happelsauce

Ratatouille

Jean-Yves showed me a big box of vegetables – zucchini, tomatoes, turnips, eggplant and mushrooms – he had purchased at the coop yesterday. “For ratatouille,” he said. “Very bueno! You cooking?” Umm, oui. I had never made ratatouille before but I figured it couldn’t be too difficult. I would sauté the veggies in a big pot with olive oil, onion and garlic, add rosemary and salt to taste and voila. Jean-Yves thought it should include lamb as well and said that before he left to run errands, he would get the lamb out of the freezer and put it in the kitchen. When I returned to the house around 11am, after spending a couple hours with the goats, I found the box of ratatouille ingredients but no lamb. Jean-Yves hadn’t left yet to deliver his cheese to local restaurants and families, so I asked him, “Ou et le mouton?” (“Where is the lamb?”) And he replied laughing, “Suis le fil!” Right. What does that mean? “We’ve run out!” or “Butcher it yourself!” I had no idea. Jean-Yves then flipped through the hefty French/English dictionary and found “fil.” It means “thread.” Something about thread? What? Now I was completely confused. I looked once more at the box of ingredients on the floor. There was a blue string tied around the handle. I followed the string to the counter top near the window. It was attached to a plate covered with a glass bowl. The mouton! I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before. Turns out, “Suis le fil” directly translated means “Come with the thread.” In this case, Jean-Yves meant, “Follow the string.” Very clever! I sliced and chopped all the veggies, sautéed the lamb with onion, garlic and rosemary and let it simmer together for an hour or so. It was savory and good and just enough for lunch and dinner that day. Bon appetit!

La Fete est Chouette

When Lucie and I returned from the market on Saturday, Jean-Yves asked me if I liked driving. “Oui.” I replied. “Very bueno, you et Estelle take beer to le concert du rock. D’accord?” Lucie then explained that there was a fete (party) in a town about 50 kilometers away and the organizers had purchased twelve cases of “Belmonthe” beer. Estelle wanted to go to the fete anyway, so it would be great if I could drive, drop off the beer, hang out at the party with Estelle and then return with the empty plastic cases. It was all fine by me as long as Estelle would navigate. We unloaded the market items from the van and loaded the beer, ate lunch and left around 5pm. Estelle played good music the whole way and I would point out the window at the green hills and exclaim things that a four-year old French kid might say, “Tres vert! Tres jolie!” (“Very green! Very pretty!”)

When I first heard the phrase, “Le concert du rock,” I was picturing something entirely different from what it turned out to be. The only “rock” involved came at the end of the night in the form of a tres terrible band called “Crazy Hot Pop.” They consisted of four middle-aged guys who spoke no English but sang only American rock songs from the early 80s. The lead singer put on his sunglasses halfway through their set, just as the sky was turning dark. “Crazy Hot Pop” aside, the fete was, as Estelle often says, “Super chouette.” (“Super cool.”) So I started saying, “La fete est chouette!” (“Chouette” sounds like sweat with a “shh” and rhymes with “fete.”) It was an all-ages affair – kids and adults dancing to the beats of an African drum circle, a room full of onion tarts for sale, and fire dancing in the streets after dark. Estelle and I got back to the farm after midnight. It had been a long day with the market in the morning and the fete at night. Long, but totally “super chouette.”

Les Grande Salades

For the past week, I have consumed, on average, about two large heads of lettuce per day. The abundance of salad on the farm would be deemed a surplus by most, but not by us. For both lunch and dinner, Jean-Yves, Alban and I have started each meal with our own gigantic bowl of lettuce, dressed in a simple vinaigrette. Each bowl is big enough to serve at least four people a generous portion of salad. We pick lettuce from the garden and it’s supplemented with more lettuce from the coop. “Salade est very bueno. We eat beaucoup du salade! ” Jean-Yves declared last week. “Beaucoup du salade” is an understatement.

I like what Michael Pollan writes of salad in The Omnivore’s Dilemma: “There are few things humans eat that are quite so elemental – a handful of leaves, after all, consumed raw. When we’re eating salad we’re behaving a lot like herbivores, drawing as close as we ever do to all those creatures who bend their heads down to the grass, or reach up into the trees, to nibble plant leaves. We add only the thinnest veneer of culture to these raw leaves, dressing them in oil and vinegar. Much virtue attaches to this kind of eating, for what do we regard as more wholesome than tucking into a pile of green leaves?”

There are two things I love most about our grande salades – the preparation of the lettuce and the few seconds before we eat.

Preparation: I always soak the lettuce leaves in water for a few minutes. When I first arrived on the farm, I would let the lettuce sit in a colander, then pat it dry with a kitchen towel before dressing. It wasn’t long before Jean-Yves introduced me to a new, more efficient and much more fun way of drying the lettuce leaves. Now, after they’ve soaked, I dump the lettuce into a big, clean pillowcase. I close off the opening with my hand and swing the case around and around a few times, then dump the lettuce into bowls, dry and crisp.

At the table: I make a vinaigrette with olive oil, vinegar and mustard, mix it in a jar and place it in the middle of the table. Right before we eat, we individually dress our big bowls of lettuce. This is when I laugh. Always. The bowls are enormous and we look miniature in comparison. We toss our lettuce; forks clanging against the side of our bowls, then say “Bon Appetit!” before diving in.

Lucie and I woke up early on Saturday morning – market day. Jean-Yves handed me the keys to his van full of farm-fresh goods to sell and we were off. The market is in the town of Belley, about a 15 minute drive from Belmont. We set up two tables side by side, pieced the glass cheese case together, prominently displayed the Belmont farm sign, and arranged our products.

• Organic goat cheese (frais, demi-sec, sec) – 1.30 euro

• Organic, farm fresh eggs (one half dozen) – 1.50 euro

• Organic, farm pressed apple juice (one liter) – 2 euros

• Organic, homemade “Belmonthe” beer (.75 liters) – 3 euros

Lucie left our table a couple of times to run a quick errand and inevitably business seemed to pick up when I was alone at the stand. I could understand enough French to know what the client was requesting. “Bonjour! Deux jus de pomme et duex fromage sec.” Translation: “Good morning! Two apples juices and two aged cheeses.” Oui. I would wrap the cheese in paper and try to tune out the customers calculating their orders out loud, “Deux plus duex est quatre et…” so I could do the math in English in my head. A good exchange would end with a pleasant, “Bon Weekend!” and the happy customer walking away with exactly what they had asked for. There were a couple of times when people would approach the table and ask a question, or their voice would raise towards the end, so I would assume it was a question. I will never be sure. I would do my best to understand, then smile and say, “Je parle un petite peu Francais.” Which is almost a lie because I speak less than “a little bit” of French. Sometimes this would spark curiosity and they would continue speaking to me in French, assuming that I spoke enough to explain a short version of my life story, which is not at all the case. Sometimes they would ask, “English?” then switch to English and ask their question again – it often turned out that the customer was asking about Jean-Yves. “Where is he? How is he doing?” And sometimes the question would be altogether dropped and they would just point to whatever it was they wanted to buy. No one ever walked away, I am proud to report, and almost everyone was kind. By the time the market was coming to a close, around 1pm, Lucie and I had sold most of everything. I pulled the van around; we folded up the tables, took down the big umbrella and packed everything up. We headed back to the farm with hot pizzas from the stand a few stalls away, bellies full of fresh cherries from the stall across the street, a lot less cheese and more cash in the little tin cash box.

A couple of weeks ago, after my Saint Girons Saturday market experience, I started writing an entry and never finished it. I was overwhelmed with posting all of my previous entries that had backlogged while on Rose and John’s farm with very limited, solar-powered internet access. The Saint Girons market is worth mentioning because it was an entirely different experience from the Belley market. In Belley, Lucie and I had a very low-key morning, with an easy stand to set up, not many items for sale, and just the two of us working. In Saint Girons, Rose’s produce stand took almost two hours to set-up and another two to pack up, the selection was huge, and there were more than seven of us working at any given time. The market itself was immense compared to the Belley market, with stall after stall of cheeses, olives, produce, bread, art, and the organic selection was vast. It was a younger social scene – live music, beers outside at the café, drum circles and barefoot dancing. At least a quarter of the clientele seemed to have dreadlocks or a joint in their hand. The Belley market was tame in comparison, the clientele were mostly age 50 and over, and only our stand was organic.

Here’s what I started writing about the Saint Girons market:

I spent the evening before the St. Girons Saturday Market preparing the vegetables for sale. This entailed removing the plastic wrapping from the organic cucumbers and the wilted, brown outer leaves from the iceberg lettuce that Rose purchased in Perpignan, then rinsing them in the stream for a final burst of cool before returning them to their box in the back of the van. To say that the big, blue van was full of produce is an understatement. It was packed with produce; so much so, that I don’t think there was a single inch of room to spare. The boxes were all pieces in an edible three-dimensional puzzle that only Rose could fit together just right. The van isn’t always so packed, but we’re in the thick of “the hungry gap,” so Rose buys more wholesale produce this time of year.

I would consider 4:30am the middle of the night, yet on Saturday morning it was my time to rise and shine. Market day. I had slept for less than five hours the night before. The weather had been rainy on Friday and I was cold and muddy. I had been looking forward to the market all week, but after waking up in the pitch dark, putting on my damp jeans and covering my greasy hair with a wool hat, I wanted to get back under the covers and sleep until noon…or at least until sunrise.

So yup, it’s fair to say that I found the Belley market and our little Belmont farm stand a refreshingly enjoyable place to work, but I would shop at the Saint Girons market every Saturday if I could. It felt alive – a bountiful celebration of good food, music and life. I hope farmer’s markets in the United States will become social meeting spots for neighbors and friends. It is a step in the right direction when we find ourselves face to face with the people who pick our produce and make our cheese and bake our bread. Food becomes more than just something we consume. It has a history. And the person working at the market stand has usually played a role in that history and will willingly divulge all the details (unless that person is, like me, a stranger in a foreign land and unable to speak to the inquisitive shopper in their native tongue).

The shopper can learn:

- Where the product was grown/made/raised – hopefully not too far from where it is sold.

- Who grew/made/raised it – maybe the very person behind the stand.

- When it was picked/made/slaughtered – hopefully very recently, unless the shopper is purchasing cheese.

- How it was treated – hopefully kindly and organically.

One thing I’ve learned in my life on the farms is that SO much labor and love goes into the food we eat. I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that farmers are quiet, unsung heroes. They enable the rest of us to eat and live! Sante to farmers and farmer’s markets! May they survive and thrive.

Lucie is 19, Jean-Yves eldest child, and the only member of the Martinal family who can speak English. More importantly she is one of the most thoughtful, kind and inquisitive people I’ve met on this journey. She is in the middle of studying for her exam that will determine if she can go to university, where she will study philosophy. Estelle is 17, the middle child, and equally wonderful but with whom I need to use an array of hand signals and the French/English dictionary to communicate. She attends pottery school in Dijon, about four hours away. Both Estelle and Lucie stay at school during the week but they return to the farm on the weekends. Alban, at 15, is the youngest and cracks the most jokes. I laugh not because I understand, but because his enthusiasm is contagious. He attends school nearby and is home every evening. Unlike his older sisters, he will not continue school after this year. He hopes to be a fireman.

After dinner on Friday night, Lucie, Jean-Yves and I lingered at the table and talked philosophy. Lucie, both translator and active participant, brewed a pot of tea with slivers of grapefruit rind. Jean-Yves repeated, “Wild, Hombre, God.” (When we talk, he’ll throw in a few Spanish words, like “hombre” for good measure. It always makes me laugh.) Then would launch into his theories about nature and religion and the different ways in which people see God. Patiently, Lucie would translate for me, and I’d reply and ask more questions. For Jean-Yves,  God is in the eye of the beholder and the world evolved in this order: “Wild, Hombre, God.” First came nature or “wild”, then humans or “hombre”, and last God, if God is whom we choose to see.

Just as we had finished our tea, Alban ran into the kitchen. A goat was having a baby. “Maintanant!” We all rushed over to the barn and by the light of a single headlamp, Jean-Yves assisted with the birth by gently pulling the baby goat into the world. At first the baby looked dead. She was lying on the straw, limp and lifeless. Maybe 20 seconds passed. Then she moved her tiny little head and tried to stand. The other goats approached her, curious. When Lucie and I walked out of the barn about ten minutes later, the petite chevre was already standing and trying to drink.

And I didn’t fall asleep that night thinking that witnessing my very first live birth on the heels of an in depth discussion about God was some sort of sign from a higher power. I fell asleep thinking that life is a miracle in its own right. It is opportunity and hardship, hope and sadness, and love and loss. Maybe for me, God encompasses every life on earth, past, present and future, and is a reflection of the energy that all our lives produce. “Wild, Hombre, God.” Sounds good to me.

Recipe:

Take the following two videos, mix and mash them together until thoroughly combined.

Et voila!

Then read below for more details…

Lunch and dinner are both very communal affairs. We eat only organic and local food that is cooked in one large pot and placed in the center of the table. Everyone gets a large spoon and we eat straight from the pot. No individual plates or bowls. For my first lunch, Jean-Yves prepared steamed rice with diced leeks and carrots. He cracked eggs on top of the hot rice and they cooked sunny-side up. Only the rice was purchased from the store. The leeks and carrots came from their garden and the eggs were still warm from the hen house. Most meals seem to be a variation on this first lunch – couscous sometimes replaces rice, potatoes are added and sometimes we have a salad with lettuce and radishes from the garden. Simple and good and always sans salt. And I love salt. Tonight I plan on taking a pinch from the salt bowl and sprinkling it over my portion. I just have to.

Each meal is accompanied with a plate of goat cheese. There is always one “frais” (fresh) cheese that is only a day or two old and is mild and ricotta-like in texture, a couple rounds of cheese around a week old, and then another couple rounds that are “sec” (dry/aged) and up to three weeks old. The “sec” is my favorite because it has the most flavor. It is fair to say that I’ve consumed more goat cheese in these past few days than I have in the last six months. It is magnifique. And the best part is that it doesn’t upset my stomach like cheese sometimes does. I have a couple reasons as to why I think this is true.

First, the cheese completely organic – no chemicals or pesticides for the goats, no additives or preservatives in the cheese and therefore nothing but pure, fresh goat cheese for me. Second, the cheese is unpasteurized. When I was working alongside Victoria at Chris and Olivia’s farm in Southern Spain, I would pepper her with questions about her experiences on the chevre farm outside of Nice. Victoria loves cheese and she explained the cheese-making process to me in full detail. We also talked about the differences between raw, pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized milk. Back in Pennsylvania, she buys her milk raw and fresh from a local dairy farmer. She swore that it was the only milk she could properly digest because it is not is heated to kill off bacteria like pasteurized and ultra-pasteurized milk. This sounds contradictory, but it turns out that when milk is pasteurized it kills off all the bacteria; both the potentially harmful along with the good bacteria that make milk easier to digest. Victoria claims that as long as you know you’re getting your fresh milk from a hygienic farm, it is far superior in taste and tummy. So, knowing this, I can only assume that the same goes for raw milk cheeses. Victoria wrote an outstanding article in her blog about raw milk. Read it here.

When I explained to Jean-Yves via a neighbor friend who speaks a little English why I think his cheese doesn’t upset my stomach, he adamantly disagreed. Brushed and polished translation is as follows: “Your life is so fast – going, going, going – in America. Your body is not reacting to the cheese; it is reacting to your environment. 90 percent of any illness is in the mind and 10 percent is in the body.” And he went on, “It helps to only eat one animal protein a day. When I eat cheese, I don’t eat eggs or meat. When I eat meat, I don’t eat cheese or eggs. And so on. It’s very good for digestion.” Okay, I can appreciate Jean-Yves’ explanations and I will take them into account as well. I’ll make it my quest to eat organic, unpasteurized cheese avec sound mind and sans meat or eggs when possible. Whew.

It is with hand signals, head-nodding, my ridiculous pocket-sized French travel phrasebook and dictionary (the French word for “before” is not listed, but I can find the word for “belt”) and lots of laughing that I have survived my first few days on the farm. Yet, it is the sheer goodwill and openness of my host and his family that I have actually enjoyed my time here. Lucie, one of Jean-Yves daughters, has painted quotes, many Gandhi and a few Native American, in bright colors on various walls throughout the house and barn. This one is painted above the barn entrance to the goat milking room:

Ne regarde plus le monde avec inquietude. Tes yeux dispensent la lumiere du jour ils sont le miroir de monde.

Not knowing anything about Jean-Yves or his family, the very presence of these quotes, all about world peace and understanding, put me at ease that very first night.

After a breakfast of oatmeal with raisins and Yannoh, an organic coffee substitute made from ground chicory, barley, rye, and acorn flours, Jean-Yves handed me a stick and motioned to the hillside. Was he asking if I would lead the goats onto the hillside near their home? Oui. Of course I would. Jean-Yves then explained in rapid-fire French all the details of tending the herd. I understood none of it and stared back in bewilderment. Hand signaling ensued. Here’s what I could gather:

- I would leave now and return about three hours later. That would give the goats just enough time to graze on the wild grasses before they got sleepy.
- Sleepy goats are not good. I should return before the goats start lying down in the grass.
- I should always walk ahead of the goats.
- I should lead the goats high on the hillside. Then I could sit on my blanket and read.
- The goats will follow me at the sound of the goat call, “YEE DOOO LOO DOO LOO YOOO! YEEEP YEYYOOOH!” Or something along those lines.

So, off I went, bellowing my goat call, stick in hand, leading more than 20 goats up the hill. The morning progressed without much fanfare. The goats were curious, nuzzling my book from my hands and stepping on my blanket. I was high enough on the hill so I could see the little town of Belmont below, another town in the valley, and the snow-covered Alps peaking over the green hills in the distance. When it was time to return to the farm, Jean-Yves met me at the road below and helped me herd the goats into another pasture behind their barn. Voila! Goat herding success!

I envisioned myself on a particular farm before leaving New York. I was making cheese, the sun was shining, and the backdrop was postcard perfect. And now I am here. I have found that farm minus a few romanticized comforts and plus an obscene amount of bug bites from Nice, one particularly itchy one on my eyelid. I received a response to my WWOOFing inquiry from Jean-Yves less than two days ago. He wrote that I was welcome to come and he’d pick me up from the train station closest to his home nestled between Lyon and Geneva in a village called Belmont. I’d had it in my head that I would WWOOF on Corsica after Nice but neither of the two farms there that were willing to take me sounded as promising as Jean-Yves place.

Now that I’m more of a seasoned farmer, I find myself seeking a more authentic experience. For what is probably my last WWOOFing experience on this journey, I was hoping to find a fully-functioning, family-owned, native speaking, organic farm on which I could spend a couple of weeks. I came across Jean-Yves’ WWOOFing description while using the solar powered computer at Rose and John’s place. It was written entirely in French, but the word “chevre” appeared like a golden nugget in a mucky river of French verbs and nouns, so I wrote back. In retrospect, I think I was feeling overly confident that I could farm anywhere. Hell, at the time I was living on a farm without a shower or electricity, so a little language barrier didn’t faze me. Here is Jean-Yves’ description of life on his farm (merci Babelfish, for the rough yet readable translation):

Bonjour, je suis Jean-Yves MARTINAL, j’habite un petit village dans l’Ain, sous le dernier contrefort du Jura (le Colombier) entre Lyon et Genève (Suisse). Je cultive 17 hectares environ de blé, d’avoine, un peu de seigle, de l’apôtre, de la luzerne, du foin pour mes 20 chèvres. Je fais du fromage à partir de février que je vends à la ferme, dans des coopératives bio où sur le marché de Belley. Mon travail est rythmé au fil des saisons, en automne je transforme les pommes pour faire du jus. En décembre après avoir tué le cochon je fais de la bière. La ferme possède une boulangerie où l’on fait notre farine, du pain et des pâtes. J’ai trois enfants (19, 17 et 15 ans). J’ai deux ânes, des poules, des moutons, des cochons et des chats. Chacun est le bienvenue pour participer à mes diverses activités suivant les saisons, à découvrir le Valromey, une région entre mi-montagnes, lacs et rivières. Français parlé et anglais baragouiné.

Hello, I am Jean-Yves MARTINAL, I live in a small village in l’ Ain, under the last buttress of the Jura (the Dovecote) between Lyon and Geneva (Swiss). I cultivate approximately 17 hectares corn, d’ oats, a little rye, l’ apostle, of the alfalfa, the hay for my 20 goats. I make cheese as from February that I sell with the farm, in co-operatives bio where on the market of Belley. My work is rate/rhythm in the course of the years, into autumn I transform apples to make juice. In December after having killed the pig I make beer. The farm has a bakery where l’ one makes our flour, of the bread and the pastes. J’ have three children (19, 17 and 15 years). I have two donkeys, of hens, the sheep, the pigs and the cats. Each one is it welcome to take part in my various activities according to the seasons, to discover Valromey, an area between semi-mountains, lakes and rivers.  French and poor English spoken.

It sounded enchanting. Now that I’m actually here, the farm is real and alive and I feel lucky to be a part of it for just a little while. I had been unable to get in touch with Jean-Yves before leaving Nice. He’d written that I could come on Thursday the 21^st, the day I originally thought I’d arrive. Yet on Monday, a whole three days earlier than planned, I was ready to bid aurevoir to the French Riviera and head to my next farm. Sarah headed off to the airport, Brooklyn bound, after our send-off lunch of crepes and café. I would miss her! Alone again, I wasted no time and bought a train ticket to Virieu Le Grand, the town with a train station closest to Belmont, that was leaving Nice in less than an hour. I figured that if I couldn’t get a hold of Jean-Yves by phone to warn him of my early arrival, then I would find a room for the night and sort everything out in the morning.

I arrived in Virieu Le Grand just as the sun was setting. I lugged my bag off of the train, stepped onto the platform and realized that the town was a bit more petite than I had anticipated. Could it be that there would be nowhere for me to stay? When I called Jean-Yves from Lyon I got no answer. He still wasn’t expecting me. I walked into what appeared to be the only restaurant in town. Just the fact that they were open gave me a glimmer of hope that I wouldn’t have to sleep on the sidewalk. The owner spoke enough English to understand that I needed to use her phone because I was potentially stranded in her tiny village. I called Jean-Yves again. No answer. The woman, who could not have been more understanding or kind, told me that there was a hotel a few villages over from Belley that might have room. She called them for me. I would have to take a taxi there and the room would cost about $90. Really? This was not happening to me. I could see the owner read the look of disbelief on my face as the reality of sleeping curled inside the village phone booth set in.

In desperation, I tried Jean-Yves one last time and…someone answered! They didn’t speak English, so I handed the phone to my new friend and savior who explained that I would like to come to the farm tonight. She might have added that I seemed very disoriented and slightly afraid, I’ll never know. Either way, when she hung up she said that it was going to be okay, her husband would cook me a little something to eat and then she would drive me to the farm. I could have cried with relief, but more so out of appreciation. This woman was the kindest of kind strangers. Without her help, I have no doubt I would have ended up sleeping inside the France Telecom booth down the street. Her husband made me a beautiful salad of fresh greens, salami and roasted vegetables that made me feel all the more fortunate to have landed in their little town. On the ride up to Jean-Yves place, “Merci” was my mantra. I kept repeating it out of sheer gratitude. When we pulled up to the farm in the dark, not more than a ten-minute drive from Belley, the woman gave me her card and told me to call her if I needed anything. Then the car tires crunched over the gravel and she was gone, headlights winding down the hillside in the distance. I had made it.

It turns out that Jean-Yves was away at a “reunion” when I arrived around 10pm. “Reunion?” Hmmm. A wedding? A family gathering? I later learned that a “reunion” is simply a meeting, but regardless I wouldn’t meet him until the next morning. At home were Jean-Yves XX year old son, Albon and a French WWOOFer named Michael. I must have appeared more than un peu perdue. Neither of them spoke English. When I tried to apologize for arriving early in my very best French (which is tres terrible), I don’t think they understood. It didn’t take too long until Michael and I realized that we both spoke Spanish, at least enough to communicate. So, instead of sounding like a two year old speaking French, I sounded like a ten year old speaking Spanish. It was a vast improvement. Tomorrow would be a new day and it would bring good things – chevre, fromage and sunshine.

Bienvenue a Belmont

I left the farm in the French Pyrenees this morning and am en route to Nice to meet my friend Sarah for our whirlwind “Brooklyn Does Baguettes” tour of the Riviera. I just walked down to the Vieux Port in Marseille to see a bit of the city before dark and grabbed some Vietnamese spring rolls for a picnic en chambre. I am now nestled in my cheap room at a little hotel across from the train station, poaching internet from a French neighbor. Bon chance! I have several entries to post due to a lack of electricity and internet this past week. I will post date them, so please READ BELOW FOR UPDATES. Merci!

In typical last minute style, I sent a bunch of emails to WWOOF farms in the French Pyrenees a week prior to my impending arrival. My hope was that I’d find a spot to work the week between San Sebastian and Nice, where I am meeting my friends Beth and Sarah for our “Brooklyn Does Baguettes” tour of the Riviera. I received a response from a man named John Gunning who said that he and his wife had room for me and he’d pick me up in St. Girons when I arrived. John’s WWOOF posting was brief, but mentioned work in their organic vegetable garden and fresh strawberry tea. I replied that I’d take the bus to St. Girons on Tuesday evening and thanked him for picking me up. Any other information about the farm I figured I’d discover upon arrival.

When I got off the bus in St. Girons, no one was there. It occurred to me that I might have ended up in the wrong St. Girons. John had mentioned something in his last email to me about making sure I was traveling in the right direction. I speak no French and I have no guidebook or map, so I was at the mercy of the woman who sold me my train ticket back in Pau. I told her what I knew, that the town was about 100 kilometers south of Toulouse. She seemed to understand. So, I waited a bit longer and then pulled my pocket-sized French phrasebook from my bag. How do I ask, “Is this is the main bus stop in town?” Or should I just cut to the point and admit to the next passerby, “Je suis perdue!” Crap. Just as a sliver of worry started to creep into my mind, a tiny old car pulled up to the side of the road and out popped a small man with a white beard. John! I hoist my bag in the trunk and off we go.

John and Rose Gunning live about ten kilometers outside of St. Girons, which is a small town in the French Pyrenees less than twenty kilometers from Spain. On the ride to their home, John told me about Annie Oakley. Apparently, she had a traveling act that toured throughout Europe in which she’d extinguish the lit cigarette from a volunteer’s mouth with her incredible sharp-shooting skills. John said, “Annie Get Your Gun! And we’re the Gunnings. So, it’s Annie Get Your Gunning!” A one-of-a-kind welcome.

Family:

John and Rose Gunning are from England but they’ve been living in France for the past twenty years. John spends his days in the garden and moonlights as an herbalist. He picks pots full of herbs for his daily dose of tea, treated the massive, swollen spider bite smack in the middle of my forehead that I got my last night in San Sebastian with clove oil, and can recommend an herbal cure for almost any ailment. Rose runs the large produce stand every weekend at the market, buys and transports the produce they don’t grow from Perpignan (five hours east) to St. Girons, and as John says, “Rose gives a piece of her heart to each customer and keeps them coming back for more.” They have five children (four boys and one girl), between the ages of 21 and 29. From oldest to youngest: Sky, Sundance, Rain, Orion, and Etoile. They also have three Mastiffs: Kali, Citi, and Nazca. None of their kids live at home anymore. Sky, their eldest son, built the cabin that John and Rose live in now. They own a large, blue van that now transports all of their organic produce to the market, but has sometimes been their home when they haven’t had a roof of their own. When the kids were younger they drove to Morocco. All seven of them and two dogs lived in the van for more than two months while they explored the country.

Accommodation:

Rustic! I stopped in to meet Rose and have a cup of tea when I first arrived, then John drove me down the dirt road another quarter mile or so to the “barn.” There was a mattress on the muddy floor, an old futon frame for sitting, and a cabinet with shelves in the square cinderblock room. There was a tap outside for water, but no electricity, no toilet and no shower. I asked John where I could bathe and he pointed to the little stream than ran underneath the road. “It’s fresh water. Really nice.” And he left me to settle in. Thoughts fired at rapid speed: “Candlelight I can deal with, but no shower? John never mentioned this in his emails. Okay, not what I was expecting. Why didn’t I wash my hair the last time I showered? Shit. That stream is coming straight from the mountains. It has got to be freezing. I am going to freeze or be a dirty grease ball. Probably both. Whatever Annie, embrace it. I can leave whenever I want. Remember that. Ask Rose for a clean towel and sheet and blankets. I will be fine. This is good for me, a complete 180 from San Sebastian. A heads up would have been nice, though. Whatever, then I wouldn’t have come. Okay, embrace it. I am one with nature. It is ridiculously beautiful here. I hope there aren’t a lot of spiders…”

A few days after I’d settled in, I felt good. I braved the frigid alpine water and took an invigorating “bath” in the stream. Rose hadn’t had a clean towel to give me, so I air dried in the sun on a big wool blanket. My naked sunbath was interupted when a man walked right past me with his fishing rod on his shoulder, heading towards the river below. He didn’t seem to pay much attention, so I responded by remaining exactly where I was. Ahhh France!

I also got “Feeling Groovy” by Simon and Garfunkel stuck in my head. “Slow down, you move too fast. You’ve got to make the morning last…” Those lyrics were my gospel. I slowed down. I absorbed the clean air like a little city sponge ought to. I thought back to my arrival at the barn and felt all the more certain that life is about timing. San Sebastian gluttony followed by this! I hadn’t planned on the transition being so dramatic but the timing was perfect.

Environment:

The Pyrenees Mountains create a natural border between France and Spain. The tallest of the peaks are snowcapped and will remain that way for at least another month or so. The mountains sit on a mixed-temperate forest of poplar, aspen, and chestnut trees among others. I want to drink the scenery, it looks so refreshingly delicious.

St. Girons and the surrounding villages have a freethinking, alternative feel. Old French hippies with berets and beards mingle with the younger, increasingly international, eclectic crowd. From what I can gather, many people build their homes themselves and live off of their land. The Saturday Market is a weekly ritual for many residents, when they all filter down from their little corners of the wilderness to buy their cheese, bread, mountain honey and wine, and catch up on the week’s events. (More on the market later.) When the McDonald’s opened in St. Girons a few years ago it was promptly burned down. It was rebuilt to the dismay of many locals and still stands…for now.

John and Rose’s land is nestled on a steep hillside. All of their vegetable beds are on a slope and the views range from lovely to spectacular. They grow potatoes, leeks, squash, artichokes, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, beans, carrots, herbs, peaches, apples strawberries, and flowers. Their little cabin is sans toilet or shower just like the barn, but does have running water in the sink and a solar panel on the roof that lights up their nights and powers their laptop.

Food:

All organic, mostly veggies and fruit, usually unseasoned (which means I get to doctor my plate with an assortment of different spices), always simple and good. Rose buys big, glass bottles of fresh apricot and blood orange juice that are worthy of the title, “Nectar of the Gods.” The food tastes good and it feels good. Their policy is to “eat when you’re hungry.” There is no proper mealtime. And I like this in theory, but it means that each one of us almost always eats alone. I discovered a few days into my stay that John doesn’t like eating with other people as a general rule. For John, eating a meal with someone else “is quite like taking a piss with someone. I find it quite a private thing.” But we shared the table often – John would sip wine and chat with me while I ate, enjoying my meal but holding on to the belief that food tastes better when it’s shared in good company.

Work:

Right now is what people once called “the hungry gap” because their vegetables stored from winter (potatoes and squash, mostly) are all gone and new crops have yet to come up. So, I am a little early for the harvest – no strawberry tea for another couple of weeks. Rose and John need help hoeing and weeding the garden, preparing beds for new seeds and keeping the planted beds happy. I would also help Rose at the Saturday Market, setting up, packing up and everything in between.

John broke his back five years ago. He still manages remarkably well, but can’t do anything that will set it off. The hoeing and heaving lifting were up to me. My first morning and most mornings after were spent hoeing the big vegetable beds, which is not easy work but it is almost instantly gratifying. Hoeing is kin to those cleaning commercials when the dirty floor is wiped clean and sparkling with just one stroke of the solution. The hoe is sharpened before use and when applied with pressure to the weed infested soil, it wipes the weeds away and leaves only the rich dirt. After a couple of hours my back is sore, the blade dull and the novelty has worn off. By then it’s lunchtime, afternoon break and then back to work in the evening until dusk.

When I had finished hoeing my first morning in the garden high above the cabin, John yelled up and asked me to untie the dogs and bring them down with me. Kali headed back to her doghouse and dragged what I thought was a chew toy out from the back wall. Upon closer inspection, I realized that her toy was a dead cat. I told John and his immediate reply was, “Oh okay, will you bury it then?”, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. Before I could respond he said, “Oh, I’ll do it.” Whew. I would have said no anyway, but I was relived nevertheless. Later on, John told me that Kali had been very fond of that particular cat. They were friends. I had initially thought that Kali was eating her, but it turns out she just missed her company. Kali just hadn’t been ready to say goodbye.

Another one of my tasks on the farm was carting various items – groceries, meat, water, propane and organic humus (soil fertilizer), from the road below up to the cabin. The day Rose returned from town, the load was immense and I took almost all evening making trips with the wheelbarrow to get it all up. The dogs eat dog food for most of the week, then Sunday is their lucky day. Rose picks up two crates full of unwanted scraps from the butcher. They smell rancid, attract swarms of flies, leak blood and just like everything else from Rose’s trip to town, must be carted up the hill. Bleeeh. One crate was extra macabre because it contained, among other bits and pieces, a cow head with the eyes still intact. I gagged a bit while wheeling the crates uphill, but I made it. The dogs then spent the next couple of days tearing the raw meat to shreds. Kali must have gnawed on the cow head until Friday, its vacant eyes staring back at me from the darkness of her doghouse.

John and I harvested leeks on Friday to sell at the Saturday Market in St. Girons. This time, we were the hunters and the leeks our prey. That day the entire area was enveloped in a mist so thick I could feel it on my skin. We walked up the dirt road, past the barn, to another small piece of land that contained row upon row of pointy, green leaves sticking up from the earth. Unplucked leeks look surprisingly tropical to me, almost like mini palm fronds. Their roots are strong and they’re not easy to unearth. It takes slipping a long kitchen knife into the dirt right alongside the leek, slowly working the knife around, tugging the leaves, and ripping it out hopefully without cutting any of the edible white flesh in the process. John and I harvested two wheelbarrows full and then I spent the rest of the morning making them market-worthy. I washed off the dirt, held the leeks at the meaty end and whacked off the tops of their leaves, and then cut off the little roots at the base of the leek. I had successfully massacred the poor leeks. They would soon be purchased and cooked by a smattering of residents in the St. Girons vicinity. If given the chance, I would vouch for them at the market. Je ne se quoi, “These leeks are fresh from the garden. Get ‘em while the getting’s good!” S’il vous plait.