It's mid September and it hasn't rained properly for weeks, the sunny weather continues with daytime temperatures around 25'C although the thermometer on the south facing wall has still been climbing above 30'C in the last week. It is getting cooler at night now, hovering around 10'C or just above, although we did have one night last week when temperatures dipped below 7'C. The horses are all starting to look a bit fluffy, and their short summer coats are coming out. Chantelle, our 30+ year old mare, has a rug on most nights now, and a couple of times when I’ve gone out to check the horses late at night I’ve worn a fleece – but we’re still a long way off needing heating or winter duvets.
The farmers have been busy harvesting the maize to feed the cattle over the winter, the whole plant is chopped up and stored in huge piles, covered in plastic. In the last few days most of the maize fields have been ploughed, and when we drove a short distance to walk the dogs today, we noticed that several fields of grass had been limed - does that mean rain is on its way?! Farmers have been feeding the cows big round bales of hay in the fields for several weeks, the grass is almost non existent and burned off, only a few green patches remain where there are springs and underground water. |
In the garden we’ve had an amazing tomato crop, and now the first aubergines are ready for picking, and we’ve eaten our first ever home-grown butter nut squashes – one stuffed and one in a curry – delicious! Apparently there are carrots ready for the horses – but the ground is too solid to dig them up! | Acorns are turning brown and starting to fall, and the sweet chestnut trees are full of green spiky balls that will soon be ready to litter the ground, their leaves already turning brown and making a crunchy carpet. We’ve had the best yield of hazelnuts ever, normally we hardly notice them but this year we’re forever picking them out of the horses’ water containers, and both dogs and horses are enjoying eating them. The blackberries are nearly over, just a few juicy ones left but most were too short of water to come to much. Gordon will be disappointed – he and Aramis learned to pick blackberries last month, and soon moved their new found talent onto the plum and damson trees in the orchard – Gordon leaping into the air to pick plums once the lower branches were stripped. Now he is mostly eating fallen apples, but there have been few good enough to pick for us to eat. |
Bird life is quiet at the moment, mostly jays gathering acorns, young kestrels flying around the oak trees, and the ubiquitous buzzards perched on a fence or telegraph post. A red squirrel crossed our path in the woods today, and we saw a stone martin just down the road from Magnieras when we drove home in the dark last weekend. Hunting has just started again, and all the land on one side of our hill, most of our neighbour’s farm, is designated “reserve de chasse” this year, meaning it can’t be hunted, to safeguard animal numbers.