THE larks stopped their morning singing back in July, so it is a case of up with the Maran cockerel. Unlike the wild birds, Robespierre, ‘The Terror of the Farmyard’, never fails to announce the dawn. He works 365. Mist across the fields and valley; but, behind the soft lace veil, the electric anticipation of September, the month that is the advance guard of winter, yet when grass has a second springtime. It is only the feebleness of the pinky-grey cells of the human brain that reduces Nature to a set of four separate seasons; yesterday, swallows hawked insects in leaf-stripper wind; thus, summer and autumn in one swirling moment. The geese need to get fat and to get fat they need to get out on this ‘flush’ of grass, hence my first duty this September dawn is opening the door of their wheeled, wooden shed.
We have farmed geese on and off for 20 years, and are currently ‘on’, with a small flock of Toulouse, that old French breed famed for being the force-fed provider of foie gras. More to our taste is that Toulouse are reasonable layers and, if they don’t beget golden eggs, they do beget white eggs about which cooks rave. Then, there is their grease, plus their down and, of course, their bodies, which we roast with Port-wine gravy or, for the mature bird, Armagnac and a castiron casserole dish.
Denne historien er fra September 29, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra September 29, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
