and now...

Berlin. Adenauer Platz. Sitting in a warm cafe, a chandelier hangs from the ceiling, the waiter lights the candle in the bronze candleholder. Outside, cold cold air, late afternoon sun hiding behind the buildings, incessant traffic on the large avenues, and Christmas trees for sale neatly aligned on the paved place.

I left Toril's place on Saturday. The fence for the new pasture was almost finished, but not quite; we were still waiting for the wire line to come in the post. In the last few days, Toril made us ride a little on one of the mares, who was pregnant and so sweet. For the first time in my life, even though I had had several riding lessons, I rode without bridle or saddle. It was so different, as if I had never ridden before. Toril talked about telling the horse where to go with the energy of the body, rather than the reins. She talked about establishing a relationship with the horse, first of all, before any riding, simply by walking with him for a few hours. Riding should be a relationship; the horse should be doing it for you because it likes you, and not because it is forced. It all sounded so simple, and so obvious - something that I always wished I would hear.

Now, in Berlin. Cars and buses and bicycles and people and restaurants and shops have replaced the trees, the pastures, the streams, the horses, the dogs, the cats. But how strange. I notice that I do not see them in the same way that I did before. This city life that was so foreign, so hard for me to understand before, now has a meaning. From having experienced the farm life for a few months, now I understand how farm could lead to city.

Rocky Mountain

The day started with a big disappointment. I just found a tremendous hole in my alpaca jacket which has served me so well since February. I must have been careless while packing it in my bag. Be more careful while packing.)

Since Saturday I am in the state of Thüringen, near Berga, at Toril's Rocky Mountain horse farm. Quite interesting place. Many things to say.

Thüringen is in the former east Germany, quite in the middle of the country, surrounded by five states, including Bavaria and Saxony. The capital is Erfurt, which had been an important stop on the trade route with Asia in the middle ages. It also homes Weimar, where Goethe and Schiller had lived. In size and population density, the state is one of the smallest of the country. Because of its big forests, it is called the "Germany's green heart". When I traveled across Germany's cities a few years ago, Erfurt and Weimar had been my favorites. Small, town-like, nice atmosphere.

Toril is from the Netherlands. There she taught animal behavior for several years to students learning to train animals for people care. She also bred dogs and horses, and dreamed of having a more extensive horse farm one day. She never thought that she would fulfill her dream before she retired, but then some day a friend told her about this incredible offer: 20 000 euros for a huge farm house and barn, in the middle of the countryside, in beautiful (and apparently, sunny) Thüringen. In the Netherlands, she says, "you have to be a millionaire" to afford a farm. For this reason the Dutch who want to have a farm usually migrate to more welcoming lands: France, East Germany, Canada ("in Canada, you can buy hundreds of hectares of land for the price of a house in the Netherlands..."). So Toril didn't think much more than twice, and bought the farm, thinking that she would renovate it and perhaps move in later on. But within the first year she loved it so much that she quit her job and moved in, together with her three year old son and horses.

Her horse breed is the Rocky Mountain. Originally from Kentucky, it is a gaited horse (i.e., I learned, which can do a fourth speed, between trot and gallop, smooth and more comfortable over long distances). She came across this breed because of this peculiarity, which she first encountered in another breed, and fell in love with. So she searched for other gaited horses, but it turns out that gaited breeds in Europe have a fussy temper, and she also wanted a peaceful, easy-going horse. Her search for the good combination brought her to Kentucky in the States, and to the Rocky Mountain breed.

I must say that indeed these horses are incredibly beautiful and loving. Here are sixteen of them: two stallions, and I think six foals and the rest of them are mares. The coat color varies between sand and dark, almost black, usually with blond to white mane and tail. The nose is straight. The horse is rather small, pony-like, and extremely elegant. Most of them are incredibly sweet and quiet, and have nothing of the nervousness that I usually know from horses. They come to you, smell you, enjoy being pet, look at you with their inquisitive, sometimes sad looking eyes. It is hard not to fall in love with them.

But gosh, how much shit can a horse shit. For the first few days they were all in the pasture, and Toril said this was a holiday for her, because she didn't have to take care of cleaning the stable. Now I understand what she meant. Yesterday we brought a few mares and their foals back to the stables, because we shall train the foals a little, and because it was raining for the last few days and Toril didn't want the foals to stay wet and cold for so long. (In the wild, says Toril, they would have more shelter than they do in the pasture. Also, in the wild, a good part of them would not survive through the Winter. It was quite a journey to take these few mares out of the pasture, without having the others follow, under the wet and cold rain, but it was so beautiful to walk with these horses, on the road between the pasture and the house, that I thought it made it all worth being so wet and cold.) And, since yesterday afternoon, I have shoveled five carts of horse manure out of the stables. I keep thinking how great this manure would be for a gardener. But Toril said that there aren't many gardeners in the area. Someone came once to pick some up, but it didn't suffice. The manure keeps on piling up behind the barn. I wonder how she will deal with it eventually. The issue is perhaps not so pressing for her, as in fact she aims at keeping the horses on pastures as much as possible.

***

How Toril got the pasture that she now uses is an amazing story in itself.

It turns out that back in the communist times, the region used to be intensively mined for uranium by the Russians, and thereby quite destroyed. Now the German government tries to rehabilitate the area. The soil was not greatly contaminated but anyway they covered it everywhere with plastic sheets, and ten to twenty meters high of sand. Now they try to regrow vegetation on top of this soil. Because the water doesn't drain they have big erosion problems, and drainage canals and lakes have to be built. Water quality must be monitored. All day long one can hear the tractors coming and going on the road, transporting sand everywhere. It's taking decades to do all this. But eventually they want to turn the area into a nature reserve park.

So at first Toril was here with her horses, but no land, and was looking for land. Eventually the city council learned that, and offered her a few hectares on the rehabilitated area, a few hundred meters away from her house, on the verge of the future reserve park. The grass on that piece is too poor for the cows, but perfect for the horses, which requite a poor fodder. The hope is that the horses will manure the soil and till it, making it more fertile for plants to grow back on it. How many horses and for how long one needs, this is still to be found. By now the grass is pretty much all eaten on their pasture, but Toril got lucky again a few weeks ago and was offered another "poor" land, not so far away, about 4 hectares. It needs to be fenced, and I shall be of some use for that.

Now Toril is gone to a meeting with the city council and the hunters. The hunters have been keeping on coming to hunt on her land, and they chase the birds away. Apparently the hunters must have some rights, as they are meeting to discuss the issue with Toril and the city. Toril says she is lucky, because the village people and city council prefers the horses to the hunters. People have been telling Toril that now that the horses are in the pasture, they go walk over there, which they didn't before.

So why did Toril get this house for so cheap, she got to learn after she bought it, from a man who had long gray hair attached in a pony tail, and one single tooth in his mouth. The house is very old. It is built of wood and clay/straw, some brick, and composed of three buildings enclosing a courtyard, which seems to be the standard over here. One house, one barn, and one building where the workers used to live (apparently, which used to include a dance floor!). It was quite nice although in need of work, but came along with truckloads of garbage, and the stables floor with a meter high of dung, which is probably why Toril got of for so cheap - nobody wanted to deal with all this junk, or move in such a dreadful looking place.

So the first few months, Toril spent just getting rid of the garbage, and as she cleaned, the neighbors would come by and relentlessly tell the story of the people who had been here. The man and his wife used to have goats, and he had some talents in renovation and did some nice work on the house, but things went a little sour, the wife had drug problems, and the man became alcoholic, and started to pile up garbage in the house. I forget how they eventually got into needing to sale. The neighbors could not stop telling that story. And those who didn't at first, did after just being asked.

***

In front of the house, between the house and the pasture, is another building farm. It is very big, with two upstairs floors I think. It is for sale. (Toril dreams of somehow getting it and making it into a hotel, although, she is not so sure about the hotel idea. She says, "from far it sounds great, but then, you have to clean all the time, I didn't do six years of study to clean people's shit". As long as it's horse shit, it's fine :-)). Now lives in it only an old couple in their nineties, but it used to home seven families composed of several generations, with a total of forty children.

This state of occupation used to be common for such old big farmhouses, because when the Russians came to mine the region, they sometimes destroyed entire villages, and the homeless people found a new home in these big farmhouses. This is also why one finds in the area such oddities as a green pasture where a village used to stand before, with a panel reminding it as the only remaining memory of the village. Or a church, in the middle of nowhere, with not a single house surrounding it (the story tells that the church has been saved from destruction, because when the Russian man who was in charge of demolishing the village came, he found a lady in tears over a tomb in the cemetery, and for that reason he did not have the heart to put the church down as well).

Besides the destruction from mining, the Russians left here another relict of the communist times in the form of an amazing kindergarten system - in contrast to most of the rest of Germany (the west?), where I am repeatedly told that it is very hard to find a kindergarten place, because anyway the mothers are expected to take care of their children - for the communists, both men and women were expected to work. Toril takes her son to kindergarten from 8:30 to 3:00, five days a week, including a very nice warm meal at midday. The kindergarten is very nice, with a great atmosphere and lots of very friendly teachers, the kids are taught good manners, and both Toril and her son are quite happy with it. Toril had no trouble finding a place, and in fact, they were quite happy to have her son, she said. And for it, she pays about a hundred euros per month, and if she went through the hassle of filling up the pile of paperwork that it requires, she would actually pay nothing for it, as her status of single mom allows her.

***

The people in the area are quite amazed by Toril's sense of initiative, her desire to do things and her ever-flowing ideas. Toril says this is yet another remnant of communism; because people were not allowed to take initiatives, those who had any have left, so that now the region is mostly populated by people who have not much desire to change anything or to do something special...

Antonia

For some reason, these days I wake up before dawn. In the middle of a dream all of a sudden, I am wide awake, and I still have plenty of time before I shall start the day. I usually spend this time listening to the silence, contemplating the warmth and softness of the blankets, watching the dark slowly turning into light. But today I decided to brave the darkness and to do some writing instead. Perhaps this moment of the day will give me more inspiration. As I write, a cock crows (did you know that each language interprets the singing of the cock differently? French: cocorico; English: cockadoodledo; German: kikerikie ), the horizon turns to orange, and the sound of a tractor passes by in the distance.

The other night, with Ben and Antonia we watched “Unser Täglich Brot”, a german movie about industrial food production. It is a series of short shots, with no words, taken across the whole realm of conventional factory production of the various things that we might eat: cereals, vegetables, meat, eggs, dairy. It shows how incredibly mechanized and disheartened this “farming” has become. I usually avoid such movies because I am tired of complaints and prefer to deal and think about solutions, but on the other hand I have recently decided that I shall keep my “eyes wide open”; and I did not regret having watched it. The image is very artistic, the approach neutral, and the result is intriguing, interesting, beautiful. Also, the film made me more aware of the amount of technology that goes into each production step. It seems that a machine has been invented to deal with every possible step of the pig and chicken production industry; and that, behind each machine, sits a totally bored and numb looking worker. I had not quite imagined before that behind each factory chicken there is worker sitting on the production line, whose job has been solely to “cut the flap of neck skin remaining after the head has been chopped off”. I mean, we are concerned about the ethics of producing factory animals, but did we ever consider the ethics of having the factory workers doing such jobs? (According to Ben, the suicide rate in those jobs is among the highest.) As of vegetables: one can after all really wonder about the prowess of plants; it is incredible that the methods used to grow them are able to produce something alive!

Anyhow. At the end of the movie, Ben said, “I got a lot from it, but not about food, rather about humans. We are so amazingly creative and intelligent; it's just incredible, these machines that we are able to invent. But, what do we put this creativity into!!! Also, it's really interesting to see the workers in these factories; how do they feel, how do they think? Perhaps I should work in one such place for one month, to get to know them.”

These days I am thinking, that perhaps I could say the same about my travel. I have not learned all that much about food, but a great deal about humans, or rather, at least, about specific people.

**

Antonia arrived about one week ago, as I was here already. As I showed her the way to our rooms, she carried her backpack on one shoulder, and her bass guitar in the hand. She was very thin, looked quite young, and giggled at most things she said or did. As she was going to be my roommate and coworker for a few days, I was particularly eager to see if we would get along. But right away I thought “Oh, I love her”. My feeling hasn't changed since. She is one of the most considerate, humble, thoughtful, alive, enthusiastic, calm and thorough thinking, hard working, person I have been given to meet.

Antonia is 19, of Irish origin, now lives in Wales. She finished her A-levels this year and took a year off to think about what to study in University. She came to do helpx on farms in Germany because in school she did a course on sustainability, which was “really great”, and which gave her the desire to come and see what goes on on farms aiming at being sustainable. This farm is the third one she is on, and she needs to go back home after this because she has (“actually that's really boring”) "an appointment with the orthodontist for her braces". Antonia has light curly blond hair at ear-length, which falls down on the sides of her face in a gracious style which reminds me of the 1920's, big blue-gray eyes, pale skin. She wears beautiful wool sweaters that she gets from second-hand shops (apparently Britain is the kingdom of second-hand shops). Antonia loves to cook and to experiment with cooking; things to eat and to cook are one of our favorite conversation topics, and we had a grand time baking cakes together. Antonia loves to rake leaves, to weed, to build and to do anything with her hands actually. In her free time she has been fighting with Ben for a book about meat that they have been both passionately reading (Eating Animals), teaching Ben to play the bass, dancing in the garden in the dark with her ipod. We also regularly and intensely discuss about “what can be done”, or rather "how", and she ponders at length about what she should choose to eat (“I think I should stop eating pig, and eat more sheep, isn't sheep good, it just feeds on grass, and that's what we have in Britain. And what about pulses? Hm, they are great, but they don't grow in Britain...”). At the top of her nineteen years, Antonia has a level of awareness that I myself, in my thirties, only recently reached. Both she and Ben (21) seem both quite aware that the problem is also one of lifestyle, and that the solutions are not at all clear for anyone yet; and both of them are eager to think and to come up with new ideas, to change their own lifestyle, to search for compromises.

I am struck by how pessimistic about the future most of my hosts have been until now. Most of those who actually seem to think about the issue, cannot see how things could get better, because they cannot see how people could change the behaviors which are sources of the problems. They don't see that change is happening. I think that the only exception is Joan back in the Ariege, who was the most open and imaginative and positive mind I ever met. He said there was no limit to what we could invent and create, and he was sure that we could find ways to turn each problem into a solution. Interestingly, although I guess not surprisingly, even though he has no training nor does he think of himself as an “ecologist”, he was also the host who made the most extensive use of the various techniques for a low-impact lifestyle. He had solar electric and water heating panels, heated his water only with wood or sun, only had compost toilets, used rain and well water, recycled his waste water, built as much as possible with natural materials. He was the one who really wanted to have the best of both worlds: sustainable life-style, modern comfort (and for that, he did not want to give up concrete :-)). But other than him, the views of all the others hosts I have had, I must say, are rather disheartening. I was quite surprised to hear that even Angelika, here, although she is incredibly cheerful and positive in her every day life, thinks that the chances for the future are rather low. She thinks that being pessimistic is being realistic.

It's hard to see change. Even harder when you are inside of it. The mind likes to focus on fixed punctual memories. But I look at Antonia, at Ben, and I see the change in them. The pessimists will reply “yes, but they are a minority”. It does not matter. This minority, twenty years ago, didn't even exist.

Grossenhain

I left David and Viola's farm with some regret a few days ago. Since Monday I find myself a few dozens of kilometers more north, nearby Grossenhain.

I am not sure why, but sometimes I think that until now this entire german section of my trip has a very surreal quality. The people, the places, the conversations. Everything feels too strange to be true. Could it be because, as apparently similar to mine as the german culture can be, it is in fact, deeper inside, totally different?

My two days in Bremen, before my arrival at David and Viola's farm... where I stay at someone's place from couch surfing, I was interested to meet this indonesian doctotal student in “political ecology”, he lives in a one-room flat on top of a building, for a long time, standing in the kitchen against the afternoon sun, he tells me with passion about his interests and his life, and he has also two indonesian friends staying with him, as they just arrived in Germany for a few months of study and are looking for an appartment, and my host tells me that we can just all sleep in this small room, and I prefer to sleep in the staircase, which is large like a room and where I can keep the window open, and the same evening another couch surfer also comes, he has a dutch name and is totally blond and he comes from South Africa and he studied architecture and he works on sailing boats of rich people, now he travels around on a vespa from 1950, together with an incredible leather bag that he made himself, as well as other useful leather items, in the evening the indonesian host takes us for a tour in old Bremen, the South African comments on amazing architectural features of the city, the city is incredibly lively and sweet, I have a terrible headache although I never have one, later on we go into a pub which our host says is his favorite, lots of young people are watching a football game on a big screen and cheering, we meet his friends from the university and it seems like they just stepped out of a book, or that they lived in a glass cage their whole life, the South African and I are from another planet, anyway I most of the time feel like I am from another planet, and then I wonder perhaps lots of other people also do, but perhaps they don't dare to express or to acknowledge it...

And now, here, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by industrial farms of all sorts, this little house, little farm, out of a fairy tale, with sheep of incredible hair of all sorts of colors, which gabble apples like would a beast in a video game, and which noone eats or kill anymore, and the incredibly beautiful house where everything is so simply nice, either very old or new, with an old man sweet like candy and who back in the days has transformed this traditional barn/stable/house into a full house, and his wife, always cheerful, talkative, who plays irish music in a band, she loves english and seems more american than german actually, anyway is there really a difference between germany and america, that's the question, we spend morning collecting apples and making apple juice, before having for lunch the most delicious food I ever had, the afternoons spent taking tea and talking about education and religion, the old man says in his quiet, slow voice, that for a real democracy people must be educated and informed enough to think by themselves, so the school must teach people to think, and religion and school were meant to prevent people from thinking and expressing themselves, as societies grew and became industrialized, the other helpx guy from England, breathtakingly meditative and quiet and silent, he writes a four-page letter by hand to a man with whom he has worked on an ice-cream parlor, because the man had asked him to keep in touch, and my room, or rather should I say, my appartment, which perhaps would be the appartment of my dreams had I ever had such a dream, sort of loft under the v-shaped roof, both ends are full glass between the wooden beams, on one end is my bedroom where the glass is covered with vine, and on the other is the entrance door and a balcony on which hangs actual wine grapes, which I can pick and eat each time I pass by and they are just the most delicious grapes I ever had...

Strange world

Tuesday. Overcast, nice fresh autumn air. Yesterday was sunny and cold. In the morning, the meadow was covered with frost, the sun shore over it, it was so beautiful. I guess, that's the advantage of living in a place where it rains a lot. One gets to enjoy the sun so much. Just like summer in Quebec.

This place here is quite surreal in many ways, and quite enjoyable too. The atmosphere is such that the surreality feels quite funny.

I can start with this house and farm building, the story of which is striking in itself.

I am not sure if the house should be called a house, it is rather some sort of house/castle. It used to be a huge brick farm, with lots of stables. The previous owner converted it into a house on one side, on the other a studio, and office space in between. The house part contains gigantic rooms of all sorts, a huge workshop, and a room that looks like (or is?) a dance hall. The office space contains several rooms only separated by walls, the ceilings being all opened on the beamed roof, and it contains also a kitchen and two toilets. The studio is another insanely huge room. (I keep thinking on how much energy must be used to keep this entire building warm.) The house is surrounded by another gigantic grass garden, with some trees, and a quite big brick and cement barn, and some fields and meadow behind.

The man who did all this conversion work had big projects in mind, we don't really know which (perhaps he didn't quite either). To get this work done, he borrowed money from several banks, and lied to the banks and gave the house as insurance for the loans several times. Then he didn't get the job from his step-father as he thought he would, and he went bankrupted. And the parents from Viola bought the place, and invited Viola and David to come and farm the land.

Viola's parents live in the house part, Viola and David and their two children (and the wwoofers) in the office space, and a student rents the studio. My bedroom is one of the biggest rooms in which I ever slept. It has a huge door/window, a bed, a sofa, a shelf, a desk, and it still feels empty.

This previous owner man was rather imposing in height and breadth, and he wanted to make all the doors larger and longer. So he got the openings made bigger, but then he realized that it would cost too much money to also change all the doors, so he got the openings turned back into their normal size. Indeed, inside the toilets, one can see that the tiles on the wall above the doors have been cut and that the joints have been remade. Now that I know where this comes from, when I sit on the toilet and look at the tiles above the door, I cannot stop thinking about this man who wanted to make all his doors bigger.

Now, this village in which the house/farm/castle finds itself is also quite surreal. The village lies about 40 kilometers from Hamburg. The area is completely flat, and mostly covered with fields. The village used to be composed of only farmers, and today there remain only... 20 (says David)! Twenty farms in one village! In fact, the village has a couple of shops, and a gas station. They are all conventional farms, relatively big I think. There is only one bio farm in the village, and it is the one of my hosts, Viola and David. The houses which are not farms anymore are now suburban cottages which look like they have been used just yesterday to shoot the Truman Show; grass perfectly cut, flowers perfectly blooming, windows perfectly clean, fences perfectly straight.

So as of direct neighbors, Viola and David have on the right, one such suburban cottage, homing a retired couple, of which the man, says David "talks a lot". It is such a marvelously strange sight, to come out of the cow stables, after having cleaned the shit, or to come back from having fed the ever-hungry pigs, and to encounter, right in front of you, this perfect suburban cottage, with perfectly clean windows, and perfectly cut grass. Perhaps the man would be outside, smoking a cigarette. At times they order some vegetables or meat from the farm, in which case Viola crosses the fence, with a big pumpkin in the hands, because they "want to have some pork chops and salad for lunch, and pumpkin would go quite well with it". This is the neighbor next door.

The neighbor in front of the house is one of the twenty farmers. The son now runs the farm, and the father, 80 years old (but you would never think), is still there. They have enormous tractors and dumpsters of all sorts, constantly coming and going, often parked in front of the farm, and which make you feel, when you meet them on the road, like the country is going to war. I didn't know that they have those cord-walky-talkies inside those huge tractors, just like they do on the huge road trucks in America.

One day the grand-father came over, and we chatted a bit. He was impressed about my German (which all Germans are, and I could never understand why, as my German is poor at best, but someone recently told me the key to this riddle; in fact, none of the foreigners who speak English ever bother to learn German, so it is very rare for Germans to meet anyone who can say more than a few words in their language. I feel a bit sorry for them...), and he asked me how old I was. He sounded not so happy to hear the answer. David later explained to me why: he asks their age to all the girls who come here, because he has a 17 years-old grandson for whom he wants to find a girl. (This amuses David quite, as many other things.) The grandfather also always wants to know what's going on here on the farm, and he checks on every single thing that is being done here, and David said that as soon as he turns the tractor on, the neighbor gets out of his house to see what is going on.

Now, in the middle of this surrounding, you have to picture my hosts and their farm; among these enormous fields, these farms dealing with hectares and animals not by the dozen but by the hundreds, here are: two hectares of land, two cows, seven pigs (three adults and four babies), a dozen geese, about 10 chickens, and less than 100 meters square of garden.

David comes from England, 23 years old. Viola grew up near Hambourg, and is 26. They have two small children. They met in England, and traveled and worked on farms in South Africa and Japan, and they wanted to traveled more, but then the babies came along. So they settled on a farm, first in the middle of Germany, and now here. Viola studied social care, for handicapped people. Her mother says that she is just naturally wonderful at this, and I can believe it; she simply seems to be an angel just fallen from the sky. When she smiles her eyes light up the most benevolent and friendly and innocent glare one could think of. She is graceful and gifted with everything she does, and everything, from feeding the baby to shoveling shit, seems to be just purely simple and easy.

David has been doing farming since he is 15. Since that age he knows that he wants to do farming, and he also knows that he wants to do it "small". He is quite passionate about farming, yet not a frustrated way, and he still manages to at the same time be very aware of the complete absurdity of how we deal with food now, to be very well informed of how things in the real world work, and yet remaining peaceful and cheerful. I find that quite amazing. Both he and Viola are, in general, among the most peaceful and cheerful people I ever met, and it seems as though they are not even aware of their peculiarity.

(When David said that word, "small", I had to think again about that mechanic's words, back in February in La Creuse, who, when Julie told him that they had a bio farm, but small, replied, "of course, it's hard to do bio and big". For him, it was just so obvious. Now I am thinking, we tend to think that there is no relationship between nature of things and their scale, that anything can come in any size, but it simply isn't the case. I think now of cells, which can't be bigger than a certain diameter, above which the surface area of the membrane cannot anymore match the needs of the volume inside for gas and nutrient exchange with the outside.)

As one could guess, the farmers of the neighborhood at first thought not so good of David and Viola's endeavors, and thought they were crazy, and they were not so friendly to them. But now apparently things are going better.

David said about the conventional farmers, "They cannot understand me, and I cannot understand them". They not only live in a different world, but have a totally different job. Conventional modern farming is more about management than farming, about knowing how to deal with budget and numbers than how to deal with animals and plants. David said that in fact it is quite difficult to be a conventional modern farmer, as one has to be quite good at these things; management, budgets, numbers. I think that it is in England where, he said, today to study farming one takes more semesters of management courses (two years), than of farming courses per say (one year?). In this kind of farming, one always has to do calculations of all sorts, and, David said, he could not do that. And they, they could not do what he does. If anything, because the animals and plants that they are thought to farm could not survive to the "natural" handling that they get here. More on that later.

Die Familie

I find myself now in the north of Germany, in a small village near Tostedt, between Bremen and Hamburg. This morning while feeding the animals, my hands and feet froze, for the first time since last Winter; I had forgotten how much I don't enjoy this feeling.

I have a lot to say about this new place and people, but I still wish to say a few words about the last farm in Baden-Württemberg. For some reason I have trouble writing these days, but I must make an effort and record at least something about this family with whom I spent these two weeks. All I have written about it is a complaint about the silly conversion of petrol into milk by sick cows (although I just learned that in this area they do something which sounds even more silly: growing corn to make biogas, more on this later).

I don't know how. I don't know where to start. I don't know how to explain... The morning when I left, Hilse and Helmut and Oma all had tears in their eyes when I said goodbye. Tears that they didn't want to show, that they quickly hid behind a smile, and just to think about it I want to cry as well. And I could not say why. We are quite different in many ways, and yet, we love each other so much. This is all quite strange.

They were all such interesting characters.

Oma ("grand-mother").

She is 90 years-old, but you would never guess. She has trouble walking now, but her mind is sharp as an eagle's beak. All day long she works in the kitchen, preparing food for at least seven people every day, and besides the stable times, I mostly worked with her in the kitchen. She had an infinite patience and understanding, and it seemed that you could do all the mistakes you wanted and that she would never get angry.

Once, I cooked lunch, and made and experimental leek pie. The next day Oma said, "so today I will experiment as well", and she mixed left-over lettuce and brussel-sprouts for the salad. She seemed to feel quite rebellious doing that.

The farm used to be hers and her husband's. In her time, they farmed a little bit of everything. For a long time she had to do every thing herself because her husband got injured first on the farm and again in the war. One day, she told me that had been against the farm becoming so big.

Siegfried, the helper (picture on top).

He is 70 years old and slightly mentally handicapped. He has been working on the farm for ages, and now that he is so old, they would have returned him to his family - but as of family, he only has a sister, who is even more deranged than him - so they kept him. He still works every day, cleaning the stable, feeding the animals, sending the cows to milking - and seems quite happy about it.

Siegfried mostly smiled, and looked at you straight in the eyes when you looked at him, and often I wondered if he was not the bright one amongst all of us. It seemed as though in the end he never said anything stupid.

He used to be alcoholic and to drink several litters of apple-schnaps every day, until the day when he ended up in the hospital and the doctor told him that if he didn't stop then he would die; so he stopped.

One evening, as we were both going to our respective bedrooms, Siegfried invited me into his. He showed me his collection of Teddy bears, his tape-player on which he plays german folk music every night when he goes to bed (very loud, because he is a bit deaf). Some of the Teddy bears could make a sound when you pressed them, and he particularly wanted me to hear those.

One day, Siegfried dressed himself quite clean. I asked where he was going, and he happily joked that he was going to find himself a young wife. In fact, explained Hilse, he was going to some pig celebration in the neighborhood.

Hilse and Helmut.

Helmut is Oma's son. Hilse grew up in a neighboring village. The two run the farm today. They had three children, and of them one still works on the farm. Hilse: The first moment I saw her at the train station, when she picked me up, she was smiling - and she never stopped. Always full of energy, she always does everything well and fast, and she seems to have infinite joy and love for life and people and animals. Helmut: often he was not present at meals, because he had to take advantage of good days to go work the fields with the tractor. He asked me lots of questions about what I want to do with agriculture, and he was interested to know what is permaculture, and he wanted me to go and visit a school-farm which is in the area.

And I could still say lots of things about the other people (the grandson and the two other helpers who were there, a mexican girl and an australian one). They were all so special, such strong people.

***********

The work.

At the beginning, I thought it was abominable. I had a lot of trouble not to be disgusted by the shit everywhere (for, to increase milk yield, the cows are fed silage, fermented grass and corn, which gives them diarrhea), on the floor, on the milking tubes. The shit which would splash onto us, in the milking hole, when the cows above would shit on the concrete floor. I was disgusted to see Hilse and Helmut's clothes and hands always stinky and covered in shit.

The first days, I was horrified to give milk to the calves to drink in a bucket (because the calves in conventional farming are usually separated from the mother, because it's inconvenient to keep them together). At the beginning, they don't quite know how to drink in this way, and they desperately search for a teat to suck, and they plunge their head fully in the milk and half drown.

But then, after a while, I got struck to notice that I started to half enjoy all this - the shit, the cows, the calves drowning in the milk buckets. I found myself laughing, yes, laughing, when the calves could not drink in the bucket, but instead mostly made lots of bubbles in it.

How striking. What I had, at first, found horrible, could become, after two weeks, almost enjoyable. This reminded me of Georges Orwell's account of the spanish civil war ("Looking Back on the Spanish War"). I had been struck when reading it, by how badly he wanted to fight, and by how much, in the end, as awful as the conditions in the trenches were (even though there was no fighting), they enjoyed it. Now I think that it must be the feeling of brotherhood that does that.

And I am so shocked to see this in myself as well, in this travel. I would much rather dig shit every day all day long with people with whom I get along, than do the most beautiful and meaningful work with people with whom I don't.

A friend of mine who studied anthropology and other social things, says that the greatest need for humans is to be recognized by a group. More and more, I think that she is probably right.

Ah! le bon lait

Samedi. Pluie encore.

Une ferme laitière conventionelle dans l'état de Baden-Württermberg. Avant de venir ici, plusieurs personnes m'ont demandé sur quel genre de ferme je m'en allais. J'ai constaté que je ne savais pas quoi leur répondre. En effet, j'ai reçu si peu de réponses de la vingtaine de mails que j'ai envoyés à des fermes en Allemagne, qu'à la fin j'ai dit ok à presque tous ceux qui m'ont écrit, sans autre forme de procès. Et heureusement car, si j'avais su à quoi m'attendre ici, je ne serais sans doute pas venue, mais maintenant que j'y suis, je suis ravie de faire cette expérience; j'ai le sentiment qu'elle a quelque chose d'assez fondamental.

Car en découvrant le fonctionnement de cette ferme laitière très standard, j'ai l'impression de découvrir vraiment le monde tel qu'il est. Voilà d'où viennent vraiment tous ces litres de lait, de fromage, de yaourt, et de crème glacée que j'ai ingurgités au cours de ma vie (jusqu'à ce que je réalise qu'ils me rendent malade...).

Pourquoi est-il devenu impossible de produire de la nourriture de façon saine, et d'en faire suffisamment d'argent pour se maintenir dans le système? La réponse m'apparaît si clairement ici sur cette ferme, au milieu de tous ces tracteurs dont les roues sont plus hautes que moi (au moins 5): c'est parce que nous mangeons du pétrole et du minerai. Voilà ce qui nous a permis de passer de 90 à 10 % d'agriculteurs. Parce que les tracteurs travaillent pour nous.

Et oui, ça paraît évident. Et pourtant, j'ai l'impression que je ne l'avais jamais réalisé avant. Avant de voir ces vaches qui passent leur vie dans l'étable, nourries à coups de pelleteuse. Avant de voir ces hectares de champs qui ne voient plus passer sur eux que des pneus. Avant d'entendre le bruit des tracteurs, à longueur de journée, dans cette belle et verte campagne.

Emptiness

Back to the land, back to silence. Morning sun slowly warming up the earth cooled down through the night. Wind, chirping of a small dog in the distance. My eyes are tired, my heart a bit restless. I write on a desk on which all sorts of inscriptions have long ago been made with liquid paper ink. One says, “X=X_ncos(2πf₀xt + φ₀)”. Another one, underneath, says “FUCK OFF”.

I am now since yesterday back up in the mountains; still in the Aude, nearby the Sougraigne village, on a sheep farm. I finished yesterday a permaculture course, which I attended for the past two weeks in Limoux. The course was for me and apparently for most if not all of us 43 students there, a truly life changing experience. Robyn Francis was the teacher. We students, were a bunch of very diverse ages and doings, but united through our passion for life and our deep desire to live this life better in tune with our hearts, and to dedicate our reason to this. The feelings and warmth which thereby developed amongst us is simply very hard to describe. Some people say that we have become a “family”. I guess there is few better ways of expressing this feeling that something deep and moving which you couldn't really put your finger upon, connects you to someone else.

As of Permaculture itself; I wonder why it's not more well-known than it seems to be and than it greatly deserves to be. Why did I develop an interest for it only now, two months ago, at 31 years of age?

The first time I heard the term “permaculture” was back in March when I was in the Creuse, and when someone said, “ah, permaculture, I don't really know what it is, but every time I hear about it, it seems to only be about basic common sense, such as how to organize your garden in order to have shorter paths to take when you walk through it. There really doesn't seem to be so much about it, and I don't understand why people make such a fuss about it.” I am struck now by how much this statement is both true, and false.

It is absolutely right that permaculture is not about much of anything very specific, and that it is, in the end, basically about basic common sense. But the fact is, that common sense is precisely what we generally lack; and that this lack is precisely what leads us ashtray. We get hooked up on theories in our thinkings, and we let our emotions or faiths or beliefs guide us, instead of, at each and every moment, coming back to What Really Is.

And why do we do this? Well, I don't have the least trouble understanding it. Coming back each and every moment to What Really Is, rather than what you expect or imagine or fancy, is coming back, each and every moment, to something new. And accepting that nothing is fixed, that all is change, that our minds no more than the world, should get fixed on some views, is an incredible challenge.

I believe that in order to overcome this challenge, one must find stability somewhere else, in a realm beyond What Is, in the realm of feelings. For if What Is never is the same, the feeling of Being is always there, and this is the true constant in our lives. But this feeling we do not find in our minds, and we do not find in the words, no, we find it in the silence within. Perhaps that's the problem. I guess that seeking a solution within emptiness doesn't naturally sound like so much fun to the mind. Isn't it striking, that we consider locking people up in an empty room, what could be considered as a blessing by others, as a form of punishment?

Wilderness and the French Revolution

Hot and dry August Sunday afternoon; a few clouds lighten the dark blue of the sky; a few crickets accompany the dancing of the greens. Several different kinds of insects bounce on my window.

Insects; there are so many different ones. It seems that every day I see at least one that I had never seen before. And it seems that you just need to move a hundred meters further to get a fresh supply of novelty.

I have been finding myself now for a week in the Aude department, nearby a village called Arques, at the farm of a lovely British family – Ivan and Claire and their three young sons, Joseph and Rowan and Fabian.

**

Arques! How beautiful you can be! Oh France! The more I visit you, the more I feel like I am here more inside a fractal than within a country. Of course there is the France of baguette, of cheese, of wine. There is also, however, the France of each department – specific foods, specific attitude, specific landscape, specific weather. And then it is as if there were, even within each department, a thousand different countries. For every new hill, every new valley, every new river bed, has its own people, its own weather, its own soil.

Take Arques for example. It is perhaps 30 km far from Limoux, and I know Limoux as an uncle of mine lives not far from it, and I thought that it was not very exciting to come back here. But no! Couiza and Arques have absolutely nothing to do with Limoux! Limoux is flat and dry and it has vines all around it. But here is in the middle of rough, small craggy mountains which like precious stones exhibit grey-white rocky walls in their rivers of green.

And here even, at the house, the Perilhou; within ten hectares can one find oneself in ten different places. There is the hill with the pine trees, there is the valley with the fields and house, and there is the river below with the huge deciduous trees gasping for the light above, the mosses and the box trees. Each part has its own fauna, its own flora, its own feel. Up the hill blows the wind constantly, and all around can one admire the mountains, and feel the strength of the summer sun. But, down at the river, instead one hears the constant murmur of the water, and one is always cool and protected from the sun and the wind.

I have been wondering if it is not its extremely varied geography which contributes not only to France's cultural diversity, but also to its remarkably sparse human population. For France's countryside, I got to learn, is quite devoid of people compared to that of England, Belgium, Holland, Germany. So it is not only because of its more generous sunshine, that rural France is being colonized by the people of these other countries, and that farmhouses all over the countryside are being bought up by them, and transformed into secondary houses, or houses for their retirement, or kept running as farms (in the Ardèche, the deserted primary school next door had been bought by a Dutchman, as a secondary house). It is (of course!) also because here, these foreigners can afford to buy a house or a piece of land or both, which they could in their own country, not even dream about. Money, you speak once again!

And, why is France not only so culturally diverse, but also so sparsely populated?

I do not know it for a fact, but I get the impression that France's landscape is much more rough than it is in these other countries. And, evolutionary biologists tell us that a rough landscape is a very potent diversity generator, because not only does it provide a diversity of climates and soils which drive life forms in different directions (this is hard to imagine for people who are not used to it, like me, but life on the north and south-facing sides of a mountain can be dramatically different, as the temperature can differ by ten degrees!), but also does it prevent cultural diversity from being tempered by inter-mixing – simply because it is harder for people in different parts to reach each other (thus in the mountains one finds villages which are separated by only a few kilometers, but which until a few decades ago barely knew of the existence of each other, until roads and cars came to them!).

But besides bringing diversity, what does roughness of the landscape also bring? Difficulty to farm! And thus, few people!

Take this place. A gorgeous, a wonderful place it is! It is not so high in altitude, 400 meters, and there is plenty of water, with the river. But there is at least 50 meters of difference in altitude between one side of the ten hectares and the other. Thus it is difficult to farm, unless one wants to build terraces, and even then, it is not trivial to bring the water uphill, as there is no source uphill (as there was in the Ardèche). Plus, there are not that many stones here I think. Plus, the house is three kilometers away from the most nearby village, Arques, up a winding dirt road which climbs and climbs. So the place is incredibly, astonishingly wild, even though not far from relatively big cities (perhaps 50 km as the crow flies from Carcassonne, and 60 km from Perpignan) and I have rarely heard so much silence nor felt so immersed in nature, than here.

And, believe it or not, but this topic of wildness brings me to the apparently completely unrelated topic of the French Revolution. Here is how.

**

The other day came a man here, Tim, with his small Russel-Terrier dog. He wore, vaguely tilted on his head, a lovely white and black checked hat of the typical “french artist” shape. He spoke French with an accent which I for an initial moment thought was perfectly French - and that surprised me because Claire had told me that this man was a friend from England. In fact, he was just back from England where he had spent two months. He is otherwise a resident of a hamlet nearby.

And then the other night we went to a party (given by three German people, one of them grows wheat and sells German bread at the market on Sunday. The party was attended by lots of new-age and hippie people, and I had never seen so many since-long-grown-up people smoking such large amounts of weed with such little discretion). Tim was at the party as well. We sat on square straw bales under an enormous centenary tree, and I got to learn his story.

I asked him what had brought him to France. Most of the foreign farmers/countryside people answer to this question either with the weather, and/or the price of land. But Tim's reply was different, and unusual, and startling for me. He said that he had always dreamed of coming to live in France, that he had always felt more at home here than he did in England.

As a child he got to spend some time in France, and each time he would leave and go back to England, he felt as though he was leaving home. Later he was a teacher and in the summer he would come for the holiday, and when he would return to England in the Fall he would feel pain, and the whole school year he would wait for the summer and the time to go back to France to return. And then, fifteen years ago the opportunity to buy a ruin in a hamlet nearby presented himself. He had no money, but there was no question - he bought it. “When you have a good idea, he said, money is no question. First comes the idea. Then you find the money.” And then, three years ago, he made the move, and came to live here permanently. And although he does miss certain things about England, such as the pubs and the green and how so beautiful countryside landscape, he is the happiest person to be here. He feels like he did exactly what he has always dreamed about.

I asked him what he thought was the origin of this apparently intrinsic passion for this country. Here is what he answered.

On the one hand, British people in his eyes are “intolerable”. All they ever think and speak about, is money.

On the other hand, here in France can one still find some wilderness. He just loves to be surrounded by this mixture of forest and pastures and sheep. In England, the wild patches that remain are very few.

And why is that? To Tim, this is so not only because of the rough landscape. He thinks that culturally, the French cherish the wilderness more. Perhaps, he says, because many of them still hunt. And although he does not himself enjoy shooting animals, he thinks that the people who do it develop more of a feeling and respect for wild nature.

And why do the French people hunt more than the British do? Well, the French did the Revolution. And, this is perhaps not often realized, but one of the important claims of the Revolution was the right to hunt for all. In England, to this day still, only the nobles are allowed to hunt.

So in England, said Tim, to this day, there exists a nobility that means a class of people who think that they are intrinsically better than the others. When he drove in the morning for work in England, sometimes the road would be blocked by huge land-rovers. They were cars of nobles, who had parked to go hunting. Tim would complain, tell them that if they blocked the road then he would not be able to go to work. But they would reply that this was not important to them.

Tim said that he cannot feel comfortable in such a society, where some people think that they are intrinsically better. He said that as soon as some people in a society think that they are different, special, then it just, simply, cannot be good.

Bubbles

Sunday morning. The sky is gray, the birds chirp. The wind shakes leaves and branches softly. Now and then the door creaks, and some branches rub the roof of my hut.

My head is full of soft moments and sounds, but finding their road to my fingertips is a quest. Poetry, oh dear, you are so fluid!

Should I tell of the three cats, as beautiful one as the other? The strong male, always so loving and so white, who graciously jumps on your lap, especially when he is wet? Or the red female, who is so thin, pensive, and discrete? Or her daughter, a few months old beauty, gray and long hair, look of naughtiness, purring food requests?

Or I could tell of the people who come for a visit, for one, two, or three days. The former German wwooferin who now studies theater in Hannover. Or Nicolas, from Peyssac near Bordeaux, seventeen years old, dark eyed, dark haired, as tall as thin, passionate about insects, leeches, snakes, in a love affair with chemistry since childhood, he spent his afternoons collecting sap from poppy to extract its alkaloid. Or Annie, his mother, who radiates love, joy and playfulness. Or the three kids, nephews of Pascale, who with their high-pitched voice disseminate their infinite thirst for play, excitation and creation?

Or I could tell about Jonas, my fellow wwoofer from Aix-la-Chapelle, Germany. Working in the garden with him one afternoon, we are weeding, a ray of sun comes out, and he thinks, and says: “Oh, I could say, that now I am happy...”

Or I could tell of one of our bike trips, in our free time, up and down the hills. Up, giving from our legs and lungs all of what they have (well, in my case, not quite), down, offering our bodies to the wind. Going to swim to the lakes nearby. Stopping to eat wild prunes, red or yellow or blue, growing generously along the Garonne river. Striding along the streets of St-Gaudens, in search of beautiful postcards, or the perfect present. Marveling at the diverse and picturesque old toulousish houses and churches, the gorgeous landscapes unraveling one after the other, or the perpetually-empty-of-people French countryside. The sunflower fields, the pastures with three horses, one black, one red, and one white with black patches. The pastures with one donkey, and many small, white, black-headed sheep. The cows here and there. The light of the setting sun over the rolling hills of all sorts of greens and yellows.

Or I could tell of the salad which is served with every meal, always composed of all sorts of wild greens, freshly collected from the garden, with flowers on top. Or the tomatoes from the garden, of dozen different varieties, each more exquisite one than the other. I could also tell of the meals themselves, which are always a “ceremony” as Jonas says, and usually taken under the shadow of the oak, in a bubble of green.

Or should I tell of the local cultural events which Pascale and Christian take us to. A walking tour starting at the historic village of Aurignac, where the first “first human” remnant has been discovered (hence, the “Aurignacien” prehistoric period), down the forested hill, along the country roads, organized French-style: publicized as a two-hour tour, it actually lasted five. There is also the summer fiesta at Aurignac. With food, tables, families eating, and a clown making the children laugh. And there are the various concerts in the villages nearby. The Occitan music group, giving a free concert as part of the “31 notes d'été”, concert series of the Haute-Garonne. Pianist, bassist, two female singers, drummer with long hair like a rock star, they sing in Occitan. The language itself is music, and the songs are so beautiful and creative that they make you want to cry. Or, Friday evening with Jonas, at the café associatif of Cassagnabères, the nearest village. A French band playing all sorts of classics in a folk style. Some people stand and clap, some people dance, some people stay on the terrace outside to smoke. On the way back, on our bicycles, we went down the hill full speed, through the dark and cold night.

The bubbles of pure beauty.

The Naturalists

The leaves of a maple tree cast their shade on the white crocheted curtains of my windows. It is the Summer of Pure Sky – warm, dry, implacable, simply gorgeous.

I have been for a week now back in the area of Toulouse, in the Haute-Garonne department just north of Ariège. The place is held by a couple, Christian and Pascale. They are both French. She comes from the central east coast, he from the north.

Christian works part time in weather forecast. Pascale used to be a nurse, and now takes care of the house and garden. From the outside, they have very normal lives. But they want to live this “normal life” as ecologically as possible. For them, this does not mean being self sufficient. They have a garden, but it's not extensive enough and there is no greenhouse, so it cannot cover all their needs. Rather, they construct their house the most naturally as possible, using local materials, by caring very actively about their wastes, and about the protection of the local flora and fauna. They reuse as much of the plastic and metal and glass as they can (plastic for example can make labels for the plants in the garden), they have compost toilets, a solar water heater, a plant-based waste water filtering basins, they provide shelters for insects and birds (which have disappeared with the destruction of the hedges, as this region has not been protected from this like la Creuse has been), they try to regrow hedges.

They bought this house a few years ago. They chose this particular area because the houses are not made of stones, nor bricks, but mud - this for the reason that here the soil is poor in stones, but rich in clay. Not only is clay very nice to work with, but it makes great houses from the climate-control point of view, explained Pascale. Indeed, clay not only regulates temperature just like stone does (absorbing heat in the day, releasing it at night), but also regulates humidity. It absorbs water in the air and it can release it outside when it's sunny (I guess that's what it does), so it never stays humid for long. The feel in the house here is indeed very nice and healthy - fresh and dry, not a trace of smell of mold, even though the house is certainly a few hundred years old.

So here they want to make a house for themselves under the big hangar, and later turn the part where they now live into a gîte. Christian experiments with the materials that he finds.

With wood they raise the structure of the house. To cover already present stone walls, they use soil and straw or hemp, with some sand for the outside layer. The soil is filtered by hand with a sieve, the straw is cut with a machete, the two are mixed with water in a tray, the whole is then spread on the wall. The final layer I think is just soil and chalk and sand. For walls to build entirely, now Christian tries an insulating filling of sawdust (obtained for free at a local sawmill) and chalk (which allows the sawdust to stick all together), inside two layers of wood stick ladders covered with the soil-straw mixture.

Some of the walls have been raised already. The feeling of these walls is I must say, extremely nice. Their texture and and brownish-yellowish color are just lovely. I think I could sit in this room and just stare at the wall for a long while.

They use very simple compost toilets and, unusually for what I have seen until now, inside the house they use simple buckets with sawdust. The compost toilet at Peter and Julie was outside, and had a sort of gutter such that the pee would not get mixed with the shit. Joan and Sol had simple sawdust buckets outside, but for the inside had a special device, very expensive and imported from Norway, which blew air, had a plastic covering, collected the pee separately, and made no use of sawdust. Sol had said that they had gotten it because she had feared that otherwise their visitors, especially the Spanish ones, would be completely disgusted to “see and shit on top of other people's shit”. But personally I find this expensive system less agreeable than the simple “shitting in a bucket filled with sawdust” system, because with the expensive system you really do get to see the shit when the plastic covering fails to fall back on the opening, or gets trapped on toilet paper.

Christian afterward composts the shit very seriously. First the shit is brought to the compost bin, which takes six months to be filled. There are two of these, and when the second one is full the first one is emptied into another one which is twice as large, with intervening layers of fresh watered grass (thus this must be done when the grass is still green, i.e. before late in the summer). This brings the compost to ferment at high temperature, about 60 degrees Celsius, and thereby kills all the germs or seeds which might be there. As a further precaution, Christian does not use the compost for growing roots in the garden, but only for fruits or leaves.

Christian and Pascale are also very active in trying to publicize their beliefs. They organize visits of their water-cleaning basins systems, organize a elder tree collection and preparation days, because both the flowers and the fruits of elder tree apparently has lots of amazing protection properties for the respiratory system. Pascale goes to schools to teach kids how to make insect houses, and to install them in the countryside. All of it is done in a non-militant, simply friendly way.

All in all it is quite inspiring to see how this couple takes it share at doing something to care for nature.

Goethe, Steiner, Spinoza

Juillet. Quelle étrange saison. L'effervescence partout. La verdure qui couvre tout. Les petits des animaux qui poussent, qui découvrent la vie. Les vacances pour les citadins. La saison critique à la campagne; il faut faire les foins, il faut s'occuper du jardin, il faut produire, mais aussi vendre.

Richard est un peu débordé, entre le jardin, ses deux AMAPs, les six marchés et le magasin de producteurs à St-Jean de Muzol sur lesquels lui et d'autres producteurs vendent toute la semaine. Ces marchés communs sont expérimentaux pour cette année. Mais ça fait peut-être trop. D'un autre côté, il est content, car il voit que l'intérêt du public pour ses légumes bio augmente, et il lui semble qu'il n'y avait pas autant de demande il y a quatre ans.

Pour moi aussi c'est un peu une étrange saison. C'est mon sixième mois dans ce voyage, et j'ai un peu l'impression d'être dans une période de transition. J'ai appris un peu sur l'agriculture, un peu sur la construction, j'ai vu des façons de faire, j'ai développé mes propres idées, et c'est comme si je devais maintenant aller un pas plus loin dans ma découverte.

Et puis, étrange: cette semaine j'ai reçu la deuxième annulation d'un hôte, pour mon prochain séjour, après chez Richard. D'abord je devais aller chez quelqu'un dans les Cévennes, et il m'a oubliée, “parce que je n'avais pas plusieurs fois réécrit”. Ensuite, j'avais arrangé un séjour chez d'autres gens dans l'Ardèche, et ils m'ont oubliée encore, car prétendument mes intentions n'étaient pas claires. Eh bien, je suis un peu étonnée par la façon des gens de fonctionner... Ou bien, j'ai des problèmes de communication! Mais ces deux annulations répétées coup sur coup me donnent une impression bizarre. Peut-être que, au fond, je n'ai pas si envie que ça de rester en Ardèche encore un mois. Peut-être que quelque chose de vraiment spécial m'attend quelque part ailleurs?

Enfin, le résultat de tout ça est que je ne sais pas du tout où je vais me trouver ni ce que je ferai après mardi prochain. C'est un sentiment d'abandon à la vie qui ne me déplaît pas.

**

Parallèlement, il me semble mettre ces jours-ci le doigt sur une piste importante dans ma remise en question de la science telle qu'elle est généralement pratiquée. Cela, par l'intermédiaire du beau-frère de Richard, Manu, qui est arrivé il y a quelques jours. Richard et lui se connaissent depuis leurs études de géologie. Après celles-ci, Richard s'est mis au maraîchage, et Manu lui est devenu prof de sciences générales dans les Ecoles Steiner. Maintenant Manu voudrait venir s'installer ici et travailler avec Richard au maraîchage la moitié de l'année, quand il ne donne pas ses cours.

Ce Steiner, encore lui! Comme disait la copine de Manu l'autre jour (elle, prof de français dans les écoles Steiner), on retrouve son nom partout: en biodynamie, dans les écoles Steiner, dans les produits corporels Weleda... De quoi intriguer. (Note cocasse racontée par Manu: les écoles Steiner portent en fait le nom de Steiner-Waldorf, car c'est Waldorf, propriétaire d'usines de tabac, qui voulait faire une école pour ses familles d'ouvriers, et a démandé à Steiner de l'y aider).

Alors avec Manu on a parlé un peu de science et de son enseignement, et j'ai enfin eu la première présentation de Steiner qui me semble éclairée et réaliste. Pour Manu, Steiner s'est beaucoup inspiré de Goethe. Car Goethe était non seulement un poète, mais aussi intéressé par la science, et a fait certains travaux simples mais intéressants. (Par exemple Goethe a repris les travaux de Newton sur les couleurs et s'est rendu compte que le fait qu'un prisme diffracte la lumière en couleurs certes, mais ce à l'interface d'une zone d'ombre et d'une zone de clarté, n'était pas anodin, comme il l'avait été pour Newton. A partir de ça Goethe a développé une théorie des couleurs qui est utilisée par les thérapeutes et les artistes aujourd'hui, mais ignorée des physiciens.) Et donc en fait, Manu dit plutôt qu'il enseigne la science goethienne, que steinerienne, quoique Goethe n'ait jamais écrit directement sur sa vision scientifique, qu'il a simplement appliquée.

Aussi, selon Manu c'est dans son ouvrage “Une théorie de la connaissance chez Goethe” que la pensée de Steiner est la plus intéressante, car généralement présentée. Il y aurait cherché à appliquer la vision spirituelle de Goethe sur la pensée scientifique. Ce qui vise, en gros et d'après ce que je comprends, à retrouver la part de créativité, d'intuition et de spiritualité dans notre perception et l'analyse du monde.

Car, explique Manu, la science moderne est principalement basée sur une vision mécaniste du monde, et celle-ci convient au monde minéral, mais n'est plus suffisante lorsqu'elle concerne le vivant (personnellement j'ajouterais, lorsqu'il s'agit de tout système complexe, ce dont le minéral n'est pas forcément exclu). Ce serait de notre vision mécaniste que découlent nos problèmes avec notre mode d'agriculture et nos problèmes environnementaux car, lorsqu'il s'agit de vie, la vision mécaniste nous pousse à des comportements déphasés avec les besoins de la cause.

Et que penser des multiples écrits de Steiner sur tous les sujets possibles et inimaginables, et de certaines de ses idées plutôt catégoriques et parfois douteuses? Pourquoi Steiner donne l'impression d'être un gourou qui aurait dit quelques conneries? Manu l'explique ainsi. Steiner était effectivement un type très sensible et très brillant. Mais d'une part, bien qu'il ait insisté sur le fait que l'intuition ne pouvait être utilisée qu'après qu'une solide formation en pensée et logique rationelle ait été développée, certains ont omis cette précaution, et se sont mis à faire un peu n'importe quoi, soit disant à partir des principes de Steiner. Ensuite, Steiner s'étant senti un peu seul avec ses idées se serait joint aux théosophes. Ceux-ci cherchaient une réincarnation du Christ, et croyaient l'avoir trouvé en Krishnamurti. Lorsque Krishnamurti leur a dit qu'il n'était pas question qu'on le prenne pour le Christ, les théosophes se sont tournés vers Steiner. Qui a alors aussi rompu avec eux. Mais entre temps, sa collaboration avec les théosophes n'a pas trop bien servi à sa réputation et à l'influence qu'il a eue. Et puis, son succès grandissant, on s'est mis à l'inviter d'un peu partout à donner des conférences sur toutes sortes de sujets. Il s'y est prêté, et ses paroles ont été transcrites, mais pas forcément toujours respectées, ni leur contexte. Et puis, sa femme aurait apparemment aussi beaucoup retravaillé ses écrits pour les arranger à sa sauce. Et ultimement, car n'étant pas “aussi élévé d'esprit que Krishnamurti, qui est lui toujours resté humble”, le succès lui aurait monté à la tête. Tout cela a fait que, à partir du travail de Steiner, purement philosophique au départ, s'est construite toute une société qui aujourd'hui révère sa parole comme une vérité sainte, et ses pensées sont parfois mal utilisées. “Et, dit Manu, toute pensée devrait être partagée pour être intégrée et puis remise en question. Sinon ce n'est plus la peine, et peut même être dangeureux”.

A côté de ça, je suis aussi tombée sur une revue sur Spinoza. Au 17iècle, en Hollande, il s'est opposé à la vision judéo-chrétienne du “mal extérieur” qu'il faudrait combattre pour atteindre “le bien”, ainsi qu'à la vision cartésienne qui met la pensée au dessus de tout, et a proposé une vision de l'homme dans laquelle le corps et l'esprit sont unis, et dans laquelle le désir est source de créativité et non de... problèmes... Tout cela me rappelle étrangement les bouddhistes, et aussi Alan Watts. Manu dit “Ah Spinoza, c'est le plus grand”.

"Le désir, source de création"... Cela me rappelle une chose qu'un ami m'a racontée un jour. Il me disait que lui, pour faire son travail scolaire, jamais il ne s'était assis à son bureau en se disant "bon, allez je vais faire ce travail". Comme je l'avais toujours fait moi. Avec les séances de désespoir, devant la page vide, qui viennent avec.

Mais lui, non. Le soir (et même la nuit), il rentrait chez lui, et se mettait non pas à son travail scolaire, mais à toutes sortes d'autres choses qu'il avait envie de faire. Sa lessive, jouer à des jeux vidéos, manger, regarder la télé, jouer avec son frère... Mais, avant ça, il prenait ses livres d'école, les ouvrait, et les laissait comme ça traîner sur une table. Et puis, alors qu'il s'adonnait à toutes ces diverses activités, au cours de la soirée, soudainement son attention, sa curiosité, finissait par être attirée par le livre, et alors il s'asseyait, et faisait le travail, sans même s'apercevoir qu'il s'était mis à le faire, sans même avoir "pris la décision" de le faire.

Ce récit m'avait laissée bouche-bée. Existerait-t-il donc un autre moyen de faire les choses, qu'en se forçant à les faire? C'était tellement à l'antipode de la façon dont j'avais été élevée. On m'avait inculqué l'idée que tout travail est, par définition, chiant, et que pour le faire, eh bien, il faut se botter un peu le cul. Avec mon frère, dans l'enfance notre activité principale avait été de trouver chacun le moyen de ne pas faire nos tâches ménagères attitrées. Surtout, qu'aucun de nous n'en fasse plus que l'autre! Car jamais il ne nous était venu à l'esprit qu'exécuter une tâche ménagère puisse être non pas un pensum, mais un plaisir.

Depuis ce moment, j'ai essayé d'intégrer cette façon de faire dans ma vie. Et je crois que ça l'a beaucoup changée. Et je m'en sens très redevable à cet ami.

Châtaigne

Avec Richard l'autre matin, on est allés à Lamastre, le bourg le plus proche, pour mettre en place sa table à l'Exposition artisanale et gourmande ardéchoise qui y aura lieu cet été, dans la salle communautaire. Des volontaires sympathiques nous ont accueilli et aidé. Il y avait des poteries, des confitures, du miel, d'autres producteurs de châtaignes, et je n'ai pas vu le reste, qui n'était pas encore arrivé. Richard y a exposé ses châtaignes fraîches, châtaignes sèches, crème de marron, farine.

J'ai appris récemment que en fait, Richard fait le plus gros de son revenu avec les châtaignes. Au début de son installation, c'est surtout avec elles qu'il survivait, mais maintenant il essaye de diminuer de plus en plus son revenu châtaigne, et d'augmenter le revenu légumes. Pourquoi? Parce que la châtaigne se vend surtout aux touristes, mais pas les légumes. Les légumes, tout le monde en mange.

J'ai demandé à Richard pourquoi on ne pouvait plus vendre la châtaigne à un prix assez faible pour que les locaux en fassent une consommation régulière, comme c'était le cas en Ardèche auparavant. Il m'a répondu que d'une part, dans le nord de l'Ardèche on n'a jamais fait une consommation énorme de châtaigne, car on pouvait bien cultiver les céréales, et que c'est surtout dans les Cévennes que la châtaigne remplaçait le pain. D'autre part, on n'arrive plus à faire la châtaigne pour un coût assez faible aujourd'hui, car une maladie (qui s'appelle??) a ravagé les châtaigniers dans les années soixante, qui fait que le rendement depuis est bien moins important, ce qui fait qu'il faut beaucoup plus de temps pour ramasser le même poids de châtaignes, car les châtaignes tombent plus clairsemées sur le sol. Parfois, les feuilles tombent avec, et c'est « trop déprimant », dit Richard, de fouiller pour trouver les châtaignes sous les feuilles. Et puis, Richard aime bien les légumes. Les légumes, c'est varié, c'est jamais pareil, tandis que les châtaignes, c'est trois semaines non stop pour les ramasser en octobre, et puis le séchage ou bien l'épluchage pour les fraîches, et puis la fabrication des conserves, et tout cela est bien monotone.

J'essaye de convaincre Richard de se concentrer à faire et vendre la farine de châtaigne. Moi, en tant qu'intolérante au gluten, cette farine m'intéresse beaucoup, et on peut faire des gâteaux avec, sans avoir à rajouter de sucre, tellement elle est déjà sucrée! Et pour lui, la farine est peut-être la transformation la plus économique en temps, car alors il n'est pas nécessaire d'éplucher les châtaignes fraîches à la main, mais plutôt on les fait sécher dans le séchoir au feu de bois, et puis on éclate les cosses avec un gros cylindre, et puis on peut mettre les châtaignons en vrac pour faire la farine, sans encore trier ceux auxquels il reste des peaux attachées – lesquelles vont aux cochons, et qui constituent bien un tiers des châtaignes sèches, comme on le fait pour vendre les châtaignes sèches entières.

Mais le problème: comment faire un produit à mettre en dégustation au marché pour publiciser la farine de châtaigne, mais qui ne contienne ni oeuf ni lait? Car, sur le marché Richard n'a pas le droit de vendre des produits transformés contenant des produits animaux, car obtenir le permis pour cela lui coûterait: un laboratoire en inox. En plus, Richard veut utiliser des produits locaux un maximum possible. Alors ça devient compliqué! Donc cette semaine j'ai commencé à expérimenter avec les recettes de gâteau à la farine de châtaigne, sans lait ni oeuf.

Eh bien, il s'avère qu'on peut simplement mélanger la farine avec de l'eau, ajouter des noix et des raisins secs (que Richard peut produire dans son jardin), et cuire le tout au four dans un plat à tarte, et que c'est très bon! Mais Alex le faiseur de pâtes italien, à qui a fait goûter la fameuse tarte, trouve qu'elle manque de moelleux. Il dit que des cookies constituent un meilleur plan parce que, la châtaigne, « à la base, c'est sec ». Et à Richard qui a dit qu'il ne voulait pas acheter du chocolat pour mettre dans les cookies parce que le chocolat ce n'est pas local, Alex a répondu « local local, mais qu'est ce que tu fais chier avec ton local! Tes chaussures, elles sont locales peut-être? ». Alex, il a dit ça, lui qui est peut-être le seul type en France à vendre des pâtes fraîches faites du blé qu'il a lui même fait pousser, avec le purin de ses propres vaches, et de la farine qu'il a lui-même moulue, et tamisée à la main! (Les oeufs, proviennent de ses voisins.)

Au retour de l'exposition artisanale, on s'est arrêtés à l'une des châtaigneraie de Richard, juste à côté de la maison. Celle-ci ne fait que quelques hectares - il en a plusieurs dizaines d'hectares plus loin. Les châtaigniers sauvages étaient en fleur, mais les châtaigniers domestiqués, pas encore. Richard dit qu'il aime beaucoup les châtaigniers en fleur, que ça a un look exotique. Il est vrai qu'elles ont un look un peu étrange, ces fleurs, toutes petites, jaunâtres, et rassemblées en gros et longs bouquets, qui partent sur de longues branches dans tous les sens comme des pattes d'araignées velues. Le châtaigner, avec son gros tronc, ses feuilles allongées, est en effet un arbre bien majestueux. Il peut vivre plusieurs centaines d'années. Ceux de Richard ont entre 100 et 200 ans. On dit qu'à Lamastre il y en a un de 800 ans.

Richard m'a montré les travaux d'élagage qu'il a fait l'hiver dernier. Et de greffage. Oui, le châtaigner, tout comme le pommier, ne peut se faire sans un greffon. Car le châtaignier sauvage donnerait toutes sortes de châtaignes différentes dont peu seraient comestibles, tandis que le châtaigner apprivoisé n'est pas stable. On ne peut donc produire un nouveau châtaignier, qu'en greffant une branche de châtaignier apprivoisé sur un châtaignier sauvage. On fait les greffes principalement à l'orée de la forêt, ou sur le bord d'un sentier, car les greffes ont besoin de beaucoup de soleil pour prendre. Richard a inspecté ses greffes, elles avaient presque toutes repris, il était bien content.

Hope

Summer is finally here, I am so glad. When I used to spend most of my days indoors, I never realized how long it takes for warmth to come. I feel like I have been freezing my butt most of the time since February. The humid weather of France might not help.

Summer! Warmth, vegetables, swimming in lakes! What a precious season.

Yes, vegetables are finally coming. They come a little late here, with the altitude (there is about 20-30 cm of snow in January and February). For the past two weeks we could have mostly salad, young potatoes, and some green onions, and we complemented the menu with chenopods, a delicious weed which likes to grow on rich soil and tastes like a buttery spinach. But now comes broccoli, garlic, Swiss chard, radishes! Also here these days are the berries; strawberries, raspberries, myrtilles and cassis. The cherries in the area were all a failure, there was too much rain, so they burst and rotted and they had little taste.

Richard started to give out the AMAP baskets this week. We have been weeding, planting all sorts of cabbage, potatoes, seeding more carrots, putting out irrigation tubes, preparing chestnut marmalade pots...

**

Today, small tragedy at the farm: a visitor's dog opened the rabbit cage, and killed one of the two rabbits. So I guess, we will eat rabbit soon. But I am not sorry for the rabbit. I prefer to know him dead than leading this stupid life in this stupid cage. Ah, why can't we all get our meat from hunting once again!

**

I am reading books about the history of Ardèche. I learn a lot of interesting things, but one point comes across straight and clear for me: it's been a while that farmers have been subjected to the absurdities of the “market”, this didn't come with the modern loans and big machines. Many farmers of the Ardèche, until the beginning of the century, were malnourished because they couldn't afford to eat the food items that they sold. For example, cheese, butter, wine, were reserved for the purpose of making money. For most artisans the situation was the same. The shoemaker, to remain competitive, would sell his shoes for a ridiculous price, such that the worker in the cordonnerie earned in one day enough to buy six eggs, and would have needed 96 days of work in order to buy the shoes that he made (from “Ardèche”, by Michel Carlat). It is still quite mysterious for me how our societies ended up in such a situation. For some people, it's all clear. Capitalism is the source of it all. But I am not sure, I have the feeling that the real source is something else.

But this dependency on “selling” starts to explain the absurdities that I see in farming. Yes, there seem to be many things that farmers do, which seem to me irrational from the effort/gain ratio point of view. Let's take cheese for example. It's one thing to take some milk from a nursing mother, and to share the rest with the baby. But that's not what dairy farmers do. If they did that, they would not get enough to sell it, so they kill the calf (or lamb, or kid), and take all the milk for themselves (vegetarians, think about this...). But milking the mothers and making cheese is a lot of work. Or perhaps more accurately, it's an enslaving work, because then, when there is no baby to replace you, you absolutely need to milk the mother twice a day, otherwise it will become sick.

But, if you did not kill the baby, what would happen? You would not need to milk the mother every day and twice a day, but rather you would be able to leave everyone happy in the pasture, and just move them to another pasture once in a while. Then the energy, instead of going into the milk, would go into the baby. When it is grown, you could kill it, and eat it, and you would get from it the same energy as that that you would have got from the milk. (At least, that's how I see it.)

One of Richard's friends is a cow cheese maker. He does this alone. Before, he used to do everything: keeping the cows, milking them, and making the cheese. But eventually he realized that it was too much work for one person, so he gave up milking the cows, and instead he raises them for meat. And he still makes cheese, but... from bought milk... Yesterday, I heard from another man a similar story, with goats. But in his case, since not so many people want to eat goat I guess, he had to give up his business.

So I do not understand at all, why did people start making dairy products as a business, instead of meat? Is it because the market was filled with meat already? That doesn't sound right. I just cannot comprehend the phenomenon.

As of vegetables, it seems also that many things are grown more to satisfy the client than because it is reasonable. For exemple, the tomatoes and peppers. It is impossible to grow them without a green house even in most parts of France. Greenhouses are expensive and necessitate quite an investment. But people want to eat tomatoes and peppers, no matter what the climate is.

You should see the fields of green houses and their lovely plastic roofs which cover most of the land of Perigord, for the purpose of growing strawberries. I don't know if, without the greenhouses, the production would not be possible, or simply reduced. But anyhow, do we really so badly need to eat that many strawberries, that we need to completely disfigure Perigord with greenhouses? Not to mention that these strawberries are generally grown either on plastic covered soil, or in hydroponics, so that anyhow you can wonder about their nutritional value, even for the Bio products. Yes, I don't know if hydroponic can be bio, but at least the Bio Label is not at all concerned with plastic. I have seen the soil in a Bio garderner's field being completely filled with pieces of plastic, because he fails to get rid of it all before tilling the soil. This was a very sad seeing.

And I guess, we cannot blame the clients for wanting to buy things that they like. The problem is that the client is completely disconnected from the producers' issues, so basically there is no collaboration between the producer and the client. Some think that the basket delivery system should solve this, like Richard. But I have doubts. I don't have the impression that Richard is really free to do what's reasonable, because he still needs to please his clients, as he still is in competition with the other basket providers.

**

Talking of plastic, you cannot believe how much plastic goes into gardening, I guess this must be true for the rich countries. There are plastic films to cover the soil to prevent weeds, there are plastic irrigation tubes, there are plastic pots to start the seeds, there is plastic covering for the green house. Oh please, someone, invent a plastic which I would not mind to eat!!

**

But I have hope! I think that the massive movement of populations to the city leads to the realization by these city people that pollution is not a fun thing. And this realization could not have happened without this population movement, because when surrounded with lots of nature, it's very hard to see anything as “pollution”. For example I have been several times struck by how much the people “living on the land” that I have been meeting and even the most eco-conscious ones, do not have one tiny bit of the repulsion towards cars that I have, and that I believe many other city people have. So I think that it is in the city, where the troubles caused by our irrational behaviors become concentrated and obvious, that we become forced to think again about what we are doing and why. So now we will be able to put our attention back on nature, with a fresh and more enlightened mind!

Yes, today we have pollution and dead soils, but we should not forget how much humanity has been progressing spiritually, nor the freedom that so many of us now have, something unprecedented in history. And I believe that when people are free, they do the right things.

Yesterday was a curious sequence of teachings for me.

The whole morning, I spent planting squashes. That sounds like a poetic activity (activities, this is how Richard calls the different things that need to be done, and each time he tells me "let's change activity", I expect him to continue with proposing modeling clay). I guess, in theory it should be. Wonderful landscape all around. Forests, hills, cute little hamlets. Cute little plants to transfer carefully from pots into the ground. That should be a lovely "activity".

Well it wasn't. I hated it. And the whole time, I thought "god, I hate this". Why? Well, it's kind of my fault. Since I realized that turning the ground around and to leave it bare kills it, now every time I encounter this bare ground, completely dry just like rock, looking more like concrete than something alive able to give birth to something alive - it makes my hair rise. From a distance, say from a car seat, or a tractor seat, this 'naked' field doesn't look bad. These straight alternating rows of green plants surrounded by brown soil actually look neat, and give you a certain sense of wonder. They make you think, at first, wow, we humans make some nice things. We can grow the plants we like wherever we wish! How powerful is that!

But when you kneel down on this bare, dry ground, to plant something and the big dry pieces

[Unfinished]

Ardèche!

Ah! Ardèche! Land of my great childhood love, The Irreplaceable Chestnut Puree!

I arrived here a week ago. The view above is the one I have when I wake up in the morning - when it doesn't rain. Although, the air is much drier than it was in Ariège, which pleases me (at the end of my stay in Ariège, I started to understand better why the region is so green and unpopulated. It is deadly humid, and many in the Spring are plagued with terrible pollen allergies, like I was).

On my way here I stopped to visit my uncle near Carcassonne, and then on the Mediterranean coast at the beach. God, what a sad area of France! I almost cried seeing these landscapes filled with non-sense ugly and dirty and half-abandoned urban developments. Apparently lots of people want to live there, perhaps they like to get cheap wine I don't know, so ugly soul-free cottages grow like mushrooms everywhere.

And then, somewhere around the department of Drome, you get across some mountains, and on the other side is a new world. Suddenly, everything looks nice and peaceful, rather than ugly and chaotic.

I arrived at the train station in Valence. The city looks a bit like an alternative little Paris. Clean, rich, with little terraces and cafes, fancy big grey stone buildings... with people jogging and cycling on the bridge over the Drôme river.

Between Valence and here: lots of pretty old granit stone houses. Ardèche people were hard workers.

**

Someone in Ariège told me "Ardèche! The first place to be colonized by the Baba Cool!". It seems to be true. There are really tons of Baba Cool here. It's like, not France. People great you with "Salut", and right away kiss you without shaking hands. Almost everyone's hair is long and often dirty and often worn in dreads or in mohawks regrown in all sorts of lengths. They wear clothes that you wonder where they found them. Almost everyone seems to smoke roll-ons. And they often drive old battered cars. It seems that many live in houses with no electricity or water, or they renovate or build houses in eco materials (just heard today of one made of compressed soil bricks, with a lime and cow's dung coating on the inside walls. The people who did it do not look alternative at all).

I am flabbergasted by the cultural diversity of the different departments of France. I knew that they had different cuisines, but I didn't know that they also had different ways of thinking. Or rather, perhaps I just simply thought that all French were obnoxious... :-)

Here I am working with a vegetable gardener. He also has chestnut trees and sells the chestnuts under all sorts of forms (dry, as flour, as fresh preserves, as crème de marrons...). Chestnuts, with potatoes, anciently fed the inhabitants of the region, so much so that the tree was called "The Bread Tree".

The vegetables, he sells in an AMAP. Also, he and other local producers try to organize sharing selling at markets. I went to one of their meetings. Informal and funny, around a garden table and an omelette, nice bread and cheese, I learned some of the great delicacies of the lovely French bureaucracry: example of a conversation: "so, are you a cotisant or a sous-cotisant?" "Hm, I am not sure". There was Paolo, who grows wheat and makes fresh pasta (and who, guess, what, is of Italian origin), there was Estelle who makes vins aperitifs (who used to be a researcher in Biology, until she got fed up), and her man who has cows and makes cheese, a young girl who makes flowers, another girl who keeps chickens for eggs, etc.

My boss, Richard, is young and funny. He was born in the area, studied geology and then decided that it was all good and pretty, but he needed to do something with his hands, "learn how to hold a hammer". With him I learn to speak cool French: "ah ça c'est top". "Trop naze". "Ca va pas le faire". I forget what else. I also learn about all the different lovely insects which want to eat the vegetables, and on how to get rid of them: collect the doryphores (imported from US, here they have no predators...) on the potatoes by hand, drown them in water, squish their yellow eggs laid underneath the leaves with your fingers (you get used to it). Spread the Bt bacterium on the cabbages where the white butterfly eggs have turned into big fat caterpillars. How to lay the irrigation cables. Which combinations of vegetables grow well together. Which soil is good for what. And so on.

His farm in at 800 m of altitude, in a cute little hameau. Down in the valley is the town of Desaignes. Humans first colonized the valley, then gradually went up in the mountains as their population increased. Here there is lots of spring water, but the conditions are not so sweet and warm. Two days ago, we had 10 degrees. Richard put his hat and anorak on, and he said "avec un bonnet, ça va!". Now mid-June, there isn't much else than lettuce in the garden. Peas are starting to come, as well as broccolis.

Richard says that it's a sacrilege to farm here, when there is nice land and warm weather down in the valley below. But the valley below is out or reach for the small farmers like him: it is for the big producers of grains.

Outside of the garden we have all sorts of conversations on all sorts of things. He has personal and very interesting views on history, economics and how the world works. He showed me this movie "Argent Dette" from Paul Grignon http://vimeo.com/1711304?pg=embed&sec=1711304.

***

As my contact with the soil and the plants grows, so does my incomprehension of the process of working the soil: breaking it into parts and making it bare and killing it. It all feels so unnatural. So I am starting to get quite interested in permaculture practices. Here is a neat video about the method developed by Emilia Hazelhip: http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=-1726301048523579590#.

***

There is much speaking everywhere about Coline Serrau's movie "Solutions locales pour un problème global". I haven't seen it yet.

In the area, "local" seems to be the word of predilection.

**

And guess what, the "Clément Vaugier" Ardèche chestnut puree sold all over: is actually made with chestnuts from Italy. It's cheaper.

Amazing

This morning Sol told me something quite interesting.

It started by her saying that she thought that the Ariège is quite a singular area, because it attracts all sorts of people who seek a different way of life, and everyone very much respects the choice of life of everyone else. There are total hippies who live in yurts, and there are people like them who still want modern comfort but in a more eco-conscious way than usual. She says that you can notice this character of the region when you go to the Saturday market at St-Girons, or the Sunday one at Montbrun. At St-Giron "hippies and normals" coexist happily, and everyone is dressed in his own way, and nobody will look at you in a weird way (in fact it feels a bit like Montreal). In Montbrun, you can see all sorts of unexpected things, quite unexpected for France: a wood carver carving wood on the site, a hair-dresser cutting hair, a things-troc (you leave and/or take whatever), etc.

Then she said that this was quite impossible to see in Catalonia, where she and Joan come from. There, there is no "alternative" life style. There are no more small farms. If you want to live on your land, and live from it, and have the children with you at home like Joan and Sol do, people will look at you like you come from the moon.

Why are there no small farms in Catalonia? Well, here is the amazing part: in most of Spain, except Galicia, there is an old tradition which says that the property shall not be divided among the progeny, but rather be passed on in its entirety to the first son. So, farms grew, and never shrank. And now, farms of thousands of hectares are inherited by sons who don't give a damn about them, and everything is mechanized, and there is absolutely no small/family farming anymore. Farmers usually live in a town, and drive 20 km to go to their field in the morning. The wife and kids stay in the town. There is no more "life in the country side".

Hm!

***

Ramon came back here, this time with his wife. She makes bio pig products. Both are quite concerned with ecology and interested in discussing and thinking about the problems more than superficially. The other day, they told me that the biggest and most reknown producer of bio vegetables in Catalonia is their neighbor, and that everyone in the village knows that... he spreads pesticides on his fields during the night.