Wood shed finished

Except for a few details (such as screwing on the final side tiles, aligning and protecting the protruding rafters, and paintwork), my wood shed is finished and operational.

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The piles at the rear are composed mainly of wood that Gérard Magnat delivered in September [click here for my blog post with a photo of that pile of firewood], whereas the front pile is some of the extremely dry wood that the Barraquand firm in St-Laurent-en-Royans delivered a few weeks ago.

The structure is sturdily-built, and unlikely to collapse under the weight of snow. As you can see in the following photo, there’s an appropriate system of braces beneath the roof. Besides, I’ve systematically used timber of dimensions somewhat larger than what you could get away with.

The position of the wood shed is ideal in that firewood can be delivered just alongside it, and it’s not too far away from my front door. Meanwhile, there’s also a large stock of dry firewood inside my cellar: enough to keep the house heated until well after Xmas.

For the moment, I haven't yet got around to lighting up my new wood stove, because it hasn't really been cold enough, and the fireplace is perfect for watching TV of an evening (often with Fitzroy dozing on my knees).

Great weather for dogs and donkeys

This morning, Choranche received the first autumn snow. (Winter won’t start, of course, before a month’s time.)

And the view from my bathroom window proves that I’m unlikely to be dining outside on the front lawn in the near future.

Like last winter, I’ll soon be receiving a visit from Australian relatives who choose this time of the year to drop in on Europe. Inside the house, it’s not at all cold… and I haven’t even got around to lighting up my new wood stove that I’ve been installing over the last year. Outside, my dog Fitzroy adores this kind of weather, and he races around madly, burrowing into the snow whenever he halts. The donkeys, too, don’t seem to be troubled by the snow. Jackie and I had a look at them this morning, and put a small block of hay in one of my old animal shelters. But some of them preferred to stay outside, burrowing into weeds beneath the walnut trees.

The only way in which this kind of weather affects my daily existence is that it would be crazy to go out driving… supposing that I were able to get the car safely to the bottom of Gamone Road without sliding off into the creek. Between now and the arrival of my sister’s family (just before Xmas), I intend to get a set of four snow tyres installed on my car, to maximize the possibility that I’ll be able to collect them at the train station in Valence.

BREAKING NEWS: I've just received an e-mail with a warning for "level 2 snow" in our region.

Level 2 is an orange warning, one step below the red warning.

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The weather folk explain that residents of an orange zone must be "very careful, because dangerous phenomena are likely". Do you find that clear? Me neither. So, I'll stay at home in front of the fireplace.

Donkey situation at Gamone

A few months ago, I deliberately refrained from indicating on my blog that my young female donkey Fanette had suddenly died. At the time, shocked and saddened, I simply failed to understand what might have killed her, almost overnight… so I preferred to remain silent. I shall never know, but donkey life goes on… and it looks like this, today, at Gamone.

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Left to right: Bella [young Monaco female], Alice [black Monaco female], Victor [Alice’s son], Louise [gray Monaco female], Fernand [Louise’s son], Moshé and Barnabé [young local male, obviously gay].

There are seven animals: a donkey for each day of the week.

After the above-mentioned tragedy, my kind neighbor Jackie had the impression that Moshé was depressed by the disappearance of his female companion. So we decided to join our neighboring properties, donkey-wise. And the consequences are happy for all of us… particularly since the birth of the two young males.

For the moment, all these splendid beasts are grazing on my backyard slopes. Jackie has gone to the trouble of installing fine winter lodgings for his animals, but the chances are that they’ll spend the cold season outside. Tomorrow, Jackie and I plan to reinforce all the electric fences around our properties. Incidentally, I'm immensely happy to have a friendly neighbor such as Jackie who adores donkeys, chooks and my omnipresent dog Fitzroy.

Luxurious breakfast

In my blog post of November 2010 entitled Master mushroom chef [display], I spoke of Coprinus comatus mushrooms, which are one of my favorite breakfast dishes. For the last few days, I’ve been feeding the donkeys and hens up at Jackie’s place, and these mushrooms flourish on his lawn. The tastiest specimens are the small mushrooms that have made their appearance during the last 24 hours.

Their preparation is simple. I simply put them in a non-stick frying pan with butter for a few minutes.

A good part of the pleasure of such exquisite food comes from the fact that my mushrooms were taken out of the ground just 20 minutes before being eaten. These days, that’s pure gastronomical luxury.

PS Jackie once told me that he has never been tempted to eat such mushrooms… and I replied that I agreed entirely with his wariness.

Collision with a cloud

I didn't hear the noise of the impact, but my photo proves that the catastrophe did in fact occur... this afternoon, at an undetermined moment.

A low-flying cloud apparently hit the hill just opposite Gamone, and then subsided into the Cirque de Choranche, where it is henceforth firmly entrenched. The cloud has descended upon a rural pathway, blocking it completely. The mayor has called upon emergency services, equipped with helicopters, to see if they can dislodge the cloud, which threatens citizens of the commune with its terrifying vaporousness.

Door in my cellar

My stone cellar finally has a stout wooden door at its southern end.

One of these days, I'll build a staircase up to the ground level, where my lawnmower is parked. But there's no urgency. The immediate purpose of this doorway is to keep out the winter cold. A craftsman in Pont-en-Royans built me this tailor-made door for a quite reasonable price, and he installed it firmly in the opening by means of long screws sunk into the stone. But it's up to me now to use concrete to seal the gaps between the wooden frame and the stone wall of the cellar. As you can see from the following photo, these gaps are quite irregular in width and form:

That photo also reveals that the oval form of the stone at the top of the opening is totally asymmetrical, meaning that the door, too, has to correspond to this asymmetrical shape. That's Gamone! Everything here is out of alignment... as if the fact that the property is located on mountain slopes meant that the builders were no longer capable of getting anything straight. But I've come to take asymmetry for granted. I think of it as the normal state of affairs. I would surely be terribly anguished to live in a house where all the flat surfaces were perfectly horizontal, all the walls were perfectly vertical, and all the angles were right angles. Happily, Gamone is considerably more topsy-turvy.

Pheasant in my rose garden

From my bathroom window, I glimpsed a pheasant in my rose garden.

I rushed downstairs with my camera, hoping to get closer to the bird. I had just enough time to obtain a poorly-focused closeup shot before Fitzroy scented the pheasant's presence, and chased him away.

In flight, a pheasant makes a strange sound, almost as if it had a motor. I can't imagine what kind of satisfaction a hunter obtains by firing at such a disoriented and defenseless creature.

Mysterious objects at Gamone

Up until today, my collection of mysterious objects at Gamone has included as star exhibits the following specimens (all of which have been presented on my Antipodes blog, which seeks constantly to stay abreast of avant-garde technology):

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The red machine peels apples (the fruity kind, not the Cupertino models), the spiral prong enables you to roast unpeeled apples over an open fire, and the device at the bottom helps you to blend butter and flour when you're about to prepare an apple pie.

Well, this new mysterious object (purchased this morning in St-Marcellin) has nothing to do with apples... but rather with other Gamone fruit. My new mysterious object is not particularly photogenic, since its principal organ is composed of elliptically-shaped wires, and it's not easy to take a photo of an empty oval space. I warned you: This object is elusive! The following vague photo suggests that it's a kind of wire-framed rugby ball attached to a long stick... which is almost what it is, in fact.

My scientific/literary hero Richard Dawkins indicated recently (I forget where) that he didn't like the idea of swimming in rivers where nasty fluvial creatures (that's an elegant synonym for carnivorous fish) might bite his balls off. Imagine, for a moment, a momentous scenario in the underwater kingdom. A mother fish returns home with a fabulous gastronomical feast for her baby descendants in the wondrous chain of procreation: Dawkins's balls! Then there's that nasty business in Dawkins's autobiography about a schoolmaster who, in the words of the author, "pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts".

While I hardly imagine that my favorite writer reads Antipodes, I would not wish to evoke dramatic memories. I hesitate therefore before revealing that the mysterious object I purchased this morning is a nut grabber. To be clear, that's the French name. In English, I should specify that it's a walnut grabber... but, as the bishop said to the actress, nuts are nuts. Now, if ever Richard Dawkins were reading this blog post, I would suggest that he shut his eyes while I publish this closeup image of the metallic rugby ball (Dawkins, if I understand correctly, is not of a South African sporting nature) that grabs nuts that happen to be lying around indolently on the ground, as if they'd never heard of Saturday night fever.

In fact, my new toy is an old man's device that enables you to pick up walnuts without bending over. I don't know about you, dear reader, but I'm old enough to appreciate such inventions. But don't get wrong: I've never been particularly accustomed to bending over—neither forwards nor backwards—during my long and fulfilled existence in the domains of science, philosophy, technology, sex and walnuts.

As you will have gathered, there was no prize for guessing the identity of my newly-acquired mysterious object... but I offer you, as a gift for participants, a delightful everyday image—which you can share with my dog Fitzroy (a nutty connoisseur)—of a basket of Gamone walnuts.

Baby donkey at Gamone

The day before yesterday, as I was about to set out on my usual early-morning stroll with Fitzroy, I was alarmed by a strident donkey bray from one of my neighbor's animals. Rushing up the hill, I witnessed the presence of a baby alongside the black female named Alice. The new-born donkey was struggling to get up onto its legs. No sooner had it done so than it toppled over and slid a few meters down the hillside. Reaching the Ageron home, I rang the doorbell frantically and yelled out to Jackie. Fafa appeared at the window, and I explained that a baby donkey had just been born. Within a few minutes, we were all down alongside the mother and her baby, who appeared to be in perfect shape.

Jackie announced that it was a female, whereupon Fafa proclaimed that it would be called Victoria. We looked on for half-an-hour to make sure that the baby Victoria had found her mother's teats. Jackie then picked up the baby and carried her down to the donkey shed, built on relatively flat ground.

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Throughout the day, both Jackie and I wandered back to the shed frequently to admire the mother and her baby. Jackie was enraptured by the beauty of the young animal, and caressed it as if it were his own baby. All of a sudden, he yelled out:

"Victoria has balls!"

We laughed a lot. I advised Jackie to get his eyesight tested. In any case, as the old French saying goes: "If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle." From that moment on, the glorious baby donkey had a new name: Victor.

Country lanes

Here in the Old World, the rural landscape has naturally inherited a vast assortment of ancient and less ancient man-made features. This is particularly true in the case of thoroughfares. In south-west England, for example, I've always had the impression that the main roads between big towns are often simply macadamized transformations of the old pathways used by horse-drawn vehicles. Passengers on the upper level of double-decker buses hurtling along such country roads are anguished by the experience of brushing up against overhanging branches of trees. On my few occasions of moving around in such settings in Britain, I've often had feelings of claustrophobia, and wondered what would happen if a driver were to find he had a flat tyre on a narrow road of this kind. The truth of the matter, I think, is that well-heeled Brits in this part of the world drive expensive vehicles that simply don't break down... As for the rest of humanity, they're no doubt smelly creatures from the mainland continent. So, as Shakespeare hinted, all's well that ends well.

Here in France, fortunately, narrow major roads of that British kind do not exist, since the state has systematically intervened to make sure that the public administration can knock down old buildings and acquire the necessary land surface to create thoroughfares of a decent width. And users of our rural roads include, of course, not merely local residents, tradesmen and tourists, but agricultural workers as well.

In the middle of summer, the mayor of Choranche (an agriculturalist) decided to set up an official enquiry into the idea of selling off some of the ancient public paths in Choranche. In the context of the enquiry, which culminated in a public meeting last Monday evening, residents of the commune (a hundred or so individuals) were surprised to discover that there had never been many significant requests to privatize parts of our public domain, apart from a few flagrant cases of tiny sections of paths that happened to pass uncomfortably close (for certain residents) to their houses... for the obvious reason that, once upon a time, householders were more than happy to have a track from their front door to the village.

In fact, the only noteworthy case of a lengthy segment of a public lane crossing a large area of privately-owned land concerns land owned by... the mayor himself! Insofar as it's thinkable that the mayor may have taken advantage of his elected role to tackle a purely personal problem (I hasten to point out that I totally refrain from expressing publicly my personal opinion on this matter), we might well be heading towards a situation in which the conclusions of the ongoing enquiry will be simply nullified by an administrative tribunal invoked by citizens who feel that the mayor has gone too far.

Aware that this official enquiry had been set up, I hastened to write a document aimed at protecting and indeed enhancing the public nature of the marvelous path that runs along the crest of the hill up behind Gamone. Known in olden times as Greenery Lane (le chemin du Vert), this ancient path—whose geographical contours remain perfectly detectable—was a segment of the principal itinerary between Pont-en-Royans and Presles. It came as no surprise to the mayor of Choranche to see me submit to the enquiry a document concerning Greenery Lane, because he knows that I've been trying for years to promote the idea of removing weeds from this track, setting up pathway signs, and encouraging hikers to discover this fabulous itinerary. Click here to download a PDF copy (with photos) of my 22-page French-language paper on Greenery Lane.

In fact, since I have to climb up the steep hill behind my house (donkey territory) to reach Greenery Lane, I don't wander up there very often. Over the last 20 years, my preferred pathway for almost daily walks—once with my dear departed Sophia, now with Fitzroy—is Gamone Lane, which is the non-macadamized extension, further up the slopes in the direction of Presles, of the roadway that leads up to my house and the neighboring Ageron property.

A fortnight ago, when I was wandering exceptionally up along Greenery Lane, I discovered an excellent viewpoint down onto my everyday Gamone Lane (the pathway crossing the slopes).

These ancient rural lanes are patrimonial treasures, which must continue to belong to all of us, both residents and visitors. The idea of privatizing and selling them off is utter heresy. Fortunately, there are now so many informed and patrimonially-sensitive citizens dwelling in this part of the world that the mayor's crazy intentions are surely doomed to fail.

There will be municipal elections in France early next year. Some of us who've attempted to do the electoral arithmetic for Choranche conclude sadly that the commune has a sufficient quantity of conservative old-timers to guarantee the reelection of the present mayor. Fair enough. Enlightened citizens—most often "foreigners" whose ancestors were born in faraway places beyond the tiny confines of Choranche—will continue to oppose any stupid attempt to sell off our country lanes.

Reached the roof

In November 2012, I started to purchase pipe elements for the erection of a chimney system for a future wood stove. Prior to that date, I had devoted days of effort to a tedious and horribly dusty operation that consisted of making a wide hole in the 20cm-thick slab of reinforced concrete between the ground level and the upper floor of my house. Finally, last January, I decided upon the stove model that I preferred (a French-manufactured Invicta Bradford), as indicated in a blog post entitled Installation of my wood stove [display]. Since then, I've carried on purchasing and installing all the required elements of galvanized steel tubing (Poujoulat), according to the following schema:

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This afternoon, Serge Bellier and I carried out the ultimate operation, which consisted of placing a chimney on top of the roof, linking together the final elements of tubing, and firmly attaching the external chimney to the rafters of the house. Everything fell into place perfectly, and we didn't even have to cut through any rafters, or slice into any roof tiles. Here's a photo of Serge alongside the new chimney:

Serge was happy to discover that the chimney, now fixed firmly in place, turned out to be perfectly vertical.

 Retrospectively, I realize that there were several stages in the chimney construction process at which I might have possibly run into nasty obstacles of an almost insurmountable kind. Fortunately, in every case, I managed to avoid such traps, often through sheer luck. In other words, the entire installation process has been carried out in a very smooth fashion. Besides, the stove itself (from Bricomarché) and all the items involved in the erection of the chimney (from Castorama) were purchased for a global cost that is a mere fraction of what I would have paid if I had called upon a professional stove vendor and chimney installer.

At this stage, all that remains to be done is to order some extra-dry firewood (to be delivered in November). Then I'll simply wait for the start of the cold season.

Getting ready for the cold season

As I said in a recent blog post [display], I've just built a new version of the small website for the Châtelus camping site of my friends Daniel Berger and his wife Michèle. A few days ago, Tineke Bot translated the text of the website into Dutch, which means that the website [display] is now in French, English and Dutch. Daniel was so happy with my work on the website that he insisted upon doing something in return... although I tried to make it clear that I certainly don't create website stuff on local themes with the intention of receiving any kind of payment. Daniel told me he owned a mini digger (which had played a necessary role in the creation of his camping site on the slopes of Châtelus), and he suggested that there was surely some kind of job to be done at Gamone with the help of such a great little device. I replied that it would indeed be good if the track behind my house could be modified a little so that surface water coming down from the slopes would not tend to leak into my stone cellar. Daniel understood immediately the exact nature of the task to be carried out. A few days later, after working late at night on my computer, I happened to sleep until the middle of the following morning. When I awoke, I discovered with surprise that Daniel had arrived early in the morning, with his mini digger, and completed the job.

Last night, there was a heavy storm at Choranche, and I was happy to find that Daniel's remodeled angle of the track has succeeded in bringing surface water directly down onto the macadam road, so that there's no longer any trace of moisture getting into the house.

The day before yesterday, I drove to Valence to pick up the final two sections of tubing for the chimney of my new wood stove. Consequently, Serge will be helping me to install the rooftop chimney in the next few days (preferably at a moment when we're sure that there's no rainstorm on the horizon, because we have to cut a hole in the roof).

Meanwhile, my neighbor Gérard has delivered my annual order of top-quality firewood.

This new wood supplements a big stack of dry wood (not visible in the photo) left over from last winter. And it's quite likely that I'll purchase a small additional quantity of extra-dry wood, for the new stove, from the high-tech Barraquand factory in the nearby village of St-Laurent-en-Royans. I now need a convenient roofed zone, alongside the house, to store all this wood. So, that implies another quite big construction project, to be carried out as rapidly as possible. Here are the six basic posts, ready to be set up in concrete-filled holes.

It's timber that I purchased about 15 years ago, when I was thinking vaguely of erecting a more elegant shed for my donkey Moshé. I've bolted a steel base onto each post, and painted the wood with a nasty-smelling but highly effective protective product.

Over the last couple of days, I've already got my concrete mixer back into action and erected two posts. (When the rain stops, I'll take photos.) The future construction will occupy an area 5 metres wide and 2 metres deep, with a sloping tiled roof (in the style of my carport), located to the left of Fitzroy's kennel (just behind the pair of old brown wooden doors in the above photo of the wood pile), on a flat site that has been built up, over the years, by landfill.

Tricked by a donkey

Yesterday afternoon, when giving my donkeys a bunch of fresh thistles (their caviar), I was suddenly alarmed by the physical appearance of Fanette. Alongside the sleek silvery hide of Moshé, the 3-year-old female was terribly shaggy, and I had the impression that the forms of  bones were protruding in the region of her rump, as if she were becoming dangerously skeletal. The following photos, taken this morning, prove that Fanette is indeed shaggy, but they don't quite reflect the vision of my donkey that shocked me yesterday afternoon.

I jumped into the car and set off to St-Jean-en-Royans to ask the veterinarian for advice. When I explained that Fanette had not yet eliminated all her winter fur, the veterinarian told me that this has something to with the exceptional weather conditions over the last few months. Apparently he encounters a steady stream of owners of all kinds of animals—dogs, cats, horses, etc—who have observed the same phenomenon. In any case, the shaggy appearance of an animal that has retained a lot of its winter fur must not be interpreted as a symptom of any kind of health problem.

— Have you seen any traces of diarrhea? No.

— Are the donkey's rib bones visible? No, not at all, merely something that looks like rump bones.

— Does the donkey appear to be eating well? Yes. Fanette gulped down the bunch of thistles so quickly that Moshé couldn't get in for a nibble.

— Are you sure that your vision of "protruding rump bones" is not simply an illusion brought about by the presence of patches of thick fur alongside areas of bare hide? When I think about it, maybe you're right...

After leaving the veterinarian, I nevertheless dropped in at the local agricultural store to buy a bag of oats, on the off-chance that Fanette might be needing some kind of a boost in her summer diet. This morning, I had the impression that the donkeys looked at me as if they wondered whether I had gone crazy, serving them up fresh thistles and oats in the middle of their season of plenty, when they're surrounded by acres of luxurious grass and tasty weeds of all kinds.

In the following photo, you can distinguish the ridges of thick fur around Fanette's rump that looked to me like protruding bones, particularly when she was standing on sloping ground, and I was looking at her from behind.

You can also see the excessively fat bellies of both animals. The veterinarian told me that, ideally, I should be able to run my fingers over the sides of a donkey and feel the rib bones. For the moment, the main thing I feel on Fanette is fur. But how can you persuade a donkey to go on a diet?

OK, I was tricked by Fanette's fur. Now, when you've stopped laughing at me, let me ask you a simple question. Why do animals grow fur in winter, and then lose it in summer? Many of you probably said: To keep themselves warm in the winter cold. No, that's not a good answer. Keeping themselves warm in winter is indeed a favorable outcome of growing fur... but what I want to know is: What is the mechanism that makes the animal grow fur at exactly the time it's needed? You might have answered: Animals are designed that way. Fair enough... so long as you don't intend to say that God made them that way. Some of you might have added: Animals that happened to grow winter fur had a greater chance of survival (in the Darwinian sense) than animals without fur. That's true, too. But the answer I was looking for is the presence of genes, inside the donkey, that might be designated as a biological clock. A biological alarm clock, that rings a bell when the animal's fur-growing genes need to be triggered, in preparation for the forthcoming winter.

Geneticists have now identified precisely such biological clocks inside humans, and they are capable of studying the ways in which the operation of such devices can be upset by various external factors. We all know, for example, that some of our biological clocks become quite dysfunctional when we step onto a plane and fly to the Antipodes. And it takes a few days for the clocks to get back into a perfect operational state.

Getting back to Fanette, it appears that the internal mechanisms of her gene for shedding old fur have got screwed up by the weird weather. One day, donkey specialists with advanced training in genetic engineering will surely invent a technique for repairing biological clocks that have become temporarily unphased. Meanwhile, Fanette appears to be less upset than me about her shaggy appearance. And her old fur will inevitably be replaced by new fur by the start of the cold season.

Butterflies at Gamone

There's no doubt about the preferred flowers of butterflies at Gamone. Disregarding my roses, they spend all their time on the lavender bushes. Here's a lone specimen of Euplagia quadripunctaria, nicknamed the Jersey Tiger (Ecaille chinée in French), which is rather rare here.

Iphiclides podalirius, nicknamed Swallowtail (Flambé in French), is quite common here at Gamone, where I found a couple flitting around the lavender this morning.

Click to enlarge, enabling you to see a visiting honey bee.

Media reports speak of an alarming diminution in the quantity of butterflies in rural France, due to the use of pesticides. So, their abundance here is what might be termed (metaphorically) a blessing. At the level of their wonderful park, Tineke and Serge have found, like me, that the butterfly population at Choranche seems to be intact. In an adjacent domain, Serge was happy to inform me that his hive of honey bees appears to be, not only healthy, but in a prolific state of honey production.

I say to myself constantly that we have the privilege of living in a lovely corner of France.

Beating the heat

Over the last week or so, we've had a heat wave in France, and the region where I live has regularly been the hottest spot in France. But I haven't really been upset by the high temperatures. At Gamone, I merely have to leave the door open between the living room and the ancient stone-walled cellar (where I'm supposed to be installing a pizza oven), and a cool breeze floats through the house. Besides, the air passes through the stack of hay (for the donkeys) at the northern end of the house. So, I'm cooled by a sweet-smelling flow of air. But this happy experience remains solitary. It's such a delightful cooling system that I often say to myself that it's a pity I can't share my pleasure with other human beings. Ah, if only I were able to cool off in the company of friends, in a spirit of togetherness, like these lucky Chinese folk:

PS To be truthful, I was a little shocked by the fellow (in a colorful plastic tube) who's obviously taking advantage of the global situation (notice his liberated facial expression) to have a leak... not to mention the couple in the background (also enclosed in colorful plastic tubes) who give the distinct impression that they're fornicating. When the weather's hot, though, we can be excused for letting off steam in one way or another.

Walnuts in syrup

As I said in my recent blog post entitled Green walnuts, black hands [display], my first batch of green walnuts in sweet syrup has been put in jars and sterilized. The 10 or so jars are now labeled, and the product is ready to be eaten. It's a purely token production, of course, of a personal and experimental kind. But it might implicate local professionals in the walnut domain.

Last Sunday at midday, I invited Tineke and Serge around for lunch outside in the shade of my giant linden tree. After a Greek salad with feta, and a vaguely Greek main dish of braised chicken and mushrooms cooked with turmeric and ginger, we finally got around to tasting the walnuts as dessert. I believe I can speak for all three of us in saying that this product is delicious... and somewhat astonishing in that it doesn't seem to resemble any familiar fruit.

It's crunchy, and the walnut's inherent bitterness is replaced by the sweet aromas of cinnamon and cloves in the thick pinkish syrup.

I'm convinced that local restaurants would be capable of promoting this delicacy, if it could be produced in large quantities. An industrial producer of sweet walnuts would need to find ways and means of replacing all the tedious manual steps of my cottage-industry approach (such as peeling and piercing the fruit) by mechanized operations. And various quality-control tests would have to be carried out in a laboratory environment, as required by European laws. That, of course, is the stumbling block. I'm unaware of the existence of imaginative and daring local entrepreneurs who would be prepared to invest in the large-scale production and marketing of this foodstuff.

Baby beasts at Gamone

About a month ago, I caught sight of a small animal cantering down the road from my house, in the style of a rabbit. I only had a rear view of the moving animal, from a distance of some 50 metres, and it disappeared quickly, so I wasn't able to examine it. I concluded that it was probably a stray cat. Still, the cantering (or maybe galloping) movement seemed to be rather weird for a cat. And I have never seen rabbits or hares at Gamone. I came across a few small black turds on the road near my house, and they too didn't seem to have come from a cat. Besides, there are no scraps left lying around the house to attract cats. So, the identity of the small animal remained a mystery.

This morning, just after the annual passage of the fellow in a tractor who cuts the weeds alongside the narrow road up to Gamone, I think I finally solved the mystery. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take photos, but here's a Web image of the kind of beasts (same size and colors) that I saw quite clearly, at close range, half an hour ago.

In the vicinity of my mailbox, Fitzroy and I suddenly found ourselves alongside three baby wild boors (called marcassins in French) which promptly cantered off down the road, with my dog on their heels. They disappeared into the grass alongside the creek, and Fitzroy didn't seem to be capable of picking up their scent. A few seconds later, one of them reappeared on the road, and he squealed in terror when he found that Fitzroy was chasing him. But the marcassin disappeared instantly, and all ended well. I have the impression that Fitzroy was just as surprised as me to come upon such small beasts at Gamone.

I left a message with a friend in Châtelus, Daniel Berger, who's a hunter and an expert in the behavior of wild boors, asking him for advice on how I should handle this affair. Wild boors, as their name indicates, are wild beasts, and I don't know whether it's a good idea to have a litter of marcassins just alongside the house. I can imagine some of my readers saying: "Oh, they're so cute. William should catch them and keep them as pets, as friends for Fitzroy." Yes, a great idea... but totally impossible!

Seriously, I don't deny that I would indeed be pushed by an obscure physical desire to cuddle such splendid little beasts (like I cuddle Fitzroy) and to experience the power and determination they would no doubt exert in trying to break free. I would be fascinated, above all, by their marvelous little snouts, used both as a marvelous sensory device (enabling them to carry on dozing in the undergrowth while dogs abound all around them) and as a tool for digging up hard soil and rocks in their search for tasty food. Of the same order as basic human sexuality, the attraction that emanates from domestic and wild animals is a wonderful and mysterious force that surely takes me back mysteriously to my evolutionary origins as an African ape (an expression employed regularly by Richard Dawkins). I often feel that the silly adjective "cute" might in fact be based upon this profound archaic association (resuscitated thanks to a handful of surviving genes) between our ancestors and us. I'm reminded of these links, every morning at about 7 o'clock, when Fitzroy wanders upstairs into my bedroom, moves his front paws stealthily up onto the bed, reaches around until he finds one of my hands (I'm usually still half-asleep), and then starts to lick it conscientiously, cleaning me up (symbolically, at least) for the approaching day.

POST SCRIPTUM: The property of my neighbors Jackie and Fafa, a couple of hundred metres further up the road, is bordered all around by woods. So, it's logical that they receive more visits from wild animals than I do. Jackie tells me that he has often seen a couple of marcassins hanging around their house.

Maybe I've outsmarted my dog

I have never, at any moment, actually caught sight of Fitzroy stretched out on the Ikea lounge chairs in the living room at Gamone. In fact, he has got into the habit of spending a lot of time dozing on one or other of those two lounge chairs. I know this because I see the traces he has left there: hairs and traces of his muddy paws. But Fitzroy only ever jumps up onto the lounge chairs when I'm out of sight, upstairs. Fitzroy has a sufficient mastery of the science of optics to know that, when he can't see me, I usually can't see him. Fitzroy also understands perfectly well that I don't approve of the idea of his jumping up onto the lounge chairs. I don't know how and when he acquired that knowledge, because I've never had an opportunity of catching him red-handed up on the lounge chairs, and yelling at him or dragging him off. From a moral viewpoint, Fitzroy has the mentality of a pure criminal. That's to say, he considers that a crime only becomes a crime when you get caught. So, as long as you don't get caught, nobody could ever claim that you're doing anything wrong. So, Fitzroy concludes that his dozing on the lounge chairs would only become an offence if I were to actually see him dozing on the lounge chairs... which, as I said, has never been the case. No matter how quickly and quietly I try to race downstairs in an attempt to catch him perpetrating his misdeed, Fitzroy is systematically sufficiently alert and rapid to scramble back down onto the floor before I'm halfway down the stairs.  Sure, I then look at him sternly and reprimand him for having been up on the lounge chairs. But, as we all know, verbs in the past tense don't really count in the dialog between a master and his dog. More precisely, I have the feeling that dogs do in fact understand all the subtleties of the past tense just as well as the finest human grammarians, but they seem to have learned that we humans believe that dogs only exist in the here-and-now, and they take advantage of this state of affairs by deliberately looking dumb whenever we speak of anything that happened in the past.

But, from now on, all of this will be ancient history, because I've invented an ideal method of preventing Fitzroy from jumping up onto the lounge chairs. I've purchased enough heavy cloth to make a new set of robes for the pope, and I've thrown all this machine-washable material over the lounge chairs in such a way (with the help of lengths of wood posed on the arm-rests) that my dog will no longer envisage the chairs as a familiar and convenient place to snooze.

At least, that's the theoretical sense of my solution. Another of my beliefs about dogs is that Fitzroy is sure to understand that I've gone to some trouble (and expense) to implement this solution, and that it would be most unfriendly of him if he were to drag the covers off, or scramble up underneath them. We'll see what happens...

Green walnuts, black hands

It's the green-walnut season at Gamone.

The hard fruit, with their reptilian skin, are impregnated with a clear bitter liquid. If you start to gather these fruit without using rubber gloves, you're in for a nasty surprise. This is a photo of my left hand taken a week ago, when I started to pick green walnuts:

And here's another photo, taken this morning:

As you can see, it's worse and worse! I refrained deliberately from wearing gloves because I needed to peel the walnuts, and it's not easy to perform this operation with rubber gloves. Furthermore, I had to stick a metal spike through each walnut, both vertically and horizontally. Here's a saucepan full of peeled and spiked walnuts, soaking in water, after a couple of days in the sun:

On the Internet, there are all kinds of tales about, say, such-and-such a young couple who had spent an afternoon gathering green walnuts just a few days before their marriage... and they turned up at the church looking as if they'd just been using their bare hands to assemble a greasy old automobile engine. You see, once the walnuts have tattooed your hands in shiny black, there's no way of getting your hands back to normal. You simply have to live with your affliction until it wears off, about a fortnight later.

Funnily, though, various individuals on the Internet offer all kinds of remedies (all of which turn out to be totally false) for eliminating instantly the black stains. Common suggestions are bleach (a solution of sodium hypochlorite or hydrogen peroxide) and lemon juice. Somebody said that common cooking oils would get rid of the stains, and there was even a woman who said that the miracle product was toothpaste.

Now, why have I been gathering green walnuts? Well, as I explained in a blog post two months ago [display], I'm experimenting with a Greek Cypriot recipe for fresh walnuts preserved in sweet syrup. The precise description of this product (both in English and in French) is quite complicated, as I would have to mention the fact that the walnuts were picked when they were green and soft, whereas they soon turn black, and that the preservation process involves lots of boiling in syrup. Then I should maybe explain that the little brown blobs floating around in the dark syrup between the black walnuts are roasted almonds and cloves. For the moment, I think I'll refer to this product, from now on, simply as sweet walnuts (noix sucrées in French).

I'm currently preparing a second batch. Ten days ago, the walnuts in the first experimental batch were smaller and softer, and I spiked them first and started to soak them in the sun before peeling them.

Today, I conclude that it's preferable to peel the green walnuts from the very start. One of the aspects of the Greek Cypriot recipe that worried me a little, when I first saw it, was their advice to soak the walnuts, in the central phase of the preparation, in a quicklime solution. After all, quicklime is a most noxious chemical product, and the idea of using it during foodstuff processing appeared to me as somewhat weird.

In reality, this phase of the operations turned out to be unimpressive. Soon after the quicklime (in a cloth bag) is placed in a basin of water holding the walnuts, the calcium oxide is transformed rapidly into harmless calcium hydroxide, with a certain effervescent emission of heat (which I did not try to observe at close range). And it's a fact that the walnuts had a nice look and feel after this quicklime treatment.

From that point on, the processing consisted of boiling the walnuts, many times, in a dense solution of sugar, with a little lemon juice. I also assembled a few extra ingredients: almonds, cinnamon and cloves.

First, I roasted the white almonds in the oven for about 10 minutes. Then I added these ingredients to the walnuts in their syrup, and boiled up everything once again... until the syrup got thick. Fortunately, I have a powerful gas range for high-temperature cooking of this kind.

The big stainless steel cooking vessel is perfect for boiling the syrup and walnuts. Finally, I filled 10 jars with walnuts, covered them with syrup, and piled them up inside the sterilizer. Incidentally, I had taken advantage of a moment when the syrup was still cool to eat a walnut, both to verify that the product tasted fine (it certainly did), and also to verify that it wouldn't make me ill (it didn't, of course).

I filled up the sterilizer to the brim with water, placed the thermometer inside, and brought it to boiling point on the gas range.

The sterilization process necessitated what seemed to be an amazingly long period of intense boiling: 2 hours! All that remains, now, is to label the 10 jars. Then I'll carry out a tasting, with friends, as soon as possible. Between now and then, I need to learn how to cook some kind of Mediterranean honey-based pastry, to accompany my sweet walnuts.

Hay for next winter

I don't usually purchase hay for the donkeys at this time of the year. But my neighbor Jackie took advantage of the fact that farmers are currently cutting their grass and transforming it into blocks of hay. He ordered a big supply, which was delivered yesterday. But there was more than enough for Jackie's animals, so I was happy to buy the surplus of 30 blocks.

I'm storing it in a corner of the house (just behind my carport), and I plan to distribute small quantities only when there's snow on the slopes. Otherwise, if the donkeys have free access to such fodder, they simply set up residence alongside the bale of hay, and nibble away at it night and day... which is not a good situation. Donkeys tend to overeat constantly. For example, at this time of the year, my two donkeys are frankly far overweight. At the height of winter, they need to be encouraged to wander around, turning up the snow, searching for tasty wet weeds.