While our farmers work les terres du château with a proper dedication to improved techniques and agrarian productivity, Monsieur Martyn and I are engaged on another mission. But he suggested that Martyn cut a swathe around the plantation before he started mowing. In his heavily-accented French, our English gardener took the same occasion to expand about the ripening daffodils. “ C’est plus naturel, you see” explained Monsieur Martyn to our farmer. ![]() Unlike the orchard in the farmyard, with its rows of precisely placed pommiers, the Taxodium are arranged in apparent disorder. The trees are still small, easily confused with grass and wildflowers. It fills a damp clearing between the copse and the big pasture to the east of the Chateau. And this winter, after much consideration and research, we put in a grove of Taxodium distichum, cyprès de la Louisiane, otherwise known as swamp cypress. The leaves must ripen to yellow before they are cut, a process that lasts into June. Two years ago, we planted daffodils in swathes across the grass. Mowing the parc and its Great Lawn has become a delicate affair for our farmer. Our plantings have invaded the agricultural domain. A fine gardener herself, her flowers stay in borders around her house. “ Ah, non!” enunciated Madame Brigitte in a censorious tone. Even the Great Lawn in front of the Chateau offers up its greensward. Besides the hayfields, we mow the little paddock beside the graveyard, the old horse pastures next to the stables, the grassy centers of the farmyard and the cour d’entrée. The benefits of enrubannage are such that now we make it in every aire available. Looking through the double "allée" of linden trees to the single "rangée" of lindens on the other side of the cour d'entrée.the grass has been cut and now regrows. It started to take off in the 1990s, but with typical Norman prudence, we waited to make sure it worked before investing in the matériel required. ![]() Enrubannage, as this process is called, is a new technology in the French countryside. Plus, the cut grass grows back in time to make hay. It’s a costly process, but the preserved grass is precious during the long winter months. The fluffed and dried grass is pressed into les grosses balles, envelopped in plastic, and stocked in our hangar behind the Temple. That’s why, as soon as we had a few sunny days in the middle of May, our farmer began cutting, raking, tedding, and baling the young grass in the prairies and around the Chateau. ![]() “Et encore riche en protéine et sucre !” Madame Brigitte, our farmer’s wife, informs me.Īs grass matures during the summer, its nutritional content falls. In these final days of spring, the grass is still tender. Their mothers continue to eat industriously. Slender legs tucked under their delicate bodies, they doze amid buttercups and the lengthening blades of green grass. In the pasture behind the Chateau, the calves are taking a mid-morning rest. It’s a very warm June day at Chateau de Courtomer.
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