Au Revoir, Noyerac

Due to visa issues and some other schedule shuffling, I ended up coming back to the States for a couple of weeks this fall, in between my longer stay in Dordogne and a final couple of weeks for conferences/visits in France and the Netherlands starting in early December.  So I won't be returning to our little village of "Noyerac" this year, but it's been a fun four months of fall.  Some end-of-trip memories: 

- Finishing up a dozen thread-lace snowflake ornaments for C and Y's French family Christmas celebration.  Blocking thread lace (previously soaked in simple syrup so they'll keep their shape when dried) requires a lot of pins. 

- The abundance of walnuts at harvest time in Perigord-Noir, a major walnut- and chestnut-growing region ("noyer" is French for "walnut tree", and "noix" or "nut" has the default meaning of walnut).  The local walnut liqueur has a lovely raisin-y flavor, and C used some of it to make one of the traditional  "tartes de noix" of the region.  What happened to the rest of the bottle?  Well, it was just sitting there in front of the fireplace...

-  The convenience store/market where you can pick up a cured leg of pork (unwrapped, hanging on a rack), a grave marker (totally serious.  The store has an accompanying garden/florist shop, and floral memorial tributes are apparently a big part of their business), or a jugful of local wine from a big box-barrel in one corner with a spigot on the bottom and a hand-lettered sign reading "Vin du pays, 1,5 euro/liter".  There are clean plastic one-liter water bottles in a tray on top of the box-barrel in case you forgot to bring your own jug.  I wonder if any of the wine is from the vendange or grape harvest that I saw going on at a nearby farm one weekend in September?

- Hikes with C and Y and the kids ("Peterama" and "Hanuman") in the hills and forests around Noyerac. Y made Peterama a bow and arrows from saplings (with nylon-cord bowstring, very inauthentic), and he's become pretty good with it, but you have to remind him not to point it at people.  Sometimes we'd find windfall walnuts and whack them with a stone on the road to crack them, and go on our way eating nutmeats. 


Here are Peterama and Hanuman on a knightly tour of a local castle after I left.  (Is knightly work daily or is it strongly weekly?)