Beachcombing and St. Malo

I couldn’t believe this was called work. By now, I knew I had lucked out big time with the family that had chosen me to help them. I was their first WWOOFer ever and they were my first WWOOF hosts. While they were audibly worried that they’d work me too hard after hearing reports of poor drifting kids subjected to 12 hours hard labor each day on Spanish farms, I was silently worried I wasn’t working enough and vowed to do whatever I could to compensate for my trip that was slowly becoming a cultural excursion week.

Getting up, Catherine, Michel, Claude, and François, and I made our way to St. Malo for the sole reason that I’d never been there and needed to see it. Feeling a little guilty, but also secretly excited about my Tour de Bretagne, we happily scuttled westward in the family’s anti-GMO van, picnic lunch and all.

Our one pit stop was at Michel’s parents’ house, situated in a one-lane village, comfortably sidled up next to an Atlantic beach guarding masses of mussels and oysters. While François ran off to photograph birds and the rising tide with his tripod, the rest of us headed for the muddy bay, which unashamedly squelched with each bare footstep, making me giggle every time. Armed with violently flapping plastic bags, our mission was to collect as much salicorne, a green plant that sprouts in the bay, the sea water giving it a salty taste, as we possibly could. When low tide hits, it’s time to pick.

Salicorne can be used with garlic, parsley, and butter to accompany fish, poultry, and red meat. When it's soaked in vinegar, salicorne is a great substitute for pickles used with cold meats, fish, and raclette. Catherine sells the popular plant to campers and market-goers. It remains a very popular sale for her as I assume it's hard to find in stores.

That night, Catherine and I stuffed glass jars full of the crop. I got this one to take home.

While the family got straight to work, grabbing at the stalks like they were in a competition to see who could procure the most disappearing currency, I stood like a motionless fool awed by the jaw-dropping silhouette of Mont St. Michel in the far distance. Apparently cultural excursion week had become infectious making my work ethic even harder to find.

This vast, and I mean vast, windswept beach had been the childhood playground of Catherine and Michel’s children. The postcard perfect balcony from the grandparents’ house looked directly out onto the beach, a blinding turquoise band of water filling the window. Lungs inflated with sea air carried in by assertive winds, I didn’t know how life could get any better.

After comparing my pickings to the rest of the family, it was obvious that I hadn’t been as greedy, or more likely, not as efficient. Whatever the case, we eventually washed our mud caked feet in buckets of water supplied by grandma, while her toy-sized dog Zazie ran ladders for entertainment in the grass. Fueled by the juice boxes and the pre-packaged cakes that grandparents can always be counted on to have, we set off for our final destination, St. Malo.

As stunning as St. Malo is, a fortified city planted on a sandy beach, it’s a tourist trap, almost guaranteeing shoulder-to-shoulder contact with strangers inside the ramparts during the summer. When we arrived, it was nothing of the sort. It was early evening, the sun was a giant orange peach sinking slowly toward the horizon, and we’d just splashed about in the warm water for a bit, something that never fails to give me a natural high.

Waves on a St. Malo beach. The posts are there to break the momentum of the waves so they don't damage houses nearby.

On a lovely act of decisiveness by Catherine, we ate our picnic dinner right on a concrete dock behind a line of parked cars and a massive ship tied to land by a rope the size of a human thigh. Spotted with seagull droppings and stained with oil, it was certainly not the most picturesque setting, but we laughed ourselves to tears as tourists walked by and gave us strange looks for eating our dinner in what was really a seaside parking lot. Later, we made up for it by stopping at a gourmet ice cream shop that had a flavor available in saffron.

Rampart walls hug the city and act as sightseeing loop. Here, one can easily imagine how the fortifications blocked both strong sea winds and English attack. We ended our night in a circle. And undoubtedly slept well.

Market Day and Homemade Cheese

In order to remember details heard and seen on the farm in Bretagne, I made notes every night in a red journal stuffed with Greek paper, a gift from Leslie who gave it to me after returning from her trip there.

For me, the farm was one of those experiences that really make you think, enthusiastically opening the mind in a new direction. On the train ride home, I honestly thought I might be able to change the world. I love that feeling. I don’t love the fact that it’s so short lived.

So to continue the tale of my final farm days, weeks later, from a dying, dysfunctional laptop in the US, mental images not burning so bright, yet with the evidence from a small journal:

As a happy frequenter to markets in Europe, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the sounds, colors, smells, and sometimes unconventional displays of chow that turning into a meandering tourist who can’t walk a straight line complete with wobbly head looking here and there almost always happens no fail.

When Catherine invited me to help her set up the stand at the Fougères market, I quickly agreed. There would be jam, honey, eggs (that we had collected days earlier), salad, and pigeon for sale. Once I had lined up the display, as shoppers hovered by, the eggs went the fastest. Promises were made, broken, prices forgotten, deals were made for early morning home delivery. It was a flurry of activity that I sat back and watched in awe. All around me villagers had come for miles to sell their wine, herbs, vegetables, cheeses, and meats.

Thinking I might be bored there, Catherine handed me a map to wander around Fougères. I thought it better to be out of the way, but secretly wished I could have worked the market myself.

For lunch, we had galettes, square-like crêpes popular in the northwest made from blé noir (black flour) or what Michel referred to as poor man’s flour. A combination of the fresh air, speaking in French, and navigating the hilly town of Fougères on foot had left me exhausted, but there was still work to do. Picking blackcurrant, I found, was rejuvenating rather than stiffening and monotonous. My thoughts wandered everywhere while I watched the clouds for a possible burst.

Dinner was a bolognaise and afterward the work didn’t cease, at least for the family. Jam cooked on the stove, Michel pitted cherries with a machine, and Catherine stirred milk on another burner to make cheese, a process that takes days. While the milk was heating, she added a few drops of some kind of solidifying agent. The mass was then put into a bowl with tiny holes and left to mutate.

The next day, the cheese was turned over, while a milky white liquid drained away. This is of course added to the chicken feed. Once the mass has completely drained and been flipped, it becomes cheese. The type or name of the cheese depends on the size and shape of the mould it’s put in. Unfortunately, I didn’t stay long enough to taste it, but it was an interesting process to observe.

The little things are really becoming the important ones. One of my favorite parts of the day was taking a shower, rinsing off the day’s work, the skylight open to reveal silhouettes of owl inhabited trees leaning gently in the dark breeze.