Our region, Quercy, is a part of France famous for its fruit and in particular the ‘ Les Melon de Quercy’ which have IGP status. L’I.G.P as the PGI, Protected Geographical Indication, covers agricultural products and foodstuffs closely linked to a specific geographical area.
For the local melon growers it has been a difficult year, the crop was a good month late but the melons have finally arrived, just in time for the tourist season. Last week Belfort de Quercy, a neighbouring village hosted its 22nd Fete du Melon complete with the ‘who can eat the most melons’ competition. The highlight of the 2 day celebrations being the ‘Repas’ featuring Assiette Belfortoise, and starring – yes, you’ve guessed right – melons.
Team Melon
This morning I spent a happy hour part of a team of cutting up crates of melons to be sold as part of the food available before our local Son & Lumiere.
Sadly not all the melons produced are suitable for sale, any with cracks (often the sweetest) fail the quality control test and have to be disposed of. This ‘waste’ is our gain. Several times a week we drive up into the hills to a visit a tiny farm that produces some of the best melons I’ve ever tasted and fill our trailer with the rejects.
These melons, barring those that go straight into my fridge, are then fed to our piglets by the wheel barrow load twice daily.The squeals of delight at meal times can be heard for miles! Hurling the melons into their paddock is often one of the things our guests remember long after they have returned home …
One very happy pig….
Keeping pigs is a very satisfactory business. The four boys arrived in May weighing approximately 30 kgs. They live in a large enclosure in the wood so they have plenty of space and shade. Thanks to them, there is little or no waste in our kitchen – any non meat scraps go straight into the pig bucket, and the families renting the gites also bring over bags containing their left overs, carefully sorted.
We say NO to meat as it is said to make the animals more aggressive, something we don’t want to encourage as the hungry boys already nip Roger’s boots if he doesn’t fill the feed tray fast enough… Later they’ll be eating all our over sized courgettes, fallen apples and any plums that don’t go for jam or use for Eau de Vie.The end product, next spring, will be delicious especially the hams that will be salted then air dried to produce the local version of Palma ham. Our freezer will be full of chops, sausages and joints whilst the shelves in the larder will groan under the weight of jars of homemade pâté. But best of all we’ll know exactly WHAT they’ve eaten and therefore what we ourselves are eating!
Molles 