Hibernation

We have to get out of the house soon as we have run out of bird food. They now have a diet of suet, porridge and emmental. I knew that cheese would come in handy for something other than the couple of ounces required by my tartiflette recipe.

On Sunday morning, after a week of bitter east winds, we woke to a blanket of snow beyond the bedroom's French window, and driving snow. The weather has been like this before; in February 2004 we just made it to the airport for a trip back to the UK to pick up the car. Gendarmes accompanied a convoy of traffic up and down the several hills on the Bergerac road, past abandoned lorries, following the only 'gritter' in the area - two guys on the back of a flatbed truck shovelling gravel and earth onto the road, which sank uselessly into several centimeters of snow.
As we sat in the airport, 4 hours before the flight was due, we watched the snow melt before our eyes. The plane left at 4.30 and friends told us later the snow had all disappeared by the evening.

Not this time. Now, on Wednesday morning, the snow is still thick in the garden. A mixture of icing sugar and glitter, it is no good even for making a snowman. I tried, at the top corner of the garden, overlooking the road to the outside world, to make un homme du neige, (just doesn't have the same cosy ring to it, does it?) perhaps waving for help? perhaps signalling 'cheers' with a cup of tea? but the snow crumbled to sparkly fragments in my hand. And few would have seen him anyway, for few vehicles have made it along the road.

The French do not handle 'weather' well. Some seem even to consider rain to be a dangerous substance. In this area of South West France snow is rare and short-lived - 1999 was the last prolonged fall - so there are few snowploughs or gritters. Being a Continental climate it can get intensely cold in January, particularly overnight, but sharp winters are short-lived and can be followed by good spells. We have often gardened in t-shirts in February. So we all have to shift for ourselves now.

A friend marooned up the road in St Astier has just emailed to report the ridiculous if well-meaning efforts of her Maire to clear his Commune's roads. He drove past her house, where she cannot get up the slope of her drive, in his tractor with a bucket on it. " He had attached the bucket not to the front, where he might have been able to scoop some of the snow from the lane, or push it out of the way, but to the back. So he succeeded only in compressing the snow into a hard-packed glass-like surface." A local farmer has made a run along our road and turned up our lane to free our neighbours at the top. But beyond where he has been the road is still pretty dangerous, crackling and crunching as the occasional car goes by in 2nd gear So for one more day we'll stay put.

I've found suet at the back of the spare fridge, so we've had steak and kiddly pud. I've made tartiflette and cheesy-onion bread and we've had lots of porridge. So running short of potatoes and eggs has not been a problem. By the way, the BBC food site has only 1 recipe for tartiflette and it is incorrect. Sorry, Hairy Bikers, crème fraiche is essential imo, although some French recipes use no cream-based products at all. Double cream belongs in a dauphinoise not a tartiflette.

But though the freeze is forecast to continue we have appointments to keep tomorrow.
Our example will be the French family who do stand up to the weather. Unlike other local farmers who have kept their tractors in their sheds and their feet up by their wood-burners, the folk who work the vineyard opposite work in all weathers. By the next spell of good weather, all the pruning has to have been done, followed by the pulling out of all the pruned growth. Yesterday, un homme dressed in a suit similar to that worn by actors in The Hurt Locker, worked his way up and down the rows with his huge secateurs and working up some warmth yanking out lengths of growth.
And he drove here to do it. My Hero.