9th August 2010 – Carrot tops and baby calves

In the morning we went down to the fields to weed the baby lettuces, beans and carrots. I was worried that I was going to pull up the tiny vegetables by mistake, but I soon honed my eyes to watch out for the fine fronds of immature carrot tops and the little green waves of salad. I was working with Sophie and the family, and Theotim and Francis had come along too. Usually they stayed around the house. There was too much of an age gap between them for them to get on well with each other for very long. Francis was too old to want to join in with Theotim’s games, and not old enough to have learned the patience to put up with him. They were both too young to have enough of an attention span to be useful farm labourers, but at that moment, absorbed in their tasks, they were at peace with each other. Theotim had a bad cough, and kept complaining of being ill. I was working near Nathalie during one of his spluttering outbreaks, and she made a comment under her breath about the effects of second- hand smoke on children. I smiled to myself. It was reassuring to know that I wasn’t the only one who found the fumes of the kitchen unhealthy.

The world looked different with my head between my calves, squatting as I was close to the ground and looking back up the field through my legs. An expanse of undulating brown sky spread before me with herringbone clouds of assorted greens. A large blue bucket hung nearby, and further away Joao was floating, legs planted in the muddy heavens, stretching his back, arms reaching towards the blue ground as if he were trying to grasp it. Standing up, the world righted itself again, and the Dali-esqe perspective disappeared instantaneously. My thighs were aching, my back was aching and a butterfly rested on my trowel. It seemed almost transparent, with diaphanous mother of pearl wings, delicate as a soap bubble. 

Francis and Theotim had begun to bicker and moan. Sophie was shooting them murderous glances – or at least as murderous as she could muster – and Nathalie decided that it would be best to take them back to the farm. Sophie and I remained to attempt the impossible task of ridding the entire field of weeds, and going back over the areas covered by the family, whose standards had not been quite so exacting. As we worked, we talked about the French music industry and about our favourite styles and artists. She promised to write me a list of good French singers that I could look up when I returned home. 

As soon as we arrived back at the farm I was dragged around the side of the house by a highly excitable Theotim. He took me to the outbuilding that I could see each morning from the bathroom window, but had never investigated. It turned out to be a barn full of sheep. It was warm and musty inside. Air only seemed to circulate near the roof, at the base of which thin, glassless horizontal windows were built. The sheep bolted away from us down their enclosure as Theotim ran at full pelt towards the back wall, his sticky hand in mine, and only at the last minute did he veer to one side into a stack of haybales, scrambling up and over them and leaving me bemused at the bottom. With little choice in the matter, and curious as to what was quite so exciting on the other side, I clambered after him, my weight a disadvantage on the soft, yielding hay. 

Flopping down in an ungainly fashion on the other side and stumbling unsteadily onto firm ground, I found Theotim pointing past a wooden barrier. Lying on the straw were three shaggy-haired Highland cows, and beside the nearest one was a tiny calf. Theotim told me it had been born very early that morning. I was entranced by it, delicate in its infancy and yet more robust than I would have imagined, its nose blindly snuffling towards its mother’s udders.  I asked Theotim what it was called. He looked at me as if I were an imbecile, and told me quite clearly that this baby was not going to grow up; it was going to be killed when it was still a baby and so it wasn’t allowed a name, otherwise it would be like a friend, and you can’t eat your friends. That was me told. I wondered how many days of nameless freedom this little baby would enjoy before it became a burger. 

The previous evening at my party I had met Sen. Sen was an agriculture student from Bangladesh, and was WWOOFing as part of his studies. His college required him to interview the farmers and to write a report on the farming practices of whatever farm he was on. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t speak any French past bonjour, and neither Marta nor Abelard could speak a word of Bengali, not even the corresponding nomoskaar. He didn’t really speak much English either, but with time and a thick accent he could make himself understood to me. He was so relieved to be able to communicate with me that he asked stiltedly if I would interpret between him and Marta, allowing him to conduct his interview. He looked so lost and helpless that I couldn’t have turned him down had I wanted to. As a result I found myself sitting at a large wooden table opposite the interviewer and the interviewee, translating questions and answers that I didn’t understand about soil types and crop rotations as though it were the most normal thing to do in the world.  

Sen sat next to me that night at dinner on the other farm; apparently I had made a new friend. I lapsed into English for his benefit, relinquishing my French for a couple of hours. I might have been obstinate about not speaking English, but I wasn’t cruel. Hannah had been capable of speaking French, but Sen wasn’t. While he tried to explain to me in broken English the dangers of flooding from global warming that threatened Bangladesh, we sipped deadly- strong mojitos and deadly-sweet piña coladas. Nibbles were brought out and stared at us from huge plates placed at intervals down the table. The nibbles in question were friture – tiny little fried whitebait – their eyes still clearly visible through the translucent amber batter. The next course was a pizza with potato, an odd combination, but at least it wasn’t capable of seeing its sharp-toothed fate.

There were two groups of new faces at the table that evening. One was an older couple who were walking the Loire valley and staying in gites along the way. They had read about Edouart in a book written by a man who had done something similar and phoned the farm up out-of-the-blue to ask if they could stay. They didn’t know about WWOOFing and were bemused to find quite so many people collected around the dinner table, perched on the walls and assorted sun-chairs and stools. A guessing-game ensued: why were we all there, coming as we did from all around the world? They were even more surprised to find that it wasn’t only the youngsters who were on this mysterious programme, but that Nathalie, Joao and even Francis were too. Eventually they gave in, and were amazed that we were all there to volunteer for manual labour, whether to learn the language, or the agricultural techniques, or to escape the rat-race of the cities, or as a cheap way of travelling.

The other group was a young couple with a baby and a two year-old, who were friends of Abelard and Marta. To the right of me sat Sen, but to my left was the toddler. He had straight sandy blonde hair, and the widest eyes I had ever seen. His name was Papillon: the French word for butterfly. It struck me as an unlikely name, especially for a boy, but the parents seemed a fairly alternative couple, and until somebody else posed the question – pourquoi Papillon? -  I assumed that they had seen a butterfly at the moment of his conception and hadn’t considered how much he might be bullied in later life. Mercifully, I was spared the details of his conception. But his birth had been complicated. His heartbeat had been so weak that the doctors had given him two hours to live. And so his parents had named him Papillon because his life would be as fleeting – but as beautiful – as a butterfly’s. And then, against all the odds, he survived. He was a pale child, but not sickly. According to his parents he was a miracle. I supposed he was, toddling around with vital curiosity, but I couldn’t help but think that, with time, he might get very tired of telling the story of his birth to incredulous new acquaintances.