#it suffered a bit in the move to touring (although the differences were juicy to chew on)

[supercantaloupe]

happy sleepover saturday!!!!! if you could only ever watch one of these for the rest of your life would it be sexy oklahoma or don giovanni (i think it's. aioux? production? your special one, you know)

also!! here is spitfire & the girls

A CRUEL AND VICIOUS CHOICE. they are like two sides of the same coin to me.... Well considering i am literally watching the latter right now,

also OMG what fantastic beasts!! Girls Night

[ask meme]

[180abroad]

Days 47-49: Beaune

Thanks to the French train strike and our fortuitous ticket-buying mistake, we ended up cutting our stay in Provence short and heading up to Burgundy one day early. It was with considerable sadness that we bid farewell to our lovely home in Avignon and walked through the old town back to the train station.

The train ride went fairly smoothly, although I did almost get a touch of motion sickness on the first train due to a combination of stuffiness, difficulty seeing through the windows, and being on a backward-facing seat. When we changed trains in Lyon, we were careful to choose seats facing in the direction that the train was traveling. Except the train ended up changing direction and backing out the way it had come. As soon as the train started moving, But the air and windows were much better, so none of us had any trouble.

I’m must report a minor tragedy that occurred in Lyon, however. My trusty water bottle--which has survived many bumps and drops--suffered its final blow when it came unclipped from my pack and dropped to the station floor. At least I was able to put it in a recycling bin instead of the trash. Perhaps it will live on in a French toy or synthetic t-shirt...

After we arrived in Beaune, my aunt Donna found the nearly-hidden taxi stand, and we were whisked away to our one-night refuge--a hotel just a few minutes’ walk outside the center of town.

After resting up for a bit, we went out to dinner at a nice little pizzeria, where we enjoyed a couple pies with the house white wine. After dinner, Jessica and Donna enjoyed the house cafe gourmand, and I ordered a sorbet. I asked for a scoop of raspberry and a scoop of blackcurrant, but due to a miscommunication (or possibly a chef who simply knew better), what I received was a scoop of raspberry and a scoop of lime. The two flavors paired spectacularly well--their sweetness and tartness balancing out into a refreshing and balanced burst of juicy flavor.

After dinner, we walked up into town to get a sense of the place--the small shop-lined streets, the half-Roman half-Gothic central cathedral, and the famous Beaune Hospice, which we would visit later. On the way back to our hotel, we also swung by the apartment that we had originally booked and that we would be staying in for the rest of our time in Beaune.

Also, bake-on-demand baguette dispensers on the street corner. How French is that?

On our first full day in Beaune, our main goal was just to get checked into our Airbnb. There were other things we wanted to do eventually, but our next scheduled activity--our Burgundy wine tour--wasn’t for a couple more days.

While we were waiting for check-in (our hotel let us keep our bags in the manager’s office in the meantime), we visited the Fallot mustard mill--the last independent family-owned mustard mill in Burgundy. We learned about the history of mustard, how it is made, and what makes Dijon mustard special.

In the Middle Ages, most mustard was chunky--with the ground seeds still in the mixture. This gave the mustard texture but diluted the flavor. The mustard makers of Burgundy (whose capital is the city of Dijon) perfected the technique of filtering out the seeds, leaving a smooth mustard that was much more potent. We got to taste both chunky and smooth mustards--they still produce both--and the difference is astounding.

They also make a huge range of flavored mustards including terragon, blackcurrant, and even gingerbread.

I’m not much of a mustard fan--that is Jessica and Donna’s forte--but even though I bowed out of the tasting portion early, it was fascinating to learn the intricacies of the art of mustard production. The mustard needs to be finely ground, but it also can’t get too hot or else it will lose its flavor. So the best mustard mills have to work slowly and settle for quality over quantity.

Mustard also becomes milder over time, so if a mustard is too spicy for you, leave it in the refrigerator for a month or two then try it again. On the other hand, if you like spicy mustard, make sure not to let yours sit around too long before finishing it.

We even got to make some mustard ourselves! It's surprisingly hard work to do by hand.

Saturday is also market day in Beaune, so we got to stroll through the stalls as we looked for lunch. As the rain picked up, however, the merchants were forced to strike camp.

We stopped for lunch at a cafe. Jessica had chicken with a Chardonnay cream sauce and a Cote-du-Beaune chardonnay wine. Donna and I enjoyed a spectacular boeuf bourguignon with a Cote-du-Beaune Pinot Noir. Before this lunch, I’d never quite gotten the significance of pairing food with wine. I could tell that some wines went better with some foods than they did with others, but I’d never really experienced a synergy where they actually made each other taste better. Until now.

The stew was great in its own right, but the wine filled flavor gaps that I didn’t even realize were there. And the flavor of the beef masked any hints of harshness or bitterness in the already very smooth wine. (We would enjoy an even more spectacular example later on, but that’s for later.)

After lunch, we headed back to our hotel to pick up our bags and check into our Airbnb. Check-in went smoothly, and shortly after we went to pick up more allergy medicine for myself and groceries for all of us. We tried to pick up all the food we would need for the rest of our stay since many shops are closed Sundays, Monday we would be gone on a wine tour, and Tuesday was French Labor Day.

We enjoyed a small dinner of microwaveable quiches, then ended up talking late into the night.

We had planned for Sunday to be a rest day, but since Tuesday was a holiday, we wanted to get the last essential sightseeing site out of the way--the Beaune Hospice.

The Hospice was built in the 1400s, when the population was at a desperate low point after the ravages of the Hundred Years War and the Black Plague. The Hospice was built like a palace and made specifically to serve the poor, who normally would be left out to die in the cold. Each patient would be given a bed (or at least half of one) and their own bedpan and utensils for eating and drinking. The Hospice was built out of the belief that everyone deserves a place to convalesce in peace and, if worse comes to worst, to die with dignity. A chapel was built into the end of the hall so that patients could attend mass and hear spiritual teachings without leaving their beds.

The Hospice’s crown jewel is the Great Hall of the Poor, where the poorest patients were housed and treated. It may look plain next to the colorful terracotta-roofed buildings that make up the rest of the complex, but its slate tile roof was actually an exotic luxury at the time.

Inside, the ceiling is filled with interesting details, including busts of animals and local townsfolk, as well as larger heads graphically spitting out colorful crossbeams from their mouths. These were made to cheer up the patients with funny and familiar faces. And above the door, a painful crucifix was placed to remind the patients that Jesus also suffered pain and death.

Having visited magnificent cathedrals in Spain and Italy, I never felt as touched as I did standing in the Great Hall of the Poor. For all the grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica, it ultimately feels to me like a monument to the institution of the Church rather than the principles it stands for. If Jesus returned to walk the Earth in secret during the 1400s, I think he would have spent his time here in the Hospice, not in the Vatican.

And, to be brutally honest, the patients would have needed all the spiritual help they could get. While the nurses and physicians no doubt did their best to help, many of their practices (like those across the West until the late 1800s) were downright barbaric. The theory of the four humors guided treatment, bloodletting and trepanation were commonplace, and the pharmacy was stocked with various elixirs and cure-alls crafted from mystical elements like mercury and arsenic.

But the prize of any medieval pharmacy was Theriaca, a powdered panacean concoction made with dried flesh--ideally mummy flesh, of course.

For those interested, the Hospice has a fascinating collection of medical instruments from across the centuries since it was founded. It remained an active hospital until well into the second half of the 20th century, and its furnishings, equipment, and practices obviously evolved with the times. It was only with the need of advanced laboratories and surgical suites that came about in the later 1900s that a new hospital was built, allowing the hospice to be restored to its Medieval layout and opened to visitors as a museum.

The Hospice also includes a fantastic altarpiece that originally hung in the chapel of the Great Hall of the Poor.

After the Hospice, we revisited the Beaune cathedral. Built during the transitional period when France was abandoning the Romanesque style in favor of the new and airy Gothic style, the cathedral is an interesting mix of both architectural styles.

Inside, however, I must say that it is much like any other European cathedral we’ve visited--pews, altar, pulpit, chapels, choir, and art. I hate to say it, but church interiors are doing less and less for us as the trip goes on. Leaving the church, we walked around the town for a bit longer before heading home for sandwiches and a lazy afternoon of rest.

That would be the end of the story, except for a spectacular dinner. We had bought some beef, potatoes, and an onion from the supermarket to cook up, as well as a bottle of red Burgundy wine to enjoy with it. When we first opened the wine, it was thoroughly unimpressive--earthy and flat with almost no fruitiness or complexity to speak of. It improved as it opened up (and to be fair it was still a young wine), but it still did not impress.

But when my aunt Donna used some of it to make a sauce for the meat, it transformed both. The meat and sauce were some of the tastiest I’ve ever had, and drinking the wine with the meat transformed its flavor profile entirely. It was spectacular, blowing even the previous day’s boeuf bourguignon out of the water.

Of course, we’d heard this already numerous times, but it finally clicked through personal experience--French wines are made to go with food. If a French wine doesn’t taste good by itself, try it with food. It’s entirely possible that you’re just drinking it wrong.

Next Post: Burgundy Wine Tour

Last Post: Rhone Valley Wineries

[diyaquaponicssystems]

2 Days at a commercial aquaponics farm

Course in aquaponics on Bioaqua farm

I wanted to learn more about aquaponics on a commercial scale, so I went to the beautiful Summerset just outside Wales, a rolling landscape with hedgerows and meadows.

Along a small road has Bioaqua Farm with Antonio spearheaded set up their business with the cultivation of trout, they have four large swimming pools buried in the ground with two associated greenhouse. Two new greenhouse was about to be put up when I was there and there were even a couple of hives helped with pollination. I was the only “foreigner”, where although there were some who lived both in Brazil, South Africa and Greenland! Delightful mix of people of all ages but different amount of experience. The course was an intensive introductory course in two days alternating theory with practice.

DAY 1

Salad Aquaponics Began with the theory and history of aquaponics. The aquaponics is not at all new but already used thousands of years ago by various different peoples. We also went through different systems, pros and cons. Antonio claimed that Zipgrow Towers was equivalent to the NFT which I do not entirely agree with. The downside of NFT / zipgrow was under him that it acted as a major element, which heated the water, creating temperature fluctuations. It may well be that in certain situations with clean NFT, but it feels weird to Bright Agrotech not have pointed this out at all. Their system is much larger than Bioaqua farms.

After completing the theory that offered some interesting discussions, we went out and inspected greenhouses. They were solidly built with a wood frame and UV-protected plastic that covered too. They also had a good ventilation possibilities in hand, the plastic that you could cover for open depending on weather.

  The ebb and flow / DWC / Aero

The water is fed out to the plant beds content spirit hydrograins using a distributor controlled by a timer. When the water in the planting beds reached a certain height started a siphon that began to empty down to a line of DWC beds. A special type of Styrofoam had holes drilled in with nätkrukor which mainly lettuce grew, but other major crops.

aeroponics propagation

The abundance of these ran down into a sump which also acted as a large propagation system using sprinklers. To get the first root growth were planted cubes first in this aeroponics system for later transfer to a “nursing board” where the holes for nätkrukorna set more tightly. Finally, as they were moved over to the disk where the holes were further apart so that all the plants would get plenty of light.

clever tricks

Bioaqua farm had devised some clever ideas which nätkrukorna did not go all the way down the hole without sticking up a little bit. The reason for this was that when the plants get bigger and heavier so they weigh down the Styrofoam so much so that the water reaches the crowns which makes them rot. This was enough, however, a problem that was quite specific to their solution as they were very large and heavy plants in their DWC.

Another smart idea was to plant the seedlings in a zig zag pattern so that the water circulated better around the roots. They had also thoroughly with oxygenation with a large oxygen rock every meter in the summer and a little less in winter ( read the article on oxygen and plants ).

greenhouse Inside

Something I have not thought of, but which was very logical was that the roots became host to microorganisms in DWC system, similar to that seen in the plant bed onto Leca balls. This meant that Bioaqua farm let the plants remain until they could replace them just because the microbes would continue to work. Had they removed all the plants at once, this had probably led to problems with the mineralization.

Pisces After the tour of the greenhouses, it was time to say hello to the fishermen. They were outside in the round and buried in the bottom conical tanks in a pattern number five in a dice where the sump was in the middle. They were well protected during both net and a tent. If I remember correctly, they held a total of 100,000 liters of water in the marshes. In each tank so swam a large amount of char in different plant stages which made it very easy to “reap” on various occasions. The variety was exclusively rainbow trout as this was both tasty, durable and quickly grew. They had tested other types of trout, but these grew half as fast resulting in significantly lower returns. The only thing that was different was the texture of the meat as Antonio. They were also GMO free which was unusual in the industry.

fish feed

Bioaqua farm use only “organic” food, which means that the corn used is GMO-free. This is mixed with catches which vessels have raised. According to Antonio’s what the fish eat determines how it will taste. The trout is a predator and it is the fact that makes it taste just fish. The price of the GMO-free feed and the “organic” feed skilled not a lot in price, but when you go through a pallet of the day in large plantations begins suddenly felt. What was one of the reasons that GM feed is used more often in large plantations. If the water is not filtered properly so the fish have a slimy taste.

controls

In Britain controlled all fish farms regularly and tests taken by the water. Bioaqua farm has very good values compared to traditional fish farms, probably due to the effective filtering with aquaponics, and that they do not fill their tanks.

Clean water

To fish would taste as good as possible, it was important to filter the water properly. Therefore had Bioaqua farm set up filters between the plant bed and DWC system. Because the holes were so small they were filled quickly back and Antonio emptied them several times a day.

Filter

Time to build After lunch it was time to get practical. We would put up our own aquaponicssystem (without fish). An IBC 1000 liter acted as the fish tank. These are cheap and easy to get started, but needs to be covered over when the resin is UV-resistant and temperature would shift too much if you let it stand in the sun.

It would then build a “radial flow” filter so that solid substances would sink to the bottom. The water here would lose a plant bed filled with hydrograins and a siphon would drain the water into a DWC system. A pump with T-cross was supposed to fill in both the IBC and the NFT system on the other side. Much to do, lets go!

Radial flow filters

We were divided into two groups where one group built a radial-flow filter, while the other began to cobble together a plant bed. To build the filter was very simple, and it is difficult enough to find the right material, rather than putting it together. What was important was that the filter tank corresponding to approximately 1/4 of the large tank volume.

plant bed

Finding a plant bed of the right size is very difficult, so instead they built Bioaqua their farm with the help of wooden planks that were painted on the outside and the inside covered with plastic, very smooth. Antonio used exclusively Torx screw, and when it was time to drill holes through the plastic began his first anticlockwise not the plastic would stick in the hole saw.

Building the plant bed

It was about what we he with on a day which was not a little.

DAY 2

We banged us again in the classroom and now we went into more rules about fish and how to get hold of their first fry. The rules for the UK probably differ somewhat from Sweden which meant that this part did not give as much. It was very interesting to listen to the section on water dynamics and how to build fish tanks that performed better than others. Around and tapered at the bottom seems to be the way to go.

After the theory we were treated to lunch with fish from own cultivation. Very juicy and tasty, but it apparently took 20min to peel. Take it times 10 fish then you have some work to do. For the most part so smoked the fish and made a pâté of it was very tasty. The question came up about how the fish were raised and killed.

Fishing net

For single fish, a large landing net, but then there were different types of networks that mattered. The fewer the fish that were in the tank, the smarter they became, and the more easily escaped the all fishing effort. Finally covered the entire bottom of a net which drew up the final bottom.

An important point that Antonio took up was to use gloves when the fish’s body temperature is much lower than ours. The large difference in temperature burn otherwise the fish skin and create unnecessary suffering.

Once up, he took a firm hold of the tail and with a finger in his mouth, he broke the fast neck of the fish. The whole thing took no more than three seconds without any suffering.

More construction

Template

Now it was time to complete the system. New beds were built, but this time they were filled with water instead. Styrofoamskivor (polystyrene) normally used for floor became a “floating raft” Once the holes were drilled. To avoid having to measure out the holes each time had Bioaqua farm made a smart template with screws that formed a perfect impression when pressed together with another disc.

The second group began working with a siphon that turned out to be a real headache, but eventually began to suck water. Personally, I am not eager to build when there are many parameters to fiddle with the width of the pipe, the amount of holes in the ground and how much water is entering the bed.

The bed was filled with three sacks hydrograins, oxygen stones placed in DWC system and NFT troughs that were completed since the previous placed so that it had to tilt the DWC. All that remained now was to get some power to the pump and then everything started to circulate. A little leaks here and there, but to have put the system on two afternoons, we can be quite satisfied. Speaking of leaks as Antonio had tried everything and wanted to be absolutely sure it is not leaking so he recommended something called PU-40 is a super silicone. No idea if you can get the equivalent in Sweden but it might be worth checking out.

Summary A rewarding course in beautiful surroundings. For Bioaqua farm as the fish was the main income which is different from what I have seen and are used to. This meant that the farm was better attended than the greenhouse where some defects appeared on the plants, probably when the pH was too high in my opinion. Being aquaponicsbonde however, is a right reserved plot and sometimes lonely job where the greatest social contact occurs at the farmer’s market. Pushing for the product you have is better is also a challenge, but the only way to go if you want to get paid for what you do.

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