony… should have taken a photo, damnit!!
So, I had a working pump but no electricity down there. I had to get a generator which was one of the first hardest decisions I had to make. I am really not good with anything electric and trying to figure out what kind of generator I need for that pump was a difficult one. And then where to buy it was the other one. In the end, I got lucky and the local E.Leclerc had one on offer and I grabbed the opportunity; coupled it with a good long hose and a new thicker 5 meter hose going down the well and days later I was filling up the water butt I found last year while strimming around the house. I have to tell you that I felt quite empowered when the first few litres of cool well water ran through the hose …
Only one more thing missing in a proper vegetable area: compost. I’ll need lots and lots of new nutrients for my plants on a regular basis. It’d be easy to just go and buy fertiliser in a shop but no person aiming for self-sufficiency would ever do that. (Well, I did actually, but that’s just to help me out this year. Turns out the French soil/compost you buy is not enriched and quite nutrient deficient so you DO need something otherwise your plants in pots will struggle in no time).
The aim is to make your own compost so you need to create a composting area. You could just throw it all on one big heap but it decomposes much faster when you contain it and go higher instead of wider. You want to create sufficient heat to kill off all the seeds and other unwanted things. One of the cheapest composters you can create is just four pallets, tied up with cable ties. So with a little help of Facebook Marketplace I organised a few pallets to create the first composter of many. When I’m finished, it’ll be a whole row of pallet composts, always one ready to go while others are still decomposing and others are being filled up. It will be a beautiful sight for every keen gardener.
Of course, as always, not everything runs smooth. The deer found the beds and especially love my salads. I love salad too so I have quite a lot of that. And I don’t really want to share it. Currently, I have to cover it with mesh and I have some funky solar disco lights for night time too but the long-term solution would be a 2m high fence. A few deer like to nap under the giant overgrown apple trees which are just five metres away and I want them to stay so they have a safe place. But I don’t want them to eat all my veg either.
And the moles obviously love all that fluffed up loose soil i created and moved in. I’m not quite sure yet how to deal with that but I’m guessing that my carrots will disappear at some point and I won’t have a single one.
Those two beds are just a tiny start anyway, and I have another small raised bed closer to the house as well. I’ve arrived too late to grow most things so I was pretty limited on what to sow. I’m currently enjoying my own salads, radishes, mange-tout and some other green leafy plants. And of course herbs like parsley, dill, chives and coriander.
Beet roots, spinach, chard, kale, squash and winter salads are in the making and will hopefully cheer me up a little during the winter. If they survive not being looked after for two weeks, that is …
