Day 24: Havarti

Very French day yesterday. Woke up, yogurt for breakfast, hitchhiked my way downtown (some lady very kindly offered me a ride) and then saw a man playing the most stereotypical french song you can imagine, and then saw an old lady riding a bike with one of those tiny dogs in the handlebar-basket.

It was very warm, and I saw a large tropical fish-tank in the airport. I was leaving all this for cold and stormy Boston.

I flew Swiss airlines, connecting out of Zurich. I got a great view of the Mountains on the way to Zurich, I had the urge to jump out of the plane and start snowboarding.

Going to the Zurich airport is like traveling to the distant future. I'm not sure if I like the future, it's mostly run by robots. There was a moment where I was walking through a terminal and there was quite literally no one else there. It was somewhat eerie.

On the flight, I watched Looper, Taken 2, and Robot and Frank. All three were great movies, and they brought out a seemingly endless supply of food. I had a little pack of pretzels, constant water and orange juice, dinner including salad, bread, cheese, mashed potatoes, vegetable medley, and pork roast, followed by some extra rolls, and then a vegetable crustini, and then ice cream, and then chocolate, and then a warm towel. Also, the flight wasn't very crowded so I had some extra elbow-room. Overall it was a great flight.

I landed in Boston, and took a cab to Christian's apartment. Christian is my grad student host while I'm visiting Harvard. I met his roommate, Leo, and heard about the third loose-cannon roommate Patrick. I met Patrick the next morning as he shouted at his alarm, pleading it to quiet down. He introduced himself, and I was somewhat surprised to be shaking hands with a diminutive asian (who did not fit my mental picture of the "unpredictable roommate").

They were all very nice, I mostly talked with Leo who is from portugal. He went to University there, and I forget the name but it is approximately 700 years old. They were a little surprised to learn that I wasn't French. I don't look french, and I don't sound french, but it still took them a moment to ask. I explained I was just visiting. I'm muhrican.

I spent the day doing interviews with OEB faculty, most of whom were great. One had forgotten that we had a meeting scheduled but found time for me eventually.

Dr. Kramer took me out to lunch with her lab, everyone was awesome. We went to the "Oxford Spa". A "spa" is a sub shop in Bostonian, but is a very misleading name to outsiders (me).

I then checked in to my Hotel, which I will call home for the next 3 days. I have a roommate who checked in before me but I have not seen him yet, he's off and about but his luggage is here. He has a black hat and a blue coat, but that is all I know about him.

Over the course of the course of the interviews I did get to see the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and therein was an exhibit of glass flowers. Apparently prior to plastics, glass was the material of choice for instructional models. They looked incredibly life-like, I'm not sure if the photos do them justice. It's hard to believe they're glass.

For the next several days it's a series of talks, interviews, and lunches and dinners and soirees. I again need to emphasize that I can't be relied upon to keep up with blog posts this week.

Also there was this huge shoe (much taller than me). And they worship Cameron Diaz in switzerland, she's everywhere.

Day 22: Via con me

Not a single mountain this morning. Lots of low hanging clouds and rain. Claire and I trudged up to the house, Betty was hiding in her little pig-house.

We made it inside, and took off our boots that were twice as heavy as usual thanks to a thick coating of mud. We sat at the table, wondering if this was a day where we suck it up and work or if we were to spend it warm by the fire. Jean Louis lifted a cup of coffee up to his lips and murmured "today, I think we will do nothing". Claire and I relaxed noticeably, working in cold mud is no fun.

Then the brainwashing commenced. We started watching "Food inc." and "The Future of Food". Both films circle around the recent industrialization of agriculture. It's not really farming anymore, it's mass production of food. The vegetarians in the room (everyone but me) sat back and laughed as pictures of meat processing plants and lab tests on animals fed GMOs were flashed across the screen. They are fortunate, as they know the essentially the entire life history of their food, from seed to dinner plate. Realistically, however, not everyone can have this luxury. Modern society is founded on densely populated cities, which means that every person can't tend to a few acres of proprietary organic farm and still manage their day job at the engineering firm. That being said, there are some pretty repulsive things happening in the food industry, and the influence that large food production companies have on the legislative organizations that are supposed to regulate them is staggering and completely unethical.

If you want to become a vegetarian and never feel safe buying food from a grocery store again, you can read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan (what a great surname to have), and then watch the two movies mentioned above.

And while I am recommending reading material, please read every book by Michael Pollan, as well as Sharon Moalem. I've also been told to read "Guns, Germs, and Steel" about 50 times, and haven't gotten around to it. Someday.

We went back to the Caravan to relax. We started a fire, and I did some work on my paper and Claire watched Oceans's 13 and a few episodes of Friends. We went back up to the house for lunch, and Claire looked through some of Jean-Louis' photos so that she could do some paintings (she's an artist, I don't know if I'm repeating myself in saying that).

Jean-Louis' photos are incredible. He's a very cheerful man and in the spring and summer the food is very bright, and the weather is great. Southern France and Italy covered in organic vegetables, with a sprinkling of farm animals and friends. He has a really great collection of photos, I want him to put more on his blog.

Hand's down the best picture of the day was a baby picture of Betty the Pig, being held up by Joelle. I'm getting a pet pig during grad school.

Later in the evening, Claire left to pick up Julia (the Italian) from the train station. I stayed at the caravan and cleaned up and packed some. Julia is a short little Italian girl, who as soon as she showed up started cooking dinner, and after dinner started playing guitar and singing. Before I was halfway through my glass of wine she was cleaning the kitchen. Part of me felt bad, she had spent all day traveling and capped it off with some cooking and cleaning. The other part of me felt like I could get used to WWOOFing with Italians if they are all like this.

Julia and Claire know each other pretty well, they met through a mutual friend and Claire ended up spending christmas and new years with Julia's family in Italy. They basically told me about their adventures throughout the holidays in Italy, which were partially marred by unreliable Italian train systems.

We talked a little about American music, which Claire knew a lot about but Julia mostly just knew Aqua and the Backstreet Boys, neither of which I followed particularly closely in my childhood.

Julia speaks english very well for being tri-lingual, but obviously several words escaped her (her english is way better than my french).

Words she didn't know before tonight:

-chatterbox
-sneaky
-yamaka
-gopher

Yes each of those words popped up naturally in the thread of conversation.

Tomorrow there will be no blog post, unless I miss my plane. I'm flying back to America to visit some schools for a week. Tomorrow I will be in transit essentially all day, and jet-lagged and exhausted upon arrival. The day after I will make an effort to bring everyone up to speed on my life happenings, and then for the rest of the week is a mystery, you may all hang in suspense. I'll be back in France February 3rd.

Day 21: No Moss

So I have some catching up to do. On weekends, it is a little tougher to find the time to sit down at my laptop, so this may be a recurring theme.

Friday was less rainy, but Jean Louis and Joelle had to go up to the mountains to get fertilizer from one of their friends. They left around 10:30, so we only got in about 2 hours of work while they were there, and then we fixed some of the irrigation systems for the green houses after they left. Over all a pretty relaxing day.

Saturday morning we went up to the house and had a quiet morning with Jean Louis and Joelle until some friends arrived. It was the mechanic I had met earlier and one of his friends. They rummaged through some of our scrap metal, and also wanted one of the trees growing on the farm. They packed those things up and headed off. They were a funny pair, both very short and heavyset, with thick accents. I think they thought we spoke much better french than we actually did. They would jabber on about something and I would pick up enough words edgewise to tell if it was a joke or a question, and then hack together a response.

After they left, Jean Louis suggested we do some work on the caravan. We took some wooden panels and set up kind of a porch outside that I am quite proud of. Once it's warm enough I'm sure there will be pictures of us out there. We also found an iron table, which we sanded down and painted. I joked with Joelle that we no longer lived in a caravan, but a castle.

Saturday night Jean Louis mentioned that he had a friend playing in a band in town that he was going to go see. This was great, as really our only opportunity to go out is when Jean Louis or Joelle come out too and drive, because the buses don't run very late. Joelle declined coming along, she said she saw them sing a couple months ago and that's enough to last her a year. She said something about singing "yogurt", which is apparently code for trying to sing in english when you don't speak english, and thus mumbling a lot.

We went downtown around 6, bought some painting supplies so we could paint some vegetables for Jean Louis (Joelle used to be a painter, and Jean Louis loves paintings, especially WWOOFer paintings). After that we decided to go to a mexican restaurant for dinner, again owned by friends of Jean louis. As we entered, it did feel a little bit like Mexico (or maybe Texas). We were greeted by Jean Louis' cowboy-hat wearing friend. The lampshades were sombreros, and there were confederate/texan/mexican flags on the walls. I glanced over the menu, but Jean Louis told me to just get the house specialty, which was like a fajita. I said sounds good, and it turns out that's what Jean-Louis was having also. I was a little startled that he was eating meat, but apparently that does happen from time to time. Joelle and Claire never eat meat, Jean Louis dabbles. Claire has a picture of him and I about to dig in, I'll have to get that from her.

The place was very hospitable, we had margaritas and red wine pretty constantly available. The food was great, but maybe that doesn't mean much coming from me anymore, I do seem to love eating.

Afterwards, we bid farewell to our tex-mex friends and headed over to "La Maison Blanche". This was the venue for Jean Louis' friend's band, and I don't think we could have looked more out of place. The place was all white (thus the name) with all the staff wearing all black semi-formal attire. Most of the guests were well dressed also, but we were the only ones sporting muddy farm worker themed outfits.

We took a seat in a corner almost behind where the band was to perform. All through dinner, Jean Louis had been talking about drinking Guinness during the show. When the waitress came over and said they didn't have that, we were a little dazed. She offered us a menu and gave us a few minutes to decide. It turns out all that they did have was overpriced run of the mill beers, insanely overpriced cocktails, and laughably priced champagne. After much deliberation, we got the cheapest beers on the menu and hoped that the waitress wouldn't come back.

The show was quite good. It was a cover band for The Doors. It took me some time to figure this out, as "Doors" is not one of those words that french people can pronounce recognizably.

The Singer was intense. He was jumping around and screaming and waving the mike stand back and forth, clearly the showman of the group. Jean Louis' friend was acting as a foil, probably 30 years older and cooly playing the electric guitar with precision and confidence. The drummer seemed very young, but seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, whereas the pianist looked almost like he was waiting for a bus. I'm pretty sure he was texting and playing the keyboard at the same time, all the while managing to look disinterested.

There was a comparably broad spectrum of enthusiasm amongst the spectators. One woman in particular knew every word to every song and was jumping around right in front of the singer. She was pretty much the only one dancing except for some mangy looking teenagers who I'm pretty confident were asked to leave about 10 minutes into the show. There were several enthusiastic head bobbers, and then many people who were more interested in their expensive champagne. A group of english folk were particularly rambunctious, working really hard to find the bottom of their bottle of bombay gin. One of them could barely sit up by the end of the night.

They passed around fireworks for the final song which was "Light my Fire". Nice touch, but it was really late for me at this point (past midnight!) so I was too tired to be enthusiastic.

It turns out Jean Louis is a big music fan also, we spent a fair bit of time listening to Led Zeppelin. There is a laminated photo of Jean Louis meeting Robert plant, but both of them look quite awkward, no doubt partially thanks to the language and cultural barriers between them.

I also got to experience a little snapshot of french culture through the show "les guignols de l'info" or simply "news puppets". It is a comedic french news show (like the daily show) that uses puppets to portray the characters it is mocking. It turns out that a puppet version of Sylvester Stallone is used to portray americans. He is generally shown with an air of superiority and extremism. There is a really charming scene where he gets into a car and begins to fight with the automatic seat belt reminder, eventually resorting to lethal force. Not the most glowing portrayal I've seen of americans, but far from the worst. They do throw in self-deprication also, referring to themselves as "smelly cheese" and frequently mocking political figures.

Jean Louis also told a joke about a group of Italian soldiers who were pinned down and out of ammunition. Their commander yelled " A la Baionette!" which means essentially "Fight using your bayonets", but the men heard "A la camionette" (sounds almost the same...) which means "Everyone to the pickup trucks". So the men hopped into the truck and went home.

And finally, I found my camera-cord.

Day 18: The United Nations

I could see all the mountains this morning.

As we prepared to go up to Broc, Jean-Louis chatted with us about the WWOOFer schedules. It gets pretty complex juggling that many people's schedules. In summary, Claire (The Canadian) and I (he American) are here now, Julia (the Italian) gets here on Monday, then I leave for a week on Tuesday, and when I get back Claire and Julia will be gone, but then a Japanese Girl will show up a week later, and then leave after two weeks, after which Claire (canadian) and Kelly (?) will show up again.

The conversation centered around how international relations tend to correlate pretty closely with inter-WWOOFer relations. For example, there were Russian and Iranian girls living here at the same time, and they didn't get along at all. Something about the caspian sea conflict was clearly the root of their relationship's failure to blossom. Apparently it was quite bad, they never saw eye to eye on anything (that's a joke, because the russian girl was allegedly enormous and the Iranian girl was travel sized). Anyway, Jean-Louis and Joelle were worried that the Japanese girl might be mad at me about Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I said I was kind of hoping that didn't come up, I'm perfectly happy to leave it as water under the bridge. Then they asked me if I spoke japanese, because they're not sure if she speaks french or english. I said my brother took a semester of japanese so I'm pretty sure I could say "hi" to her but that might be it. They said that was wonderful and that settles everything.

I hope she speaks some french, because I think I could carry about a 3 second conversation in Japanese before my vocabulary is depleted.

Joelle then told me about her Japanese friends that live in VilleFranche-sur-mer. She said they were atypical, as they are two women living together but the larger one is transgender. I said maybe we should have them over once the japanese WWOOFer gets here, they can help us communicate.

On the way to Broc, we saw a car driving by that had a lady carrying a box full of puppies in the passenger seat. It was the cutest thing I've seen since Betty the pig, and I started making the incomprehensible baby-babble noises that so many people make when they see something cute (Claire joined me). Jean-Louis on the other hand, asked us if we were hungry. We paused and looked at him for a second, processing.

He was in fact making a joke about eating the puppies. I allowed it, but only because he was a vegetarian.

At Le Broc, we essentially broke down trellises all morning. This was the best job yet, because the scraps could be used as firewood. We were running low, and it had rained recently so desperation was setting in. With tea we had some of Jean Louis' home-made brioche. Now, given the track record of Jean-Louis' cooking, and my love for brioche, you would think that I am about to spend an entire paragraph trying to describe the slice of heaven I got to experience this morning.

Not so.

The brioche was flavored with a hint of lemon. Lemon breads are on a short list of foods that I will almost never enjoy. Here's the list:

1. Lemon flavored breads
2. Cheesecake
3. Raw Radishes

Attentive readers will note that I have experienced 2 of the above items since my arrival here.

Lunch was pasta and a quiche. This was heaven.

I checked my e-mail, and found some bad news. I had ordered a phone (that costs 2 euros a month for unlimited texting and 2 hours of calls!!!!!) and the e-mail said "we could not deliver it to your address, so we dropped it at the nearest relay station". Oh good! I'll just head down to the friendly neighborhood relay station 4.8 km away. I walked and walked, spending about 2% of my journey on the sidewalk and the rest on winding roads. I got close, and then got completely lost and started wandering around. I think an elderly lady ran away from me (okay, walked briskly), but that may have been my fault because I was a little muddy and needed to use the restroom so I may have looked like an angry homeless person.

I eventually found the place, no thanks to google maps which was of next to no use. The proprietor reminded me of the food critic from ratatouille. We spoke in french no problems, and I walked home with my phone.

On the way I saw one of these guys. It looks like a really beefed up segway more than a car. I kind of want one.

I made latkes properly for dinner, I was quite pleased with them. Claire is a hippy, and has me listening to flower-child music all day. It's not bad, but I don't have very developed musical taste. Claire is also somewhat horrified at the amount of milk I drink. She pretty much only drinks it in coffee, but I have at least a glass every day. I think it is a step above whole milk (not quite cream but knocking on the door). It's great.

I have misplaced the cable to upload my pictures, so we will have a photo-dump when I find it.

Day 17: Onions

Woke up today and it was really cloudy. Instead of trusting a weatherman I look out my window and see how many mountains I can see in the distance. If I can see them all, it's going to be a clear day. If a couple are missing, 50% chance of rain later. If I can barely see any, it's raining already. So when I say it was really cloudy this morning, I mean I could only see 2 mountains.

We went up to the house, and Jean-Louis said that we couldn't make it to Broc today on account of bad weather. So we went and started cleaning up a greenhouse here at les grenouilles. We were just weeding, but I swear one of the plants was out to get us. It was almost like a bee sting when it touched bare skin, it got me twice (shame on me) before I covered up appropriately.

It started raining pretty hard, but we were safe in the greenhouse so it was actually pleasant.

Once we were done, Jean-Louis said we could just go hang out in the caravan if we wanted, as it was too rainy/cold to work. I got some work done on the computer and chatted with Clarie. Then Jean Louis popped in and made my day. He said we were having cheesy broccoli for lunch, and then directed me to a website where he gets a lot of his recipes (most importantly his pizza). Then he looked at me working on the computer and said "you aren't sharing with Claire?" I said of course I was, she can use my laptop whenever she wants. It turns out that's not what he meant. He meant that since Claire has an iPad, I should set up my laptop as a wireless hotspot so that we can both use the internet at once. I didn't know that was possible, but 6 clicks later we were both surfing.

Lunch was great, it was broccoli cooked in a flower/milk sauce, topped with parmesan and baked (write that recipe down). Claire cooked dinner for me, she said she doesn't cook much at home but she likes doing it here. She desperately needed an onion though, and went up to the house to find one.

Upon her return we talked a little more about onions, which led us to the quote of the day. She was cooking with one of her friends a while back, and the friend out of nowhere said "I wish onions made you laugh instead of making you cry". That never even occurred to me, but that would be amazing. Then again, onions would probably be a controlled substance if that were so.

During dinner we talked about unbearable roommates, and how both of us, and most WWOOFers in fact, are pretty agreeable. After Claire cooked me dinner and we chatted about roommate faux-pas, I took the hint and did the dishes like a good WWOOFer/roommate.

We then had some wine and leftover dark chocolate (it's better here, closer to switzerland), and started skyping everyone with our newfound wireless hotspot technology.

Happy birthday if you were born today!

PS: If a word is blue/purple then it is a link you can click on that is either a joke or an explanation of something I just said (only one today but there were some good ones in earlier posts). Happy clicking.

Day 16: Hungover Pregnant Cows

We went up to Brock today, but on the way I did make an attempt at a joke. One of the previous WWOOFers had carved a face into a stump, and it was prominently displayed along the wall of the property. As we left, I told Jean-Louis that he had a "Gueule de bois", which literally translated means "face made of wood", but is also the french word for hangover. He did actually chuckle, and went on to explain that it was a portrait of Betty.

We cleaned up one of the green houses so that we can plant potatoes soon. I think we did a bang up job.

It was warm today, warm enough for the bees to be flying about. Claire thinks they are cute, Jean Louis and I keep our distance.

For lunch we had pizza. It was just as excellent as last time. I want more.

Over lunch we talked about how I needed to go run errands in town, and that Claire and I were going to a movie later. Joelle said she'd like to come along, and we were delighted to have her. We dwelled on the subject of errands for a while, as apparently there is no French word for errands. "Courses" works, but that usually refers to shopping more specifically. I guess French people don't really run errands?

We talked about how helpful language immersion is for learning, and how detrimental it is for Claire and I to both be native english speakers. I jokingly said we should set up a jar that we have to put coins in every time we speak english, but Joelle and Jean Louis seemed to like the idea a lot.

After we had finished eating, Joelle continued offering us food. We said no we've eaten plenty, and Claire said "Je suis plein". Literally translated, this means "I am full", but it doesn't have that connotation in french. "Le mer est plein de poisson" means "the ocean is full of fish", but when a living object is plein, that means it's pregnant. Usually this refers to livestock, not humans, so it is sort of a derogatory way of saying someone is pregnant. I then made another attempt at a joke, because the last farm Claire was at was a dairy farm so she was surrounded by pregnant cows. I need a little more practice at this. Joelle said the word for full, but she said it's archaic and no one uses it, so I promptly forgot it.

We decided to watch Django at 5:30 in english with french subtitles. Claire and I went down early, and Joelle met us at the theater around then.

As I was running errands, I met with Daphnee (the proprietor), and had a nice conversation. Everything went smoothly, I slipped very easily into french, but at one point she mentioned that where I live there is a lot of wine. I wasn't sure if she said "wine" or "wind" (the words sound very similar, and there is both a lot of wine and a lot of wind where I live), so I paused and asked her to repeat it. She said "vin...Wine?" and then proceeded to ask if I knew what that was and if I drank it. I said of course I knew what it was and of course I drank it. So much for speaking like a local.

Django was a good movie, just very Quentin Tarantino-ey. It was fun talking to Joelle and Claire about it, Joelle thought it was a little over the top (which it was).

Big day au Brock demain. Bonne nuit.

Day 15: That explains a lot

It rained all weekend, so there wasn't much to do except go to the grocery store for supplies, and then build a fire and hunker down.

Today, however, we got right back to work. We spent the morning sorting potatoes, and then we went into another adjacent storage room and Jean Louis pointed at a large closet-like piece of furniture. I thought he said "destroy that", but I paused and looked at him to make sure. He then handed me a pickaxe which was a pretty good clue that I had heard him correctly.

That was the second most fun job I have had so far, following closely behind tractor surfing.

We actually got the room quite clean, there was enough room to fit the mystery machine in there. The mystery machine was some huge green metal box with a rotating cylinder inside, that was quite heavy. Once it was situated comfortably in the storage room and everyone was exhausted, I asked what the machine was for. Turns out it was an olive sorter.

Also in the storage room, was a piece of art that Jean Louis said he had made. I'll get a picture later, but it was abstract and colorful. It turns out that it was a method that he invented when he found a box of soggy old projector slides. The colors run when they get wet, so you can take a slide of any photograph, and then essentially real-life photoshop it into abstraction.

We also found an old fishing rod, a cow bell, an old tasseled leather jacket, and a bunch of Leffe glasses that could be put to good use back at the caravan.

As we went up to lunch, Jean Louis bounded over to show us the first egg his special chicken had made. It's a dark red egg, apparently very flavorful.

Over lunch, I got to experience a wonderful moment of discovery.

We were talking about accents, and eventually different dialects. It was at this point that Jean Luis and Joelle looked over at me and said "you know how sometimes we talk and you don't understand us?". I said yes often when you are talking amongst yourselves I don't follow the conversation. They said that this was probably because they shift into a different language when they talk to each other, called Argot. It's structured pretty much like french, but they replace most of the verbs and nouns with nonsense, or other words that have a completely different meaning.

Some examples: the verb "planter" (to plant) in argot means to joke or kid someone. A bird (oiseaux) is called a piaf. Water (eau) is called a flotte (a fleet).

This was great. It had seemed that there was some kind of switch that people were turning on that made them incomprehensible, and it turns out that I wasn't imagining it. They are actually switching to gibberish language. I knew that there was a certain degree of slang that permeates all languages, but I didn't know that I was in the French version of East London.

Throughout the afternoon, Claire practiced guitar and I made a woodcarving of my name (with hammer and chisel, aren't I old fashioned).

For dinner we had some vegetarian medley, including Claire's go-to grain which is quinoa. She seasoned with mustard and honey, and I think olive oil. It also had corn, peas, and chick peas. Twas quite excellent. I have however, regularly started to crave a 36 oz. steak, and quinoa and chick peas doesn't exactly cut it.

We found a spider crawling in the tea leaves. I was ignorant enough to point and say "look at the size of that thing" which prompted Claire to literally scream and run in to the other room yelling "that needs to go outside". Apparently she is afraid of spiders, as she later informed me that she was going to have spider themed nightmares tonight. I tried to change the subject, so she got a lesson on the rules of american football.

Today began with a quick online check of last night's ravens game, and I couldn't be more proud. Go Rayvens. Finished with the chowder, on to the gumbo.

Photo-dump below: Cello sculpture and blockhead museum.

Day 13: The forgotten sports (noodling and jousting)

I stayed up late last night chatting with Claire. Most of the conversation hovered around how great Jean-Louis and Joelle were, and what an interesting life this was to lead. Since I've been here, pretty much everything I have used has been either recycled or composted, with literally a handful of plastic wrappers accumulating in the garbage. Also, with most of the food being grown on the farm, and heat coming from firewood (chopped locally), essentially the only non-sustainable activity I do is use electricity and an internet connection for lighting, hot water, and an internet connection. It was great talking to Claire, because we both share the idea that traveling can help you develop a much more global perspective. It puts your own life in the context of the entire world, and you can start thinking in a way that keeps much broader repercussions in mind.

One of the experiences that drove this idea home was Claire's travels in Morocco. You can't drink the water there, and there is literally garbage lining the streets and piling up on the outskirts of town. It's a vicious cycle, because there is essentially no motivation for any individual to stop dropping garbage everywhere. It will be just as dirty because all their neighbors are doing the same thing, and everyone suffers. It's the same behavioral idea that is the root of most pollution/uncontrolled carbon emission. The  repercussions will be severe, but they will be in the very distant future and will likely not affect the majority of the people/companies that contributed to the problem.

In the end, we concluded that some things definitely needed to change, and we were thankful that we were raised to be open minded and have some concern for things like this.

Today, we weren't sure if Jean-Louis expected us to work or not. We work Saturdays depending on the season, so we decided to go up to the house at the usual time and see if there was indeed work to do. Jean Louis welcomed us in, and then offered us tea and toast and coffee. We enjoyed a nice quiet morning, and eventually it became clear that there was no work to be done. We headed back to the caravan, but as we left we were told that we were welcome to come back up for lunch.

We built a fire immediately because it was cold and rainy. We were incredibly thankful that we weren't working on such a muddy day, and decided to head in to town after lunch. We chatted some more, and I don't think it's really appropriate for me to publicize everything that Claire told me, but she did have some WWOOFing experiences that helped put my own experiences in context.

She had gone up north to the mountains to WWOOF on a different farm for a couple weeks. She had a bad feeling from the beginning based on the e-mails that she shot back and forth between her host, but she went anyway. As she got on the bus, the driver said that there was an avalanche/ rock slide that had blocked the road to the last stop, so she would have to walk the last bit. Luckily, another man was going to the same town and had a flashlight so they stumbled through the woods together. Once she got to town, her instructions were to wait at the bar for the host to pick her up. He showed up after 2 hours.

His farm was in complete disorder, with rotting food and garbage everywhere. She stayed 2 weeks, but left after she felt she had given it every opportunity to succeed. Part of her job was to haul cowpies away from the stable/barn and to the compost. It was in the mountains however, so there was a lot of snow and ice. I think the most interesting comment she made on the fiasco was that there wasn't even cow dung there for her to step on to keep from slipping on the ice. I think that's a good sign that it's time to leave, when you are wishing for cow poop to step in.

We had some great cultural exchange, I shared some american traditions (like noodling) with everyone, as well as Maryland's state sport, which Jean Louis said he liked way better than soccer.

Day 12: New Friends

Very busy, and it's very late so today is going to be brief.

We finished making the wall, it's beautiful. I described it as perfect, Jean-Louis describes it as better than perfect. Once we were done, we took a hard earned tea break and I enjoyed some jam made from a fruit I couldn't identify.

Jean-Louis seemed very happy with himself, as though he had earned a little break to tool about on the internet. I decided to excuse myself and contact Daphnee.

Daphnee is the proprietor of the apartment that my american friend might be staying in once she gets here. She asked if I could check it out and take some pictures before she committed to that apartemnt, so I decided to drop in. I called Daphnee, she was very nice on the phone, occasionally dropping in a couple english words for my benefit. I understood her french fine, and arranged a meeting for 4:30 that afternoon. I took the bus downtown, did some shopping, and then hovered outside the apartment waiting for daphnee. She showed up right on time, right after I had finished asking a random elderly woman if she was Daphnee.

The apartment was great, good location with solid furnishings and cheerful roommates. It was fun speaking to the roommates and daphnee in French, it felt very natural.

Once I got back, Claire was at the Caravan waiting for me. She's a very nice Canadian girl, we talked for a while about our travels (hers are more interesting I think). She's a vegetarian, so she made lentils and I made latkes for dinner, which went surprisingly well together.

She showed me that one of the bags of herbs that I couldn't identify was actually tea. Really good tea.

We talked for quite I while, it grew late, and the thought of getting a good night's sleep tomorrow started to take priority over writing an all inclusive blog post.

Night!

Day 11: McBaguettes Exist

When I got up to the house this morning, Joelle was bustling around and quickly shuffled me into a seat. She said Jean-Louis would be back soon, he's snowed in downtown. I started mumbling trying to formulate the necessary questions like "What was he doing downtown" and "do they ever get snow down there" and "how much snow is there" and "what time does he get up"?

Before I could spit all of those out, she cut me to the quick and filled me in with essentially all the answers, which turned out to be: meeting a friend, pretty much never, I don't know, and well before the sun, respectively.

When Jean-Louis got back, his eyes were a little wider than usual also. He said it's a catastrophe down there. A little bit of snow and everyone panics. I asked him how much and he said not much, but seriously no one is prepared for this at all.

We then started driving, I asked where we were going and Jean Louis said we were picking up a friend of his, and then driving to Italy to buy bottles for Olive oil, they're way cheaper over there. On the way to the rendez-vous point, I saw the snow. It was a generous dusting (but still just a dusting, the roads are essentially clear). The render-vous point was a McDonalds, which was proudly advertising one of it's specials, the "petit McBaguette". So yes, it turns out McBaguettes exist. It's a cheeseburger on baguette bread, not the most creative thing I've ever heard of but certainly a great targeted marketing move.

Jean Louis' farmer friend got in to the van wearing red suede shoes, a fedora, a blazer, and smelling like cologne (or maybe just not smelling like a farm). He was elderly, and semi-retired as it turns out. Selling the odd product from his farm but nothing like the scale Jean Louis does. We started heading to Italy, for my first time ever. It was relatively indistinguishable from southern France actually, just that the signs are in Italian rather than French. A short way across the border, I was asked if I wanted to stop for coffee. I said I'm fine without stopping, to which our new friend asked if I'd prefer some Whiskey (in a really rough attempt at English [half of it was French]). I laughed and said I think it's a little early for whiskey, I wasn't sure if he was trying to be funny or make fun of Americans. I gave hime the benefit of the doubt, but now I'm keeping an eye on you Mr. Suede shoes.

Shortly after we stopped for coffee. I was persuaded into trying one, even though generally I don't drink coffee. It was Italian Espresso, so the cup was the size of a shot glass and only half full. I drank it pretty slowly, chided on by our old friend (yes, he's getting old by this point), who said that american coffee is pretty much just water, nothing like this. I said I don't usually drink coffee so I wouldn't know, but if he keeps mouthing off there is probably an american nuclear submarine within 50 miles of here full of americans who've had plenty of whiskey and watered down coffee (I didn't say that second part, I don't know the word for nuclear).

We got incredibly lost in Italy. There are no signs anywhere, just winding roads and toll booths. Jean Louis had arranged to sell some potatoes to a friend, as well as buy the discounted bottles, all in one stop. Once we finally found the right building, it was a little bit of an adventure finding the right store. This building is apparently three-quarters international unfriendly business office, and one quarter Olive Oil Supply Co. We opened a couple wrong doors, sprinted away, and repeated until we found the olive oil part.

The store had everything you could possibly want that had to do with olive oil, which turns out to be one of the primary exports of the region. Most of the tools were pretty foreign to me.

The drive back was quicker, and relatively uneventful. Right after we dropped off Suede shoes, Jean Louis started telling me about how he didn't really like the guy. He was preaching to the choir at that point. We were also both hungry and a little grumpy. But as soon as we made it home, there was a hot lunch waiting. Couscous and some kind of vegetable soup seasoned with cumin. Again very good.

Throughout the afternoon, we put some finishing touches on the erosion wall we had worked on a few days before. We have perfected the system for getting the 300 pound blocks up the hill, which involves a backhoe, a wooden planck, a piece of rope, a piece of sheet metal, an abandoned telephone pole, and a crow bar.

I straightened up the caravan from my laundry day, partially in preparation for the arrival of my first WWOOFer-Freind tomorrow.

Day 10: Rusted Root

We stayed chez les grenouilles today, the old dumpster had been replaced with a fresh one to accommodate the still daunting level of iron laying around the farm.

Today we made real progress, I think the majority of the scrap has actually been taken care of. Occasionally as I was lugging a wheelbarrow full of metal up the hill Jean Louis would run over, grab a piece of iron, and run off grinning. I think he inherited a small fraction of his fathers pack-rat tendencies, as he kept saying what a beautiful piece of iron it was.

I thought we were almost done around 11, but some digging with the backhoe revealed a network of rebar and roots that I hadn't seen before. I spent quite a while excavating, hampered by the fact that a dirty, rusty, piece of mangled rebar looks exactly like a dirty old root. It turns out that shuffling about and listening for clanging is the best way to distinguish the two.

Joelle is back from some mysterious mountain vacation, I ran into her while I was looking for Jean Louis. She was actually up in an olive tree at the time so I didn't see her until well after she started talking to me. She asked if I wanted coffee or tea and I said sure.

We take occasional tea breaks. It's really pleasant it's just a little jarring, as I get focused on work and the next minute we are sitting around the stove relaxing and drinking tea.

Lunch was again fantastic, Joelle made a quiche with leeks. I told them about the famous leek/walnut/brie appetizer I had recently taken a liking to in an effort to sound like a cooking expert. They sounded intrigued, maybe I will make it for them someday.

Then Joelle and Jean Louis started contrasting their cooking techniques, and I was caught in the middle as an unbiased judge. It boiled down to Jean Louis being italian and loving brick ovens. He got a light in his eyes when he talked about a big brick oven that someone somewhere used to have (the details escaped me).

We then watched the news for a while. I don't watch news a lot but French news seems to jump around more so than your average american channel. Most of the news was bad, with a helicopter crashing in London and a hostage situation unfolding in North Africa.

Then it was time for laundry. I have a washing machine, but no dryer. I investigated hanging the clothes on the clothesline outside, but found a towel there that was mostly dry and completely frozen.

I don't like wearing frozen clothes, so I built a pretty roaring fire inside and criss-crossed laundry lines around the room. As I write, almost everything is dry, dependent on proximity to the fire.

No pretty pictures today, just imagine a refugee camp and that is pretty much what my abode looks like.

Good night!

Day 9: You're eating broccoli wrong

If you are reading this, look left and then look right. If both sides of you look like American soil, you have probably been eating broccoli wrong your entire life.

I'll loop back to fill in the rest of my day, but for lunch we had broccoli and rice, and something that looked like a small misshapen potato. Quite literally, the meal preparation was some variation of:

1. Boil water
2. Put food in
3. Wait
4. Take food out
5. Eat

As this was put on my plate, I was pretty doubtful that I would like it. We were eating boiled starch or boiled notoriously displeasing vegetable.

Obviously I was wrong.

The broccoli was great. Between shovelfuls of broccoli and rice I managed to explain to Jean-Louis that in 'Muhrica we only ate the florets. He gave me the stunned/confused face that I was growing accustomed to and said "that's gross, that's the worst part". I guess this explains the countless vegetable platters where the broccoli goes untouched, and why I usually only eat broccoli when it's smothered in melted cheese.

The leaves really are flavorful, apparently more so when they are close to the floret, and the floret is not too developed (small, not yet flowering). So I would like to know what's happening to all the broccoli leaves in America. Are we importing it all, and some country is keeping all the leaves for itself as some kind of sick joke? I'd like to know, because we are really missing out.

To jump back to the traditional chronological blog format, I began my day with a drive to Le Broc. I asked Jean-Louis if he liked skiing, and he said he'd been a couple times. His wife is a great skier, so when they went together (for his first time), she said he couldn't ski on the lower slopes, there are too many people it's too dangerous you'll hurt someone. So she took him to the highest peak there was and they worked their way down. I guess it's the off the deep end, sink or swim, accelerated learning program here in Nice. He survived, and has scarcely skied since.

When we got to Le Broc Jean Louis paused, saying "maybe it's too wet to actually collect crops today". It's lucky he wasn't paying attention, because I gave him the "shouldn't you have thought of that before we drove all this way" look. We walked to a pretty large patch of mud and started hitting it with a pitchfork. I felt like one of the mud farmers in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Eventually, Jean Louis found what looked like a muddy pebble, and said this is what we're looking for. We need 50 kilos.

We spent about 5 minutes exercising futility before Jean Louis said "I'm getting my friend the tractor". This was great. There was a plough attached to the back that he told me to stand on as he drove. This helped bury the plough deeper in the furrows, but was also a lot of fun (think surfing).

After the plough upturned all the earth it was much easier to find the small, muddy, irregular, reddish potato-like things we were harvesting. It still involved a lot of rooting around in the mud, but we had 50 kilos within 2 hours rather than 2 days. Then we picked broccoli, drove back to Les Grenouilles, washed the weird potatoes, and ate lunch.

After lunch, I watched some french TV with Jean Louis, mailed a letter, video-chatted with a Maryland alumna, and then did some reading and e-mailing.

A fantastic prize will go out to anyone that can identify the potato-like vegetable pictured below (hint: it's just my appreciation, and I will have no way of knowing if you're right). Also see the leafy broccoli, essentially we spent all morning harvesting lunch.

Day 8: The Rain House

"Au jour d'hui, nous allons réparer la serre".

"Great! we're going to repair the.... what's a serre?"

Jean Louis responded with a mumble that sounded something like "rain howz".

I looked at him for a second, and he nodded saying "that's what the americans call it".

OOOOoooohhhhh greenhouse. Got it. "Oui, green howz". I should have figured that one out more quickly. There are about 9 greenhouses on the farm, but not a single rain house.

The greenhouses are essentially just arches or pipe with heavy duty plastic covering them, I'd like to build one of my own someday. The one we needed to repair was squeezed onto a terrace that barely accommodated it, and the terrace above was beginning to erode. The falling rocks and soil had built up and pushed through the plastic. We were able to dig out the excess soil pretty quickly, but then it was time for erosion control.

I dug out the eroding terrace into a step-like pattern, and then Jean-Louis called me over to see the long term solution. There was a stack of rebar-enforced concrete blocks that were supporting part of an old terrace. Jean Louis said we needed to do something like that. I walked over and tried to move one of the blocks; I could slide it but there was no way I was lifting it alone. "It's heavy, huh?" chirped Jean Louis. I said "yeah what are we gonna do?". Jean Louis said his old friend had built the existing wall by himself with no machines. I was a little incredulous, but Jean Louis said he was very short and stocky. Okay. I'll run with the excuse that I'm tall, and therefore at a clear disadvantage.

We made pretty good progress, but as the wall got higher it got harder and harder to lift the blocks. We ended up making a kind of ramp out of planks and sheet metal to push the blocks up, Jean Louis said we were just like the egyptians. Touche.

Lunch came early, we were tired. No we didn't finish the wall we're only human and neither of us is short.

We had shredded radish and carrot salad for starters, with some vinegar and mustard added to make into a slaw. I think I don't like radish. Or Mustard that spicy. I ate it politely but didn't go for seconds as I was regaled with the life history of everything I was eating. Essentially all of it had been grown here, which is actually quite impressive.

The main course was an omelet, with only sautéed onion in it. It included the greens of the onion, and was really sweet. Again, compliments to the chef.

Then Jean Louis started showing me "The Future of Food", a documentary that spends the first half hour giving some background on genetically modified crops, and then starts reviewing the lawsuits filed by Monsanto. The documentary is clearly biased in favor of farmers rights, and I agree that in those cases, the farmers rights were being completely ignored and abused. I didn't finish the documentary, I had some errands to run in town so I figured I'd capitalize on the early quitting time and head down.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about Bus stops here, as they're a bit of a misnomer. Busses don't stop at the the bus stops, they keep driving unless someone jumps in front of them. I've only missed one bus so far, and hopefully it'll be the last one. I was at the stop, saw my bus coming, so I stepped out to the curb. The Bus driver glanced over at the stop and then hit the gas. I watched as the blinking blue box labeled "62" slid away, and stood there dazed for a second. "Was this the right stop?" I rechecked the map, indeed it was the right stop, and indeed I had an hour to kill before the next bus sped by. You really have to be on your toes here.

When I got home, the couch was fluttering. There was something behind it, either a huge beetle, a normal sized bird, or a small bat. I was really hoping for bird, and I was right. Quite a cute one in fact. My walls make better windows than walls, they are floor to ceiling glass. Thus the bird didn't really know which way was out, so I constructed a trail of (precious) brioche bread crumbs leading toward the open door. Unfortunately my activity scared him into the kitchen. I followed after, and he conveniently fled from whence he came, the open window. Guess what happened to the bread crumbs....

Also, over lunch, Jean Louis mentioned that we would be getting another WWOOFer on Friday! She's been to the farm before, and is allegedly very nice. She spent Christmas etc. with her boyfriend in Italy. Later in the year, we'll be getting a WWOOFer from Colorado who actually wants to learn to be an organic farmer. I guess this is the right place for him.

Can't wait to meet the new WWOOFer, I hope she speaks French or English because my Italian is not so good.

Day 7: Rain

Today was very quiet, but very pleasant. It rained essentially all day (but I slept in). I cooked, cleaned, read, and did a little bit of writing.

My brioche cookbook is coming along:

Chapter 1: Plain
Chapter 2: As Toast
Chapter 3: With Butter
Chapter 4: With Cheese
Chapter 5: Used for eggs in a basket (new today)

Good night!

Day 6: Stratigraphy

Today we stayed at "Les Grenouilles", my home farm, to clean up. A large dumpster had arrived along the road before I woke up, and we spent the day filling it with scrap metal from around the farm. 

Throughout the day, I learned that Jean-Louis' Father had built the farm from nothing, including the construction of the 2 houses along the road that the family lives in. As we loaded the dumpster with approximately 50,000 pounds of scrap metal, I wondered how frequently they went through this cleaning process. It certainly seemed that a lot of metal had accumulated. Jean Louis explained that his father was a great man, but did have a tendency to hold on to things. I guess it occasionally comes in handy, holding on to old equipment to scavenge from later, but over the course of about a century the scraps really build up. It became pretty clear that the answer was "never". "Never" before had they sifted through and discarded the growing stacks of scrap. 

This made for a very interesting archaeological dig as we delved into the metallic history of the farm. Among the more notable finds were a roller skate (A.D. 1910), a throwing star (A.D. 450), and a chain rusted perfectly into the shape of the U.S. (A.D. 1960).

Lot's of heavy lifting, uphill both ways. But I did have a wheelbarrow, which was helpful, and I was eventually introduced to the robo-wheelbarrow, which was my best friend that day.

A little after noon, Jean Louis donned his backpack, hopped on the dirt bike and motored off, yelling back at me that he was off to fetch wine for lunch. He looked a little like a kid running off the the candy store. 

After he got back we had spaghetti for lunch, with a mushroom sauce and freshly grated parmesan. I noticed that the bottle of wine we had was "AB" certified, for "Agriculture Biologique" (kind of like organic certified in the U.S.). I asked him if his farm products were AB, and what that entailed. He said of course he is AB, he is actually a level above that called "Nature et Progres", which is even more strict. He has 3 or 4 visits a year from inspectors to ensure that he is holding up to these codes. 

He then carried on about how he only drinks AB wine, because the wine industry has one of the highest pesticide usages in agriculture. He was quite serious, stating that if you aren't drinking AB wine, you are drinking poison (pesticides). He then continued, talking about plastics. There is indeed some molecular exchange between food and plastic packaging, so he essentially never eats anything that has touched plastic. The yogurt we ate was in glass containers, the cheese was fresh, he didn't have any tupperware, and never drank from plastic water bottles. He mocked the plastic water bottles the most, saying that the advertisements say "fresh pure mountain spring water", but in fact it's just plastic-water after they bottle it. 

The Pièce de résistance in his kitchen, however, was his salad spinner. He talked about how they used to have one, made out of plastic, and how wonderfully it dried lettuce. But he gave it a little bit of thought, realizing that as it spun it made a lot of noise. What was the loud noise? Plastic grinding against plastic, spreading little particles all over the food. So it doesn't matter how organic or clean your lettuce is, after you use the spinner it is coated in poison. He immediately threw out the plastic one, and got a metal version from the internet. It essentially looks like a chicken wire basket that you spin around using your arm, like they did in the olden dayf.

He then asked me if I could help him update his blog, as he was very proud of the wall we had constructed and wanted a gif depicting it. I tried to help him out, I'm new to the blogging/gif-embedding but I think I almost have it occasionally working on my blog...

You can see jean-Louis' blog here... http://desgrenouilles.tumblr.com, under "videos" you can find classics like "Betty at Breakfast" and "The Chicken's percussion concert".

He didn't actually make the blog, apparently a potential pothead / brazilian WWOOFer made the site for him.

I then told him about the Raven's game, and discussed how I might watch it. He said he never really understood american football, but wished me luck. He recommended I find an american bar in Nice, there are plenty. I told him that's great, but the game starts at 10:30 PM local time and can last about 4 hours. The last bus home is at 8:30. He very casually responded that I should just party all night, and take a bus back in the morning. I was about to laugh and say I'm a little too old to be out that late, but as I looked up and saw a 60-something man, grinning but completely serious about his suggestion, I thought better of it.

I decided to video chat my family, and they could just place the laptop in front of the TV for me. It worked wonderfully, I just needed to go to bed around half-time because it was getting way past my bed time. I would've fallen asleep on the bar or in the gutter if I'd gone in to town. It's good I went to bed because the game lasted about 5 hours, but I also missed one of the best games of football the Raven's have ever played. There were some great highlights and a fantastic final score waiting for me when I woke up.

Day 5: The nine-fingered man

It feels routine now, even though it's really my second day at it. I meet Jean-Louis up at the house at 8:30, and we drive to "Le Broc". There's a Medieval Castle on one of the peaks we drive by on the way, again I promise to get a picture eventually. En Route, the primary topic of conversation was the terrible and inevitable transformation of farmland into developed areas. I think it began with my asking why there were olive trees everywhere. I was wondering if they popped up often uncultivated. This turned into a discussion about how this all used to be farmland. With every building, parking lot, street, or sidewalk we passed, Jean Louis would say how he remembers when there used to be cows or trees there. He criticized mankind of trying to cover up the earth, thinking it's dirty. I decided that this topic was only going to get more depressing, so I shifted gears to talk about food. I asked if his chickens were laying eggs (with the intended follow up of "can I have some"). He said not very many, it's too cold. It used to be zero, gradually working it's way up to 3. I guess this is eggs per week? He then went on about all the different colors of eggs, he has a couple chickens that lay dark red eggs (which are highly desirable), but he has had friends who have produced blue and green eggs with their diverse chicken breeds. Searching for the next logical step in the conversation, I started to talk about easter. We were talking about multicolored eggs, so it seemed pretty logical to ask if the french do easter egg hunts. Unfortunately, I don't know the word for easter. So I led off with a question something like "Do French people ever run around looking for hidden multi-colored eggs like we do in America". He looked at me funny and I felt I was making america look like a looney bin. So I tried to reference the specific holiday by first establishing that he was christian, and then trying to talk about the resurrection of Jesus. We converged on the day of the ascension, which is pretty close but clearly not good enough.

 I gave up and started talking about Mushrooms, promising to look up some much needed vocabulary for tomorrow.

 We got to the farm and I thought it would be a pretty normal day, we just needed to re-build the wall we had torn down yesterday.



















So we started. It's called a "Dry Wall" (Mur Sec), meaning there's no mortar, just carefully stacked stones. However, it is crucial that behind said wall, there is a layer of small stones. This is so that when it rains, the soil doesn't swell and push over the wall. The little rock layer provides a buffer zone, allowing the soil to swell a little bit without pushing on the big rocks, and also facilitates drainage.

Then Two men rolled up. They yelled something at Jean Louis while he was on the backhoe. He ignored them for a moment, so I went over to say hi and apologize saying that he may not have heard them. During the handshake I realized that one of the men was missing part of his right hand, pinky included. This was not the most interesting thing about him however.

It turns out that our nine-fingered friend was a bee farmer, and every year he trades 2 boxes of bees for one pick up truck full of firewood from Jean-Louis. Now I didn't know this at the time. I just knew that some strangers had rolled up, and started loading a truck with firewood. Once they were done, we all went down to the base of the farm. Jean Louis put on a ridiculous bee suit, the nine fingered man started burning pine needles in a teapot, and the other man pulled out big packets of what looked like icing.

 We then started trudging into the woods. In the distance, I heard the cries of the nine fingered man echoing through the hills. Clearly he had broken something, and he was yelling some words that I recognized as obscenities and a lot of words that I assumed were obscenities. We all looked over our shoulders, expecting to maybe see an eight fingered man emerge from the tree-line. Turns out he had broken the spout off of his spray bottle.

So, we made it to the beehives and the nickname-less guy and I kept our distance. Jean louis was protected from head to toe, and the nine fingered man apparently knows no fear. He ran up to the beehives and pumped smoke out of the teapot with burning pine needles, then took the lid off of the hive-box and sprayed it, and then cut a hole in one of the icing packets and put it on top of the hive.

Jean Louis bumbled about, he's afraid of bees.

The men then left, and I started asking questions. Jean Louis gets the bees every year because he loves honey, but primarily because they are good pollinators. The smoke keeps the bees from flying around too much. I thought it would just enrage them, but apparently it makes them eat a ton of honey and get itis. The more you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_smoker

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=itis

So the smoke calms the bees. The liquid in the spray bottle is two types of acid that kill bee parasites. The icing is, icing. For the bees to eat.

We then went back to wall building. You'll just have to trust me the rocks are big and heavy.


animated gif maker

After that was done, we got lunch. We had tea, some kind of spicy vegetable soup, pizza, and some kind of nutty bread. Everything was really good, the pizza had goat cheese and mozzarella, and the vegetable soup probably had squash among other things but it was great. We talked about vegetative propagation of olive trees, and how sweet the wall was, and how long it takes grapes to grow. Jean Louis still eats about 4 times as fast as me. He sits politely for a while and then gets antsy and leaves to go work. I was savoring that pizza it was excellent. How many times am I going to say it was good?

We then loaded the backhoe into the tiny van and drove back (I didn't think it was possible).

I got home, went grocery shopping, built a fire, made dinner, called home, and then started writing a blog post about a nine fingered man I had met earlier that day.

Day 4: Sissys Fuss

First day of Work!

We went to the mystery farm, it's about a half hour drive. It's a little further north, again in the mountains. Our goal was to clean up one of the fields in preparation for planting grapes. This "cleaning" consisted of using a backhoe to dig up trees and rocks and roots and move them out of the way. "Out of the way" for stumps/roots/wood is beyond the tree-line, but for rocks they were to be moved uphill to contribute to a retaining wall. (Sisyphus, get it?)

On the drive over, Jean Louis asked me all about what I do for a living. This developed into a pretty long discussion about school being way too expensive in the US and French Socialism. It was interesting speaking with him, he was very engaging.

The lower part of the farm already had broccoli growing, and had a fair amount of heavy duty construction equipment (Bulldozer, backhoe, mystery machine, etc). We took the backhoe up the rocky hill (again not my idea of farmland), occasionally stopping to rip up a random patch of earth. Once overturned, Jean-Louis would tell me about how beautiful the earth was there, and we'd move on.

Up higher, there are a couple relatively flat fields! But they are really rocky. Jean-Louis would dig up s bit of earth and I would lug the big rocks up to the wall, to be assembled later. I'm not kidding when I say this is exactly what I wanted to do.

We encountered a pretty large tree (well, deep-rooted) that had roots digging deep into the wall. Jean Louis said it had to go, so he attacked it with the backhoe and the bulldozer for an hour or two. I went to go get a shovel and an axe and a crow bar to help, but by the time I got back the tree (and a pretty big section of wall) was uprooted. Tomorrow we rebuild the wall.

We then gathered 20 kilos of uncut French.... Broccoli. This was kinda fun, though Jean Louis works approximately twice as fast as me. For those who don't know, broccoli is essentially a tight cluster of buds that have not yet flowered. Every tiny green dot is a potential flower. What I didn't know until today was that it has very broad leaves, grows well in cooler temperatures, and the actual yummy broccoli-looking part is kind of hard to find.

We took a tea break, and then headed back. I was a little tired and hungry at this point, it was 2 before we left so I'll have a heartier breakfast tomorrow. But, there was a hot lunch waiting for me when I got back. Lunch started with a greeting from Collette inquiring "Manges-tu les moules aux Etats-Unis?". I responded with a "I don't know what a Moule is". They turned out to be Mussels, accompanied by rice with some kind of vegetarian sauce. I'm not sure if I'm jut being nice but they were probably the best I have ever eaten.

We talked mostly about the global crises, financial and ecological. As farmers, they are relatively sheltered from the financial crisis. However, they are seriously concerned about global warming and the like. They think the root of the problem is that everyone is concerned about money and economic growth, but the economy can't grow forever. It takes a toll on the environment, one that will probably be irreversible and catastrophic. So they endorse a simpler, more sustainable living, which they clearly practice as well as preach.

The conversation evolved into a discussion of who had eaten half the box of chocolates. Neither party willing to give any ground, they dutifully recounted each occasion and the corresponding quantity of chocolate they had eaten. Miraculously, the total number they admitted to eating was about 5, with 9 pieces missing. Apparently we are also in the midst of a chocolate crisis.

We also talked about unity, how I said that in the US there is definitely a sense of a unified country (geographically speaking). Collette responded by talking about how that's what Europe wants, a unified sense of being "European", not French or Italian or German. But she thinks this idea is a little idealistic, people are too different and aren't thinking that way....yet?

Moment of weakness, I took a nap. 10 Hail Mary 50 Our Fathers. Check.

Also, I am still pretending that I can't read the nutrition facts on Brioche. Brioche is French for "Fatty Sugar Bread not a staple". I've been eating a lot of it it's hella good.

Lastly here's a rabbit.