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.