Angling Lines Blog

Steph Dagg runs Alder & Notaires carp lakes.

I haven’t  been cheesing for a while, so a bit of a catch up this week.

Louche cheese

First up some local cheese. This is the product of the Orval fromagerie in Berry. Louche means ladle and a louché cheese is one that has been hand ladled into its mould. These are usually plastic these days with drainage holes. Once the whey has dripped off the cheese is trundled off to be packaged.  This cheese is made from pasteurised cows’ milk. In theory it’s spreadable, and it is slightly crumbly, but you don’t get a smooth layer with it.

I have to say that I can’t admit to being very fond of louché. Most likely it’s an acquired taste. It’s certainly a bit odd. None of us like it that much on its own so I’ll use it up in cooking. Rors had developed an addiction to leeks in cheese sauce, so no prizes for what cheese I’ll incorporate into that dish!

Sheep are very much in the forefront of our minds as we continue to be kept waiting by our ewes for a lamb delivery. Rameses has got a bit bolshy with me and Caits lately, so his future may now involve the freezer. I’m using a vinegar/water spray to stop him from butting me when I go into the field, as per the advice on a website. It didn’t take him long to cotton on to that one.

Etorki cheese

So I bought some sheep milk cheese this morning. It’s from the Basque region and is called Etorki. I thought this might be something exciting, but it turns out it simply means ‘origin’ in Basque. That is a slightly lame name for a cheese. It’s a very pleasant, mild and light cheese, but with a slight tendency to stick to your teeth, I find. However, that could just be my teeth so don’t let that put you off trying it. This might be the first sheep derived cheese I’ve eaten, and I’m very impressed. But not to the point of planning to continue milking numbers 27 and 28 (the ewes formerly known as Lavenham and Debenham) after they eventually have their lambs.

So, one highly recommended cheese, and one less so.

Steph & Chris Dagg own Alder & Notaires carp lakes.

We made it! We’re back home with our long lost and now steerable Renault. My little Fiat made the round trip to the garage at Faverolles sur Cher, no problem. She was a bit slow uphill, and a bit slow downhill, not to mention on the flat as well, but she kept going and I reckon could have kept going all week.

Valencay

The trip there took us through Valençay, which I’ve heard about but never been to before. It has a fabulous castle, which I shall be going back to visit over the spring holidays. It’s a beautiful Renaissance building. It’s famous for the Doric and Corinthian features in its architecture. It was built by the Estampes family, who started work in the mid 16th century, around 1540, but didn’t actually it finish for nearly 200 years. (It was bad enough spending two years renovating our two buildings, let alone two centuries!) In 1719 a Scottish banker, John Law, bought the place, then in 1803 Napoleon’s finance minister Charles Talleyrand took possession. The idea was for him to hold sumptuous banquets for dignitaries there.  Ferdinand VII of Spain was imprisoned there for six years. Poor old chap, that must have been tough.

In 1979 the castle was sold to an association that has been responsible for its upkeep since then.

The castle has a good reputation as a family friendly venue with an Easter Egg hunt in its forty acres of grounds each year, as well as other fun events, and it has a play area. Both kids and adults can dress up in period costumes and have their photos taken. Twice a year in summer there are candlelight visits to the castle at night. I would have thought that was rather risky, what with all the old furnishings, but so far things have gone well.

The château is open all year round. Here’s a good site about it to check out. http://princessa.hubpages.com/hub/French-Castles-Valencay

The west wing houses a car museum in Valençay too that’s well worth a visit, apparently, and if there’s time hopefully I’ll fit that in too. Maybe they’ll take my Fiat one day.

Chris’s satnav brought us a different way home. We drove past Zooparc du Beauval. We could see the Chinese section of the zoo with its pagodas and curvy lion statues, but I didn’t get a glimpse of any black and white fur though!  The satnav also brought us home behind a straw lorry for a fair chunk of the route. Now, straw is not meant to go at 90 km per hour. It’s fine at 20 km or so when towed by a tractor but when it’s hurtling along on a main road, it disintegrates. We were driving through thick cloud of bits of the stuff. There will be a good bit less of it when it arrives from when it left.

It was fun to travel in our mini convoy of two cars. It brought back memories of when we drove down here on that fateful day, 13th August 2006, to start our new lives in France. Chris was ahead in the Renault with Caiti, who was navigating, Ruadhri and the trailer. I brought up the rear in the Fiat with Benj and Nessie (our dog). Nessie is stouter and more grizzled than she was, all three kids have grown a lot and become totally Frenchified, and Chris and I have a few more wrinkles than we did then and a whole new outlook on life. And we’re still enjoying our adventure.

Steph Dagg owns Notaires & Alder carp lakes.

La Présidentielle is quite a family affair. Not only do we have Marine Le Pen, daughter of a former presidential candidate, running this year, plus François ‘give me a fiver’ Hollande, whose former partner Ségolene Royal run in 2007, but it now turns out that the two favourites, the afore mentioned Hollande and Sarozy, are distantly related. According to Jean-Louis Beaucarnot, author of Le Tout-politique, the pair of them share a common ancestor, a Savoyard peasant from the 17th century. This person is Claude Labully-Burty from Saint-Maurice-de-Rotherens, a little village 20 kms from Chambéry.

Claude’s family included two sons – another Claude, who was Hollande’s ancestor, and Pierre, who was Sarkozy’s. These two settled in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Genix-sur-Guiers during Louis XIII’s reign. Labully is a famous name in the area since it’s associated with a rather grisly cake. A pastry-making ancestor of our two presidential hopefuls, invented a fake breast gateau. Seriously. It’s an appropriately shaped brioche decorated with praline which was originally created to celebrate the fête of poor Saint Agatha (5th February) who was martyred unpleasantly (weren’t they all) by having, amongst other things, her breasts severed. I hope you weren’t eating while you were reading this.

Let’s have a quick, closer at our two cousins. Nicolas Sarkozy was born on 28 January 1955 in Paris. His father was a Hungarian immigrant, and his mother was of French and Greek descent. (And Sarko wants to cut down on immigrants!) He’s on his third marriage and has three sons and one daughter. As I’ve mentioned in earlier blog posts, he’s an extremely wealthy man. He’s also an author and his better known works are these three books – Libre, Témoignage and Ensemble.

François Hollande was born on 12 August 1954 at Rouen and is as French as he can be. He lived for a long time with Ségolene Royal and they have four children. His new partner is Valérie Trierweiler. Like Sarkozy, he’s also not short of a bob or two. He’s written books as well, including Le Rêve Français and the forthcoming Un Destin pour la France which has an unnervingly smiley-faced Mr H on the cover!

I can only think this common ancestor, Claude Labully-Burty, maybe wasn’t so good at the marriage thing but excellent with money, had a strong political (i.e. ruthless) streak and a love of expressing his opinions (orally most likely, since the chances are he probably couldn’t read or write) which he has passed on down the generations. It’s not quite the family feud of the Milliband brothers recently in the UK, but I think this ancestral connection adds a little bit of extra excitement to the contest.

Steph Dagg is the owner of Notaires & Alder carp lakes

The last couple of mornings I’ve been getting up early-ish to write. I’m about to launch my light hearted travel memoir about moving to Les Fragnes and our first years here, Heads Above Water, and I’m already busy on the sequel!

I went out to feed the sheep. Yesterday I’d checked No. 27’s teats, since she’s definitely pregnant, and saw that they were getting nice and big. There were a few more promising signs today so our first lamb or lambs (ewes don’t always have twins the first time they give birth) might not be far away. That’s very exciting!

Then I decided to shovel poo, you know the way you do! Well, we do anyway. More correctly, it was compost. But it used to be poo. I’m working on the second raised bed at the moment while Chris solders pipes in the gîte. I also emptied out the big kitchen compost bin and found four teaspoons. Chris found four in it the other day. I wondered where all my spoons were going. I’m not quite sure how they all ended up in there, I have to confess.

No worms!

The sun was shining and it was cosily warm in the polytunnel so I planted some beetroot and radishes in the raised beds, and started some rocket, tomatoes and lettuces in seed trays. Then Rors and I attempted to do a worm survey. We followed the instructions. We marked out our area and watered it with a dilute mustard mixture, but absolutely nothing happened. I’d expected worms to come popping out of the ground at high speed. Nothing. Now either Creuse worms are just plain tough, or the ground is so waterlogged already that the mustardy water didn’t penetrate. I upped the ante and tried again later with some pepper sauce mixed in water. Still no worms. I feel very disappointed since I know they’re there, but how are we going to get them to come out and be counted. I may have to resort to explosives.

I did some more shovelling after dinner and then got busy helping Caiti write job application letters and her résumé to send off. She’s probably left it a bit late to get a job with the Tour de France, but we’re trying. We’ve written to some agencies and also to a few of the teams directly. It’s rather nice that we were able to mention to each one that we’d been cheering them on yesterday at Aigurande. Which we had – we cheered for everyone! Caiti has offered to do anything from admin to washing socks. I hope she’ll find something. She’d love it since she’s a really keen cyclist and she’ll been a great little worker.

I’d just proofread Caiti’s letter and inserted a very necessary ‘with’ in the phrase ‘I hoped I might be able to work with your team during this year’s tour’, when Rors came in to tell me he’d seen a horse and cart go by (our neighbours a few kms away) and also that he’d found some frogspawn. I went to see that with him. I’d be worried about the frogs and toads this year. Their first batches of spawn got frozen solid during le grand froid. Luckily they’re having another go so they’ll soon be zillions of tiny frogs and toads appearing everywhere.

A sure sign of spring.

Sarkozy

I’m quite enjoying the run up to the French presidential elections, even though none of us Daggs can vote in them. That situation will have changed by the next Presidentielle though. As soon as Caits turns 18 in April, I shall go to the Mairie in Nouzerines and get the paperwork going for her, Benj and me to become French nationals and thereby obtain the right to vote. Rors is still too young and Chris is quite happy to stay British for a while longer.

Here’s the full list of candidates in this year’s Presidentielle:

• Nicolas Sarkozy – Union pour un Mouvement Populaire
• François Hollande – Parti Socialiste
• Marine Le Pen – Front National
• François Bayrou – Mouvement Démocrate
• Jean-Luc Mélenchon – Front de Gauche
• Eva Joly – Europe Écologie Les Verts
• Dominique de Villepin – République Solidaire
• Corinne Lepage – Cap21
• Nicolas Dupont-Aignan – Debout la République
• Nathalie Arthaud – Lutte Ouvrière
• Frédéric Nihous – Chasse, Pêche, Nature et Traditions
• Philippe Poutou – Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste

Bayrou

There’s one I’d like to add: Nicolas Canteloup. He’s an impressionist who excels at politicians. He has a 10-minute slot after the news every night where he does skits on political figures. Chris and I actually understand most of what he says now. Our project of watching telly every night is really paying off. Not only are we now a lot more in touch with French affairs, but it has definitely helped our French. continue reading…