Update from the Auvergne

Monday, September 17, 2007
Ferme les Fromentaux, Retournac

Jack took us and our bags to the station in Liancourt on Sunday morning for our day’s journey to Retournac. Our journey was basically fine, just the usual stress of finding a place for our big packs on the train; then, someone was in our seats and I had to go get help from an employee since my French couldn’t handle the conversation. The TGV goes so fast it makes one tired, then the little train from St. Etienne to Retournac went so fast next to the river, the upper Loire, into the hills (kind of like Idaho!) we were quite exhausted by the time we arrived. We had to laugh when Andre picked us up from the station in a tiny, old car, as I somehow expected; he’s an old hippy, basically, with long hair that looks like it never gets combed, and a long beard. His wife Renee-Jo is very kind and cheerful; she’s in charge of the cheese. The three grown children, Else, Kevin, and Beranger, all have dreadlocks, and there are a couple other people, Marie from Belgium, for instance, who is working with Beranger, and another guy here named Cedric, but I don’t know their status or if they are WWOOFers or not. They have a little bit of English, which helps, and we are struggling to understand French as best we can. But I have kind of an ache in the pit of my stomach from the effort of it. I understand that it will take a few days to get in the swing of the routine here, and so I am hoping the ache will go away eventually. It might help if Medor the rooster wouldn’t start crowing at the crack of dawn just outside our window as he did this morning. Tomorrow morning if he starts I’m going to throw a rock at him, in fact, I’ll stock up on a few tonight so I’ll be ready.

We learned how to milk the goats this morning, and it was embarrassing to be so slow and inept, but Renee-Jo was understanding; she said she’d been doing it for 26 years and us for only 2 minutes. Then she showed us how she does the cheese, and then we did the cleanup in the fromagerie, which is in the basement of the gite. I suppose tonight we can help milk again, we’ll see what happens. There is also a new bakery up above the house where they bake bread on Fridays for the Saturday market. Things here are pretty relaxed and bohemian, the house is tiny. I can’t imagine how Renee-Jo raised 3 kids here before they added on the gite. Everybody smokes, I think, but I haven’t seen Renee-Jo light up yet, and there is no wine in this house, as compared to Verderonne, where wine was a necessity at every meal. Walt and Reed are heading out to see what’s happening, and I suppose I should do that too instead of hiding out here in my room. Get busy, get happy…

Last night for our first dinner, Andre began by slicing everyone a piece of his homemade bread with his pocketknife. Renee-Jo fixed a goat cheese tart with tomatoes that was absolutely delicious, with a light flaky crust (perhaps premade?), and I’m assuming tomatoes from her son’s vegetable patch. Then, there was a gratin of zucchini and mushrooms with a lot of delicious sauce. Then Andre got a selection of the different ages of goat cheese, and we had peaches from the neighbor for dessert. The only fruit trees Andre has are plum. Breakfast this morning was baguette that Renee-Jo bought in town, with butter and jam, and coffee, or an instant drink of coffee with chicory and milk, kind of like Inka with powdered milk in it. It was really good, I had a whole bowlful. Reed was complaining about bread not being a “proper” breakfast (wonder where he heard that from??) so Walt found him some muesli to eat as well. When Renee-Jo went into town at noon to pick up her three year old grandson from school, I went with her, and then we went to the store so I could get toothpaste and pull-ups for Reed; while I was there I bought yogurt and bananas and muesli so we can all eat a “real” breakfast before we go have bread and coffee with the others.

For lunch Renee-Jo fixed a big rice pilaf with carrots in it, some cooked fennel (I think – she said fenouil) with a lovely white sauce, and a roast leg of lamb, which was from their own lamb and incredibly delicious. More cheese, and then grapes for dessert. Maybe I should stay here for a while just so I can lose some weight…

This afternoon we all went over to Beranger’s farm to harvest potatoes; Reed and I stayed at the house in case his little boy woke up from his nap, and they went out with the tractor into the field. Then, it started to rain, so that operation was scrapped for a while. We came back to the house with Renee-Jo and moved rooms; but now the sun is out so perhaps they’re getting some work done with the potatoes. Beranger strikes me as moody; he is handsome in a gypsy-like way, but perhaps being just 6 months separated from his wife has taken its toll.

I identified the sick feeling in my stomach – it was familiar to me in a strange way and I finally remembered what it was – the feeling I used to have when I stayed in the cooperative houses where my sister lived when I was little, where there was always cat hair on the upholstery and no one ever washed the curtains or the windows. To understand why I would have this feeling you’d have to know my parents, and the way in which I was raised, to not even leave a drop of water standing on the sink when I exited the bathroom in the morning, or finished washing the dishes in the kitchen, and to keep the dirt and dust completely at bay, inside and out. It has nothing to do with how I feel about the people who live there – I adore my sister and always have – and this family is very nice despite having to try to communicate with us idiots who can barely speak a sentence of French – but it’s simply a gut level reaction to dirt. I think I’ve got a phobia. So when we came in this gite and there were dust bunnies all over the place and I had to rummage around a while to find clean sheets to put on the beds, and the toilette smells faintly of piss, well, I quietly freaked. It was the same at Verderonne, but I kept telling myself it would be better at the next place. Well, it’s not. Walt reminded me this afternoon that it’s not that bad, that really it’s much cleaner than camping which I do without a problem, so I agreed to try to think of it as camping with a shower. And really, how lucky are we to have a shower and sink in the same room? And Renee-Jo and Andre obviously put some care into this gite: the walls are painted joyful colors like sunny yellow, sky blue, and pink, and the floors are wood, and in the kitchen there is a refrigerator that works and a sink with hot and cold running water and clean dishes and things like coffee and sugar and milk and tea, and Nesquick! And aren’t I always telling Reed that other people’s lives are just as valid and important as ours?? It could be much worse for us; imagine what it must be like for the WWOOFers who sleep in tents! So who am I to quietly freak? I must also tell that at lunchtime Renee-Jo got out a little notebook for us to write words in, in French and in English, so we and future WWOOFers will have a lexicon to work with – very thoughtful. I’m also cheered up by the prospect of a birthday dinner for Marie tonight, who turned 42 or 43 today. There will be 13 or 14 people; I’m not sure who all will be here besides the family and us.

It’s been two days, however, since I was able to get online, and that is stressing me out, although I KNEW I might have to wait a week or more. Another day or so and perhaps I won’t mind so much. Our new room, by the way, is far away from the window where Medor likes to crow in the morning, so perhaps that won’t be so bad tomorrow morning. We will see. On va voir, I think it is in French.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Retournac

My outlook has improved considerably; after my second try at milking the goats this morning and being stymied by several of them, I intend to stay here long enough to do a good job at milking! And, we are learning slowly how the goat cheese is made, and I want to do a good job at that, too.

Yesterday we met Beranger the oldest son, when he came out for lunch and to pick up Thelio, his son, that Renee-Jo and I had gone to pick up in town at noon. At lunch Andre managed to explain to me with great effort that they were going to harvest potatoes at Beranger’s farm. The weather was still gorgeous, so in the middle of the afternoon we headed out to Beranger’s for the potatoes. It turned out Thelio was napping so I stayed at the house with Reed while Walt went out with the gang to do the potatoes. Then, after about half an hour, it started sprinkling, then pouring, and soon the rain drenched potato harvesters returned. So Walt and I came back to the house. The rain stopped for a while, so Walt did some pruning and gardening around the house while I arranged our new room, where the 3 of us are together. Cedric the strange red haired guy left – Renee-Jo explained he has some mental problems but I never could understand why he was staying there – and a new guy arrived, named Johan, I think, or maybe Jouane, who also seems to have some problems. I preferred Cedric, who watched tv loudly at night but who seemed to have some manners, whereas Jouane wears a lot of very strong cologne, drinks coffee all day and smokes and pouts, and has no purpose that I can determine. Although he does try to talk to us sometimes, it is hard to understand him at all because he has a slurry way of talking.

Dinner last night was nothing but fun, and lots of silliness. The evening started with a huge storm, and I was just getting dressed to go down to the living room/kitchen when a big bolt of lightning lit up the sky and all the electricity went out. I went downstairs to find Reed to discover Marie using her cellphone as a flashlight, so Reed and I sat together on the big chair in the living room (the living room and kitchen together are about 124 feet square – it’s mostly big table, really) in the dark until Andre flipped a few switches and all the lights came back on. Then the gang moved up into the big room in the gite (the house is connected to the gite), where there is a bigger table and more room. I was really hungry and also very happy because I had understood an entire sentence that Beranger said to Andre. Thelio was sitting on his lap and couldn’t reach a piece of bread he wanted so he grabbed a little stick to reach it, and Beranger said, “Regardez la intelligence de mon fils!”

Did I say Kevin was one of the children? I was wrong. There are 3 children, all grown: Beranger, another girl, and Else, the oldest a boy and two younger sisters. Kevin, we learned, has been here around 6 months, and he was hitchhiking and living on the road and panhandling for 7 years, all around Europe, although he is from the Pays de la Loire. Else came across him and said, you could come make something of yourself working at the farm, and so he came, and now he is. Of all the people here, he has the most English, and is sometimes very helpful. His dreadlocks are long, but he has a clean, clear face and piercing blue eyes. Anyway, Kevin was there, and Marie the birthday girl who works with Beranger on his farm about 3 km away, the older daughter and her very blond boyfriend, Else, Beranger, Beranger’s girlfriend, Thelio, plus Andre, Renee-Jo, and us. Renee-Jo is a wonderful cook, and she made guacamole for the starter, with tortilla chips, and then an eggplant and tomato gratin with cheese that was absolutely fabulous, with quinoa on the side. The drink was very not French: orange juice with rum (room!). We made a toast to all the things we were celebrating: Marie’s birthday, the daughter having gotten her driver’s license which is very difficult to do in France (that must be why they drive like grand prix drivers, to get their money’s worth or something), and the blond boyfriend having cut the end of his finger off not too long ago, I’m not sure how.

I’m starting to get used to understanding very little of the conversation so dinner went fine, and we were able to pronounce some English for them when they were discussing English words sometimes. Then, out came the champagne and petit choux (mini cream puffs), and things quickly got silly, with Andre demonstrating how one is supposed to put the entire petit choux in one’s mouth, etc. etc. Then, the party started to wind down but not before Else got out the accordion and played some Auvergnaise folk tunes, waltzes, which sound very gypsy-like to my ears and were absolutely gorgeous, desperately sad but still compelling you to dance, which I would have if anybody had asked me, but instead, it was just Renee-Jo and her daughter dancing with each other while Andre just watched his girls and Walt and I sat there, blissed out on the good food and the music.

Today we woke up to pouring rain and a breakfast of bread and coffee, but when it is raining it is very cozy in the barn with the goats. I was better at milking but one of the ornery ones kicked the bucket and spilled half of the milk I’d collected which really pissed me off. But then Renee-Jo showed us more about making the cheese, and had us actually handle the stuff, and help with it, and then we cleaned up afterwards. Then I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up the mess that was left from last night’s party, and cleaning the gite’s kitchen, which hadn’t been done in a while. Walt and I were laughing that our main service as WWOOFers is destined to be life organizers, it seems, since both of our situations so far have been with wonderful people who have no sense of order. But maybe the problem is actually with us, and our WWOOFing experience will lead us to become people who are less compulsively organized and clean. I, for instance, decided not to worry too much about Reed getting dirty, since here on the farm there is plenty of dirt to play in.

This afternoon after lunch Renee-Jo offered us the use of the car to go into town if we wanted and so we did, going to the lace museum and then walking around the town center for a little and buying some apples at the greengrocer and then some pain au chocolat at the boulangerie-pattisserie. Retournac is a beautiful little town, lots of lace curtains in windows, and buildings made from a warm sand colored stone with red tiled roofs. Everything was shining this afternoon from the night’s and morning’s rain. I watched Thelio for a little bit late this afternoon while Renee-Jo dealt with something, and then we helped milk again. More of the goats were cooperative with me, I only had one this time that was impossible; Andre said she is like that. We learned that this farm is very small and not typical of the area, most are bigger, and also because this place is organic/biologique, it is not typical either. Also, most of the venders at the market are not farmers, as I would expect after reading Market Day in Provence. Dinner tonight was leftover from lunch, which was roasted pork and potatoes. Lunch included a cabbage and tomato salad with a vinaigrette, and dinner included chard in béchamel, which is Renee-Jo’s favorite sauce, she’s made one almost every meal I think. And tonight, for dessert, was crepes. C’est bon! But you will be astounded to know I only ate one crepe. I have a theory that not having dessert for a few days, and not having a supply of chocolate anywhere in my stuff or in the kitchen that I know of, has been a cold turkey kind of treatment of my addiction to sweets. Three or four days and I’m not even missing it… although I guess we did have a little pain au chocolat in town this afternoon. Remarkably, though, I could have passed on it. Really!

Reed spent several hours playing with Thelio this afternoon and evening until they were both being so wild that I had to remove Reed from the scene; but fortunately everyone is very relaxed about everything and I don’t feel any disapproving looks, even when Thelio crashed into Reed and Reed crashed into a glass and knocked it onto the tile floor, where it smashed.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Retournac

No trouble with the goats this morning, I got a bucket of milk about 2 inches deep, enough so that I could feel the warmth of it on my foot when I wedged it between my feet as I was milking, and at first I thought I had spilled some. I did of course spray some milk on both ankles since this was the first time I was using the milking stool and I wasn’t used to having my feet right next to the bucket. Kevin did the majority of it of course; his bucket was 2/3 full, more than 3 times as much as I got. Then we took it to the fromagerie and he filtered it and added the goat cheese enzyme and then I did the washing up and floor mopping afterwards.

Now I have a mission that will occupy me for probably the rest of my stay: cleaning the boulangerie, the bakery. I think the tile walls and floors get cleaned thoroughly once a year or twice a year of all the caked on flour that has accumulated. Renee-Jo explained that it is a lot of work but that I should do a little each day. So today I did one corner, and learned what to expect of the job and how much is a reasonable amount to expect to get done.

Thelio and Reed played this morning on the huge dirt pile by the boulangerie, until Andre started scooping it with the tractor to fill in the trench with the new drain line. Then they moved to a new dirt pile. Thelio has a cold so he didn’t go to school, so he spent a lot of the morning here, which was great for Reed, while Walt helped shovel in the trench fill dirt and I scrubbed away in the bakery. Lunch was simple but delicious again: a salad of tomatoes with vinaigrette and goat cheese, cooked leeks with a simple sauce of oil and garlic and something else, and bowtie pasta, with the leftover bits of pork. Today I finally noticed the pail beside the stove with all the food scraps that go to the pig – which is a good alternative to a compost pile, I think. Sure, you can grow bigger vegetables in your garden with a good supply of compost, but why not just eat bacon and sausage?

About 4 pm everyone quit work for the afternoon and we sat in the sun in the grass, drinking beer or coffee. We worked some more on our French and ended up laughing about how it is like playing charades all day long. It must be very frustrating for them to have to talk to us like toddlers, but they are very patient and good humored about it, almost all the time. We are lucky.

Thursday, September 20, 2007
Retournac

I am trying to adjust to being out of control all the time, and to not knowing anything about anything. Where are Kevin and Marie? I don’t know. What time is lunch? I don’t know. Will I get to help in the fromagerie this morning? I don’t know. Why is Jouane or Johan here, and what exactly is his problem? I simply don’t know. It is a very strange feeling for me to simply be checked out, to simply exist. People come and go and I have no idea who they are or why they’re here, and Renee-Jo somehow manages to cook for the hordes, however many there are, deal with Johan, be nice to the Belgians, without losing her cool. Andre, too, is a model of Rastafarian easy-goes-it living, while still working his butt off. But it is a good exercise for me, just like getting used to someone else’s lower standards of cleanliness and organization is good for me. But progress was made in two areas today despite my lack of control: I was able to do some laundry, and check email. It seems to me that French washing machines take forever, and I wonder if that has to do with how little water they use. A question for someone when my French is a lot better than it is now.

Dinner last night was rice and stir-fried vegetables, with cheese afterward, with the usual gang and the two Belgian students who are staying in the gite for a couple of nights. They hang out and pitch in at times, and I wonder what the gite experience is usually like, and if this is typical for them. Lunch today was delicious cous cous with lots of stewed vegetables and cous cous spices, plus a side of some mutton and some merguez sausage that was yummy. Dinner was exactly the same thing, as we had leftovers, and Renee-Jo wasn’t home for dinner, having gone to the cinema apparently. I think that French refrigerators are so small because the French don’t have leftovers the way that Americans do, cooking smaller quantitites and not eating as much to start with and therefore not having as much to save for the next time.

The cock, Medor, crowed this morning so I was expecting to see sunshine first thing, but it took a few hours for the fog to wear off into a balmy, bright day. After the milking and fromagerie cleaning, I swept a little around the terrace and the front door of the gite, did some dishes, helped get lunch started, and then Renee-Jo took me over to the small field where Walt and Reed were already working with Marie to harvest green beans. We were already hungry so picking beans at 1 pm in the sunshine was a little tiring but it really was so beautiful I was glad to be out there, even though my back was sore from the boulangerie work yesterday. I think we finally ended up eating lunch at 2:30 pm, and boy, was it good. Walt has developed a reputation for being a cheese hound and so Renee-Jo handed him the plate first with great ceremony.

Woo, boy, I’m falling asleep with my fingers on the keyboard so I’d better call it a night. Bonne nuit.

Friday, September 21, 2007
Retournac

Today has been a day of good and bad communication – we understood a lot of what Renee-Jo said to us this morning, and then later it was so difficult I was almost in tears. To try and feel useful I spent most of the morning after working in the fromagerie sorting the onions for the market, trying to make them look perfect, so Beranger will sell more than anyone else. Then I helped set the table for lunch, which was pasta, leeks baked in béchamel, a cabbage and tomato salad with vinagrette, and roast beef.

Andre baked 60 some loaves of bread today; we watched as they put the bread in the oven after lunch and then took it out again in about an hour. The oven was at 250 C. The oven is huge, and round, with two levels, about 5 feet in diameter. The floor of each is lined with stones, and he can rotate the big lazy susans with his foot, with a metal handle near the floor. The oven doors push open when he shoves the wooden peel into the oven, then he gently shakes the peel to get the loaves onto the stones, and then he lifts it out again for another load. He and Kevin worked together like a well-oiled machine, Andre using the peel and Kevin using huge gloves to handle the hot bread and stack it into rows to cool. They stripped off their shirts to unload the bread; it was like a sauna in there. By the time they were done they were both dripping and I was reminded of the scene in Moonstruck when Cher discovers Nicholas Cage by the ovens of the bakery where he worked, looking like something straight out of hell. Andre looks even scarier than that, except that he is so cheerful – always humming or whistling - most of the time he’s like a big elf.

Reed and Walt helped do the milking this morning, and then I was allowed to dip the new goat cheese out of the bucket into the moules to begin draining this morning, which made me feel good. It would be exciting if I actually ended up doing a batch from start to finish; last night I mixed the enzyme into the fresh milk so we’ll see how it turned out tonight or tomorrow morning.

I finally was able to use the visiting Belgian girl whose English is so good, to explain to me about Cedric and Johan; this place is like a foster home, only in France foster children go from place to place. It turns out if Johan wasn’t in this system he would be in a mental institution. I guess last night he went out, very agitated, at 1:30 in the morning; so today at noon, looking terrible, he had a visit from a woman who is either a doctor or a nurse or psychiatrist of some sort; I saw her preparing a hypodermic with several vials for Johan, and then later someone came and picked him up, although I think he’s back now.

We got our laundry done on these two days of glorious sunshine, no small accomplishment, to have gotten the courage to ask, and then to actually use the machine, which works much better than the one at Verderonne. Now Walt and Reed are on a walk, and I’m taking a few hours to catch up on reading and computer things, before the preparations for dinner and evening chores begin.

Sunday, September 23, 2007
Retournac

Andre is napping in front of the rugby game, Renee-Jo and Else went into town for a little while for I don’t know what, Walt and Reed are walking out in the woods somewhere, and I am feeling like I’ve accomplished a little bit by having washed the dishes from lunch and cleaned off the table, put a load of household laundry in to wash, and cleaned our room and the big living room of the gite. Johan left his room like a pigsty and I’ll be tackling that job later today or maybe tomorrow. It is supposed to be rainy, so Walt and I both will be doing mostly indoors work, me scraping the accumulated flour off the floor and walls in the boulangerie and then scrubbing clean (my mission!), and Walt fixing things in the chevalerie, that is, stable, and around the house and fromagerie. Dirt is a constant battle and Renee-Jo is the only one who will do housework and she doesn’t have enough time, she was venting to Walt this morning. It certainly explains the sorry state of the housekeeping, which I was so annoyed by at first. Said Renee, “I don’t understand, when I am not here, nothing happens!” I’m glad to know she will be happy for me to make myself at home by cleaning things up in the kitchen and cooking sometimes. I thought perhaps I was not welcome in her domain, so hadn’t pushed it at all. Tomorrow in the afternoon I will organize the pantry cupboard and see what is there, and then I can see what I can cook. I don’t think anyone will mind having something I make; there are so many good vegetables always available from Beranger’s that there is no end to the salads or gratins that can be invented. And there is meat in the freezer.

Today for lunch was leftover cabbage and tomato salad mixed with cooked potatoes and olives, with a vinaigrette it was absolutely delicious. Then there was a platter with various kinds of cured meat things: a block of pate de tete (pig head pate), some ham, and something that looked like sausage that I will try next time. The ham is delicious with the Dijon mustard that is always on the table when there is meat. For dessert was a huge crock of rice pudding from Brittany (now I can’t remember the name Andre told me) with cinnamon and cardamom in it. Renee-Jo put it in the oven Friday night after the bread was done to bake for a long, slow time. Also put in the oven Friday evening were 3 or 4 trays of pizza, which is a bread day tradition I guess. It was very informal, when the pizza was done and at the table people just picked up a slice with their hands and ate it; my favorite was the cheese, but there also something spectacularly good with potatoes, ham, and roblichon (sp?) cheese, and another one with tomatoes and onions and cheese; there were also great quantities of Kronenbourg and Heineken in bottles that were still littering the table on Saturday morning when I got up to help milk the goats. This family just doesn’t drink wine with meals regularly; I have a feeling it is due to the expense, because certainly Andre enjoys his drinks every now and then. Friday at lunch, in the midday break between bread baking, he poured us all a shot of vodka. I got to watch the bread go in and then come out of the oven, and then later in the afternoon I helped form loaves, along with the Belgian students who were staying here at the gite.

Saturday Renee-Jo said she would take us to Le Puy for the market, the prettiest one in the area, she said. So after the milking and fromagerie work was done – with me in tears because I did two or three stupid things while trying to help Kevin - we left around 10 a.m. for the hour long drive to Le Puy along a winding road. Reed and I in the back seat were half sick by the time we arrived but that was dispelled quickly by the beauty of the town of Le Puy, and its medieval/historic center. Renee took us to the market place, and explained that she would meet us back at that spot at 6 pm, so we had the entire day to explore in Le Puy. We gathered provisions at the market and epicerie for a picnic and snacks: a dry sausage, two kinds of cheese, a baguette, some yogurt, some cookies, and some fruit. We visited the cathedral and also climbed up the big rock to St. Michel’s, and discovered Renee-Jo in repose. We tried not to disturb her. It was indeed a very special place, almost a thousand years old, with simple stained glass windows of red, blue, and green, and arched plaster ceilings held up with stone pillars, imperfect yet strong enough to stand for centuries. They built the chapel up high to be closer to God, and indeed it did feel that way.

The day passed pleasantly, with Reed enjoying the sightseeing (“I can’t get over all these amazing things!”) and us enjoying having the chance to simply walk and gape at the French buildings with their shuttered windows and red tile roofs that we love so much! We gave and received lots of bonjours, especially as we climbed and then went down the hundreds of steps that lead up to St. Michel’s. We were able to find public restrooms when we needed them, not always an easy task in France, and got more cash so we met Renee-Jo at 6 pm with provisions in hand for the next few days: eggs, milk, cream, cheese, fruit, yogurt, chocolate.

Renee-Jo drove us home through the Loire valley, a stunningly beautiful drive even at dusk, and we got home just in time to put on warmer clothes for the fete at Beranger’s farm. We did not know what to expect at all, having just seen the unimpressive living area there, but when we arrived, we parked in the field and then walked towards the house, and realized that the upper level of the house was the huge barn. The double doors, reached by a upward sloping lane, were open; people were gathered inside drinking wine and talking, reggae music gently emanated from inside, and on the wall was a display of dramatically lit paintings by Beranger’s girlfriend’s mother, looking for all the world like Picassos or something. There was a table set with a buffet of various savory tarts and quiches and breads and spreads such as tuna salad and tapenade. There were boxes of wine, some beer made by a friend, and fresh cider from another friend who has orchards. People greet each other here with three kisses, even when they see each other in the morning, so there was lots of kissing. A few people could speak a little bit of English, especially the neighbor Jean-Pierre who is always around the farm at dusk during milking time, so we talked to a few people but not too many, while Walt and I gaped at the cavernous, very old barn. They had stacked up straw bales to make a wall at one end on which they draped a big piece of dark cloth that had a movie screen painted on it in white, and there were various spare couches and chairs arranged facing the screen, and some very large rugs on the floor in front. I talked to a woman who is studying naturopathy; she and her husband had adopted a Russian boy a year ago, and he played with Reed and the other gang of kids that was there running wild, using the couches and chairs like playground equipment. After everyone had been eating and talking for a few hours the movie finally got underway; they’d chosen a David Lynch movie that I hadn’t heard of called The Straight Story (Une Histoire Vrai) and luckily for us they played it in English with French subtitles. And coincidentally, it was filmed in northern Iowa. So afterwards I was able to tell Renee-Jo and Andre, I’m from Iowa! Reed didn’t fall asleep during the movie – why not I have no idea, he must have been exhausted after an entire day of walking around – and then we got home at 12:30 am and finally fell into bed.

Learning a language is not just vocabulary, it is also sounds. The French have a sound that is Walt’s favorite. You purse your lips tightly and force a short blast of air through them, making a sound like a short fart. It has the meaning, I think, of “oh well.” I think I’ve also learned the equivalent of whoops, which may be “oop-la.”

Walt helped get dinner this evening – a potato pie (slices of potatoes layered on top of puff pastry, salted, and another layer of pastry on top with a little pastry funnel right in the center into which cream is poured when you take it out of the oven - while I helped get the recalcitrant Reed ready for bed at 6:30. (He was really cranky today after getting only 7 hours of sleep, storming away from the lunch table when we teased him about going to eat with the pig if he slurped his water, and I was a bit cranky too for the same reason, actually flat out livid at bedtime about the 5th time I had to tell him to get off our bed and go brush his teeth. It was only with a great exercise of self-control was I able to progress through showertime through getting jammies on and tucked in without smacking him one or two.) We also had the platter of charcuterie. For cheese I tried Puy de Dome I think, plus some of the farm’s own very aged goat cheese. Dessert was a plum custard tart. Renee-Jo warned me that for the last week that I’m here I’d have to do a “raisin cure” as she is doing right now; that is, eating only grapes for days and days; WWOOFers here, she said, tend to gain weight, which is the opposite of what I thought at first.

Monday, September 24, 2007
Retournac

Today has been a much better day communication wise, and work wise, since I have my boulangerie mission. But at breakfast Renee-Jo told me I could go down to the fromagerie all by myself, comme une grande (like a big girl, I think it translates) and put the new cheese out onto the rack, and flip over the brand new cheese in the moules, and flip all the other cheeses that are aging. Then I was able to help Kevin milk and did pretty well at that except for the two nasty goats that never let me milk them (I’m going to get them yet!), and then I watched Kevin in the fromagerie to make sure I didn’t make the same mistake as last time. He said he’d do the mopping and cleaning, so I headed up to the boulangerie to start scraping.

I did that until lunch, which was delicious blanquette de veau, with rice, followed by a cabbage salad and a cold beet salad, both in vinaigrette, and then the Mars and Twix ice cream bars appeared from the freezer (congelateur), which really hit the spot. The sun shone most of the morning and afternoon after the fog burned off, although it acts as if it could rain at any moment. After lunch I went with Reed down to the creek below the pasture below the barn, to see what his little improvement project is down there. We stayed for about an hour and then I came back up to get back to work. Renee-Jo was peeling quince and apples (Canada, was what she called the variety when I asked) for confiture so I sat down to help peel, while Walt worked on getting the dirt ready for the sand, on top of which will go the big flat stones that make the terrace or patio outside the door. They installed a new water line from the house up to the bakery and dug a trench for it, and now it is time to bury it again. Walt thinks they are crazy not to hook it up and test for leaks before it gets buried but that’s not the way plumbing gets done around here, which probably explains why the plumbing seems a little dicey, even though we have really hot hot water, all the time.

About an hour ago Walt and Reed went with Kevin and Marie over to one of the vegetable fields to help them cover some of the rows with fabric. Andre said at lunch that tomorrow he and Walt could look for mushrooms, which makes Walt really happy. I hope it doesn’t rain so they can go.

Johan has been taken away and if I understand correctly he won’t be back. Something happened again last night and I think he’s been taken to the mental hospital, after a very loud and angry scene this morning when a woman arrived. Lots of shouting and a plate or glass getting smashed. Very sad. His room is completely trashed with stuff so I think I’ll try to get that arranged again in case someone else comes to the gite. I cleaned the other double room yesterday so it is ready for guests, although I could still clean the shower and sink in there, and also do the toilette room, which needs it desperately.

I completely understand Renee-Jo’s housekeeping problem now. The state of things is not due to a lack of desire for organization and cleanliness on her part. No one does any of the cooking, cleaning, dishes, or laundry, except her, not even her perfectly capable teenage daughter Else, and she’s got at least 5 or 6 people to take care of all the time, sometimes more. They all track dirt into the house, including Medor the rooster and the two big dogs, it’s muddy outside, and so what can she do? I feel like she needs someone like me to work for her 8 hours every day, 6 days a week, to even come close to staying caught up. So I have that urge to “fix” her life in the time that I’m here, just like I felt at Verderonne, to clean the house top to bottom and get the laundry completely caught up and to make the bakery shine like new and pick up the garbage and miscellaneous stuff that is scattered around the yard…but I do understand that I can’t fix anything since I can’t change the situation that causes the problem. All I can do is to work well while I’m here, and not let my ineffectualness in the larger picture bother me. Meanwhile, I’m learning to make goat cheese, which is a quiet and deep satisfaction. Reed keeps talking about wanting to live in a way that doesn’t cost much money, where we do our own stuff; he thinks it would be great to have a place with a few goats and some rabbits and a big garden and Walt and I both agree. So this practical goat experience is actually very exciting in a way. The question is, where will we do it?

Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Retournac

This morning I got to do the cheese by myself again, except Renee did the brand new batch, dipping it out of the bucket into the moules, while I was washing the ones I’d just emptied. Dang. But fortunately I was in the fromagerie so long I missed the milking, which I was glad to miss even though I love it because I’ve got a kind of stress injury happening in my right hand and wrist. So a day off was good for my grip. I spent the morning scrubbing the walls in the boulangerie, trying to clean the blue and yellow tiles of accumulated flour and soot, not an easy job. Reed helped for a while on the floor, scraping the gobs of flour off the tiles where the water was puddling. A wonderful session of cooperation ended abruptly when he got argumentative when I said he couldn’t use the window squeegee on the tiles. He’s been so bratty lately – as grandpa and grandma can attest – that my patience ran out. I tried to talk to him about how he was acting and he wouldn’t listen and was in fact being extremely rude so I dragged him into our room and stripped him down and put in him a cold shower, dried him off, and made him stay in the room until lunchtime; and he was informed that he would get the same treatment for any future infractions, ie backtalk, complaining, tantrums, arguing, etc. Renee made some delicious fish with a sauce of white wine, mustard, parsley, garlic, and shallots at lunchtime that we ate with spaghetti; we don’t know what kind of fish it was but it was a freshwater fish I think. I talked the unsociable Reed into coming down to the table for lunch and he was glad he did, slurping up his spaghetti and fish with gusto.

When I mentioned that we wanted to go to town to get a few things at the grocery store today and to the station to get my ticket for Saturday, Renee told us to take the car and they showed us, way off in the distance, the Chateau d’Artias, or what is left of it. Reed wanted to stay home and Renee said that he could so Walt and I went off to town by ourselves and drove and then walked the rest of the way up the hill from where we had to park, to see the ruins of a chateau and its chapel built about a thousand years ago. Incredible, and the view was simply spectacular, looking down on the Loire and the valley and the two towns that were visible. Everywhere I look I love what I see; red tile roofs and houses/barns made of stone. We ate a few blackberries on the way up that we saw but they weren’t particularly tasty, which might explain why people haven’t picked them. We stocked up on lots of snacks, Reed food, and good breakfast food so Walt and Reed can keep themselves well-nourished in between meals; later Reed was pretty thrilled to have a tortilla with cheese for dinner, and some vegetable soup – veloute - with saltine crackers. After I got done putting Reed into bed, and reading a chapter of Danny, I headed back down to the kitchen where I helped get dinner, although it wasn’t a lot of help because Renee is such an efficient cook and it is such a small space. She was making crepes with a béchamel and ham filling, so I made a few crepes and then set the table. She made some more crepes later for dessert, choosing from various types of jam, or honey, or sugar, and lemon juice. Andre fills his dessert crepes with what looks like four or five tablespoons of sugar, along with some lemon juice. Then when he’s all done he grabs the honey jar or a jar of jam and sticks his spoon in and then pops the full spoon into his mouth. Walt has also noticed he has two cubes of sugar with his coffee and another cube straight when he’s done. Still skinny as a rail.

One thing we learned on the French in Action tapes is true: the French people take greetings very seriously. Whenever anyone comes to the house, which is often, they go around and kiss just about everyone – kiss kiss kiss – or shake hands. Some people will kiss me even if it’s the first time we’ve met; sometimes I get a handshake for the first go round and when I see them a second time that merits kissing. Tonight at the end of dinner a family friend who just bought a farm that we met a few days ago came in the door (no knocking) and went through the whole greeting routine, around the table, before launching into whatever it was he needed help with, or was looking for. They answered him, and he headed out the door; he probably spent more time kissing than he did actually talking. We spend a lot of time at meals looking up words in the dictionary; I can usually get in one good sentence per meal. We also compare the English and French words for Andre’s benefit, as he seems to enjoy learning English words. He surprised me tonight with the word “brainstorm.”

Saturday I go to Joigny to go to Chateau du Fey to meet Kyri Claflin and then to meet and talk with Anne Willan. I’d better finish reading her book and then make sure I know how to use my recorder! Getting the tickets today was a bit of an ordeal but we finally got it done- thankfully the people who help are have been friendly and extremely patient, with absolutely no eye rolling or sighing or doing anything that might make us feel as if we were annoying them or taking forever. The girl at the pharmacie was incredible, trying to help Walt find saline solution, acting as if she had all the time in the world. There is no browsing around, though, at the pharmacie. They WILL help you.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Retournac

Reed was pretty happy today, being able to eat some food that seemed familiar to him such as hot oatmeal for breakfast, saltines and a cereal bar for snacks, macaroni for dinner, etc. And even though it was raining when we woke up, it got sunny for a little bit, and then breezy and cold. Renee and Andre had an appointment to talk about Yohan in St. Etienne this morning early so when we woke up no one was home. I had some “Bonjour” (a Nestle breakfast drink with chicory and coffee and milk) and then went down to do the cheese, which involves turning each crottin over every day, taking the new cheese out of the moules, and turning over the newest cheese within the moules. The whey drains into a big can that gets taken to the pig. Renee said I did a good job, later, when she was home and went down to put the new cheese in the moules. That made me happy since yesterday I had put the new cheese wrong side up on the racks when I took them out of the moules. I came down too and she let me do it. After I did the cheese turning first thing, I went down to the stable and helped do the milking with Walt and Kevin. Reed got to milk a little bit, too. The little sick goat was actually doing better this morning, amazingly enough; I thought for sure she would be dead a couple days ago – she was lying in the barn in the straw, not moving, with glassy eyes - but then, just when I thought she was a goner, Renee gave her some kind of medicine, and today, she was up for a little while, eating. When Walt and Reed went down to the stable before lunch Kevin was there too and helped the goat have some food and Walt got her some fresh water too. He said her little tail wagged some so that’s a good sign. I was able to milk this morning pretty well despite my stressed hand so I’m hopeful that I’m getting better and not worse. Only one goat won’t let me milk now. So tomorrow, she’s the one I’m starting with, when I don’t have any milk in the bucket to worry about spilling.

After the milking we filtered the milk and added the presure (it’s the culture that coagulates the milk into cheese) along with some of the liquid whey from the previous batch, and washed the buckets. The filtered milk with the culture or enzyme in it goes into a room that is kept at a certain temperature, warmer than the room where the cheeses are curing.

We learned tonight that we came at a very easy time of year. In the spring the milking takes an hour and they make 75 cheeses a day; each goat giving 3 liters of milk a day. The work in the fromagerie alone takes 4 or 5 hours each day. I told them I was glad we came now, when it is easier to learn. We’re only making 12 or even less cheeses a day.

I put a load of laundry in and hung up the two clean but wet loads of Renee’s that were sitting in the basket downstairs. Renee came home just in time to cook lunch, at about the same time that Reed and I finished scrubbing and rinsing the floor in the bakery. I scrubbed the whole thing with lots of cleaner and suds, and then, used about 4 full buckets of clean hot water to wash it all down the drain. I borrowed the floor squeegee from the fromagerie to keep the water from going out the door into the room with all the sacks of flour and grains. Reed really loved being in charge of the squeegee so I was patient and let him do it. After three days of slaving in there I was more than pleased to be done. Talk about satisfaction – and that’s even knowing that tomorrow they start baking again and will get flour all over the place. For lunch there were some leftovers of course, as well as some pasta with a blue cheese sauce that was delicious, and crepes again for dessert. This time I didn’t mess around with honey or jam like I did last night, and went straight for the Nutella. After lunch we had some quiet time in the room, I took a shower finally, Walt took a nap, Reed played in the gite living room, etc. and then at 4 pm we roused ourselves and went out to finish putting the bakery equipment back in place. Then I helped with the cheese for a short time, and then did a little bit of sweeping in the gite, before Renee asked me to help her by cleaning the glass cabinet where she keeps her special glasses and dishes. She put some nice classical music on from a CD she got at the mediatheque (like a bibliotheque – a library) and we talked quite a bit in French while she organized one of the cupboards and I scrubbed away at the glass with a rag soaked in vinegar. She had never heard of using vinegar to clean glass with but I explained that it is cheaper than glass cleaner and works well. Reed got hungry about then so I fixed him dinner and got him into the shower, and then while Walt did storytime I finally got the chance to sweep the kitchen/living room floor. The dishwasher repairman was there but he wasn’t in the way too much, and then just as I finished up Renee brought wood in to start a fire in the woodstove, the first one since we’ve been here. It made the room very cosy. Even Reed, in bed, called me in to tell me he smelled smoke, and when I explained it was a fire in the wood stove he said he wished he was down in that room by the fire! I hope I’m right that he’ll have more chances while we’re here.

Dinner was a delicious smooth vegetable soup, followed by some leftover pasta, and a mixture of eggplant and quinoa, with a sauce, she said, of egg and gruyere. More goat cheese afterwards and some fresh cider too. Then Walt and I did dishes and called it a night. Walt is already asleep. That’s okay, he needs to get rested up for mushroom hunting tomorrow.

Thursday, September 27, 2007
Retournac

Rain this morning, a cold and wet start to a day of feeling at loose ends since I accomplished my bakery mission. I got up and had a hot chocolate before going downstairs into the fromagerie to do the cheese turning. Then Reed and I went down to the chevrerie (not the chevalerie) and I did a lot of milking the goats before Andre came in to help me finish. I started with the easy girls on the opposite end of the prima donnas and only had two give me trouble. One kept bucking and I just held on tight until she quit; the other one laid down. I got her back up once and into place and did a little more and then she plopped down again so I let Andre finish her. The sick goat is still sick and Andre doesn’t know what’s wrong. Reed found an egg in the straw, which excited him tremendously, and we visited with the pig a little bit, who grunts with happiness when Andre scratches behind his ears and seems happy to see us. After the milking I took the milk to the fromagerie and filtered it and added the presure with Renee’s supervision. Then I ladled new cheese into the moules and washed up afterwards with Renee.

There were lots of people here at lunchtime, all the usual suspects from La Bourange – Beranger, his girlfriend, and Marie – plus the group from here, and another woman that no one introduced and I was too shy to introduce myself, although I’m afraid I’m giving the impression of snobbish American when I don’t do it. The truth is there are so many people coming and going around here that I’m overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of greetings and introductions required, if it was all done by the book. I helped the group of women peel carrots and dice zucchini and then disappeared when the females gathered in front of the fire with their cigarettes, gossiping. Walt and Andre went out mushrooming before lunch in the rain, and took Reed with them; they came back with a small bagful of chanterelles, mostly found by Andre but contributed to by Walt and Reed. Lunch was wonderful; turned out the vegetables weren’t for soup but for lasagna, which was made with a béchamel sauce for the vegetables, and included goat cheese plus some emmental for the top. Fabulous. There was also a cold bean salad with vinaigrette, and some veal from Beranger. I was sleepy so I curled up in bed after lunch while Reed got to watch a Stuart Little movie that Marie had provided for him. It turned out while all this resting was going on after lunch, that Andre took the goats out for their afternoon and then he went chanterelle hunting again just up the hill from them, and discovered about 3 times as many as he had gotten that morning. It was a fabulous haul, and they were pretty small ones, too, so he did a lot of bending and reaching. Renee turned some of them into a chanterelle pie for dinner; béchamel again, with purchased butter pastry. More leftovers, too, plus some split peas with ham. And goat cheese of course, followed by some yogurt for dessert, with jam. There was a delicious one I couldn’t identify except I could tell it had mint in it; turned out it was plum and mint. Whoever would have thought? There was much laughter as Kevin helped us with our pronunciation of buche and bouche (log and mouth, respectively, except there’s an accent on the U on buche) and yaourt (yogurt).

Friday, September 28, 2007
Retournac

Turned the cheese this morning but missed milking because I took so long cleaning in the fromagerie – then headed up to the bakery to watch Andre and Renee mix up the sponge. Flour, then levain (the sourdough - I think that is how it is spelled), then water with the salt in it. They mix it up in very large plastic tubs, 15 gallon size perhaps, with their hands, then it has two risings before they form the loaves. Walt and I “helped” make some of the loaves. I asked Andre how he learned to make bread and he said just like I am doing. Then he said that boulangers talk like they are God, that bread is so difficult to make, but it’s not. In so many words, it ain’t rocket science.

I’ve been organizing sheets and duvets in the gite and sweeping the floors upstairs, fluffing pillows, airing out closets, etc. in the hopes that doing so will help Renee be ready for the next busy gite season. Yohan came today with someone to pick up his stuff, so now the room is empty of his things, which will make it much easier to clean. It has been very tranquil without him and Renee says he won’t be back for a while. He isn’t in the hospital, though, just at a different house, where he is calmer, apparently.

I’ve been dealing with landlord issues long distance: a plugged up sewer line had to have the tree roots cleared out of it and they suggest an outdoor cleanout to make it easier next time. $250 already and another $650 yet to come. Then one of our tenants is thinking of leaving at the semester… so life goes on as usual. I didn’t get the Culinary Trust grant that I submitted an application for, but there are a bunch more scholarships available for exactly the kind of thing I am doing so I am hopeful that I can apply again. Perhaps after this year my French will be so much better than I can make some real progress. Also, I hope this winter to work on a big writing project that will help establish me as a writer that can handle bigger things than just newspaper and magazine articles.

Tomorrow I go to Villecien to Chateau du Fey to meet Kyri Claflin and Anne Willan. I am excited and nervous and so glad for the opportunity. I just hope I am able to find a bigger outlet for the story about Anne Willan and her new book (Country Cooking of France) than just the Spokesman-Review. I hinted to editor Ken Paulman that I wish I knew how to get something to a bigger newspaper audience – think Associated Press – but don’t know if he’ll offer me any tips.

When I look out the window from here in my room in the gite I can see the humongous pig that is Andre’s pet; he’s out rooting around for acorns and other tidbits. He also gets the kitchen scraps and the whey from the cheese, and has free roam of the huge meadow and wooded area below the house, so is therefore (donc) a very happy pig.

I earned a “good” from Andre with one of my loaves just now from the second batch, so feel happy about that. All the bread from the first batch is in big plastic bins in the outer room of the bakery, waiting for the market in the morning. I love this process and keep imagining myself selling my own things at the market and wonder if I could make enough money to finance building a commercial kitchen of my own. I could call my company Savoir Faire (it means “know-how”) and do breads, cookies, pies, cakes, cheese, jams and jellies and syrups, salsas, relishes, chutneys, soup mixes, etc. It would all be in the new garage building we’ll build in the back of our rental house, or maybe it could even be IN one of the apartments itself, so as to have a storefront presence throughout the week too – although maybe that’s too much work. The fromagerie would have to be in the basement – or maybe that’s where the kitchen should be - or in a separate building in back, to separate it from the heat of the oven… and maybe I could find a way to afford going to a professional cooking school such as La Varenne for a course to get more qualified, or find more WWOOF hosts doing things like this and keep learning things like cider making… I just keep thinking, I love to make all these things for us anyway, why not just ramp up the scale and sell the excess?

So many things to think about. And later, when I’m more tired, all this will sound ridiculous – way too much work. I’m supposed to be scheming about ways NOT to work, not trying to figure out how to become a slave to the kitchen.