Seasonal cooking with wild and cultivated plants

We try as much as possible to cook and eat with cultivated and wild produce from the land.  Some images from this year:

 

Heritage variety 'rainbow carrots ' grown with

 seed bought from Biaugerme.  As they are not

F1 hybrids, the seed can be collected to grow the

next season's crop

Monster pumpkins

Pumpkin soup made from pumpkins grown in a

hugulbed - with fresh parsley as a garnish

 

 



Help ex Charlie enjoys the pumkin

 soup



 

Help ex Gunita from Latvia made

many delicious tarts and cakes

using the wild plums from the land



A plum tart made with wild plums

 

 

We make fresh salads with herbs, flowers, leaves and

raw vegetables from the land

 

 

Help ex Indi makes jams and chutneys from apples

 

 

Gunita, help ex from Latvia picks fresh organic salad

leaves, herbs and flowers

 

Help ex Gita from Latvia - la cueillette

 

 



Gita prepares supper with produce

from the garden



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The library

I still have an enormous number of books in England that will come over at some point.  In the meantime I have knocked together some bookshelves from the old floorboards and other bits of wood.  The books mainly come under the themes of vegetarian and vegan cooking, organic growing, green philosophy, self development and ecoconstruction.:

 

Help ex Indi has recently arranged all the books into labelled categories:

 

Temporary bookshelf in extension

 

Indi reading 'We want real food' by Graham Harvey

 

 

 

help ex - Indi and Charlie



Indi and Charlie arrived a couple of days ago - a young couple who have been travelling around Europe visiting and volunteering on eco-communities.  Both are interested in philosophy, ecology and spirituality and so far it has been a rich exchange of ideas.

 

Insulating the stair wall with a thermal corrector

 

The first project they are tackling here is insulating the stair wall.  We are using a thermal corrector rather than the 20cm of terre paille (straw and slip) here as there is not much width on the stairs to spare.  This consists of a mix of one volume of chopped up straw (average fibre lengths 10cm), one volume of sand 0/4 and one volume of soaked clay earth.  It is called a thermal corrector rather than an insulation layer ... all mixed in the concrete mixer.

 

Charlie uses the lawnmower to chop up straw

 

Indi prepares the straw

 

 



Indi loads the thermal corrector mix into buckets

before applying to the wall

 

 



Indi applies the thermal corrector mix to

the wall with her hands





Charlie and Indi applying the thermal

 corrector render to the stair wall

 

Applying an earth render (corps d'enduit) to the terre paille insulation

Charlie applies the corps d'enduit to the

terre paille insulation

 

Indi applying the corps d'enduit earth

render to the downstairs wall

 

Cooking at La Mariais

 

Indi spent a day perusing my collection of vegetariancookery books and planned a menu for the week

 

Deep in creative thought with the

 cookery books

 

Indi puts her culinary research into practice

 

Charlie, an accomplished cook has

created many delicious meals using

fresh organic vegetables from the garden
 

Charlie chops wood for the outdoor

 woodburning cooking stove
 

He fashioned a blow pipe from a piece of metal

he found on the land and used it to keep the fire

going in the survival stove

 

Enjoying the kitty cats

Indi spends quality time with spotty cat

 

Charlie and spotty cat share the

same taste in colours



 

 

 









 

 

 



Workshop created in lean-to

Help exer John has done a fantastic job in the lean-to at the back of the house.  He has transformed it into a workshop with workbench, shelving, electric points and tool holders.  Everything except for screws was found around the property (recycled wood, chipboard etc)

 

John explains where everything is

 

Chantier pierre vu chez Anne Clair and Mike

Today I went to give Anne Clair a hand with rendering an interior stone wall with lime.  Mike, Anne Clair and their three children live on the other side of Saint Hilaire du Harcouet in a yurt while they renovate an old torchis building using ecological materials where possible and practical.  They have worked hard on the land uisng permaculture principles and have a thriving vegetable garden, chickens and pigs and they have planted many trees.  Mike has constructed several successful rocket stoves (to heat the yurt and the water in the bath house).

 

Some images of their place and today's chantier:

 

 

The yurt and vegetable garden

 



They renovated this little torchis dwelling last year with

 earth and lime and Mike has built a rocket stove  inside which heats

 water recuperated from the roof of a nearby barn



Their future home



Anne Clair fills a bucket with the lime and sand mix

(a mixture of chaux vif and sand that was left to mature for several

months in this barrel)



Liam helps to bring the buckets of lime to the pulley





Anne Clair shows the children how to use the pulley



Liam and Anna Rose take charge of the pulley





Successful team work





Anne Clair prepares to apply the lime putty and

 sand mix to the stone wall



Applying the mix to the wall.  Once dry

 the mix can be scrubbed with a brush to

 reveal as much or little of the stones as is wanted



Liam takes time out to demonstrate his skills in using the swing

Anna Rose brings stones in her wheelbarrow



Anna Rose tries dad's security boots for size

 



Mike spent the day taking care of the little
 one and prepared a delicious vegetarian meal
 with produce from the garden





Exterior earth render to repair torchis wall

The two last exterior 'pans' or torchis needed to be repaired before winter to protect the straw and slip insulation that we had done on the inside.  Once the wooden lattice work had been repaired it was clear that in some areas we could mix earth and hay to make torchis sausages to intertwine around them but that in other places there was no room to do this - instead we fabricated a slap on render of one clay earth to one chopped up straw to one sand and some cow manure.  Some images below:

 

John treads the clay earth water and hay

 

John makes sausages of the mix to wind around the wooden lattice work

After securing the scaffolding, I apply the two mixtures to the top two panels

 

Earth renders on internal walls (enduits terres sur murs interieur)

The terre paille insulation(straw and slip insulation) and terre paille walls were now dry enough to apply earth renders.  After much reading and deliberation, I decided to treat the surface as you would a straw bale wall and to apply a slip (clay earth and water) as the first coat followed by a corps d'enduit of a mixture of cow manure, clay earth, hemp fibres (chenovotte) and sand 0/4. 

 

Normally you should do extensive testing of various combinations of all of these ingredients but due to time constraints I decided to go for an educated guess.  From tests that I had done last year I knew that the clay earth I have is around 20% clay and the rest silt.  Having this amount of silt in the earth is not great as the clay has to work hard to bind these particles which are not sticky - as well as the sand.  There are various things you can add to the mix to make it more sticky (wheat flour paste and cow manure for example) so in the spirit of low impact development, I decided on adding 30% cow manure (bouse de vache) which I had collected from a nearby farm.  I also knew that a mixture of one clay earth to one sand to one fibre produced a good render.  So I decided on a mix of one sand 0/4 to one clay earth to one hemp fibre and a third cow manure.

 

We soaked the cow manure and filtered earth in a bathtub for 24 hours and then mixed it in the concrete mixer with the sand, hemp fibres and water.  We then applied this by hand to the wall.  Some images of the process are shown below:

 

 

 



 

We applied slip by hand to the straw and slip walls

 



We used bamboo screening around the door

and window edges.  A thick gloopy mix of clay is spread underneath, the bamboo applied and slip applied over the top.



We fabricated 15cm long staples from old metal coat hangers then hammered them in to secure the bamboo strips

 

Preparing the earth render to go over the slip (corps d'enduit)

 

 



Kevin put the earth through a sieve



 

 

The sieved earth fills a third of the bath, 30 percent cow manure is added and water is added to three quarter full.  This is left to soak for 24 hours. 

 



I watered the wall before appying the render

 

 



John puts the ingredients in the concrete mixer - earth and cow manure followed
by the sand and finally the hemp fibres



 

 



Applying the render by hand

 



John uses a règle de macon to even out the renders



John uses a plastic taloche to smooth the surface after an hour or so