May
07
Our days have been starting at about 8:30 in the morning, much to our delight and surprise. I always had the idea that, as farmers, we would have to rise with the sun. Perhaps this is because the farm where we are staying is not exactly a farm. It is not commercial, at least.Leni, our hostess, has been living on the property full-time for about eight years. With a love of gardening and a strong commitment to the Slow Food movement, she has turned the grounds into several plots of vegetable gardens, a terrace with herbs and a collection of blossoming walnut and fruit trees. The part of the house where we are staying is an 18th-century barn that Leni has restored -- it is absolutely beautiful, with limestone brick walls and a combination of wood and natural stone floors. For the entire day the building is full of natural light. For the most part, we keep the doors and windows open. The barn is not heated, and without the assistance of the sun and the breeze, it would never get warm.
Our first day was chilly, so cold we were positive we could see our breath. I regretted packing so many t-shirts and only one sweater (cashmere, no less). Since then it has been wonderful, just warm enough for jeans and a tank top, but not too hot for a bit of work outdoors.
Our village, Anlhiac, is quite small, with a population hovering around 300. To better understand the scale, the regional map labels each village, and within each village, shows a small black square representing each farm. That is to say, Leni's house is represented on the regional map. Anlhiac has one restaurant, which also is the local café, bar, tabac, and bread shop. There is also the local church, but everything else is rural residence. We are in the department of Dordogne, also known as Périgord. Périgord itself is divided into four smaller areas: the white, black, green and purple. Black Périgord is where the infamous black truffle mushrooms were originally found and are now commercially grown. The region is the next-to-last most populated region in France -- the last being the island of Corsica -- but over 5,000 castles can be found within it. Nearby there are Roman ruins, as well as the ancient Lascaux cave paintings. To our northwest are the towns of Excideuil and Thiviers. To our southwest, the capital of the region, Périgueux. To our direct east, Brive. The landscape is very hilly and especially green this time of year.
The nights are still and quiet with the exception of an orchestration of frogs living in the hillside spring. The cockrel next door wakes us in the morning (in the case that our cell phone alarm doesn't). The owls woo-HOO throughout the day. And the cuckoo's incessant call is enough to pull anyone into their deep madness. The neighbors have a couple of dogs, the one directly across the street keeps a beehive. Leni herself has two fluffy, blue-gray-colored cats, Dexter and Ella. So far my allergies have been fine, except I can feel the asthmatic pull in my chest when working in the sun.
For our first few days, we shared the bedroom with another WWOOFer -- a curious and brave home-schooled teenaged girl (Sunshine) from a large family in Arizona. Last Tuesday she left for another farm farther south. Before Matt and I arrived, there was another couple WWOOFing with Leni. Their names were Eric and Katie, and if you are curious, you can follow their blog here: bagues et baguettes.
Leni is a (almost) 60-year-old published poet, coming from a half-British and half-Dutch background. She left London for Anlhiac several years ago, and she has managed to immerse herself fluently with the local community. We share many interests (Brazilian poetry, Bob Dylan, Pedro Almodóvar, David Lynch, tracking the effects of internet culture and other predominant social trends), so I consider her library and music collection a blessing. She possesses a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of plants and is eager to pass this information along to her volunteers. Already Matt and I have planted herbs, geraniums and lime trees, and have sowed seeds to grow corn. As part of our WWOOFing experience, we went on a walk with Leni to collect trees for her live willow bench-weaving project. We have weeded, spread mulch, and hacked clay to soften the soil in her vegetable garden. Last Saturday, she generously arranged for Matt and I to participate in an orchid walk, originating in nearby Excideuil. The walk was mapped at seven kilometers, but took several hours considering how often the group stopped to leave the path in search of rare specimens. I pictured groups of middle-aged French women walking through a field, possibly even sipping tea, while pointing fingers at colorful buds. Instead, the randonnée involved guidebooks, walking sticks and extraordinarily large camera lenses.
An integral part of our stay here is the focus on growing, harvesting, preparing and eating of food. Slow Food, they call it. Leni doesn't use pesticides and tries to avoid food products (and even manure) that may have involved the use of pesticides. Working within these limits has been an entirely fruitful (har) experience thus far. The milk and cheese we use comes from a nearby dairy farm. The bread, a local baker. When I made a salad the other day, I walked out to the garden, identified the spinach and started cutting. It's fresh, healthy, incredibly cost effective and, so far, fun! Sometimes the plants have already been looted by snails or tent worms, and to see everyone's hard work go into their mouths and not ours is a bit of a drag.
Our daily lunches and dinners are abundant, vitamin-rich meals. Packaging is kept to a minimum, so our carbon footprint is, too. Leni has a great selection of cookbooks, some of which are entirely vegetarian, so it has not been difficult for us to take turns preparing meals. Wednesday we assembled crêpes with eggs and cheese. To work off all of this energy, we spend approximately four hours a day outside in the garden or the meadow. One morning Matt and I cleaned the windows of the barn, and we did a fine job of dusting out the cobwebs -- and killing the largest spider we've ever seen outside of a zoo.
I hope you have your camera with you, considering the baggage weight limitations, etc.
Pictures can be found at my Flickr site. See the top navigation bar!