Following Le Tour de France

As a result of packing to return to the US and following a few stages of Le Tour, I have to postpone my farm entries until I get back to Chicago.

I will be in Mont Ventoux on July 25th and in Paris on July 26th for the final stage! Vive le Tour!!!! Flying home the 27th...

Ce n'est pas encore la fin.

Day Two: Le Travail Commence

The heat that's been plaguing the Rhone-Alpes really makes me miss the cool mornings in Bretagne and the fresh country air. Opening my windows in Chasse lets in the faint odor of factory pollution and slightly burns my nostrils. I never realized it existed until I left for a farm in the paradise that is northern France.

A glimpse of the farmhouse

Catherine tapped on my door at 8:00am and we had a breakfast of baguette, butter, and jam...the standard French breakfast. Very bready and leaving one hungry again 30 minutes later. Not wasting a crumb, Catherine showed me how to put most of one's leftover food in the bucket for chickens. Chickens, she told me, eat just about anything, while rabbits have very fragile stomachs and will die if they eat the wrong plant. From that moment on, I was terrified to feed the rabbits.

I began by picking cassis or blackcurrant from the dozens of bushes that bordered the donkey pen. It was an incredibly calming activity, making me feel zen-like within minutes. Michel eventually wandered by and told me it was even more serene if done barefoot, the sensation of the earth on the bottom of the feet. He was right. I returned my knee high rubber boots to the shed and disappeared into a world of berries and my thoughts for a few hours, until Claude came out to see the donkeys.

My blackcurrant harvest, Pitchoun keeping me company

She spoke rapid-fire French and I have to admit to nodding and smiling when I couldn't pick up what she was saying. Then, she surprised me by getting on one of the donkeys bareback. The next thing I saw was the donkey bucking and kicking rodeo style, Claude screaming doucement! and seconds later, she was thrown from its back, groaning on the ground. Shocked, I stood still for a good three seconds before reacting. Then dropping my tub of berries, I ran to fetch Catherine who came to her daughter's aid. Saying that Claude was prone to tomber dans les pommes, an expression that means 'to faint,' I tried to explain that she had been at the donkey's mercy instead. After that was eventually cleared up, Claude went inside to rest, while Catherine and I went to go feed the animals.

The guilty holds his head low.

The one thing that bothered me was that every animal we went to go feed would later be killed as food themselves. In fact, we ended up eating an old rooster with chickpeas that night for dinner. It pained me to look at the warbling grey geese and ducks that paddled around in the water, knowing their lives had a foreseen expiration date. Catherine showed me the specific breed of duck that's used to make foie gras. A canard/dinde, or duck with a turkey face that doesn't make any noise when it tries to quack.

After feeding the rabbits and chickens, I spread the dirty hay full of rabbit droppings over a patch of garden, then went upstairs and took a really long nap. The fresh air had happily infected me.

I woke up to the smell of jam cooking on the stove. The scent of the fruit of my labors emanated from the kitchen up the wooden spiral staircase and into my bedroom. Catherine was making jam from the berries that I'd picked that morning. They'd go into glass jars to be sold at the Saturday market in Fougères. Not only was the jam homemade, but so was the glue that held the labels to the jars. Catherine made her own glue with a mix of flour and water heated over the stove.

Groggy from my earlier work, I couldn't believe how she hadn't yet taken a break. After lunch, we'd taken to the garden and removed sick or dead potato plants, then called it a day.

During the evening, I watched a live music program on TV with Michel. Tracy Chapman came on and although Michel hadn't ever heard of her, he was impressed. But as soon as a punk band followed with a Fleetwood Mac cover of White Winged Dove, he turned it off, shaking his head. From there, he unveiled a cabinet full of jazz records and was surprised when I wasn't familiar with the American artists. Not a huge fan of jazz myself, I told him I was open to listening to some it, wondering how he'd gotten into it himself.

The soundtrack for the sunset that evening became Argentinian, Gato Barbieri and Brazilian, Astrud Gilberto. Michel told me that he used to live and work in Lyon during a time of economic prosperity, so he'd treat himself to a concert every week. He'd meet people who introduced all kinds of musicians to him.

I went to sleep that night with jazz notes dancing in my head, wondering what the next day would hold...

Day One at the Farm: Fougères

I owe my reason for WWOOFing to my good friend Kathrin who has done it several times and suggested that I try it while in France. She told me that it was a great way to get to know a different part of the country in an authentic way that's easy on the wallet. I paid for my somewhat expensive train tickets (as they were last minute), packed a bag and set off for Bretagne. The map below gives an idea of my train journey. I left from Lyon in the Rhone-Alpes (17) and traveled to Bretagne (1).

The TGV from Paris sped west through territory unchartered by me before. Leaving the heaving crowds of tourists, the train rolled past open meadows and hills that became brighter shades of green by the minute. My final destination was Fougères, a small ville fleurie with an astonishingly complete medieval castle. From there, the family picked me up in their white van, sporting stickers against chemicals and pesticides. My organic experience was about to begin.

Stone houses in Fougères. The difference of architecture in the north made it feel as though I were in another country.

We drove along small winding roads towards their farm. The family's two children who were in their early twenties had come along for the ride and within twenty minutes we arrived at a large stone farmhouse draped in colorful bursts of flower. I was greeted by a friendly black caniche (poodle) named Pitchoun, a provençal word meaning small, and a cat named Pirate. The interior of the farmhouse glowed from the light wood cupboards, and tables. Jars of medicinal herbs and dried fruit were lined up on the shelves.

The shelf above my bed.

Catherine, the mother, showed me my room, which I absolutely loved as soon as I stepped into it. I especially liked the skylight and the wood paneled ceiling. In order to have total darkness in the room, the woman showed me how to put a painting of Mont St. Michel she did on a piece of wood over the skylight.

After getting settled into my room, Michel, the father, took me on a tour of the farm, and after dinner, the daughter, Claude took me on a stroll through Fougères. She was pretty well-informed on the city, explaining the castle's long history to why the windows were so low to the ground on many houses (so pigs could eat the trash off the streets).

A view of the Fougères castle with stone and timbered houses in the foreground.

Stream running through the neighborhood. To the left are a couple wells (hidden by the flowers) in which women used to wash clothes.

View of Fougères castle from ramparts.

Claude told me that this was one of her favorite places in the city, perfect for watching un coucher du soleil. As you continue ascending the stairs, you can see more and more of the castle, which used to be made entirely of wood until it burned down and took a lot of the city with it. The stone towers were rebuilt, but interestingly enough all during different time periods.

Yellow timbered houses

These houses look like they've come straight out of a fairy tale, but are still inhabited. Michel informed me that the reason why the houses are top heavy or jut out more on top is because the higher one lived, the less taxes one had to pay. As most people weren't rich enough to pay taxes to live at street level, more people lived higher up, needing more space than below.

By the time we got back to the farm, I was exhausted...and hadn't yet worked! That would come the next day...

Gone WWOOFing

From July 2-9, I'll be volunteering on an organic farm in northern France in Bretagne. I have no idea what to expect, but I'm excited to be working outdoors where it'll hopefully be cooler than here in the Lyon area. I'm looking forward to hiking, reading, and escaping Chasse for a week. Will report back soon...

La Fête des Voisins

A mix of all kinds of food is currently sitting in my stomach willing itself to digest. Ok, well the reason I'm sharing is because of a comment that "colleague x" made tonight at our "neighbor party" translated literally from above.

There was a sign-up sheet for "un repas" or meal in the lobby of my building. It seemed casual. We would set up a table outside near the laundry lines and parking lot. I figured it couldn't be much more than pizza, chips, and pop. I figured wrong. This isn't America, it's France, where eating is an art, a regime, a scheduled event with courses, magical baskets of apéritifs, cheeses, bottles of wine, and fresh desserts. Being my last day of teaching, I decided to go easy on myself, and got an apple tart from the grocery store. My dessert never got eaten. Why? There was so much food, so much home-made fresh, delicious food that no one even touched my store bought cake. It's currently sitting in my fridge. It got beat out by an identical apple tart, a home-made apricot cake, and cream puffs drizzled in warm chocolate.

I thought the first course of home-made pizza and salmon/aubergine quiche was it, so I filled up on that, only to turn my head to see taboule, vegetable salads, chicken wings, and bread landing on the table. Cheese was to follow, along with a steady "taste this, taste that!" from whoever was sitting beside me.

Colleague X, a normally quiet man, turned and said to me, "now, you need to tell your new President how much food we fed you here in Chasse so that we have good relations between the U.S. and France."