Flaming June????????

In a normal year, by this time we have our first cut of silage, baled and wrapped in sage green and bubblegum pink, looking like children’s treats, stacked imposingly by the side of our cattle shed, and the sweet, evocative smell of hay is swirling around the yard, heralding the true beginning of summer. But today, at the beginning of June, we have nothing; nothing but a hollow ground of gravel where the marshmallow tower should stand and the smell of yet more rain is in the air. Our French neighbours can remember few years like this and we begin to wonder if it will ever end.

Matthew spends his time servicing machinery, mucking out the cattle shed, negotiating with buyers, checking weather reports and cursing the skies. I begin to pack in preparation for the move, just a few boxes here and there, items that I know we will not need in the coming months – books, candles, vases... We had intended to move towards the end of July, but an unforeseen operation for me at that time has forced us to push the move back into August, at the earliest. We are all keen to start settling into our new home and farm but for now I just pack and load the car with half a dozen boxes every time we go there.

The painting of our bedrooms is nearly complete thanks, in most, to our dearest friends who visited from England with their 8 year old son, and found themselves enlisted into work, but now I get to walk into our rooms and smile at the laughter and silliness that went along with their creation; coats and coats of paint have been roller-ed on to cover the azure blue and candy pink that went before. Rooms of serenity taking their place.

Finally, a break in the weather and the mowing can commence. First the hum of the tractor, mooching through the long grass, cutting at its ankles and felling it to the ground; next being made tidy by our daughter, Madi, making them into billowing lines of warm fluffy foliage ready for the baler to pick them up and eject them as perfectly formed bales; finally, they are wrapped up like Christmas presents dotted around the field – a quintessential sight within the farming calendar and an essential element of our winter food stores. Five days reprieve in the weather allowed us to make a small start, but it is a drop in the ocean of the work that still lies ahead. Ordinarily, our silage is made before the end of May, in a joyous, fun-filled period of quick lunches and evening finishes. It is a family time on the farm, and it is not unusual to find all three tractors working together – Madi rowing up, Matthew baling, and me, wrapping – in a ‘normal’ year it is a satisfying and rewarding time, but this year, as the end of June nears, with barely a start having been made, it is beginning to become worrisome; and still the rains keeps pouring.

In between the storms, I find time however, to tend to the garden. The garden is my sanctuary, the quiet joy in growing flowers, fruit and vegetables, I find, to be unparalleled. It is all I can do at the moment to keep the sweetpeas deadheaded, and the weeds at bay; bindweed taking over wherever I turn. Flowers are brought into the house on an almost daily basis, filling the rooms with their perfume and colour. The apples are forming and the peaches are plumping, the raspberry canes reach for the skies, and as I wonder through, I notice that the blackcurrants are ready. My mother grew blackcurrants when I was a small child living in the north of England, and as I crouch down next to them now, picking their tender fruit away from their stems, I am reminded how they always seemed to create a forest around me when I was little, stretching to the top of my head where now they barely reach my hips; the fresh, verdant smell of a currant, squashed between my fingers, and I could almost be four years old again. These currants will become jam to be piled onto fresh bread, or stirred into gravy’s for a sweet, fruity reminder of warmer days when the depths of winter surround us again

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