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