In the local town of Rouillac,nestled in amongst the Cognac vineyards, the 27th of each month isan important date. For on the 27th, whether it falls on a weekday orweekend and come rain or shine, the whole town becomes a huge market place.This tradition goes back over two hundred years and is likely to haveoriginally been a horse-trading market. Rouillac is situated both on the VoieAgrippa, an ancient east/west route acrossFrance linking Lyon with Saintes, and also an important trade route between Brittanyand Spain. People still come from miles around (it is BIG in the localcalendar) and one of the main attractions now is the poultry, although thereare still a few horse sales too as well as everything else you would expect tofind at a French market.
For some time now I have wantedgrey speckled hens and with Ade’s permission (he keeps a very tight controlover my animal purchases) that was my goal and the search was on. Thoseseriously looking for a bargain are there very early, but on a cold, wet Sundaywe decided a mid morning outing was a better idea, so set off after a coffeeand croissant breakfast. The drive down was grey and damp, the Cognac vines,some neatly pruned some still scruffy and twiggy looked bare and wintry. Aquick tour around the poultry stands and we found our girls. Wanting 2 or 3grey speckled hens fate led us to the only stand offering a discount for buying3 birds, and they just happened to be grey speckled birds – sold to the shortlady in mauve! To top it all the weather was dry for our wander around themarket where we could have been tempted by all sorts from day old ducklings, tostrings of garlic, to huge turkeys (alive), to fish (dead), to sausage andchips (hot) to locally grown kiwi fruits. We did scoop up a bargain on thekiwis as they are full of vitamin C and make a great winter breakfast smoothiewith a banana and some natural yoghurt.
The new girls, Fifty (the lightgrey one), Kirstie (the bold, bossy speckled one) and Phyl (the other one) aresettling in well, they haven’t met the others yet, but I hope they will enjoytheir free range life in our orchard very soon (and lay us lots of eggs).
bonjour,je m'appelle EVELYNE ,j'habite BAZAUGES à coté de SUE ,je suis couturière et j'ai un blog :plaisir-de-l-aiguille.over-blog.com
ReplyDeleteje me suis inscrite à votre blog et serai heureuse de vous connaitre,cordialement ,Evelyne17
Bonjour et bienvenue Evelyne, Bazauges ce n'est pas trop loin d'ici, nous sommes pres de Chef Boutonne.
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