Auvergne Autumn

Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Retournac

On Sunday morning I held a book in my hands that had been printed in the 1500s, one of the rare cookbooks (the oldest one) in the collection at Chateau du Fey, about which Kyri and Anne are writing a book. It was just one of a number of previously unbelievable things that happened this weekend, the first, being invited to interview Anne Willan (who has Julia Child’s mint plant growing in her herb garden and who remembers Calvin and Alice Trillin visiting once), the second, to be spending the night in a room on the top floor in a 17th century chateau overlooking Burgundy, and then, to eat food prepared by her trainees who are on their way to become prep cooks at Michelin-starred restaurants, and finally, to discover that the cooking school at this chateau to which I aspired is about to close as they are selling the place and moving to California to be near their daughter. To discover it all, and to dream about becoming a part of it for a little while, and then to find out it is just about to be dismantled… well, I’m searching for a simile to no avail. But it’s probably for the best; I woke up in the middle of the night with my blood pounding through my veins, so fiercely that the duvet nestling against my ear was pulsating with it. It might have been the coffee that I had after dinner (why oh why did I do it?), or it might have been the stress of trying not to do or say anything stupid. I finally got back on the train at 1:15 pm and was able to relax; I finished reading my book in the middle of the afternoon and so spent the rest of the journey looking out the window and people watching, wondering if there is any way in hell I can ever live in this country where no one complains about second hand smoke. Or maybe that was the caffeine crash talking. On the other hand, at 6 pm in the train station people were mobbing the sandwich shop, grabbing baguette sandwiches filled with miniscule amounts of ham and cheese or tomato and mozzarella, and slices of fruit tart for their supper, instead of eating burgers and fries, and that cheered me up.

I was very glad to get back to our humble little farm in the Auvergne late Sunday evening, and to get up Monday morning and do the cheese as usual and to milk the goats. Reed was glad to see me and I heard all about his and Papa’s weekend, especially their promenade with the goats up the hill, where Reed walked around calling “allez!” and some of the goats would follow him wherever he went. Renee’s food for lunch was delicious – lamb, rice, carrots in a creamy sauce. I helped Renee gather wood just up the hill for wintertime kindling, and after lunch I weeded in the herb garden until it was time to go over to La Bourange to help harvest the beans. Walt helped the men move some very big pieces of equipment, which look like antique but still serviceable grain sorters. Reed played in the sandpile and watched some t.v. with Thelio, babysat by Else. Bean picking was no picnic but since we were able to pull up the bean plant and stand upright while we stripped the dried pods off the plant, it wasn’t too bad. Then we sat around the table with the whole gang and 4 other wild-haired guys (who helped move the grain sorter), drinking wine and eating cheese while the sun went down and dinner time approached and then went by, wondering when anyone was going to offer to head back home. Finally we got home and while I quickly got Reed fed and into bed, Walt and the guys rustled up some leftovers for dinner, since Renee was not home.

This morning Renee and Andre had an appointment at the bank so she asked me to do the new cheese as well as turning the older ones, which made me happy. Then I cleaned the place really well, hung out some laundry, cleaned up a little in the gite, and helped Renee get lunch ready by prepping carrots, hard-boiling eggs, and washing and destemming spinach. She made spinach cooked in a kind of cream sauce with some hardboiled eggs nestled around the edge of the pan, a tomato and aubergine tart, and a carrot salad with vinaigrette. Else made some real mayonnaise that went fabulously with the carrot salad and also with some of the extra hard-boiled eggs. Reed kept asking for more. After lunch Walt and Renee went on a shopping mission while Reed and I stayed home at Reed’s request; he played while I did some weeding and mint harvesting.

When Walt and Renee got home from a successful shopping trip for groceries for us and light fixtures and paint for her, she took me over to La Bourange for some potato harvesting, but it was too bad that I got there with about 10 minutes left to work, digging on hands and knees through the dirt to find the potatoes and then, since I didn’t know which ones were marketable and which ones weren’t I just sort of put them towards Marie so she could deal with them. We wandered slowly back through the field, remarking on the different varieties of squash which are soon to be harvested. More wine was then had by all. (Work, here, is something that happens in between socializing, and it takes very little excuse for a gathering, no excuse at all, really. At home it would take more than a year to see friends as many times as we’ve seen these folks in just about 3 weeks.) Then I spent the next 2 hours standing around trying not to feel really stupid and unnecessary while Andre sorted some grain by hand, Beranger worked on the tractor, Brigitte and Jeremy dealt with the goats, Amaya (Beranger’s girlfriend) took care of Thelio and shelled mustard seeds and Kevin and Marie went out in the truck to pick up the bags of potatoes from the field. I wandered around petting the cat, talking to Thelio every now and then, drinking wine when it was offered to me, and listening, listening, listening, listening as hard as I can, trying to find the magic button in my brain to push that will make the endless incomprehensible words that pour over me like a river into something I can grab hold of. I spent five or ten minutes making sure I knew how to ask someone’s name, so I could learn Jeremy’s. Jeremy and his girlfriend Brigitte just bought a farm about 20 minutes away from here, and soon they’ll be moving their goats from Beranger’s farm to their own. (I’ll confess here to having a crush on Jeremy, he’s very cute, with wire-rimmed glasses that give him an intellectual air despite the baggy brown sweater – Walt was absolutely not surprised when I told him, having been wearing a pair of glasses like that himself when I met him.) So when we finally stood up to go I said, in the best French I could manage, “I’m sorry, but I do not know your first name.” And like magic, he answered me! And then Beranger made some comment about me speaking French more that I didn’t quite catch. Beranger is so cool, I am afraid to try to talk to him, even though yesterday when we arrived and I was greeting everyone he put his face to me for the first time for the whole kiss kiss kiss routine. Still, it took all my courage to do what Andre asked me to do: go down and ask Beranger (in French of course) where the empty grain sacks were. Yikes! But I did it. “Beranger, Andre asks, where are the empty sacks? Like up there (in the barn)?” Two full sentences in one night, whew.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Retournac

I didn’t see anyone milk the goats this morning so I guess that’s it for this season. Renee told me the other day that this week would be the end of the cheese, and I think I saw her ladle out the last of it this morning, after I’d ladled the next to last bucket when I went down right after my bowl of Bonjour. French people really do drink their coffee out of bowls, and at this house at least, they use a lot of sugar in it. Considering how little dessert they eat normally, though, I think sugary coffee doesn’t do much harm.

The day started out with lots of fog, which cleared up just enough for me to work outside on sanding some of the kitchen chairs that Renee wants to paint. It was nice until lunchtime was just finished, when it started to sprinkle lightly. We quickly gathered up the things that shouldn’t get wet and while everyone went off to do their things – whatever those things are – I quickly cleaned up the gite since Renee was having a visit from the social services person in regard to their being a foster family. It turned out fine, I guess; when the woman came with Renee up into the gite the rooms were all clean and the living room was nicely arranged and there I was in the gite kitchen, making chocolate chip cookies for our special dinner tonight. There is an Irish couple living in Retournac that is friends with Renee and she invited them to dinner – how thoughtful of her! So my contribution is chocolate chip cookies.

Thursday, October 4, 2007
Retournac

Not quite the last of the milk. The goats got milked last night, so there was another bucket of cheese to ladle out this a.m. Renee was running off to a meeting so Walt and Reed and I got the goats all alone, which was the first time we’d done it unsupervised. The old billy goat was acting rather aggressive due to his romantic interest in one of the girls, so we didn’t try to grab him to fasten him up, knowing that someone would be home that could do it later. Renee made a wonderful dinner: a kind of terrine made with spinach and fish, pureed separately, and then layered prettily, served with some cabbage and tomato salad and a sauce that was made with fresh mayonnaise, mustard, parsley, garlic, and egg whites folded in last. The main course was a potato tourte with a mushroom sauce, and dessert was of course chocolate chip cookies and an apple tart. The chocolate chip cookies were a big hit. Kevin the Irishman was a caricature of an Irishman, as Andre said; hard drinking, friendly, but not too subtle. His wife Christine is actually French, not Irish, but her English accent was completely English, from having lived in London. Lots of whiskey was polished off during the meal so by the end the conversation had deteriorated badly. Fortunately Reed, who had begged to be allowed to stay up so he could meet the company and talk some English, ended up falling asleep in the living room chair around 9 pm, just as we got started eating, and so at 11:30 pm we had an excuse to go to bed as we carried him to bed.

Renee was gone most of the day so I was in charge of getting the leftovers together for lunch; I also wrote a column for the Spokesman pretty quickly since it turned out there had been 3 Wednesdays one month and they were short one column for October. I wrote about making yogurt cheese, since that is kind of what we’re doing here with the goat cheese. I helped Kevin sort some onions, spent some time with Reed, hung up some more laundry, put away the dishes, swept the kitchen and entry, and painted one of the kitchen chairs that I’d sanded yesterday. We collected the goats and sheep again this evening to head back to the barn, fed Reed pancakes for supper and got him into bed, read a story, and then headed to the kitchen for croque monsieur – the traditional ham and cheese sandwich. I made some crepes for dessert, since it seemed rather thin with just croque monsieur for supper. The whole gang gathered yet again, this time to celebrate Brigitte having finished her diploma in agriculture. Yet another bottle of whiskey was opened, and when it was gone Philippe – another goat farmer just down the road – went to town for another. Fortunately Jean-Pierre rescued us from the whiskey fest. He is a neighbor who comes over quite often in the evenings, who speaks pretty good English after having spent time in the US making a film about LaFayette. He brought over his huge Meade telescope this evening since the sky was so clear, and showed us some galaxies and stars, galaxies like M13, M31, etc. My favorite was looking at the constellation Pleiades. He also brought over a geography game about the United States in English that is just the right difficulty for Reed, and some Magic School Bus books about space (in English) that Reed can borrow. He was thrilled today to have some new books to look at, and to play the Name That State game. Funny that we had to be out of the country to start learning the names of the states in a more “formal” way than the license plate game.

Friday, October 5, 2007
Retournac

I did the cheese this morning and then while I was washing up afterwards stood dreaming and scheming about how to make cheese in my own fromagerie someday. Where that will be, I don’t know. We are in the difficult stage of being away from home – when the honeymoon is over and home is looking pretty good, and easy, and comfortable. I talked about it with Reed yesterday, when he was saying how homesick he was, telling him how I remembered from the first time I was away from home for a long time, how the first month was great, the second month was hard, the third month not quite so hard, and by the fourth month, I didn’t want to come home at all. The trick is not to make any rash decisions about where you want to be and what you want to do when you’re in any of these stages, and to remember in the hard stage that it will get easier.

Walt opened our window today since it was getting a bit dank in our room – the fresh air in here really helps. This area is very moist – even on sunny days it starts out foggy, and in the evening the dew falls very hard. The goats don’t go out to pasture until after lunch, possibly that’s for the grass to dry some, I’m not sure. So clothes don’t dry on the line very quickly and the ground is always damp and cool. Great for the skin but tough if you’ve got a mildew problem, as we do in this room in the shower area.

I started in on the new batch of quince but didn’t get very far before it was time to run to town for some bread and lettuce for lunch. Renee made a fabulous tagine with lamb and served it with rice. Then at lunch Marie asked if I wanted to help her harvest this afternoon, so I went with her and Kevin to two different fields to harvest carrots, lettuce, frisee lettuce, cabbage, celery, fennel, corn, cucumbers, and tomatoes. I enjoyed being out there with them; the cabbage patch, for instance, was just next to the Loire, right below a huge cliff, with the woods stretching up into the hills as far as I could see, and behind me, stone houses with wooden shutters on the windows and clothes hanging out on the lines in the side yards to dry. I was able to cut the fennel unsupervised after she showed me how to do it, and with the lettuce although I couldn’t do what she was doing, I could prep it so her part of it would be faster. It improved my mood considerably to be doing something really useful on the farm. At lunchtime Walt and I were just sort of eating without trying to talk at all, and then Renee said something to Walt about he’ll never get any better at speaking French if he doesn’t speak French! So I said, in the best French I could manage, I think perhaps you are tired of my French. And Andre, who was sitting right next to me, turned to me and in a very clear deadpan said, “Quelle Francais?” “What French?” Renee and I both made the motion of getting stabbed in the heart as we cracked up, and I said “Ouch!” in French – “Aie!” Nevertheless, when I arrived back home at 6:30 after we filled up the back of Marie’s truck with vegetables for the market in the morning, I was quickly invited to sit, filthy hands and all and have a drink of what turned out to be the best grape juice I have ever had, as Renee and Andre sat and drank some with one of their bread customers. Andre said it is a very very old kind of grape that they don’t make wine out of anymore because it is bad for the head, like absinthe. It’s okay to drink fresh, apparently. It’s called Bacot, I believe, and it grows at La Bourange at Beranger’s house. The juice is a lovely reddish pink, and when I first tasted it I thought it was raspberry juice – it is even the right color to be raspberry juice. It must have made delicious wine, too bad it’ll kill you.

Walt spent the afternoon painting Renee’s kitchen chairs and helping make the loaves of bread and get the bread out of the oven, and Reed stayed with him, being industrious and happy, thank god. The pizza Renee made for dinner was mostly cheese, but a mixture that included some blue and some goat, so it was delicious and filling. We drank more of the Bacot grape juice, and then had some apple compote for dessert. I noticed a bottle of maple syrup in the cupboard, so I got that out and had a little with mine, and everyone took turns having a spoonful, trying it with the compote, reading the label to see what you were supposed to eat maple syrup with, discussing the flavor, etc. It was quite an artifact.

And here’s a French paradox. Renee lives a very uncommercial life and apparently has no pretensions. But tonight on the news magazine show that was on while we were waiting for the pizza to come out of the oven, there was a little bit on Christian La Croix, the designer, and she very excitedly told me, “Couture Francais!” Then she proceeded to tell me she loved La Croix, that he was tres originale, and something to the effect that she could die and go to heaven happy if she could just once have a dress by La Croix. His clothes were very colorful for sure, and Renee loves happy colors – we’ve been painting the kitchen chairs blue, red, yellow, and green – so I can see the attraction. But if I’d been able to make a put down joke about fashion, it wouldn’t have gone over well, I understand now. Even French hippies admire the new fall collection.

Sunday, October 7, 2007
Retournac

The weekend has passed more pleasantly than I had expected, since we awoke to rain on Saturday morning after a rather sleepless night due to the big black dog from La Bourange– Alzac or something like that – getting into the gite in the middle of the night, drinking out of the toilet, and then peeing all over the floor. We cleaned it up before we went back to sleep. So in the morning we were doing laundry and cleaning up around the gite and the fromagerie since it was a Saturday and Renee was gone for the day and we had no major plans, and since it was raining the day wasn’t looking very good. Well lo and behold about mid morning it stopped raining and we could see good weather coming in from the west so we ate canned cassoulet for lunch and set out on a walk to town, yelling at the 3 dogs to Restez Ici! Two of them listened but Tibet came with us, all the way into town, so when we got down to the busy street Walt took off his belt and used it as a leash so Tibet wouldn’t get run over by a car. On the way we stopped to pick some grapes that were growing over the fence of a property that didn’t have a house on it, just a trailer under a shelter that looked empty. They tasted like Concords only were somewhat sweeter I thought, and very good for eating as they were.

We stopped at the train station to ask about the route to Nice, and then we walked down to the river path and had a snack sitting on a bench looking at the Loire river and the part of Retournac that is on the other side, and then we walked slowly back home, stopping for a while to just hang out in a warm and sunny place where there were smooth river rocks for us to lay on and for Reed to build something with. Right about there is one of Beranger and Marie’s vegetable plots so I showed Walt and Reed where I had been working on Friday and I picked a couple of baby carrots for us to eat. When we got home it was fairly late in the afternoon. Andre and Kevin were watching rugby but I went to lay down for a couple of hours – a delicious afternoon rest, so rare for me. I have to tell about the rugby world cup that is happening right now. The New Zealand team is the All Blacks, and just about every commercial on television these days has a rugby theme. The French have done very well, defeating the huge New Zealanders last Saturday in Cardiff. We watched the game after dinner on Saturday. New Zealand took an early lead and things didn’t look good for the French, but then they fought back to make it a close game. Then they took the lead, and managed to hold on to it in a very exciting finish. Not being familiar with rugby I’m fascinated by how primal it is, at least this particular match. At the beginning the two teams stood facing each other and did this whole intimidation thing, doing their chest beating and chant routine. I don’t know the words but they must be saying things like “We’re gonna crush you, you weenies.”

Sunday we woke with no expectations but those plans changed quickly when I went down for a cup of Bonjour at about 9:30 in the morning after feeding Reed his eggs. Renee Jo showed me the brochure for the “Fete de Bio” in nearby Beaulieu and asked if we wanted to go. She was going to leave in about 20 minutes, so I said, Sure, and went to wake Walt up and cook his oatmeal so he’d be ready to go. It turned out to be a regular organic fair kind of like our Renaissance Fair in Moscow but for only organic producers. There were meats and cheeses and breads and jams and wine and beer and produce and clothes and pillows and soap and candles and herbal remedies and all the things you’d expect at an organic fair, except there was so much good cheese and so many small producers just from this region, it gave me hope and a new appreciation for Renee and Andre’s circle of friends and what they – and we – believe in. I sense, although I have no proof of course, except from what I see of Andre and Renee’s lifestyle, that these small producers and farmers make a living on far less than you would think is possible, because they are so frugal. People don’t have a closet full of clothes, they have a couple sweaters and a couple pairs of pants and that’s it. Their houses are small, they eat off the farm and they don’t eat as much, they drive tiny cars that get great gas mileage. There are many many small farms here with 30 or so goats.

After the fete de bio we went straight to a party at one of these farms for a friend of Renee’s who is going away. The gently sloping clover field below the house, next to the goats, was filled with people – some of whom were familiar to us by now - and a couple of big tents, one of which held the drinks: bottles and bottles of homemade beer, homemade wine, homemade cider, hard and soft, whatever your heart desired. Across the field near the barn they had a sheep roasting on a spit, with the fire to the side in a rack, and the spit turned by an electric motor hooked up to a bicycle wheel by a belt. We greeted and kiss kiss kissed all the people we recognized and talked some to Geri’s parents from Bozeman who were very nice. There was some traditional music for a while, with the accordion and hurdy gurdy; later it changed to jamming electric guitars, and later still to acoustic swing. When the meat was finally done in the middle of the afternoon they went around with plates of it, offering everyone a helping, and boy, was it delicious. Tender, with just a bit of a salty brown crunch on the outside. In the meantime, two other tables were filled to groaning with pizzas, tarts, salads, breads, and apple tarts of many varieties, nectarine or peach? cake, chocolate bread, apple and chocolate tart, gingerbread, custard tart, etc etc. I wanted to keep trying everything but finally ran out of room. One of the drinks I was offered by long haired Raphael (who had helped move the heavy machinery at La Bourange last week) turned out to be some kind of fermented drink made by putting the leaves of a certain tree in with water and sugar. It was quite refreshing, with a sort of lemony herb flavor that wasn’t quite lemon. I need to find out what kind of tree it was before I forget. Frenette something or other. There was a fire to which the little kids kept adding hay so the smoke was thick and left me smelling as if I’ve been camping in the woods. The party went on all afternoon and we finally came home around 5 pm; when I asked at 9 pm where Andre was Renee said he was still at the same party. Amazing. Surely the food must be completely gone by now?!

This farm was situated on the south-facing slope of a gently undulating hill riddled with stone walls surrounding small pastures which are all connected by little grass pathways between the stone walls. Off in the distance on the valley hillsides some of the trees are starting to turn bright red and in some places it is hard to tell the red tile roofs peeking out on the hillsides from the red trees. Reed had a ball exploring all the little “secret” paths among the terraced fields and I feel a soft place growing in my heart for this part of France where the morning fog alone provides enough moisture for the pastures to stay green and the sun shines late into the afternoon, lighting up the trees and gardens and the goats grazing on the hillsides and the buff-stoned barns and houses and reflecting off the Loire, full now of spawning trout, at the bottom of the valley.

Jean-Pierre came tonight with the internet print out of the international space station viewing schedule. So we went outside a few minutes before 9 pm and watched the western sky intently, worrying about the cloud cover that obscured Arcturis for a bit, until finally, there it was: a bright point of light in the sky, definitely not an airplane, moving rapidly in an arc. It faded from view in just under 2 minutes, as it passed out of the path of the setting sun’s rays. Jean-Pierre told us it goes around the earth in 90 minutes, so they see 16 sunrises and sunsets each day. How confusing must that be!

Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Retournac

We began our last week here at the farm, I think (we’re still waiting to confirm with the people in Nice); the weather is definitely autumnal and the farm is in transition to the cold weather. Every once in a while when I’m looking off into the fields next to the woods I see the leaves from a single tree blow off all at once in a great fluttering of yellow. The cheese has truly stopped now. The last batch is aging in the fromagerie and I scrubbed out the main room from top to bottom this morning, and this morning, Renee Jo let the dogs drink the goat milk out of the pail. I couldn’t believe it, I wanted to grab it and take it inside for us to drink but was speechless as usual.

Yesterday I cleaned up in the gite while Walt helped Renee sand the kitchen table for painting. Lunch was pasta and vegetables. Renee asked us if we wanted to go with her to harvest apples after lunch and we said Sure! So we piled in the car with her and drove to a beautiful little town called Crossac where her friend Yves lives in a very big old house that has been renovated in a kind of modern way, with a beautiful south facing yard and garden. Renee’s friend Mireille went along too; turns out Yves sometimes needs a little help with things – he travels for his work with nuclear energy – and will let Mireille live in the house (separate from his own tidy quarters) rent free for just ONE HOUR of work a day. We couldn’t believe it, talk about a sweet deal. Mireille, too, called it a “dream.” In English, so we’d be sure to understand. Walt and I were immediately trying to figure out how we could swing the same deal next spring! Then Yves led us to where the apple tree was that needed harvesting and we all gathered around with buckets and ladders and picked for a couple hours until the tree was almost bare and the back of Renee’s car was completely loaded with big feed sacks full of apples. They’re for cider and were added to the batch harvested today by Walt, Amaya, and Audrey at Michel’s house in Retournac, and I believe all of them will be taken to a press somewhere, and then the bottles brought home.

When we got home I weeded in the herb garden and harvested the melisse which smells like lemon verbena but I’m not sure exactly what it is in English, finally coming in when it got dark. Dinner was simple but delicious, I’m not sure if the actual dish was called “Pommes de Terre en Robe de Champs” (Potatoes in Field Dress, literally) or if that is just what they called potatoes that haven’t been peeled. Anyway, they’d been boiled in their skins. You take some potatoes on your plate, peel off the skin, slice them up, and then eat either with butter and salt, or something called sarasou (sp?), which is a fabulously tasty mixture of fromage blanc de chevre, (basically goat yogurt), garlic, and parsley. The plate of charcuterie was also on the table, and after dinner Renee Jo made a big pitcher of tisane from the verveine, and she cut little pieces of nougat for us to have with it, very small amounts because it is very sweet and rich and full of nuts.

This a.m. I did the usual stuff with laundry and sweeping, scrubbed the fromagerie, and worked on the book review of Anne Willan’s new cookbook that I’ve promised the Spokesman. Lunch today was fish, pasta, and a lettuce salad with the leftover potatoes, and some fresh apple juice and yogurt for dessert. After lunch Renee Jo left to go visit two old people that she volunteers to visit with, and Walt and I took the goats out to pasture all by ourselves, and then finished sanding the kitchen table and primed it so tomorrow we can paint it yellow. Then I bundled up the melisse that I harvested into bunches and hung them to dry, while Walt worked on getting the flagstones put back in place where the new drain line had been run from the boulangerie down under the house. He already rebuilt the portion of stone wall that had been taken out for this line. There are two huge piles of sand up by the boulangerie, probably for the mortar for putting the stones on the walls, so Reed has been playing happily up there for the past couple of days. We told him this morning we were worried about having to take him to the doctor for tests since he’d been so angry and rude and bossy lately, and this seemed to do the trick, at least for today. Getting mad at him certainly hadn’t worked. Our next farm will have two boys for him to play with, so we’ll see if having peers helps.

Thursday, October 11, 2007
Retournac

Today was a watershed day; I cooked for everyone for lunch, an American style meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, rolls, and salad, with chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Renee Jo and Kevin especially love the chocolate chip cookies. We had been trying to figure out when would be the best meal for this to happen, and none of the evenings seemed to be working out so I suggested lunch. Then this morning at 10 a.m. while I was puttering in our room and getting ready to go down to the fromagerie to do some more scrubbing, Renee Jo came and asked if I wanted to do the lunch today – for ten of us: her, Andre, Else, Beranger, Amaya, Marie, Kevin, Reed, Walt, and me. So I took the car and went to town for groceries, getting a few things for us at Spar, the grocery store, and then to the boucherie (butcher) for the chicken. I asked for 6 cuisses de poulet, and could he please cut them in two for me, which he did, chop chop chop. I’d probably shop at this butcher every day if I lived in Retournac, I have to admit – he was quite handsome and friendly, like a movie version of a French butcher, only real. Then to the greengrocer for a lovely head of lettuce.

I came home and started peeling potatoes (from Beranger’s farm, not the store), got them going for the mashed potatoes, and then started the chicken. Things came together pretty well, although the gravy was not my best effort by any means, I should’ve used more milk but was afraid of using up the entire liter. We ate in the gite instead of the kitchen since we were so many and Renee Jo and Else were painting flowers on the chairs that we just finished painting in bright colors, and finishing up the legs and little trim pieces of the table in different colors. It was chilly in the gite room so we lit a fire in the fireplace which thrilled Reed. I spent a lot of the afternoon washing dishes except for the exciting moments when Walt came back from taking the goats out to their field to tell Kevin and me that they’d escaped. So I went back there just in time to find the goats and sheep coming back into the enclosure, except one of the sheep got tangled up in the collapsed fence and couldn’t get up. So I went to rescue that one while Kevin got the fence put back up, and then we rounded up all the little squirts – the baby goats - that wanted to stay on the fresh grass just outside the fence. They kept trying to sneak out through and under the fence, since the electricity wasn’t on yet. Despite all of this, when Walt and I went back to get them back to the barn at 6:30 they were all outside the fence again on the fresh grass, except for the one sheep that got bit in the leg by Roma’s dog (Roma is Teddy Lou’s boyfriend), who was standing where she should have been, inside the fence by the right gate, waiting patiently. Then we had another disaster, sort of. All the sheep and goats were inside the barn, except for the buck Castagnol, who was still over eating acorns. When he finally headed toward the barn, suddenly Tibet and Shava chased him clear across the field from the chevrerie to the yurt. Then they went after the pig. When we told Andre about it tonight at dinner I said I believed the dogs would never do that with him and he said I was right.

After lunch Renee Jo helped me call our next WWOOF host near Nice and it turned out she spoke English pretty well so I was able to talk with her; she said Sunday night arrival would be fine. So after I talked with her on the phone I got online and got our tickets to Nice purchased, and hopefully tomorrow I can run into town with a box we need to mail back home and then get our tickets at the station.

Yesterday was a long rainy day that turned out better than I expected since Jean-Pierre came by at noon to deliver a drill that Walt needed to borrow, and said he could come back after lunch to pick us up so we could see his house and what he’s doing to rebuild the old part. He lives way up in the hills on the other side of Retournac on Mont Gerbizon, where there are lots of walking trails and viewpoints. He showed us his ruin that he is rebuilding into a rental house or two, and then took us on a drive to a trailhead, with the enthusiastic dog Chausette (Sock) running alongside, where we walked just a little ways to a view of Retournac and the Loire and the valley. On a sunny day it would have been spectacular but it was quite foggy and beginning to rain so we just got glimpses of the town far below through the thick mist blowing through. Then he drove us around to a few neat places in the area, showing us the Garoche, a road that used to be a railroad track (with some spectacular dropoffs) and where there was a train sabotaged during the war, and a place where there used to be a huge lake millions of years ago and you could see the sedimentary layers from what used to be the lake bottom, and to a couple of very old churches, a village called Mezeres (Misery), and a village called Rosieres, and another village where he lived with his wife a while back before they were divorced apparently. Jean-Pierre has made 4 or 5 documentary films for the French schools in the U.S., the last one about LaFayette, filmed from Minnesota all the way to Louisiana. Now he’s looking for other work but there’s not a lot in this area I guess. Every once in a while, he’d tell us, here you can see the volcanoes in the distance if it was not foggy. But the fog and the rain gave the whole afternoon an otherwordly feeling. I’d keep wiping the steam off the inside of the car window to try to see out so I wouldn’t miss any of the houses or barns in the hamlets and villages we’d pass through, while Reed pressed up against my side trying to warm up after getting wet during one of scenic stops, and I wrapped the coat that Jean-Pierre had loaned me tighter around my shoulders.

When Jean-Pierre brought us home it was about 4:30 and no one was home, so we made ourselves some hot chocolate and then I started baking another batch of chocolate chip cookies. I finished them while Walt and Reed were watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on DVD, a bizarre and fantastical movie with a good moral and ending. Reed was completely entranced and not too freaked out by the scary parts. Kevin had been hunting for chanterelles so he fixed those for dinner (Renee and Andre had gone to a meeting for Education Sans Frontieres), and we had leftover potatoes and lentils and leg of lamb, along with the chanterelles, all quite delicious. I find that I am so hungry here at lunchtime and dinner that everything tastes good, even things I never fixed at home because I thought I didn’t really like them that much, like quinoa, or eggplant, or lentils with just a little cream.

Sunday, October 14, 2007
Enroute from Retournac to Nice
Toulon

We are now experiencing our first big delay during our travels – there has been some kind of accident on the tracks between here and Nice (later - turns out to have been a suicide) so our train will be sitting here an extra hour and a half. We were already not supposed to arrive in Nice until 8:47 pm and now it will be closer to 10:30 pm – very late for us, as we got up at 6 am and got on the train in Retournac at 8 am. Oh well, the people with us on the train seem to be handling the delay with good humor, possibly since it is a Sunday night and nobody has any appointments – just trying to get home after the weekend I suppose.

We spent a pleasant few hours in St. Etienne this morning between trains, eating pain chocolat and drinking chocolat and soaking up the sun while we read our books sitting on the fairly clean platform in the very quiet station. Nothing much happening early on a Sunday morning in France, that’s for sure.

Speaking of early morning, I got up REALLY early Saturday morning, yesterday, to go with Beranger and Else to the market in St. Etienne where they sell their vegetables and meat, and now, since the cheese is finished, they take the bread from Les Fromentaux as well. I had asked Marie about going earlier in the week and Friday night she said that if I wanted to go with them in the truck I should be ready to go at 5:25 am. So there I was, showered and dressed if not bright eyed and bushy tailed. Whenever I know I have to get up early and I’m afraid of missing the alarm, I don’t sleep well. On top of that, Walt wasn’t sleeping well, so when I was trying to sleep, he was keeping me awake – I was very cranky all night, even dreaming during the times I was actually asleep that I was awake and trying to go to sleep. As I stood outside next to the picnic table I could see the headlights from Beranger’s car coming across the ridge from La Bourange, and when they got to the house we all piled in the truck, actually a van, which was fully loaded with the vegetables, the bread, the sawhorses and boards for the tables, baskets for display, umbrellas in case it rained, etc. Then we drove a little ways to La Navette, Beranger’s other place which has a house in need of renovation but also a boucherie, and picked up the coolers full of fresh meat, and the little pop up refrigerated meat case. They had on a radio station that played “oldie” tunes from the US and some French ones too, and fortunately they each only smoked one cigarette during the hour drive through the dark on the winding roads to St. Etienne.

When we arrived at the market place we unloaded everything; I stood in the back of the truck and hefted down the totes so Else and Beranger and Marie (who came in her car) could grab them. They were still getting all the vegetables into baskets and it was still dark when the first customers started arriving to buy bread and haricots (green beans); when it got full light and the place was getting busy I headed out to walk around since there was nothing I could do to help them at this point. St. Etienne has a pretty center, with lots of shops. Nothing was open at that hour except bars and cafes, and since it was cold and I was freezing I found a cozy and friendly looking one, ordered a chocolat chaud, and parked myself in front of the flat screen tv which was on a music video channel, playing oldies but goodies like the Doobie Brothers and Abba. There was also a French singer guitarist filmed back in 1984 singing a pretty song called Prendre Un Enfant, to which the woman behind the bar sang along. The hot chocolate was very hot and very chocolately, absolutely what I needed to warm up. When I was good and warm and the hot chocolate was completely gone I headed back out to find a store where I could buy a pair of socks (I was wearing my Tevas barefoot as I always do on the farm but it was much colder than I had expected). I quickly found a little store that had a cheap pair and also scarves so I got a big black one and wrapped it around my neck, nonchalantly, in what I hoped was a French style. With socks and the scarf I was much happier, and so I headed back up towards the market, saw that it was completely busy, and then saw that the Museum of Art and Industry was just behind the market place. The museum was having an exhibit on Lafayette, and I learned more about the early relationship between France and the US than I ever learned in school, mainly the fact that Lafayette played a pivotal role in the American Revolution and in fact the war would probably have been lost without him and all the French weapons (many of them manufactured in St. Etienne) that the Caron de Beaumarchais smuggled to the “Insurgents.” Incroyable. The museum had 3 floors plus the basement, with the basement being devoted to the bicycle industry in St. Etienne, the most important for bike manufacture in all of France; another floor to weapons; and another one to ribbons, another industry which made St. Etienne the thriving city it is today. The looms were huge and very complex, and I learned about the relationship between Lyon, which manufactured silk, and St. Etienne, which used some of the silk for ribbon making. Later when I went to the gift shop I saw racks and racks of ribbons made locally, as well as some silk scarves, and was captivated by the colors and designs, my mind realing with creative possibilities for curtains and place mats and napkins. So far that’s one of the best things about being away from home: all the new possibilities that present themselves to me, now that I have time to think.

We got home just around lunchtime and then I did a little packing and tried to take a nap without success – but still it felt good to just lie in bed, completely toasty, with my eyes closed. Renee said she was happy to stay home or happy to go to the dance, so I decided to stay home to have a quiet night and watch rugby, since I was pretty tired and we had to get up early this morning again. We brought in the goats for the last time, doing a really great job except with getting Castagnol tied up inside, because he was extremely focused on a particular female and would absolutely not stand for Walt catching him. When he's really horny his tongue sticks out, if he could only see himself in a mirror! We sent Reed up for help and he came back with Renee Jo, who together with Walt got Castagnol under control. We got Reed off to bed, and then Renee Jo made a special dinner, starting with a nice white wine, Coteaux du Layon I believe, with a delicious creamy soup made of potatoes, peas, and carrots, and then bread with a country pate, and then gougeres (a savory cream puff, without the cream in them) with a tomato sauce. Wow. Afterwards we watched France lose, barely, to England, in the Rugby World Cup, rather sad. But it was late and we were tired afterwards, so we just gave Andre (Dede) his goodbye kiss kiss kiss and headed up to bed. It was hard getting dropped off this morning by Renee; she has been so kind, most recently taking us on Friday afternoon up to the top of Mont Madeleine so we could hike a little ways to see the incredible view to the south. We could see La Bourange down at the curve of the Loire, and then further to the west a little bit and higher up, Les Fromentaux. We could see for miles and Renee reminded us that if you think you have problems all you have to do is come up here and they become very small. She has a good philosophy about life. I couldn’t help but tear up when she took us to the station and be amazed at how you can become attached to people even though our French was so limited; fortunately there were some Irish people there to catch the train to distract us from our sadness at leaving, even though we are ready to be somewhere where there isn’t goose and rooster poop all over the front sidewalk…