... and so I returned a different version of myself. I haven't been here for a while, mostly thanks to 7 1/2 weeks in France, and a bit of laziness on either side of the adventure.
I WWOOFed. WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, so by WWOOFing I mean that I was an honourary farmer. In France. Making cheese. And wine. And jam. And harvesting vegetables, speaking French, making friends, being chased by cockerels, dancing in the moonlight, eating amazing food, working with nature, using questionable toilets, learning skills, growing up, experiencing other lives, being responsible, being free. And I loved it and I would do it again at the drop of a hat.
On my first night in Lyon, before I had reached my first farm, I wrote "I am twenty years old, and I'm having an adventure". It was just so true. And now I'm twenty-one and no longer in France. But you know what? I'm still having an adventure. I'm excited about life, scared about the future, learning to accept myself, wanting to throw myself into things, discovering all sorts of things that I've never realised. I've never felt so alive.
I want to celebrate the past, revel in the present and be ready for the future. And why on earth not?
Below are the newsletters I wrote home during my WWOOFing experiences:
WEEK ONE
To explain quickly what I`m doing: I`m WWOOFing. WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. That is to say, I`m volunteering on a farm. I don`t get paid, but I get given food and a bed and accepted into the family. I`ll be doing 3 farms in total - here for 2 weeks, then just down the road for 3 weeks, and then a different farm further away for another fortnight. If anyone feels disposed to google-map where I am, I`m near a village called Nozières (though in fact I`m absolutely in the middle of nowhere!)
On the bus that took me from a reasonably large town out into the tiny one where my first farm sells their produce, I met an old lady. Withmy rucksack covered in badges from previous travels, I clearly stood out as "not a local". We talked for a while, and on the subject of working on the farms, she came out with the somewhat prophetic "ça vous changera" (that`ll change you). I wondered for a moment whether I had actually wandered into a fairy tale, especially given the foresty surroundings. But I`m sure she`s right, it will change me. I`m just not sure yet how!!
I`m spending a fortnight on my first farm - halfway through now already. The farmers are Pierre-Yves and Estelle, who are probably in their early 30s. Pierre-Yves is in charge of the cheese, Estelle does the
aperatifs, and they both take care of the gardens (all 3 of them) and the animals (1 dog, 3 cats, some hens, chickens, ducks and a herd of cows). At least, they usually do, except Estelle tore a ligament in her knee the day after I arrived, and farming the side of a very steep hill on crutches isn`t really possible. So I`m mostly following her orders, being her apprentice. And then there`re their sons, Juan (10) and Malo (8), who are lively and mad, but lovely. At the beginning there was another WWOOFer too with whom I shared a room and talked art galleries and existentialism, but he left soon after I arrived.
The whole farm was built by them a few years ago, and is still being built. My room is just outside the main house. It`s basic and functional with wooden beams, whitewashed walls and spiders aplenty. I`ve learned that spiders aren`t going to kill me and that they`re a good method of fly control... so they`re staying where they are!
So what have I done this week? I`ve collected strawberries and sugarsnap peas for hours (back-killers, I tell you!) and blackcurrants for the famliy to eat. I`ve collected 4kg of chestnut tree flowers to turn into aperatif (and when you`re talking flowers, 4kg is LOTS!) and begun the process of making the aperatif itself. I`ve corked and waxed and boxed 200 bottles of "medieval wine" for a festival in August. I`ve watered and weeded the gardens and cracked 4 hours worth of walnuts. I`ve prepared enough salad to feed an army, and done a lot of washing up.
On the non-work side of things, I`ve been to a cherry festival, whre there was a market and music and dancing and wine and a cherry-stone-spitting competition (the winner managed 12m40!). I`ve been to the river to swim with the family. I`ve spoken a lot of French. I`ve watched 2 French films with Estelle, learned from her how to cook with agar-agar (a magic stuff made out of algue that acts like gelatin), learned from a lebanese neighbour how to make stuffed vine leaves, and made walnut biscuits. Later today I`m off to a traditional music festival. Life is totally non-stop!! But I`m loving it, all except the cold showers, because they don`t have hot water when it`sso hot outside (between 25° and 30°).
On the subject of food, because I know at least some of you will be interested... Breakfast is always bread, butter, honey and jam, and one of the other meals is always bread, bu
tter, cheese and salad. The other meal is usually based on potato or fresh pasta, with whatever vegetables are ready to eat and cheese or walnuts or occasionally beef as protein. And everything is liberally doused in olive oil. For afters there is usually fromage frais or fresh berries or both. Or "strawberry ice cream", which is DELICIOUS and I`ve eaten it `til it`s coming out of my ears. Here`s how to make it: put frozen berries in a blender with a bit of sugar and either lemon juice and a bit of water (for a sorbet), or milk or fromage frais (for a creamy ice cream). Blend it then eat it right away before it melts. Mmmmmmm!! Absolutely everything (with the exception of rice one evening) I`ve eaten this week has either been grown on the farm, made on the farm or made by a neighbour. It`s amazing, really. No need for supermarkets!!
A good first week, then. My feet are dirty, I`m covered in scratches from brambles and thorns, and I stink of a mixture of chestnut tree blossom and cheese. Despite all the work and the language, I`m not too tired, and I`m learning so much. Not sure how much of it will be useful back home, but it`s still a good feeling!
`Til next week, au revoir!
WEEK TWO
Surreal doesn`t begin to describe this week. It`s not been bad, but it has been very VERY odd.
To start with, we procured a German called Valentin - a son of a friend of the family whose school requires him to spend 3 weeks doing work experience on a farm (bizarre enough as it is!), and so I have been sharing a room with a 15 year old German boy. It`s strange, because to all intents and purposes I might as well be sharing a room with one of 9th Class (Year 10) pupils at my school in Germany, which is not a concept I relish!! Thankfully he seems inoffensive and friendly if tractor-obsessed, and he speaks amazing French. So that`s odd thing number one.
Number two is the dry toilet. Because
it`s so hot here, the spring that feeds the water supply here has stopped springing, so we`re in water conservation mode. This means skimping on showers, and also using the outdoor "dry" toilet. Not particularly odd in itself perhaps, but it is very very strange to be sitting on the loo and being able to see the entire valley spread in front of you (there`s a kind of cubicle made of wood, but with one side missing, facing away from the house so as to give privacy, and a makeshift loo with a proper toilet seat on inside). The photo doesn't really do the view justice, but you get the picture. This hopefully gives you some idea of how remote this farm is. That, and the fact that this house is never locked, because it never needs to be.
However, number three far outshadows numbers one and two in terms of bizarreness. I mentioned last week that Estelle (the farmer`s wife) had hurt her knee and was on crutches. A series of unfortunate and unforseen events has since unfolded. Her knee got worse, and eventually on Monday her husband persuaded her that she should go to see a specialist, 4 hours away in Lyon. The kids were packed off to a friend`s house, Valentin and I were given instructions for the day, and off they went to the hospital. I knew I had to pick peas, do some labelling of wine bottles and put the hens to bed, and we`d been told we needn`t answer the phone. Halfway through the evening, a "neighbour" came with the message that the surgeons wanted to operate on Estelle on Wednesday, and that as such Estelle and Pierre wouldn`t be back until Wednesday evening.
The following day, Valentin took advantage of his freedom and went to visit some friends in the nearby town, leaving me alone IN CHARGE of the farm for 2 days!! Plants and wines and cheeses I can cope with, but the animals were a different matter. Theoretically I knew what to do with the hens, chickens and ducks, but the cockrel had other ideas and tried to show me that he was in charge every time I went near them by flying at me, all beak and talons. It took me 45 minutes to get 10 birds into their coops! I`m glad noone could see me - I must have looked a fool, standing there, pleading in english-accented-French with a bunch of fowl!! And what to do with the rabbits? The cats? The dog?? What if the cows escaped??!! Thankfully they didn`t, and the neighbour popped down again and helped me out a bit, but he didn`t kow much more than me. I kept the water topped up and fed them what I could find, but they kept looking at me, expectant and disappointed - I felt so cruel!
It made me realise how reliant we are now on mobile phones. Estelle and Pierre don`t have one - there`s no signal in the mountains - and so I had no way of contacting them when they were in Lyon, which I found frustrating. But aside from the issues with the animals, being left alone (however inadvertantly!) in the middle of nowhere was strangely liberating. Sitting in a hammock overlooking the valley, playing a recorder or reading, I could have been the only person in the world.
When they returned, I went to put the hens to bed again, but got chased 300 metres back into the house by the cockrel before I managed it, to the highly amused pity of the farmers. Not so funny the following morning when their son came in bleeding. Five hours later, after a lec
ture to the children on humane methods of slaughter, we had a headless, gutless, featherless cockrel in the fridge. It`s said that revenge is sweet. I think in this case though, it probably tastes of chicken...
Apart from that, I`ve collected blackcurrants and sugarsnap peas and chestnut tree flowers and watered plants to my heart`s content, bottled and labelled 300 bottles of wine... the usual! I`m a little sad not to have worked with the cheeses, but as each one weighs 2/3 my body weight and has a market value of €1300 (yes, I DID type that right!), I`m also glad not to have had that responsability!
And so it`s time for me to leave the house whose (indoor) toilet-side reading includes "So what IS this mushroom?", "Dry Stone Walls" and "Cut your plants right", and move 30km on to... well that`s a mystery, for me `til tomorrow and for you `til next week!
WEEK THREE
If you had told me a month ago that part of my French experience would find me sitting discussing mermaids with a flemmish Belgian whilst drinking an obscure drink of fermented green tea and mushrooms to the sound of traditional Indian spiritual music as a saucepan of roses boiled on the stove, I would have (somewhat unkindly) laughed in your face, and probably wondered about which drugs you were taking.
And yet here I am. Farm #2, built 30 years ago by Serge and Chantale who have lived here ever since, 800m up in the hills above a tiny fortified village called Desaignes.They started off their farm life as goatherds, having previou
sly been a sports teacher and a something else, and then gave up the animals to make a living out of jams, syrups, liqueurs and pottery (a natural progression, I'm sure you'll agree...) and have a dream to make all of their produce out of roses. At a guess, they're in their late 50s. They're kind, generous, passionate about what they do and believe, interested in their WWOOFers and incredibly interesting themselves. Quite apart from the language and the work this week, I've learned ever so much just from conversations. They've shared their knowledge of cloud formations, edible flowers, medicinal plants, alternative foods, sustainable living, world music... the list goes on.
There have been two of us WWOOFers this week - I've been sharing my work (and free time, come to think of it) with an 18 year old Belgian called Goedele (pronunciation guide: the gutteral scottish "ch" sound of "loch" followed by an "ou" sound followed by "dluh", and then hope for the best...). We have successfuly been building a friendship on shared interests and the mutual mutilation of the beautiful language we're both here to perfect. So it's a kiss goodbye to Grammatical Accuracy, but a warm welcome to Something Approaching Fluency.
Work here ranges from 2 to 7 hours per day, averaging about 4, with weekends free for relaxing. This week, Goedele and I have picked 50 kilos of blackcurrants between us and made 196 pots of blackcurrant jam (my fingers and clothes are stained a stubborn purple in places, as are my lips... mmmmm blackcurrants....), as well as helped to label and package goods, to work at the market, to make raspberry jam, chestnut tree flower jelly, rosewater and plenty of food. And oh the food!! I'll leave the food reporting 'til next week - it's very exciting, and there's lots of it!
This week has also included 14th July. For those of you to whom that date rings no bells, it's the French national holiday, or Bastille Day, to celebrate the end of the French Revolution. Ever since I first read "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit" at the age of 11 or 12, I've always wanted to experience Bastile Day celebrations at first hand. In retrospect, basing my expectations on a semi-fictional account of celebrations in 1940s Paris when I was attending the celebrations of 21st century ardechois "town" Lamastre (population 2000...) was setting myself up for disappointment. Where was the bustling atmosphere of a France that doesn't sleep? And where was the onion soup?? Wake up, Becky, you're miles from Montmartre! That said, the firework display outshone any I've seen in Britain, and inhabitants and tourists alike flanked the bridge and riverbanks where the display was being held with a definite air of excitement. There was a ball afterwards, too, but we didn't stay, as the following day was to be a long, tiring and jammy one.
And so, well-fed and a little wiser than I was a week ago, I leave you in favour of a stroll in the hills.
A bientot!
WEEK FOUR
I think I might be Violet Beauregarde in disguise. The only thing missing is the chewing gum. I've eaten so many blueberries while making jam this week that I might as well be a blueberry, I swear my waist has expanded a good few centimetres (okay, so I'm not spherical yet) and I am stained... well... violet, especially my "doigt de dégustation" (tasting finger) and my tongue. Being in The Jammery is very much like turning into a child. Everything is just slightly too big - the saucepans measure about 70cm in diameter, and the spatulas and wooden spoons similar in length. And so, elbows at awkward angles from the height of the equipment, stirring 5 kilos of berries per pan in with a mountain of sugar feels as clumsy as a little kid trying to beat a cake mixture. And licking out the bowl, too. Mmmmm. But it would seem I have no self-restraint when it comes to molten jam. It's probably a good job I'm only here for 3 weeks!! Add to the above a good dose of trilingual Disney singalong (Dutch, French and English), and a few random Indian chants, and that's what I spend my days doing. More or less.
The calmness of my WWOOFing experience so far was shattered this week by the arrival of my polar opposite in terms of personality in the form of Kelsey, a loud (though lovely, don't get me wrong, and very easy-to-get-along-with) American, full of get-up-and-go and not very good at sitting still. The problem was that the farm is in the middle of nowhere, with a 1h 40 minute walk to Lamastre, the tiny town, and of course, no public transport. So (with immense doses of trepidation on the part of me and and possibly also of Goedele) we set off with thumbs out. I'm not going to abandon Arriva/Stagecoach/National Rail in favour of hitchhiking, but it did work surprisingly well. It's a normal way of getting around here, apparently, and we met some lovely people and had some great conversations in the cars. We even ended up hitching a lift with a family who recognised me from my previous farm. Small world. I only nearly died once, and that was because the locals drive like idiots on the hairpin bends, and was actually nothing to do with the hitchhiking itself. 6 hitchhikes later, and I consider myself a pro. Kelsey's sense of adventure has also found me in a forest in the pitch black singing "These are a few of my favourite things" as we walked home late at night, attempting and failing to find a jazz concert... she's definitely livened things up! At first I wasn't sure about it; I felt a little... threatened, I guess. Where's my peace and quiet??! But it's actually been a really refreshing week. Kelsey, I thank you.
This week has also seen me don an astronaut costume (way too big for me, and all the funnier for it) and a can of smouldering hay and approach a hive of bees to check the levels of honey and of baby bees. The smoke is used to scare the bees into the hive so it's possible to remove the plate where the honey is made, but the angle is, apparently, crucuial. Pump smoke from behind the hive and all is hunky-dory. Pump from the front and you might not live to tell the tale. Sadly there wasn't enough honey for us to take any then, though I'm still holding out for a taste of "home-bee-made" honey before I leave.
I promised news of food in my last installment. Well! Breakfast is (perhaps rather predictably, for a jam making farm) homemade bread and whatever jam is open. The choice includes blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, redcurrant, blackcurrant, red peach, apricot, chestnut, rose, dandelion and orange, rhubarb and almond, pear, and plum, to name but a few! Lunch and dinner are always the same arrangement, but as varied as a pick-and-mix stand. To drink, there's water or Kombucha. If like me you've never heard of Kombucha, it's a drink that
tastes pleasantly like a mild cider, and it's made from green tea and sugar fermented by the most grotesque looking mushroom I've ever seen - imagine a crossbreed of a giant oyster and a big ball of phlegm, and your mental image is probably spot on - just look at the photo. The drink tastes good though, especially with a little grating of ginger! The meals start with raw vegetables (salad leaves, tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, grated carrot...), flowers from the garden (yes, flowers. Borage/Starflower is particularly good, and beautiful too) and sometimes fruit (apricots or melon at the moment - the rationale being that fruits digest better if eaten before other things as a starter rather than after as a dessert). Then follow usually two dishes of carbohydrates or pulses (pasta, rice, potatoes, buckwheat, couscous, quinoa, chickpeas, lentils, beans...) cooked in any way and with any spice imaginable, and one vegetable dish (at the moment, predominantly courgette, aubergine and runner-bean based, sometimes with tofu) also with any spice or herb you could name. After all that there's always bread and cheese from the market and butter on the table, and sometimes yoghurt and fresh berries too. And then you think the meal's over? No! No meal is complete without a bowl of coffee or green tea and a square of the darkest chocolate imaginable. Each meal, from beginning to prepare to putting away the chocolate, takes at least 2 hours if not more; everything prepared with love and enjoyment, and the table set with homemade crockery. A far cry from Pret a Manger.
At market at Lamastre today I was chatting to Estelle, with whom I worked for the first two weeks, who asked me, "you've been here for a month now, aren't you bored of Lamastre yet?". A month? Really? Gosh... I hadn't realised I'd been out here for a month, the time has passed as quickly as the clouds. Just 3 weeks left, and only 1 of them here? Noooooooo! And to answer Estelle's question... I'm still learning new things every day. I love the solitude and calm of the mountains. I'm meeting new people, and talking about experiences, culture, love, death, spirituality, goats... My French gets better and better while my mind gets broader and broader at a rate far surpassing my stomach. Bored? Pas de tout, ma cherie. Totally content, and just a little excited about life.
So just one week left here, with a new set of WWOOFing companions and a wind that blows from the north, finally cooling the sun. I wonder what this week will bring.
WEEK FIVE
One thing's for sure - I wont be shouting about my summer job to my dentist... I stuck my stubborn heels into the jam and stayed on at this farm for two days longer than planned. Over 1000 pots of jam and a little bit of chutney later and I leave, conversely, with jam in my heels. Apparently size 7 ankles are exactly the same diameter as normal -sized pots of jam. My walking boots have found their calling and my jam is safe from damage - miracles never cease. I leave tomorrow morning for pastures new, quite literaly.
This week brought the cold - jeans and jumpers cold - and two new companions, who with me form a trio of girls of different nationalities who have spent the year in countries not their own. Kiralyn is from the USA, but has spent the year on the tiny island of La Reunion, and Josefien is from the Netherlands by way of New Zealand. Needless to say, we've had a lot to talk about. It's odd, WWOOFing, how everybody comes and goes. Friendships have to be forged fast, and the first few days with someone new are always a bit awkward until you find a rhythm that works. I've been lucky so far!
One of the first things I was told on arrival here was "we don't eat pudding very often". So, naturally, I've made and eaten a tiramisu each week. I'm not complaining. And if you've never tried a tiramisu with raspberries in, well, you should. It might not be to die for, but it comes close. On the food front, I seem to have developed a reputation here for being very knowledgeable about spices, which is a lie. I know enough to make a curry, which I did when asked to make a traditional dish from my country (bearing in mind it had to be gluten-free and vegetarian... and the farmers are obsessed with all things Indian) but on Tuesday Chantale took me to the immense spice stand at the market and asked me to recommend things. Amazingly, she remains under the same delusion. Oh, and she is also convinced I'm Scottish. I have no idea why.
Farmwise, it hasn't been the most interesting week to report on, although I've learned the indispensible life skill of leek planting alongside all the jamming, and discovered a donkey called Artificial. It has, however, been a week of extra-agricultural excitement. On Thursday evening, "The Crippled Frogs" were in town - a blues band who pronounced their name "Zee Creeeepled Frocks" and sang exclusively in Englsh to an audience of francophones... although it was frankly a good thing that the majority of the people didn't understand the majority of the words! Children danced the conga around the town square to "I should have married you when you were drunk"; utterly bizarre!
Saturday evening was a different kettle of fish (and the reason for this email being a day later than usual) - a party. For days it was all anyone talked about, and in my mind it grew to the proportions of Bilbo's 111th birthday bash - I imagined a field full of revellers, folk music, beer, food, big tents, magicians, hobbits.... and I wasn't far wrong. No magicians, and no hobbits, but as for the rest...! A proper barn dance in a barn with accordions, guitars, djembes and washboards, free locally brewed beer, hundreds of locals, tables laden with food, everyone chatting and smiling... I saw people I had met in previous weeks, and I felt at home. Wearing a floating rose-print dress and a fresh rose in my hair, I span and danced with good-looking, dreadlocked young farmers, ate until I could eat no more, laughed until I cried and stayed until I was dragged away.
Today, my last day, was another excitement - the Raspberry Festival. The three of us set off in summer dresses and bright sunhine on the hour-long walk to the neighbouring village, where we passed a pleasant few hours wandering around the market, lying in a field and being treated to a raspberry pancake or three. And then we saw the storm coming. Goodness knows why, but we decided to race it back. We lost. The consolation prize? Gale force winds and hail on an exposed hilltop. Well, it made a change from the sun! We made it home to wring out our clothes, wrap ourselves in blankets and whip up a saucepan of comforting chai.
And now? I don't want to leave here, I really really don't! Give me the chance and I'd stay here in the forests and the hills where everyone drives banged out Peugeot 206s and talks about the pros and cons of life in a yurt. But who knows, my last fortnight could prove to be my best yet... I have my doubts, but I'm just about open to the idea! So it's with good memories, shoes full of jam, and vivid dreams of a proper toilet, that I make my way north for the final leg of the journey. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
WEEK SIX (the penultimate update)
Will these hands ne'er be clean? I have the evidence of mass carrot murder firmly embedded in my knuckles and nail beds, and just one week left of my Year Abroad. So how has farm 3 been shaping up? 'Culture shock' is probably the most accurate description.
When I arrived at the station there was no-one there to pick me up, so I did the only thing I could do; sat and waited for someone I didn't know to look like they were looking for someone they didn't know. Once in the car, Columbian-born Amanya introduced herself and her husband Beranger. Pleased to meet you. And that was that. No more conversation seemed to be forthcoming, so I tried to start some. He mocked my accent and laughed at me. I cut my nose off to spite my face and shut up. There was another Brit who was only too happy to speak English to me, which I found rude in front of non-anglophones and annoying in that English was the last language I wanted to speak, and I ground to a linguistic halt. The final straw (or, as the French say, the end of the beans) came when I was the only non-smoker at the kitchen table of eight. As much as I had fitted in at Farm 2 I stuck out here, and I would have given anything except my passport and plane ticket to go back to where I'd just come from. I'd hit a wall, against which I duly slouched, nursing my bruised pride and feeding the anticlimax. A fortuitous and well-timed email told me that whatever happened would be character building. The only character I appeared to be building when I read the email was sulky, stubborn and a little childish, and it wasn't really a character I had much respect for. So I set off along the wall in search of a way around it, some superglue, and the end to a string of metaphors.
As it happened, it can't have been the end of the beans, because I've spent many an hour of these six days collecting them, and there are a few remaining for next week. Green beans, carrots, beetroots, shallots, garlic - it's all WWOOFer work. I am never going to look at a vegetable in the same way again, knowing how much back- neck- and high-ache goes into their cultivation! Twice a week we go out en masse to harvest the vegetables for market, and then the salads need washing, the carrots and onions need bunching, the fields need weeding, the five year old needs entertaining, the food needs cooking...
And when I say "en masse", I mean it. At this farm there are 7 WWOOFers (two of us British students, a Franco-Brazilian family complete with 11 year old son, and two French people in their mid 30s), and we've worked mostly with the neighbouring farm (Beranger's parents' farm, 2km away) who have another 6 WWOOFers and several taggers on. It's like some strange kind of summer camp. Working in the fields, it's quite nice to have company. I stuck at first to the family, who seemed the most talkative, and took things from there. Yesterday, while sitting peeling bulb after bulb after bulb of garlic for the mass production of pesto and chatting, I realised that my French hadn't deserted me after all and that I was enjoying myself. Well I never.
The worse sides of my personality have definitely come out to play this week. Stubbornness and snap judgements? Definitely could do better. The farmers might not be particularly interested, but they're generous, and though I still don't much like Beranger, I don't help myself by being insanely gullible and not being able to spot French sarcasm when it dances the cancan on my dinner plate. Hannah, the London 'babe' who models herself on Joanna Lumley's 'Ab Fab' character, might have come across to me as loud and rude, but she's also sensitive, genuine and fun, and we have a lot in common. Next time it might be wise to wait before jumping to conclusions, and even if the conclusion turns out to be correct, who's to say that I'm any better than the other people? Different, undoubtedly, but not better. Perhaps not so much character building as character weeding, but maybe just as important.
So things have got a little better. I still have to take a deep breath before I jump into the smoke cloud, and no amount of telling myself that nicotine is character building is going to persuade me of it, but life here is getting more enjoyable each day. I am overdosing on cheese and bread and rice, have gone from practically teetotal to 4 glasses of wine a day, a constant supply of quality beer, and the deadliest mojito I've ever tasted, and have introduced the masses to the joys of rhubarb crumble. I can think of many many places where I'd rather spend my 21st birthday, but at the same time... well it's not so bad. I have plans to mosey down the river Loire with a cushion, a bar of Swiss chocolate and a book of French poetry and to enjoy the countryside, culture and cloudscapes. Please let tomorrow not be a rainy day!
WEEK SEVEN (The End)
Isn't it funny how attitude can change everything. In the end, I was happy at Farm#3 and didn't particularly want to leave. The lifestyle wasn't "me", but as I got to know the people better I liked and appreciated them more and more. There isn't much in the way of farming to report back on - the work wasn't exciting, but it was sociable. We picked beans and beetroots, putting the world to rights and our backs into painful positions. I learned how to tell the difference between baby fennel leaves and baby carrot leaves and weeds that look like both of them, which might come in useful sometime in life, maybe in a "University Challenge" picture round.... One morning I looked out of the bathroom window to see a dripping, freshly slaughtered sheep hanging by its back legs from a tractor, and the next I was putting up an electric fence to keep the cows from escaping. A little bit of country life.
I had my first proper experience of selling at market. It started badly - I was alone and couldn't work the scales and tried charging an exasperated woman €26 for five lettuces. Oops. It should have been €2.60. The lesson was learned, and as my scale skills improved I began to enjoy the job, bigging up the iceburg lettuces ("they're crunchy, and not at all bitter - delicious!") and bagging up 700g of beans. Being a "foreign" worker in a public place was interesting, to say the least. Although many people had positive reactions to me ("oh, you're English?! How wonderful that you choose to spend your summer doing this!" or "Leeds... that's near Sheffield? I have family in Sheffield, you know!") there were others who were not so sympathetic. Although noone was outright rude, I experienced through their attitudes the feeling that I had until then only read about in modern novels of assylum seekers and migrant workers; the feeling of being looked down on, of not belonging, of somehow being in the way without meaning to be, of being of less importance on account of my voice and my roots. Unpleasant, but eye-opening.
As for my birthday, the sun did shine, and it was lovely, though not what I had intended. The WWOOFing family adopted me for the day and took me for a walk and a picnic by the Loire. When we returned there were balloons up, and I was greeted with a meal and a cake and about 20 farmers and WWOOFers I'd met in my time there, and a present of a French Trivial Pursuit kind of game, which had everyone in stitches, mostly because the quiz-mistress had a marked English accent...... Did I mention that the farmers were generous? They also love a good party!
Was she right, then, the little old woman I met on my first day who told me that farming would change me? Of course she was! How? I've learned the value of food and been forced to think about where it comes from and the work that goes into it. Carrots don't come from Sainsburys. Sweetcorn doesn't come from a tin. Of course I knew this before, but I had never really thought about it. For the first time for me, water has been in seriously short supply, and whilst only showering every fifth day is not a change I'm going to be making while I have the luxury of more frequent ablutions, it certainly made me think. I've experienced working with my muscles and not my mind, and enjoyed it. I've lived a lifestyle which was so much my cup of green tea that I hope to recreate aspects of it if I can, and a lifestyle which was so far from my ideal but with which I learned to cope, find the best in and enjoy. I've met and learned about people from all kinds of places, from Bangladesh to Brighton, heard their stories and ideas and dreams, which have sparked ideas and dreams of my own... and the whole experience has become my story.
So now I'm home. Not German-home, not French-farm-home-one or -two or -three, not Newcastle-home, but Home-home, sitting on my bed with its familiar creaks, listening to the sounds of my family downstairs. I hope you've enjoyed reading these updates; maybe learned a thing or two, maybe laughed once or twice. If you ever get the chance to do something like this, take it, and throw yourself into it with everything you've got. It's been an incredible journey.
