Our Source of Fruits & Vegetables

I've talked about it so much - I really should do a post on it already. Rene's garden or plantation as I like to call it because as you'll see for yourselves, it is not just your regular backyard vegetable patch.

J is away on an all girl's trip by the sea so Rene is all alone. He called us to meet him for a picnic at the garden & of course, we obliged. My only responsibility was to bring bread. He or rather the garden would provide everything else.

The garden is in Gourdon - about a 20 mins drive from his house. It's actually not that far but since it's a windy, narrow mountain road where you can't really go faster than 40km/h, it does take that long. This is the view from the garden. My camera does not have the ability to capture how huge his garden is.

Our little picnic table - check out that awesome view. We were supposed to have a little BBQ of sausages but he found out from the mayor's office that it's forbidden to start any fire outdoors until Sep 1st (so if we had the picnic next week, it would have been fine).

Ladies & gentlemen, it doesn't get any fresher or better than this. Tomatoes right from the garden with a pinch of salt - the way it's eaten in the countryside.

Now that lunch is over, how about a little tour of the plantation ?

When we arrived, he was chopping wood for winter

The land is on a slope so it's quite a climb to get around it

There are lots of chestnut trees
which is what Ardeche is known for.
The fruits are not ripe yet

Haricot blanc
I don't know what's the English name for this
White beans ?

The more popular French green beans

Melon

Pumpkin
You know autumn is approaching when these start to appear

The beautiful coeur de boeuf tomato
I can't wait for these to ripen

Aubergines
I've included all the different types of vegetables so that my city friends would know what the actual plant look like

Carrots

Zucchini
This must be one of the most prolific vegetable

There are of course raspberries & strawberries but I've already posted about them. So apart from fruits & vegetables, we have a trout pond too.

The sun was out so I was able to get a good picture of the trouts
He believes there are about 50 of them (& counting)
He used a grasshopper as bait & with a line & hook, caught us 2 trouts

That's dinner

But the biggest surprise was finding cepes
This was the first time he has ever found cepe on his land

Guess what else we're having for dinner ?

So we left with a huge basketful of goodies
very generously provided by Rene

Stay tuned for my next post on what I did with them.