olives and artichokes - a Mediterranean garden

New blog

2011-05-25T22:56:00.001+02:00

This blog has moved to : http://olivesandartichokes.wordpress.com/

All previously published posts are now on the new blog and all new posts will be published there from now on.

Thanks to all for your visits and comments over the past three and a half years. I hope you’ll enjoy the new blog.

See you there!

First tomatoes

2011-05-24T18:02:00.001+02:00

Most of our tomato plants now have flowers on them and the Languedoc plants are looking especially sturdy, so I wasn’t surprised to see that they are the first plants to set fruit. An exciting time of year!

The double row of Languedoc tomato plants with the Roma plants in the background.

Marché fermier

2011-05-23T12:33:00.002+02:00

It was a sunny, hot day yesterday for the farmers’ market at Mas Rolland and the streets of the tiny old hamlet were filled with stalls, music, visitors and tables where people could eat. One of the nice things about this event is that it takes place before the holiday high season starts – it’s for people from the villages and towns around to enjoy before all the events which are put on for tourists in the summer.

We ate kid meat (from the Mas Rolland goat farm) stuffed with herbs from the garrigue, followed by a selection of goats’ cheeses, of course, and some friends had brought some of their own peaches, the first of this year’s crop, for our group to eat for dessert. The tables in the narrow street (above, right) were full by lunch time.

We bought cherries, goats’ cheeses and flour from a mill near Clérmont l’Hérault, and many other stallholders were offering their own produce for sale.

The confrerie of local winemakers walked through the village dressed in their wine-purple robes accompanied by jazz musicians.

Our first few cherries

As well as the delicious cherries we bought at the market, we also tasted our own wild cherries for the first time, picked yesterday morning – of the six cherries on our tiny tree, four were ripe, slightly tart but with a good flavour.

What a difference a year makes

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I’ve been reminded by reading this post by Michelle on From Seed to Table, that I’ve been meaning to post photos of my caper plants. It was Michelle who originally sent me the seeds in autumn 2009 from which my plants have grown.

These are the capers sown in December 2009, as they are today. The plants got mixed up while I was away last summer, but I think the one on the left here is an Italian caper and the one on the right is Croatian. They’ve grown a lot of extra leaves just in the last few weeks and now look like ‘proper’ plants, so I’m very pleased with them.

Last December (2010) they were like this (left) and a year ago they were seedlings in small pots (above).

And the next year’s plants….

In November 2010 I sowed some of the seeds left over from last year and five of these have germinated. Soon I shall have to decide which of the two to remove in the pots where two have germinated, cutting them rather than re-potting them to prevent root disturbance to the other ones, because caper plants are very sensitive to this.

It will be a long time until I can harvest the weight of capers that Michelle does, but I feel that these plants are on their way!

Olive flowers

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Our Lucque olive tree is covered in tiny flowers, a promise of a good crop in the autumn.

Mid-May in the garden

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With 70 tomato plants, 30 peppers, 4 cucumbers and 16 aubergines put out in their beds in the garden, we’re getting through the summer planting. There are still courgettes, pumpkins (several varieties) and butternut squash plants waiting, and growing bigger every day, on the balconies.

The Kolaska pepper plants, planted out between the cucumbers (out of shot) and the chard and haricot beans.	A row of Turkish pink tomato plants, grown from seeds sent to me by beste in Normandy, next to a row of ungrafted aubergine plants.
Marseillais pepper plants (some of the few plants we’ve bought this year), then a row of ungrafted aubergines, then a row of grafted aubergines.	Roma tomatoes (left), Languedocian plants, growing very vigorously and starting to flower (centre), on on the right of the picture a mixed row of Coeur de Boeuf, Andes and Ananas.

At last the first sowing of haricot beans (sowed at the end of March) are flowering. The second sowing are almost catching up,

The Greek sweetcorn, grown from seeds sent to me by gaiashope are doing well and I’m hoping they’ll be well established by the time the free water from the stream runs out. Last year, gaiashope says, she watered them only 10 times in the whole summer, so they’re very drought resistant. On the right are 4 small artichokes I picked this morning, and put straight into a bowl of water to get out the earwigs which seem to like them (although they don’t eat them).

Spring fair

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Today la rue de l’Eglise, the widest street in the old part of the village, and the place where the Wednesday market is usually held were lined with stalls selling goats’ cheese, sheep’s cheese, honey, wine, olive oil, flowering plants, vegetable garden plants, asparagus, strawberries, and handmade crafts. The weather was dull in the morning but it cleared up later, and the day seemed to be a success.

lemon trees, tomato plants, flowers……
goats’ cheeses from Mas Rolland……	asparagus, churros and children’s rides…..
our friends from le Moulin de Casso, which I wrote about when it first opened, selling their olive oil.

We bought some Bouteillan and some Picholine olive oil, each with its own distinctive and delicious flavour. The Picholine oil went very well first on its own with bread and then with some Mas Rolland goats’ cheeses at lunchtime, accompanied by a salad made with leaves from the garden and grated carrot and apple.

Apples and cherries

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We’ve never before had so many apples as there are on our tree this year. It almost makes up for the poor apricot crop (I can see two fruits on that tree), but I’d much prefer to have apricots instead. It’s exciting that our small wild cherry tree, planted as a sucker given to us by our neighbour about two and a half years ago, is bearing its first fruit (below, right).

And those irises again, framing some orange poppies:

Artichokes and a lot of spring flowers

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I picked three more artichokes this morning, making 9 in all this year, so the plants are doing much better than they did last year and there are plenty more still growing.

It’s the most colourful time of the year in the garden and in the garrigue because all the plants flower now before dying down again when the weather gets too hot and dry for them from June onwards.

Cistus (left), poppies (above) and irises (right).

And because the irises look so lovely now and won’t last for long I took a lot of photos of them this morning:

Planting out aubergines and finding a green lizard

2011-05-02T23:53:00.001+02:00

We’ve planted out about a dozen aubergine plants our neighbour gave us – six of them next to a row of peppers on the left below. We usually grow the grafted plants, bought from a garden centre, because they produce so many more aubergines than the ordinary plants, but this year we’ll try these, as well as a few grafted ones. The Greek maize I planted out a couple of weeks ago is doing well (on the right below).

Sweet corn (maize) and a row of lettuce.

We also planted a row of chard, also given to us by our neighbour, next to the two rows of haricot beans which are growing quite well. I picked the rest of last year’s chard today as it was going to seed, and we ate it this evening with pasta and cured ham.

Our ‘big’ iris has started to flower (left below), later but more spectacularly than our white and mauve irises, and the red salvia was attracting a few bees (right).

And the green lizard under the olive tree

They’re much more shy than the brown wall lizards, so I was lucky to catch this one on camera!

Our garlic is growing quite tall, but I don’t think it will ever be as good as the garlic I bought from this stall in Pézenas market on Saturday. It’s very fresh and tastes wonderful chopped raw onto salads and other vegetable dishes.

And home to lunch….

After working in the garden this morning we came home to a lunch of aubergine puréed with olive oil, garlic and oregano, some broad beans straight from the garden cooked with cured ham, and goats’ cheese from Roujan with thyme from the garden and olive oil that was milled in the village from olives from Servian, only about 10 kilometres away – all local, fresh and delicious!

April in the garden

2011-04-29T08:31:00.001+02:00

It’s the greenest time of the year, after the spring rain and before the summer drought, so the weeds as well as the flowers and vegetables seem to grow visibly from day to day. We’ve eaten our first artichokes – thinly sliced hearts sautéed in olive oil until the edges of the leaves were browned and the centres were soft. All they need then is a little salt and pepper – it’s one of my favourite ways of eating artichokes.

The cistus flowers are out now, each lasting only a day but being replaced by others the next day. This cricket was resting on one of them:

Planting out the first tomatoes

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We’ve planted out 12 Roma plants (left) and 18 Languedocian plants so far….many more still waiting.

The cistus flowers (left) each last only a day before the petals fall, but there are plenty of buds in the garden and in the wild in the garrigue. The irises last a bit longer – these (centre) are in our garden, but they’re often planted along the edges of vineyards too. The orange poppy (right) is in the garden too, and all the rough patches of ground between the vineyards are covered with the flowers of the red, wild ones.

First sight of an artichoke

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Several of the artichoke plants have small artichokes developing among their leaves, so it looks as though it may be a better crop than last year when the plants took too long to recover from the cold winter.

We should be eating our own artichokes within a week or so!

Roses and olives


	olive flower buds look so insignificant but the fruit will make a good harvest in the autumn, we hope.

…about to flower, while the broom and Banksiae Rose are almost over….

Planting out the maize and lettuce

2011-04-12T23:30:00.001+02:00

I was sent 10 Greek maize (sweetcorn) seeds by Gaia’s Hope and they all germinated. They’re a variety that are very drought resistant, so I hope they’ll do well here. Today we planted them out, as well as some lettuce plants that our neighbour gave us.

I sowed the seeds in compost in toilet rolls (left above) and soon after they germinated they had huge roots and were outgrowing the tubes. I took the cardboard tubes off before putting the plants in the ground in case they dried out too much and stopped the roots growing through properly.

Spring flowers and an alien appearance

The first cistus flowers are starting to appear – this one (above, left) is by the path to our garden on a neighbour’s plot. The Muscat d’Hambourg table grape vine has tiny flower buds on it (centre). And work continues on the housing development next to the garden, with the incongruous appearance of a theodolite above an ancient dry stone wall (right).

A green salad (left) made from leaves from the garden – lettuce, spinach, broad bean, rocket, celery – with slices of cou farci we made with one of the duck necks we brought back from the Gers. I mixed sausage meat (100 % pork) with raisins soaked in white wine, salt, and pepper, and used it to stuff the skin of the duck neck. The stuffed necks were then added to the pan with all the duck fat and the legs to make confit, and simmered gently for two and a half hours. They can then be stored in a cool place covered with fat for weeks, or even months, although I don’t think ours will last very long. The leeks (in the right) are some remaining from our very poor crop this year. They were very tasty, though, cooked in white wine, left to cool and eaten as a first course with salt, pepper and a vinaigrette dressing.

More spring flowers and a tiny apricot

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Apple blossom – there’s much more than last year.	Cherry blossom – our first year.
A rather raggedy iris.	The bay trees are covered in flowers.
The broom is flowering here in the garden and all over the hills in the garrigue.	There aren’t many apricots on our tree, but it’s going to be a better year than last year.

And the last of the red cabbages

There were three small red cabbages left and threatening to go to seed, so we picked them all this morning, sliced them and cooked them with two sliced onions sautéed in olive oil, a tablespoonful of whole cumin seeds, two tablespoons of brown sugar, a cup of red wine vinegar and a cup of water, plus some salt and pepper, left it all to simmer for about 45 minutes until the cabbage was cooked. It can now be frozen in meal-sized bagfuls.

Vines and roses

2011-04-06T17:36:00.001+02:00

In the vineyards, the vines are growing bright green new leaves:

The wild cherry trees, given to us by our neighbour a couple of years ago as very young side shoots, are flowering for the first time:

At midday we have to shelter from the sun to eat our lunch, yesterday a tuna salad with leaves from the garden:

And the Banksiae rose has flowers and plenty more buds about to open:

Foire au gras and the last day of March in the garden

2011-03-31T19:55:00.002+02:00

At the weekend we went on a trip to the Gers in south-west France, guided by friends who used to live in that area and know it well. The highlight of the visit was the Monday morning foire au gras in Samatan, devoted to the sale of foie gras and fattened ducks for making confit de canard and other south-western delights. I know that some people find the production of foie gras distasteful – if you are one of these then you should fast forward to the spring flowers at the end of this post. I’ve written about this subject before on my blog a couple of years ago. I believe that properly raised ducks and foie gras represent sustainable local food in an area which is well-suited to raising them. The life of a duck on the farm of a small producer in the Gers is so much better than that of an industrially kept chicken or duck that they cannot really be compared, so I make no apology for being a supporter of the traditional foie gras farmers.

The marché au gras at Samatan

Every Monday morning throughout the winter and until the end of March this market has two sessions – the first from 9.30 to 10.30 a.m. when producers sell duck carcases and a huge hall is filled with tables where people display anything from 20 to a hundred or so of their ducks for sale at very reasonable prices (around 2 euros per kilo this week). This session of the market then closes and another opens to sell foie gras. Again small local producers bring small numbers of foies gras for around 30 euros per kilo (this week). During spring and summer, from next week onwards the two markets are combined and the market is usually smaller although, apparently, the Easter Monday market is very popular and busy.

You choose your duck (above left) and then it is taken to be weighed at central scales before you pay for it. The foie gras is weighed by each stall holder. For 1 euro per bird you can take it to a cutting room where two men were working non-stop to joint the ducks. Some people had trolleys filled with twenty or so birds, for restaurants perhaps, others like us had just one.

These ducks are specially reared to have plenty of fat for preserving them and are not meant for roasting. Our duck was cut into: 2 legs and 2 wings for making confit de canard, 2 magrets or breasts which can be grilled, the neck to be used to make cou farci – the skin stuffed with pork meat to make a kind of sausage, the giblets for preserving in fat, and the carcass which was delicious grilled so that we could eat the tender slivers of meat that were left on it. I’ll write another post in the next day or so about how we have made confit, cou farci and preserved the foie gras.

In another market hall next door there was a live poultry and vegetable market, with farmers selling baskets of fresh eggs by the door.

The chickens in cages looked a bit cramped, but were heading for a life in the open air as free range layers – nothing like the life of a battery hen!

Above left, the part of the market hall which is unused at this time of year, but would be used in winter when the market would be bigger, showing the size of this south-western phenomenon. On the right, one of the streets of the town where the usual market was taking place.

And the garden….

We came home with some oignons de Trébons, similar to our local Lézignan onions but with smaller bulbs. There’s some more about them in French here. Natives of the south-west, they may not do so well in our dry climate, but it’s worth a try.

Above left, some of the new onions next to the second sowing of broad beans; right, the artichoke plants are doing well and we’re hoping for artichokes next month.

The tulips are out.	One of the cherry trees given to us by our neighbour a couple of years ago is flowering for the first time.
Borage	and bay.

Re-potting

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Tomatoes….

We’ve potted about 50 plants, with the Marmande and St Pierre still to do when they’re ready.

And small two lemon trees we’ve grown from seed we found sprouting inside a lemon a year or so ago were ready to go into bigger pots.

The pepper seedlings aren’t quite ready to go into pots yet:

And paella for lunch…

Onions from Lézignan

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‘La Cébe des Lézignan es douça coumo lou pan’ (Occitan for ‘Lézignan onions are sweet as bread’. (from Monsieur Lucas’s website)

This morning we went on our annual trip to Lézignan la Cèbe near Pézenas to buy seedlings of the famous onions that grow there. I wrote about this village and its onions last year so I won’t describe them in detail now, but I’ll just say that they are very sweet when we start to pull them in June to eat in salads or to grill on the barbecue. Later in the summer they become less sweet and we use them for cooking. This morning we planted 50 seedlings next to the 50 seedlings of slightly earlier but similar Spanish onions.

Looking back at last year’s post about Lézignan onions, I see that while Lo Jardinièr planted the onions I sowed haricot beans…and exactly the same happened this year. I sowed a row of Contender beans, a few days later than the tradition date here which is 19 March, St Joseph’s Day.

Hummingbird hawk moth

I’ve seen a couple of these during the past week or so, rather earlier than usual I think, and managed to get a couple of photos of this one on our aubretia flowers this morning:

They’re hard to photograph as they never settle on a flower, but just put down a long proboscis into the centre of the flower, which can be seen here beneath the blur of the beating wings.

Spring lunch

2011-03-21T10:47:00.001+01:00

At last the rain stopped and we were able to have a long, lazy lunch in the garden with friends.

We started with onions straight from the ground and grilled on the barbecue…..

served with romesco sauce (ground almonds, red pepper, paprika, garlic, tomato) and a bottle of excellent rosé brought from Navarra by our friends.

And the jasmine flowers are out:

Rain….and more rain

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It’s been raining almost constantly for four days now – very welcome for the water supply but not very good for the morale or for spring work in the garden.

First lizard and a trip to the goat farm

2011-03-10T15:00:00.001+01:00

It was a beautiful spring morning after a cold night, around freezing temperature at dawn but up to about 20 C by midday, perfect for our trip to Mas Rolland to fetch a trailer-load of goat manure.

The vineyards and the garrigue-covered hillsides looked beautiful in the sunlight and when we got to the garden there were lizards sunning themselves on the wall by the path. Several of them scuttled under stones as I approached, but I managed to catch this one in time.

There’s nothing quite like goat manure for the garden. We’ll be using this to improve the soil in the beds where we’ll be growing peppers and tomatoes this summer.

The apricot tree is still blossoming and the flowers were attracting a lot of bees – a good sign for this year’s fruit.

Daffodils, aubretia and jasmine are flowering, and there are a lot more jasmine buds still about to open.

Home to a good lunch….

Lettuce and wild rocket from the garden, sobresada and peppered sausage brought for us

from the Spanish border by our neighbour, chorizo and jambon cru from Lacaune.

Tomatoes germinated

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The tomato seeds we sowed last weekend had all germinated by Friday (except for the Marmande) and were ready to go in one of the mini-greenhouses that Lo Jardinièr made last year. In the mornings we keep them inside but next to a window that has sun, in the afternoons they go out on the balcony. The seedlings seem to be growing very quickly! Now that they no longer need seed-starter box we have sowed the pepper seeds.

Varieties of peppers sown from seed we have saved or been given by friends:

Kandil dolma – a Turkish bell pepper with a very distinctive flavour. Only one germinated last year so we’re hoping for more this year.

Red marconi

Corno di toro

Spanish long pepper – seeds given to us by our neighbour.

Long pepper – seeds given to us by our garden neighbours.

Nardello

Piment d’Espelette – seed from paprika peppers bought in the village of Espelette in the French Basque country. As there is an appélation controlée for peppers grown in the area of that village I’m not sure whether the ones we grow here can be called Espelette.

Chorizo – another paprika variety. Seeds saved from peppers we grew last year from seed given to us by a friend in Navarra.

In the garden

The broad beans we sowed in autumn are flowering now and the second row we sowed a few weeks ago are coming up well, along with a few of the mangetout peas which always seem to be slower to germinate.

And two good meals from the weekend…

Above left, the cawl (Welsh stew or soup made with lamb, leeks, potatoes and carrots) we served for our soirée galloise on Friday, when we invited 14 French/Occitan friends to celebrate St David’s Day with us, and right, the paella I made for Sunday lunch with pork, rabbit and chorizo.

Red cabbage

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I saw bigger red cabbages for sale in the market this morning, but we’re quite proud of this one because it came from our garden. There are several more ready to eat.

From the garden….	to the kitchen….
to the cooking pot with onions, ground cumin and a little vinegar….	to the plate. It went very well with Lacaune sausage from the market.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi / Saint David’s Day

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And this year (unlike last year’s cold spring) there are a few daffodils out in the garden for the event…

On Friday evening we’ll be holding our now traditional soirée galloise for our Occitan/French friends and we’re planning a meal of laverbread (seaweed) and bacon, cawl (a Welsh soup/stew of lamb, leeks, onions and potatoes), Caerphilly cheese and welsh cakes. It’s the only day in the year when we depart from our usual Mediterranean diet!

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi hapus i bawb! / Happy St. David’s Day to all!

When does the gardening year start?

2011-02-27T14:41:00.001+01:00

One of the things I like about gardening, especially in the Mediterranean climate, is that the year doesn’t seem to end, or rather the seasons merge into each other and we’re always looking forward to something. As we take up and burn the dead tomato plants in the autumn we’re starting to sow broad beans and peas and thinking of spring, and all through winter we cut salad and other leaf vegetables from the garden. But if I had to choose a start to the gardening year it would be now when we are sowing our tomato plants and soon will be sowing peppers and courgettes, because these Mediterranean vegetables seem to be the most important in our cooking and in most gardens in this area. So I felt very excited this morning when we sowed seven varieties of tomato seeds:

Roma and Andean for sauces and bottling

Ananas and Coeur de Boeuf for salads

Languedoc – a local variety which is well adapted to hot dry conditions

Saint-Pierre – an all-round variety which usually crops well, although not so well last year

Marmande – a variety from the south-west of France, which didn’t do very well last time we grew it here (maybe it’s too hot and dry for it), but we’re giving it another chance this year

All these varieties of seeds are now on the seed starter box which Lo Jardinièr made two years ago. As soon as the tomatoes have germinated we’ll start the peppers on it.

The new gardening year has begun!

Blossom on the apricot and other signs of spring

2011-02-25T18:45:00.001+01:00

We arrived back yesterday evening from grey, cold Wales, although with a lot of happy family memories of our holiday, to find that we’d travelled back into spring. People here warn that we may still have cold weather but today has been glorious with bright warm sunlight and the temperature up to 18 degrees C.

The apricot tree is covered in flower buds, some of which have begun to open.

More spring flowers

Violets (left), aubretia just beginning to flower (centre) and daffodils (right).

And a salad for lunch

A mix of lettuce and spinach leaves picked this morning.

Sweet onions and more signs of spring

2011-02-15T12:40:00.004+01:00

Our neighbour brought us a bunch of sweet onions from the Spanish border (not far away, a drive of an hour and a half perhaps and a frequent trip for many people here). These onions are a slightly earlier variety than the local one and so they’re useful to have before the oignons de Lézignan are ready to eat. They don’t need to be widely spaced and the ones that wouldn’t fit in this double row have been very closely spaced to be eaten as spring onions.

Crocuses and rose buds

The crocuses were opening in the sun this morning and the Rosa banksiae has not only leaf buds but flower buds as well.

‘Des arbres et des hommes’

On Friday night the Cercle Occitan organised an very interesting talk by the ethno-botanist Josiane Ubaud about the social and cultural reasons for the planting of different species of trees in the Languedoc region. She divides the trees into different groups. Social markers are those trees which were planted to show the social status of the owner of a property and foremost among these are the cedar, planted around prosperous winemaking domains from the eighteenth century onwards, and the palm, planted at seaside resorts to attract tourists and more recently in private gardens. Cultural, sacred markers are those which have been considered sacred since pre-Christian, Celtic times. Cypress trees are often planted at the entrances to cemeteries and because of this they have often been associated with death, but in fact are markers of passage, and so are planted at crossroads too. Their beautiful curving shapes, especially when they are blown by the wind, have been described by the Occitan poet Max Rouquette as flambadas sacradas, sacred flames. The bay tree (laurier noble), and specifically the female tree which bears berries, has been considered sacred since the time of the ancient Greeks and has give us the French word baccalauréat (berry of the laurier). The olive tree has also been seen as sacred throughout the ages of Mediterranean civilisation, because of its longevity and its ability to rejuvenate when apparently it has been killed. In the Languedoc, though, it has too much of an agricultural history to have been planted much in sacred places. Finally, the European hackberry tree (Celtis australis, micocoulier in French) has an Occitan name which demonstrates its sacredness: fanabreguièr which comes from the Latin word for temple (fanum) and the Celtic word for sacred wood (brogilum). We don’t see these trees often in this part of the Languedoc, as they are more likely to be planted to the east of us, near Montpellier. As well as traditionally being sacred, they are useful trees too, because they are deciduous and so give shade in summer but lose their leaves in winter to let the light through.

Above are some of my photos of some of the trees mentioned in Josiane Ubaud’s lecture: left, an olive tree (of course!), centre, a palm in the garden of a substantial house in Roujan, definitely a marker of social status, and right, a line of cypress trees planted on the boundary of a piece of land.

‘Un jardin sec n’est pas un jardin pauvre’

A dry garden is not a poor garden. This was repeated a couple of times by Josiane Ubaud who feels very strongly, as I do, that in this region we should not try to reproduce the lush green gardens of wetter climates, with their lawns and colourful summer flowers. This is something we have tried to follow when growing decorative plants in our garden – we try to plant only those varieties that can survive without watering once they are established.

We're hoping that Mme Ubaud will return next year to give the second part of her lecture - about the useful, decorative and food-providing trees. If you read French, her website is very interesting.

Slavery in Europe – another reason to grow your own

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Here in southern France we see the Spanish lorries racing along the motorway taking salad produce from the south of Spain to northern European supermarkets, as well as our own shops and markets in the Languedoc, using up the earth’s resources to satisfy shoppers’ need for out-of-season vegetables. There are many arguments against this industry, to do with pollution, water and energy conservation as well as humanitarian concerns. Year-round fresh salads – tomatoes, lettuces, peppers – may seem like an affordable luxury, almost a necessity even, these days, but they come at great human cost to the workers who grow them in the polythene-covered acres of once dry land in southern Spain.

On the Guardian website today there’s a report by Felicity Lawrence about the poverty, deprivation and terrible living conditions experienced by immigrant workers from Africa, who now find themselves without even the low-paid work they used to have and are unable to return home because they cannot afford it. These people, when they can find work, are paid much less than the minimum wage and cannot complain because of their unofficial status in Europe. As the activist interviewed at the end of the film puts it, we should refuse to buy produce that results from this form of exploitation.

The video lasts for over 12 minutes, but it’s worth watching to see another side of ‘holiday’ Spain. Here's the link: tp://gu.com/p/2md95

And then we should all avoid those plastic-packed, unnaturally perfect-looking Little Gem lettuces and eat locally grown, seasonal food.

Perfect Sunday

2011-02-06T21:56:00.001+01:00

We know it won’t last and it will be cooler again in the next few days, so with the temperature over 20 degrees we took advantage of the glorious weather today and cooked our first lunch in the garden this year.

But first some planning for this year…

I sat in the sun and roughed out a plan for planting this year… I hope we’ve got room for everything! We may not follow the plan exactly but will use it as a guide.

The autumn sowing of mangetout peas seemed to have suffered from the cold, so I sowed another row, while Lo Jardinièr did some weeding and dug in some of the horse manure we collected yesterday.

an apéritif…

It was busy at the gardens this morning, with many out enjoying the sun, and one of the friends who stopped to chat joined us for an apéritif.

and then some lunch…

Red pepper, sweet onion and oregano salad, followed by barbecued lamb chops and onions.

Birds and insects

The birds certainly thought it was spring and were flirting and nesting in the bay trees at the end of the garden. There were a lot of bees and carpenter bees on the rosemary flowers, the blue-black wings of the carpenter bees glistening in the light.

Carpenter bees are interesting, big, shiny and noisy. We see them in the garden all through the spring and summer, often inspecting the holes in the ends of bamboo poles, one of the places where they like to nest. When I googled the name for more information I was shocked to find that many of the results consisted of information as to how to use pesticides to get rid of these bees, but in the garden they seem to do little damage and a lot of good, pollinating the flowers. For more information see this link.

Leaves and light

2011-02-05T15:04:00.001+01:00

Without the chilly north wind today would be a warm spring day (20 degrees C was forecast) and the light is clear and bright.

Above: olive branches and a blue sky; aloe vera leaves in dappled shade; bay leaves.

Above: left and centre, hopeful signs on our apricot tree which has plenty of flower and leaf buds. It had the same last year but the blossom was killed off by late cold weather at the beginning of March, so we had only one fruit on the tree. This year, I hope the crop will be better. And, right, flower buds about to open on our neighbour’s almond tree.

This morning we collected another trailer full of well-rotted manure for the beds where we’ll grow tomatoes and peppers this summer. We also picked two lettuces and some red cabbage leaves – that’s just about all we can eat from the garden at the moment. The chard and spinach are beginning to grow again after a dormant few weeks in December and January, but need to be left to recover from the cold for a few days longer.

Time to sow more broad beans

2011-01-31T12:30:00.001+01:00

Today and tomorrow are said to be good days in the phases of the moon for sowing broad beans. Conditions in the garden were good for this too, after rain at the weekend and the horse manure we’d spread over the bean bed the previous weekend. We sowed the rest of a packet I bought last year of Sevilla broad (fava) beans, as well as some we had saved from last year’s crop. The plants sown in the autumn are doing well and don’t seem to have suffered from the cold as they did in last year’s severe frosts.

The rosemary has been in flower all through the winter, the garlic is growing well and there is bright green new growth on the olive trees following the pruning.

The chard and spinach plants seem to be starting to grow again, the red cabbages are hearting up and a few small turnips were ready to eat for lunch today.

In most of the vineyards around the village there was a lot of slow, cold work going on. Each vine has to be pruned by hand, one at a time, between November and March, when the viticulteur/euse chooses which are the best shoots to bear this year’s crop. In the picture below, these old vines (probably about 50 years old) have not yet been pruned. In the background there’s an olive grove and a mimosa tree in flower. A typical view of early spring in the Languedoc.

Light and, best of all, manure…

2011-01-22T14:48:00.001+01:00

The sun is still very low even at mid-day, but the low light looked beautiful through the climbing rose and passion flower leaves on our garden shelter, and through the olive trees, this morning.

We collected a trailer load of horse manure from the paddock where our friend whose grapes we picked keeps her horses. It will be great for the garden, as it’s well rotted, and we spread it on some of the beds that we’ve cleared. In a week or so we’ll go and fetch some more.

Modern communications in a wild landscape

We sometimes complain about what modern innovations are doing to the environment and we’re certainly not happy about the housing development next to our garden. The electricity pylons are unmissable, eyesores perhaps, but necessary, and next to the one on the left are two mobile phone masts which mean that finally there is reception for our mobiles in the village – everyone welcomes that!

Mountains, a small bird and soup from a giant pumpkin

2011-01-20T15:18:00.001+01:00

We had a good view of the Pyrenees from the hill between here and Magalas this morning. They are about 150 kilometres away and not always visible if the air isn’t really clear. When they appear, it’s always a shock to see how huge they are. There doesn’t seem to be much snow on the mountains at the moment.

Walking around the village this morning I saw this small bird on a climbing rose and have since identified it as a Goldcrest. The crest is clearly visible in the pictures, top and bottom right, below.

And spicy pumpkin soup

This is the biggest of the pumpkins we grew last season. It was too big to go on the scales but we think it must have weighed about 15 kilos. Lo Jardinièr made a wonderful spicy soup with part of it, for lunch today. The recipe is on the Mediterranean cuisine blog.

Mimosa: the first sign of spring

2011-01-16T23:05:00.001+01:00

Mimosa flowering in Bessan today.

We saw several other mimosa trees with blossom in Roujan too, a couple of weeks earlier than last year and the year before. Mimosa is usually the first of the spring blossom to appear here. It is not indigenous to the Mediterranean but was brought from Australia and seems to have adapted well to the conditions and become a natural part of the spring colour in this region.

A hint of spring?

2011-01-13T15:04:00.001+01:00

This morning for the first time for weeks the sun felt hot and it was 16 degrees C in the garden. I know the winter’s not over yet – we’re not even half way through January – but there was a suggestion in the air that spring may arrive eventually.

The garden in January

Just for the record, this is what the garden looked like this morning.

The rosemary has been flowering all winter and there were bees on it today. The broad beans look much better than they did this time last year and don’t seem to have been affected at all by the cold nights we had last month.

Olive pruning

I spent some time pruning the second of our two olive trees, the Lucque, not too drastically as it is still a very young tree that we planted only five years ago.

Before (left), during (above) and after (right)

The main aim when olive pruning is to open out the centre of the tree so I pruned any branches that were growing inwards, and I cut some of the straggly branches at the top. It’s growing into quite a nice little tree and it produced some good olives last year.

And a cauliflower

We picked this cauliflower – probably our last for this year, but there are still plenty of leaf vegetables: lettuces, red and green cabbages, spinach and chard, as well as some turnips, to feed us for the rest of the winter. The garlic and onions we planted in the autumn are all growing well too.

Cold harvest and warming onion soup

2011-01-06T13:50:00.001+01:00

There isn’t much to harvest in the garden at the moment. There will be more cauliflowers soon, and there are red and green cabbage leaves, but the chard and spinach seem to be waiting for longer days to produce new leaves. All through the winter, though, we have lettuces and we picked one today:

This will make a couple of good salads for us, with grilled goats’ cheese on toast, une salade de chèvre chaud, or with charcuterie.

Today we felt like something more warming, and Lo Jardinièr made this onion soup, cooking the onions in olive oil for over an hour so that they tasted really sweet and adding home-made chicken stock.

With a garnish of chopped parsley and garlic and accompanied by Aveyronnais bread and rustic paté with mushrooms, it made a delicious lunch on a cold, grey day.

Oysters for new year

2011-01-01T14:58:00.002+01:00

We opened these, added a dash of white wine, a little cream and some grated cheese, then grilled them, to eat at the start of an evening at home with friends that saw us at midnight toasting 2011 with Blanquette de Limoux – a methode champagnoise wine from the Aude which I think is as good as champagne – and Cava, a similar and equally good Catalan wine.

Happy new year!

Blwyddyn newydd dda!

Bonne année!

Bona annada!

To complete the Occitan new year greeting, I’ll wish all you gardeners Bona annada, plan granada (a happy new year, full of fruitfulness, or literally with many grains or seeds).

I was excited to find yesterday that my food photos, submitted for the December assignment, are reviewed on the Guardian Camera Club website here

Work and feasting

2010-12-29T23:14:00.001+01:00

We’ve had our family staying for the past week – the reason why I haven’t posted on this blog for a while – and yesterday the weather was so warm and sunny that we spent several hours in the garden and had our lunch there for the first time for weeks.

Before pruning the larger of our two olive trees quite severely I took photos of the branches in the sun.

We burnt some of the old year, and the sun was so warm there was even a butterfly on one of the cold frames.

A simple lunch in the sun – olives from the tree I’d just pruned, bread, olive oil, butternut squash soup and cheese.

Flamingos

On a trip to Marseillan at the weekend we saw two groups of flamingos sheltering on the land side of the lagoon to keep out of the strong north wind. The lagoon, which is usually calm, was quite rough.

A midwinter feast

As we do every year, at midday on 25 December we had apéritifs in the garden – olives from our own trees and sweet wine made by friends in the village. We spent the rest of the afternoon, until it was dark, cooking and eating the various courses of the one meal we have on that day. Here are some of the dishes we ate:

Apéritifs in the garden.	Clams cooked in olive oil, garlic and parsley, with a glass of Cava we brought back from our trip to Catalunya in the autumn.
Foie gras with black and red peppercorns.	Gambas – large prawns – sautéed in olive oil and garlic, with eau de vie added at the end of the cooking.
Pigeons with apricot stuffing.	With the pigeons we drank a bottle of the best wine produced by our favourite vigneron at Roquessels.
There was grilled bream for our one non-meat eater, roast potatoes, and broad beans (from the garden and frozen last summer). All this was followed by Roquefort cheese, then a bûche de Noël made by the boulanger in the village.	To finish, with our coffee, we had cherries from our neighbour’s tree which I preserved in Armagnac the summer before last.

La pòmpa a l'òli – an Occitan festive bread

2010-12-20T22:44:00.002+01:00

This is a traditional sweet bread made in the Languedoc and in Provence at this time of the year - la pòmpa a l'òli (literally ‘the oil pump’).

It is made with olive oil and orange flour water so it has a wonderful flavour and smells delicious when it is being baked. I used: 400 gm flour, 100 gm sugar, 80 gm olive oil, a tablespoon of orange flower water, 8 gm dried yeast, the grated peel of an orange, a small glass of warm water and a pinch of salt. Mix all the ingredients together and knead, as for bread, then leave the ball of dough in a bowl covered with a tea towel in a warm place until it has doubled in size – it can take several hours. Form the dough into two round flat loaves, about 2 cm high and bake in a hot oven – 200 degrees C – for about fifteen minutes, watching it carefully to make sure it doesn’t burn. Take out of the oven and allow to cool on a rack.

The tradition is that this bread must always be broken – cutting it with a knife will bring bad luck in the year to come!

Los tretze dessèrts

La pòmpa a l'òli is traditionally served with los tretze dessèrts (the thirteen desserts) during the Christmas and New Year celebrations. The thirteen desserts are: walnuts, dried figs, almonds, raisins, quince paste, white grapes, melon, candied citrus peel, apples, pears, plums, white nougat and black nougat (made with caramelised sugar). These are all presented on the same table and are eaten with the fingers, accompanied by pieces of the pòmpa a l'òli and sweet or fortified wine.

POLIDAS FESTAS! – HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Festive-looking mezes and very low sun

2010-12-18T18:37:00.002+01:00

The peppers I pickled a couple of months ago are the only ingredient in this meal that came from our garden, but I thought they all looked festive on the red cloth, ready for supper with friends last night. Starting from bottom left: hummus, black olives, pistachios, feta cheese, pickled green peppers, aubergine purée, grated carrot salad and, in the centre, taramasalata.

Almost the solstice

I’m looking forward to when the days start getting longer again, but in the meantime I’m enjoying the long shadows cast by the low sun, even at midday.

Weekend food

2010-12-12T22:23:00.002+01:00

We haven’t done much gardening this weekend, even though the weather has been sunny and mild, but we have eaten some very good food. As always on Saturday morning, the coquillage (shellfish) van came to the village from Bouzigues and I bought a kilo of mussels for our lunch.

Saturday lunch

We started with celery soup that Lo Jardinièr had made with celery from the garden, garnished with cream and parsley.

Then we cooked the mussels, breadcrumbed them and fried them in olive oil:

Mussels are so beautiful that I always want to take too many photos of them:

Duck… twice

Last night we ate with the rest of the Cercle Occitan members in the village bar and the main course was duck legs in mushroom sauce. It was very good but Lo Jardinièr and I laughed when we saw them because we had bought duck legs for our Sunday lunch. I cooked them in a very different way, though, and the recipe for duck legs with apricots is on the Mediterranean cuisine blog.

We usually eat whatever vegetables are available in the garden, according to the season, and a lot of the tomatoes that we bottle during the summer, but sometimes in winter I long for my real favourites, the summer Mediterranean vegetables - aubergines, peppers, courgettes. So I bought an aubergine and some courgettes to make our first course for lunch today – cooked in olive oil with onions, garlic and rosemary and served garnished with chopped green olives and croutons.

Noisy work

2010-12-09T22:14:00.001+01:00

I didn’t want to stay very long at the garden this morning because the work on the building site next to it was so noisy and it was a constant reminder that there are about a hundred houses planned for this site. That’s a huge addition to a village with a population of about 700 people. The machines are clearing and flattening a large area of land, marking out the roads and the building plots and making a road across the narrow lane which goes up the hill away from the gardens. We worry about what will happen to the course of the stream which provides water during the early summer – the workmen seemed to have dug right through it. Our neighbour said that yesterday the machines had been close to the gardens and that the earth had been trembling as they worked. I think we’ll be trying to spend less time in the garden on weekdays and more at weekends, when there’s no work going on, for the next few months.

The machinery was very close to some of the old stone walls, which we’ve been promised will be preserved as they are part of the history of the village. One of them had already been slightly damaged. The bamboo at the right of the picture, bottom right, is at the end of our garden – so it is all happening very close to us!

Winter capers

2010-12-08T14:36:00.002+01:00

Last autumn, Michelle at From Seed to Table in California very kindly sent me some caper seeds which I sowed, according to her instructions, and overwintered in a cold place (outside the bathroom window, which gets no sun at all in winter). In spring I brought them out into the warm, but not too hot, sun and waited for them to germinate. Four good plants were the result – two Tuscan and two Croatian – thanks, Michelle! Unfortunately, I had to leave them with a friend when I had to go away unexpectedly during the summer and they were left in a very windy place. Two of the plants did not survive this ‘holiday’ and, worse still, the survivors were taken out of the container identifying them, so I am not sure whether I now have one of each, or two of one variety or the other. But the good news is that these two survivors are looking very healthy – here they are enjoying the sun on the balcony today:

I saved some of the seeds Michelle sent me last year and have sowed some more, which are now overwintering on the bathroom windowsill with some other seeds sent to me by another virtual friend, a blipper rather than a blogger this time, who lives in Tuscany.

Clams

On Saturday we bought these wonderful clams from the coquillage van and cooked them very simply, heating them in olive oil, chopped garlic and parsley until all the shells opened. The flavour was really delicious. It was a very cold morning and the man who sold them said that even the salt water was freezing in Bouzigues early in the day, which must mean that the temperature was minus 6 degrees C. Since then it has warmed up quite a lot, although it’s so clear today that I expect the temperature will drop near zero tonight.

From a frosty garden

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We’ve had a couple of very cold nights, below freezing with frost in the garden. Not nearly as cold as further north, and no snow here at all, but it’s still been quite wintry. There were a few olives left on our Lucque tree, that weren’t quite ripe when we picked the others, but they seem to have gone rather mushy as though they’ve been affected by the frost, although I’d be surprised at this since some varieties aren’t harvested until January and there are almost always freezing temperatures before then.

Red cabbages and cauliflowers	The artichoke plants will soon recover
Lettuce, which will also recover, we hope.	This little radicchio plant looks completely unaffected by the cold.
The frosted aubretia leaves looked pretty in the sun.	The broad beans have been protected by the layer of bamboo leaves.
Frost melting on the palm leaves.	Low sun sparkling through the fence.

And the building work goes on

Above right, two big machines and a lorry…. it’s very noisy in our garden now. Above left, you can see how close the work is to the garden.

Development?

2010-11-30T19:47:00.001+01:00

This is what the bulldozers have done to the land near our garden.

It doesn’t look very pretty, does it? We were told at the beginning of the planning process that the stone walls would be protected, so I hope the developers keep to this. The building plots have been marked out, but in the current economic climate we may be left with a part-empty wasteland, as has happened in other villages near here.

But yesterday, at least, the sun came out and shone through the olive groves like this one at Roquessels:

Winter fruit and winter soup

2010-11-26T14:11:00.001+01:00

Left, above, oranges on a tree in the car park next to the village bar. Right, a delicious soup Lo Jardinièr made from pumpkin, carrots, onions, haricot beans, pasta and chunks of chorizo sausage, flavoured with a little chopped chilli pepper, thyme and bay and garnished with chopped garlic and basil. Very warming on a cold November day!

The chorizo peppers on the balcony are still ripening in the sun, although we bring the plant indoors at night now and the plant has suffered a bit from cold winds during the day.

Tarral – the north wind

2010-11-23T14:41:00.001+01:00

The Occitan word for the wind that comes over the land, which means from the north where we are, is tarral and that’s what we have this week. In summer it is pleasantly cooling, but in winter especially when it has come across mountains covered in snow, it can be bitingly cold. It is a dry wind, though, unlike the marin which comes from the sea, because all the rain it has carried has already fallen on the mountains. The bilingual street signs in the village usually have the same meaning in French and Occitan, but this one is different. I don’t know how this narrow street got its French name as there are no mimosa trees in it. The Occitan name seems much more appropriate today as the tarral blows along it.

Olive trees blowing in the wind, showing the silver undersides of their leaves, and in the background in the photo on the left the vines have lost almost all their leaves and are beginning to take on their sepia winter colour.

Pumpkin soufflé experiment

2010-11-20T14:46:00.002+01:00

This was suggested by some friends who had given us a very vague idea of the recipe. It was the first time for years that I’d made a soufflé and we discovered that we’d left our soufflé dish behind when we moved from Wales. Never mind, we can always improvise, using the most straight-sided dish we had, one of those dishes that charcutiers use to display paté and sell for a couple of euros when they’re empty.

I cooked and mashed a piece of pumpkin and two potatoes, added 4 egg yolks, 5 beaten egg whites and 100 gm of grated Cantal cheese (a bit like Cheddar) and put the mixture in a greased oven-proof dish. I sprinkled some more grated cheese and some grated nutmeg over the top and put it in a hot oven for 30 minutes. I think it might have been better to roast the pumpkin, rather than boiling it, before mashing, so I’ll try that next time.

It tasted very good, but I think it would have even more flavour if the pumpkin was roasted first. When I’ve perfected the recipe I’ll post it on the Mediterranean cuisine blog with exact quantities.

And a mise en bouche

When you order a set menu in a restaurant in France you often find extra small courses have been added and you’re offered a mise en bouche (literally, ‘put in mouth’) to start your meal. Lo Jardinièr made this one the other day, using slices of bread brushed with olive oil and toasted in the oven, slices of boudin noir (blood sausage) and one of the last of our tomatoes, garnished with basil leaves.

Winter is coming

There are cold nights forecast for the coming week, with temperatures perhaps reaching freezing point, so we’ve covered our emerging broad bean and mangetout pea plants with bamboo leaves to try to protect them. I’ve harvested most of the mint to dry for making tea with during the winter and picked (probably) the last small green peppers which I’ll pickle as I did with some of the ones I picked a couple of weeks ago. We found some quite big peppers too, hidden among the leaves, so we’ll grill those to eat over the weekend.

Pumpkin harvest, and The Birds?

2010-11-16T22:48:00.002+01:00

Colder nights are forecast for later this week, so today we brought the remaining pumpkins back to the house so that they are not affected by any low temperatures we may have. The ones that have ripened should keep for months, the green ones maybe not for so long, so we’ll eat them first. Although a friend has suggested that they may continue to ripen indoors.

Five pumpkins and two butternut squashes. We’ve already picked a butternut squash and two pumpkins, one which weighed 5 kilos and one, which we’re eating now, which weighed 10 kilos. The two bigger ones in this photo are even bigger. So far we used them to make soup, roasted chunks of them in the oven and puréed the roasted chunks to make a gratin with blue cheese – the simple recipe for this is on the Mediterranean cuisine blog. Today one of our friends passed by the garden and told us that you can make soufflé with pumpkin too, so we’re going to try that – if it works I’ll put the recipe on the blog.

The Birds

On the way back from Magalas we saw a remarkable sight – a huge flock of very small birds settled on the (not very busy) road. We watched them for about five minutes while I took a lot of photos. Each time a car came close they flew up into the sky and circled around the vineyards for just a few seconds before settling on the road again. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of them. There didn’t seem to be anything for them to feed on, so it’s a mystery why they were on the road. It seems a bit late in the year for birds to be gathering to migrate, but it’s possible they are migrating birds from further north either arriving here for the winter or just passing through. My researches on the internet and in bird books suggest they may have been Wood Larks. I’d welcome any other suggestions. They were much too small to be starlings.

And more autumn colour in the vineyards and in the garden

In the garden the rosemary and the roses have begun to flower again after the rain.

An awful reminder…

Land being flattened next to our garden as work begins on the new houses.

The landscape seems to have been completely changed, trees destroyed and new vistas created.

Saffron harvest

2010-11-10T14:53:00.001+01:00

One of the saffron fields at Les Roches Rouges where we went to visit the Safran de Neffiès project started by a group of enthusiasts in Neffiès, including the owners of the village bar:

and the view back towards the village from the hillside on an unusually misty morning:

It takes 150 Crocus Sativus Linnaeus flowers to produce 1 gram of saffron, so that’s why it costs 500 euros, or more, per kilo. The petals are then carefully removed from around the pistils. You can see pictures of this here. Most of the flowers had already been picked but the growers had left a couple of rows so that we could see them and help pick them. A group of a hundred interested people had walked from Neffiès to see the fields and have lunch.

The red pistils that can be seen in the centre photo above are the important, saffron, part of the flower, although the whole flower is edible.

After visiting the fields we walked up among vineyards and olive groves to a field higher up, bordered by evergreen Holm oaks, where long tables decorated with crocus flowers were laid out in the shade for our meal of paella made with this local saffron followed by a dessert made of choux pastry filled with saffron cream.

We were lucky that it was warm and sunny, and it was a beautiful place to eat a delicious lunch, served with excellent Neffiès wine, of course.

One tip from the leaflet about Les Roches Rouges is that saffron should be soaked to release its flavour in warm water, milk or wine for 4 hours at least – I hadn’t realised before that it should be soaked for so long.

Saffron in Afghanistan

I noticed this video on the Guardian website which shows how saffron growing is replacing poppies in one part of Afghanistan.

Autumn colour

2010-11-09T10:25:00.001+01:00

I haven’t had much time for the blog because of work, and family staying for a long weekend. I’ll be writing soon about a visit to the saffron fields that we made on Saturday, but in the meantime here’s an autumn vines photo, with olive trees in the background, taken near Chateau de Cassan this morning.

November in the garden

2010-11-01T15:04:00.002+01:00

After a rainy weekend we went to the garden and found the broad beans sprouting through the damp earth, although there’s no sign of the mangetout peas yet. While I picked some peppers, which are still growing but not ripening, Lo Jardinièr dug up some more of the tomato plants, leaving just the Roma plants, which are still producing fruit.

Some autumnal images:

Arbutus berries and flowers - both appear on the tree at the same time.	Two Lucque olives fallen from the tree during heavy rain. They’re a good size this year.
Green, ripening and ripe olives on the same branch.	Some more ripening olives.
Butternut squash.	Two pumpkins, one ripe, one still green.
The artichoke plants are recovering from the dry summer.	Red cabbages are doing well, although the leeks we planted at the same time aren’t.
Rosemary still flowering.	A rose bud about to open.
A snail on an olive leaf next to a dead sunflower head.	Rose hips on a wild rose bush.
Wild honeysuckle.	Cardinale vine leaf.

Easy for some… different stories of olive harvesting

2010-10-25T23:24:00.001+02:00

These are some of our olives, picked a couple of weeks ago, which we’ve salted and left for about ten days, with some added bay leaves and rosemary. They were easy to harvest (with our son’s help) and no one else but us had been anywhere near the tree – it was safe.

Now they’re ready and yesterday we ate some of them. We’d washed the salt off them, drained them and then added a little olive oil to coat them, and they taste very good.

Sadly, though, in Palestine olive trees are the target of conflict and dispute. While the peace process staggers and falters, ordinary people who have their livelihoods to worry about find that their olive trees are damaged maliciously. An article in the Guardian describes one such episode, when an eighty-year-old woman found that forty olive trees which she had planted had been destroyed:

they were now, two decades later, at their peak – the most productive of all the trees, which support 37 members of the extended family.

But . . . someone had got there before them and had chopped down the trees, leaving stumps in the ground and branches scattered about the plot. The family blame hardline Jewish settlers from the nearby Eli settlement.

Olive trees seem very special to me – because of their longevity, their ability to produce fruit and oil in dry, hot climates and their beauty. It is tragic that they can be damaged and destroyed in this way.

There are some photographs of the olive harvest in the West Bank here.

First pumpkin

2010-10-23T12:45:00.001+02:00

This is the first year we’ve grown pumpkins and this is the first one we’ve picked, one of the smaller ones, it weighs 5 kilos. I’m using part of it to make mussel and pumpkin soup – see the recipe I posted last year on the Mediterranean cuisine blog.

Definitely autumn

2010-10-17T22:22:00.002+02:00

Our son was staying with us this week and, while it was warm enough to have lunch in the garden a couple of times, the sea wasn’t warm enough for swimming.

Barbecued lamb and peppers for lunch, but the sea was chilly at Portiragnes-plage.

We’re still picking plenty of aubergines and peppers – the red ones are Kolaska, a delicious spicy variety, the green ones are Marconi and Corno di Toro which I don’t think will ripen now as it’s too late in the year. They’re very tasty when they’re green, though. The Praying Mantis seemed to be looking for somewhere to lay its eggs.

Pézenas market

On Saturday morning, before going back to London, our son wanted to buy jambon to take with him… we saw a few other stalls as well:

denim and sunflowers…	baskets….
winter hats and scarves….	olive oil and salt cod…
fritters and sea food salads	eggs and charcuterie….
bread….	and fish.

Sunday lunch

On our own again after our son went home, we consoled ourselves with a very good lunch:

Aubergine slices with goats’ cheese, garlic and oregano, with honey and balsamic vinegar dressing for our first course, followed by pieces of shoulder of lamb slow-cooked with figs, shallots and white wine, served with rice.

Quinces again

We picked a basketful of quinces to make membrillo (quince paste), as we usually do at this time of year – the recipe is on the Mediterranean cuisine blog. The quinces this year are of much better quality, bigger with fewer bugs in them, so easier to cook.

And a beautiful sunset this evening

Olive harvest

2010-10-14T23:04:00.001+02:00

Just a few photos to show the harvest from the older of our two olive trees, variety unknown, from which we picked 1.4 kilos of ripe olives yesterday (the most we’ve ever had from this tree we planted six years ago), and (right) the Lucque olives which are still ripening:

I washed the olives, checked that none of them were damaged and dried a bowlful for salting immediately, using the same method as I used last year. I’ve left the others to drain and store in jars as recommended in Max Lambert’s book, L’Olivier et la Préparation des Olives. They can then be treated as I’ve shown below whenever they’re needed.

After drying them I pricked each one with a fork, then put them in a bowl with herbs – rosemary and bay leaves – and mixed them well with sea salt.

As the liquid comes out of them I’ll drain it off over the next few days and in a week or so the olives should be ready to put in oil and eat. Last year I left them rather too long and they dried out too much, so this year they’ll stay in the salt for only a week to 10 days.

Beginning a new year, and a wine update

2010-10-08T19:51:00.001+02:00

Some of the tomato plants weren’t looking very happy, so we picked the green tomatoes to ripen in the house and cleared the bed ready to sow peas and broad beans next week. I always feel very excited when we plant out the tomatoes as it seems like the beginning of summer. Today, then, may be the beginning of winter but it’s equally exciting because we’re already planning next spring’s crops. That’s the great thing about gardening – there’s always the next season to look forward to.

Wine making

Looking even further ahead, the wine being made by our friends is progressing well. The grapes we picked a few weeks ago have been fermenting in the vats in the cave. Yesterday some of the wine was ready to be removed from the grape skins and then returned to the vat. We were asked to go over to watch, take photographs and in Lo Jardinièr’s case to help. I’m going to be writing much more about the whole process of making this wine in the future, but for the moment here are a few photos:

Looking into the wine vat (left) and the press (right)

(left) running the wine off the marc or skins, (centre) Lo Jardinièr working the press which removes the wine left in the skins, and (right) the wine running out of the press. The wine was then returned to the vats.

and the Guardian blog…

Apparently, I had misunderstood a rule preventing links to ‘commercial’ sites and this is why my comment was deleted. Very strange because my blog is certainly not commercial in any way and I have made relevant links to it before. You can’t argue with the moderator, but I have suggested that the Guardian should make the wording of the rules clearer.

A few days in Catalunya

2010-10-04T19:27:00.002+02:00

We’ve just come back from a few days in El Port de la Selva on the Cap de Creus headland in Catalunya. It’s a working fishing port in an almost completely enclosed bay – we could see why it was chosen as a safe harbour because when we were in the port we couldn’t see the open sea at all.

The view from the quayside as a fishing boat came into port.

The nets being unrolled and laid out on the quay.

Nets and floats on the quay.

As it was a fishing port, we did eat some very good sea food while we were there, especially the anchovies and the cuttlefish. One of the food highlights was a wonderful fideua on our first evening there, served with aioli and full of squid, clams and large prawns (left, below). The recipe for my own version of this paella made with noodles is on the Mediterranean cuisine blog – here. This one was much darker and, I would guess, cooked in liquid which included the squid ink. Another good dish was cuttlefish with meatballs, in a wonderful spicy sauce and surrounded by sautéed potatoes (right, below), which we ate one lunchtime on a terrace overlooking the port.

Friday is market day in El Port de la Selva and the promenade along the port and beach was lined with stalls, mostly selling clothes, but also two fruit and vegetable stalls and a wonderful charcuterie and olive stall.

And some souvenirs…

We brought back a good selection of products from the charcuterie stall, some Cava, the sparkling wine made in Catalunya, and several varieties of olives oil, one from the Moulin du Mas St Pierre in French Catalunya, which I mentioned on the blog in April (here), one Arbequina oil available cheaply in a supermarket (the same variety of olives they grow at Mas St Pierre) and one local blended oil we bought from the market stall. We’ve bottled the larger quantities in 50 cl or 75 cl bottles so that we can taste them all without letting them go stale, although that’s not usually a problem for us as we eat a lot of olive oil. So we’ve got a few ways of prolonging the flavours of our holiday over the next few months!

Other food blogs

I seem to have offended the Guardian in some why by commenting on its food blog as I have had a comment removed by the moderator. I can’t understand what I have said that it takes objection to as it was nothing at all offensive, simply a description of the farmers’ market we went to in the summer, which I’ve written about on this blog and which I thought people might be interested to hear. I’m still waiting for a reply to a request for an explanation. As I’m sure readers of this blog know, my only intention in writing about food, gardening, markets…. etc. is to contribute to the enjoyment of people who, like me, value good food.

Blue sky, a cold north wind and ripening olives

2010-09-26T21:41:00.001+02:00

Today was the first day it’s felt really autumnal, with a cold wind from the north drying anything that remained of the the rain we had early on Friday morning. The sky was bright blue and the bamboo shoots waved in the breeze at the end of the garden.

Another sign of autumn – the olives are beginning to ripen:

An aerial view and a saffron harvest

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Last Sunday was la Journée du Patrimoine, heritage day, when historic buildings are open to the public. The church tower in the village was open and Lo Jardinièr climbed to the top and took photos of the roofs, a wonderful jumble of terracotta tiles and satellite dishes.

In the garden we harvested half of our saffron crop – there were two crocus flowers open, which we picked because last year we found that they only lasted a day, and two buds which have since opened and which we’ve picked.

We’re still picking tomatoes, aubergines and a lot of peppers. I stuffed some of the green peppers, mostly Corno di Toro and Marconi, with rice, raisins, pine nuts, garlic and oregano, then baked them in the oven for about half an hour. I’ve put some in the freezer, the others we ate straight away with a spicy tomato sauce made with piment d’Espelette.

And salad leaves again ….

After a summer of tomato and cucumber salads, delicious though they are, it’s a treat to start picking lettuce leaves again for green salads. It’s too hot and dry here for lettuces in the summer – they all go to seed by the end of June, by St John’s day, 24 June, everyone says, and it’s true. We plant seedlings again in September, some we’ve bought and some which other gardeners have given us, and they should keep growing through most of the winter.

An autumn market

After his summer break when he takes his stall to the more lucrative tourist market at Cap d’Agde, the vegetable stallholder was back in the market this morning (in the shade to keep the produce cool, so difficult to photograph, making it all seem much more lively. We only bought garlic, because we’ve already used the garlic we grew this summer. It will soon be time to plant some more and we usually plant garlic from this stall.

Different ways of picking grapes

2010-09-18T19:35:00.003+02:00

Depending on the terrain of the vineyard and the quality of wine which will be made from the grapes, there are different ways of harvesting. In a large, flat vineyard where the grapes are intended for ordinary quality wine, to be taken to the cave cooperative to be added to grapes from many other vineyards in the area, grape-picking machines are used to save time and labour. They look huge when you meet them on the road, as we often do at this time of the year because they travel from one vineyard to another during the vendange, towering above the cars. They look big among the vines too, because they have to straddle a row of vines to remove the grapes. In small parcelles of vines, especially on hillsides, it would be impossible to get a machine in among the rows, so these grapes are usually picked by hand, as are any grapes that will be used to make high-quality wine because this minimises the damage to the grapes before pressing.

We saw this machine near Fouzilhon the other morning as it was just about to start working its way through the vineyard.

Yesterday we helped friends pick grapes by hand – a hard morning’s work, but good fun, as a group of us worked our way up and down the rows chatting in French and Occitan. For the first time this year they are making a high-quality wine and we picked the Syrah grapes for it from a vineyard in a beautiful position on a hilltop with a view all the way to the sea. Next week we’ll help pick the Grenache grapes which are not ripe yet.

Grape jelly – an experiment

We’d picked some Carignan grapes from vines which had re-grown after a friend had uprooted her vineyard. They weren’t very good for eating – the flesh had a nice flavour but they had too many pips and a strong flavour to the skins, so I thought I’d try making grape jelly. I put 500 gm of grapes in a pan, crushed them lightly with a wooden spoon and added a couple of tablespoonfuls of sugar to them. I brought them to the boil and cooked them for about 10 minutes then put them through a mouli legumes so that I was left with the juice. I returned the juice to the pan, added 250 gm of preserving sugar and simmered for 5 minutes. The jelly is now in small jars, but it has set very hard so I think I’ll try again with ordinary sugar rather than preserving sugar. There seems to be plenty of pectin in the pips and skins to set the jelly.

Mussels again….

We bought mussels this morning from the usual Bouzigues van which calls in the village, and cooked them for lunch with sweet onion, rosemary, chopped piment d’Espelette, garlic and chorizo. They weren’t quite as tasty as when we cook them like this on the barbecue, but they still seemed to have a smoky flavour.

I ground the remaining dried piments d’Espelette from last year, to store in a jar. The colour was wonderful, and the flavour will be too. These were bought in the village of Espelette. This year we have our own, grown from seed from these.

Two tomato salads and some autumn food festivals

2010-09-14T21:53:00.001+02:00

Usually our tomato plants continue producing until November and in past years we’ve eaten tomatoes picked green and then ripened in the house as late as December. This year will be different and production has already slowed down almost to nothing. The Ananas plants seem to be having a late renaissance, though, and we’ve also picked some of the Long Andean variety which is more suitable for making purée, but we’ve used them in salads too.

Left: Long Andean tomatoes sliced with garlic, chopped green pepper and anchovies and basil leaves.

Right: Ananas tomatoes with basil, garlic and sliced mozzarella cheese.

And here’s a link from the Observer website to some amazing-sounding food festivals in Italy, France, Norway, Croatia, Crete, Sardinia and Mallorca. If I lived nearer I’d be especially tempted by the Fête des Legumes Oubliés (Festival of Forgotten Vegetables), but it’s in Normandy – a very long way from here – and the olive festival in Mallorca, and…. well, all of them really!

The pumpkin festival near Lucca in Italy reminded me to ask our neighbour whether we should be protecting ours from damp by keeping them off the ground, but he said there’s no need as they have such thick skins. They should be left while the stems are still green and then can be brought inside. Our plants seem to be rejuvenating themselves and we have several new small pumpkins growing to join the five large ones already there. I don’t know whether there will be time for the small ones to grow before the weather gets colder. The big ones are not as big as I’ve seen them in western France, where there’s a lot more rain, but they’re not doing badly.

Preparing for winter, while the summer harvest goes on

2010-09-11T22:06:00.001+02:00

The tomatoes are coming to an end, and some of our gardening neighbours have already uprooted their plants, resigned to its being a bad year for them. We’re picking and eating peppers every day and we’re pleased we planted so many different varieties which all have their own characteristics: the ones on the left of the photo above are Corno di Toro which are good for stuffing; there’s a spicy Kolaska next to the aubergine and some Longues des Landes on the right – they’re both good varieties for grilling on the barbecue. In the centre there are a few red chillies.

For lunch today we grilled some green peppers and the aubergine on the barbecue. I then skinned the peppers, which is very easy when they’ve been grilled and the outer skin has blackened. I made a salad with them, some oregano and chopped garlic, goats’ cheeses from Mas Rolland and some cherry tomatoes, added a bit of salt and some olive oil and served them with fresh Aveyronnais bread.

We picked another five or six kilos of figs this morning and made some more jam. The recipe is very simple: for each 600 gm of figs, chopped and put in a large pan, I added 400 gm sugar and the juice of half a lemon. I brought them all to the boil and simmered until the jam thickened and began to set when a spoonful was put on to a cool saucer. Then bottle in sterilised jars. We now have twenty jars of mixed, green or black fig jam, so we know we’ll have something for winter breakfasts.

Mussels for supper

As usual on a Saturday morning, the coquillage van from Bouzigues came to the village, so we bought a kilo of mussels and ate them this evening in a sauce made with onions, garlic, wild fennel, lardons, white wine and crème fraiche. And as usual they were delicious.

A rainbow…. and some bad municipal planning

2010-09-09T22:09:00.001+02:00

On our way to buy wine this morning the end of this rainbow was almost over the village of Roquessels where we were heading.

No longer in use…

At Chateau des Adouzes, where we buy wine, these barrels have been used for oak-ageing wine and now, having been used, are for sale. I was tempted, but they’re quite big and I don’t know what we’d do with one. The mazet on the left, near Roquessels, was a shelter for vineyard workers, one of many in this area, but is no longer used because people store their tools at home now and drive out to the vineyards in their vans, so they can go home for lunch and a siesta. This one looks very well cared for.

‘Improvements’ in the village

The resurfacing of the roads in the Pioch, the oldest part of the village, has been an improvement over the old patchwork of tarmac and broken stones. But some of the changes outside the church are a big mistake, I think. The new cobbles are beautiful and there is a shelter for mourners to wait when there is a funeral in the church, but the road is now closed off here. This will mean that all the traffic coming out of the old part of the village will have to go down one very narrow road – I’m glad I don’t live in that road, and I’m surprised the residents haven’t complained. I hope, too, that the emergency services will be able to get through quickly enough if necessary.

The old road out of the Pioch, past the church, now cobbled very attractively, but blocked off with stone blocks and a metal bollard.

Now it seems that all the traffic, delivery vans included, will have to go down this very narrow, bending street and through the old place at the end.

A little rain

2010-09-08T15:05:00.001+02:00

We’ve had a couple of thunderstorms and two cloudy days – a little rain but not nearly enough after a summer that’s been even drier than usual. When the first thunderstorm came the night before last, I was worried about the turnip seedlings that had just emerged the day before. Last year some of these got completely washed away by heavy rain. I needn’t have worried, though, they’re still there:

Planting out the winter vegetables

We’ve planted out the red cabbage, green cabbage, cauliflower and leek plants which we bought because we didn’t get round to sowing them earlier in the summer. Neighbours have given us lettuce seedlings, too, so we should have lots of leaves for salads and soups in the autumn and winter.

And the aubergines seem to be starting again, with new flowers and a few new fruits, one of which we ate for lunch today.

Market day

The market was busier than it has been over the summer – there were stalls selling household goods and our usual charcutier was back from the break he took last week. We bought pork chops to barbecue outside in the place, sharing the fire with our neighbour as we often do. While they were cooking we had goats’ cheeses with thyme, garlic, olive oil and cherry tomatoes.

Beginning of a new season

2010-09-02T18:45:00.001+02:00

Today we seemed to be turning over a new leaf into autumn:

Because we were so busy over the summer we didn’t get round to sowing leeks, cabbages and cauliflowers, so we’ve bought plants and we’ll be planting them out during the next few days. Today I sowed turnips and Lo Jardinièr planted out Rougette and Oak leaf lettuces.

We have five good pumpkins like the two above, which should keep for the winter. We’d given up hope of getting anything from the Butternut squash plants that our neighbour had given us because they seemed to be producing only male flowers. We’d even given up watering them when we noticed this surprise one growing on a plant which had climbed up the pea netting.

And some more figs….

The figs are ripening well on our friend’s trees and we picked some more this morning, but not enough to make jam yet. I baked some with butter and local garrigue honey this morning (just 20 minutes at 180 degrees C), and we’ll eat them tonight with crème fraiche.

Mediterranean diet

I was delighted at the long comments my last post attracted and it was interesting to read what others thought. I should emphasise, though, that I make no claims about health benefits of a Mediterranean diet, or any other diet, except to report that it is said that a Mediterranean diet can lead to a longer life. I know it doesn’t always, though, from early deaths in my own family. Mediterranean food is the kind of food I enjoy eating most – that’s why I eat it. And, of course, it’s available locally for me.

Mediterranean diet

2010-08-27T22:41:00.001+02:00

Italy, Spain, Greece and Morocco have applied to the UN for world heritage status for the Mediterranean diet (although these are not the only countries bordering the Mediterranean and with similar ingredients) and a decision will be made in November. According to an article in the Guardian this week, a spokesman for an Italian farmers’ group said: ‘Not only is this culture, but it also makes you live longer and better.’ There have been many claims for the health benefits of a Mediterranean diet, particularly for its combination of olive oil, garlic, fresh vegetables and fish. And, of course, red wine is supposed to be healthy too, in moderation.

Here in the Languedoc we eat what would be described as a Mediterranean diet, in my case because I love all its constituents and because it is what is available locally. For me, local food is important… so where does this leave those who don’t live in a country where aubergines and wine grapes grow? When I was in Wales earlier this summer I found that most of the tomatoes I ate were completely tasteless and usually unripe. Maybe in countries further north it is better to eat tasty vegetables, varieties which are suited to the climate. Everyone can enjoy olive oil and wine, but then there is the problem of transporting food long distances, with all the environmental damage that can do. I don’t know what the solution is for those who live further away from the Mediterranean, those people must make their own choices, all I know is that one of the great pleasures of my life is the diet that is readily available to me here.

Nardello and Corno di toro peppers from the garden and figs from a friend’s tree by the river near the village, all picked this morning.

Lucques olives on our tree and Cardinale grapes ripening on our vine – the birds have left us a few!

Our lunch today:

Terrine of joue, pig’s cheek, bought from the charcuterie stall in the village market, carrot salad (not very Mediterranean, perhaps, but it seemed to go with the terrine), cherry tomatoes from the garden, rosé wine from the Domaine des Pascales in the village and some of the figs we picked this morning.

A busy week

2010-08-22T08:21:00.001+02:00

It’s been a busy week with time only to water the garden and harvest vegetables to eat:


One of our Nardello plants is producing yellow rather than red peppers – they’re all very sweet. The larger pepper is a Red Marconi.	Espelette and Chorizo peppers harvested and threaded onto strings for drying in the sun.


Kandil dolma peppers and tomatoes stuffed with rice, pine nuts, raisins and oregano.	Grilled aubergine, green and red peppers.

Harvesting

2010-08-15T23:00:00.001+02:00

This weekend 18.6 kilos of Roma tomatoes (and some aubergines) became ….

22 jars of tomato puree and 3 jars of aubergine pickle.

The pumpkins keep on growing …

from small (just over a month ago) to large and ripening – what a transformation!

The grapes are ripening, too. These are in a vineyard at nearby Roquessels where we went to buy our favourite wine from the Domaine d’Estève. Behind the sunflower, the olives are visible – a good crop even on this tree which I pruned quite hard in January.

Although it’s still summer, with temperatures of up to 30 degrees C during the day, there is a noticeable change in the weather from mid-August – cooler in the evenings, and the sun is lower. There are plenty of good things to look forward to in autumn and winter, though.

Another mussel dish

We’ve missed eating mussels while we were away so as soon as the van arrived from Bouzigues on Saturday morning we bought some and ate them with pasta and a glass of rosé wine. We cooked the mussels in wine and then shelled most of them and added fried lardons, garlic, olive oil, chopped fresh tomatoes and basil leaves.

It’s good to be home

2010-08-13T23:30:00.003+02:00

We’re home again after three weeks away. We’d planned just a one-week break but had to leave unexpectedly a fortnight earlier because of a sudden death in the family, so after a sad time it’s very cheering to come home to a wonderful harvest of aubergines, peppers and tomatoes, thanks to our neighbour who watered the garden for us. We’ve got a busy weekend ahead now making tomato puree to store for the winter because the Roma tomatoes are just waiting to be picked.

and two delicious salads

A Greek salad, left, made with cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, garlic and onions from the garden and feta cheese and black olives. On the right, tomato, Red Marconi pepper and basil salad.

Missing olive oil, garlic and tomatoes that taste of something …

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but enjoying the sea.

We’ll be going home at last in a few days’ time.

Homesick…

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for the south. Aberystwyth on a grey day:



	……………………………..and a few grapes!

Looking forward to being home soon.

Taking a break….

2010-07-22T18:23:00.001+02:00

Taking an enforced break from blogging ….. back soon.

Turkish Kandil Dolma peppers, left, straight from the garden; right, stuffed with rice, pine nuts and raisins – the recipe will be on the Mediterranean cuisine blog very soon.

Sounds of summer - 3

2010-07-14T17:47:00.001+02:00

La Fête Nationale

The traditional fireworks are held in Gabian on the 13th, just after dark on the evening before the holiday.

The fireworks are launched from a small island in the river, lighting up the walls of the old village while crowds of people, the children carrying lanterns, watch from the bridge.

Tonight, if the thunderstorms hold off, we’ll eat paella in the open air and dance through the evening.

La Fête vigneronne at Faugères

2010-07-11T22:47:00.001+02:00

Sunday morning wine tasting in a village of balconies and bunting:

A theatrical entrance to the old village whose narrow streets were filled with the stalls of wine producers, cheese makers, biscuit, cake and honey sellers, charcuterie producers and throngs of people tasting all this in the heat. We found and bought some familiar produce – goats’ cheese from Mas Rolland – and tasted wines we’d not tasted before from Domaine du Météore at Cabrerolles and Domaine Alquier at Faugères and bought rosé from Domaine Ballicioni at Autignac and Chateau des Peyregrandes at Roquessels (next door to Chateau des Adouzes where we buy wine regularly, but we’ve never ventured here before). A completely new discovery, to us, was the Saffron syrup from the Tarn region of south-western France, which can be added to white wine to make Saffron kir and can also be used in cooking gambas or duck. The kir we tasted at the stall tasted wonderfully spicy.

Crowded narrow streets and, right, a traditional still making fine de Faugères.

Our own harvest, and promise for the future

From the garden this morning: Aubergines, a bell pepper, tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet onions, courgettes and beans. And, right, a small pumpkin on a huge plant, just beginning to grow. Aubergine and courgette slices fried in olive oil and sprinkled with thyme and chopped garlic went well with Mas Rolland goats’ cheeses for supper.

First tomatoes!

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We’ve been watching several of our Languedocienne tomatoes turning red and ripening over the past few days and today we picked the first four. What a treat it was to have a salad for lunch made with tomatoes, basil and garlic from the garden and arbequine olive oil from the Moulin du Mas St Pierre which we bought when we visited in April.

A cicada case and rampant pumpkin plants

When cicadas hatch out they crawl up onto a high plant or branch and emerge from these casings. Lo Jardinièr found one today. By the time he’d fetched the camera the cicada had flown off, but the casing was left. Our pumpkin plants are making a bid to take over the whole garden – compare this with the extent of the plants only eleven days ago! We’ve been watering the garden ever other day (economising a bit on other years when we’ve watered every day, and the plants still seem to be getting enough), and during two days in between waterings earlier this week the plants had completely covered the hosepipe, growing about half a metre. We’re hoping to have some nice big pumpkins in the autumn, and the butternut squash plants seem to have settled in well too.

Nearly there ….

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The sea is warming up and we swam at Portiragnes-plage today.

I think this Languedocienne tomato will be the winner. Will it be ready to pick tomorrow, or the day after ….?

Our one Kandil dolma pepper plant (the others didn’t germinate) has five good-sized peppers on it. We picked our first Bari cucumber (from seeds given to us by Kate at Vegetable Vagabond and that came to us via Australia and south-western France from Bari in Italy). It was wonderfully crisp and crunchy. There are lots more coming and we’re looking forward to them.