Alain left for a week of vacation and Anna told me that her much younger friend Ferdinand – he’s 80 –  was going to take her to the field. When I finally figured out that he was only dropping her off to work all alone, I decided to drag my sorry ass out of bed early (6:00 a.m.) and go pick her up myself and work with her. Kevin was gone for the entire month, so it would be just us two gals. It was so much fun! I got to her house around 6:15 and first we had a big breakfast of tartines (bread and jam) et beaucoup de café. Then we hopped in their camionette – which I got to drive – and headed off to le champ.

As soon as we arrived, she started giving me orders, and I followed them. I was, in effect, her slave. She was like a general commanding an army: she surveils the field,  sees what needs to be done, and she just gets to it. As she says, “Le travail est le travail.”

Our first day together began with irrigation. They have an ever-changing web of plastic pipes that connect to a big water pump. You can connect, disconnect, and reconnect the pipes, to direct them into to troughs they’ve dug that parallel the long rows of plants. The water shoots out the pipe and flows alongside the row. You can regulate how far the water goes by damming the trough with a couple shovel-fulls of dirt, or releasing a previous dam.

If she doesn’t have a sure-fire way of doing something, she improvises.  Anna wanted to irrigate four rows of sunflowers from the top of the rows all at once, but it was set up to irrigate one row at a time. She instructed me to connect what she called “a peasant’s pipe” – a soft rubber tube – to the hard plastic tube. Then she had me cut four holes out of the soft tube as it ran along the top of the rows, et voila! The new system worked perfectly. She cried out, “C’est mon chef-d’oeuvre!” (my masterpiece). I have never seen her so happy as she was that day in the field.

And I was pretty heureuse myself because my next “task” was to pick raspberries. A lot of them didn’t make it to the basket. J’adore les framboises!

Categories: Environment, Farming, Friends, Memories, Provence
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Kevin and I popped down to the field aprés un petite absence and were startled to see how high les tournesols had grown. It seems like we had just planted them, but that was back en avril. Mon dieu! Growing in between les tournesols are courgettes – zucchinis to my American friends. Anna cut me a bouquet and also threw in a little branch of some delicious berries. I don’t know what they are and will have to faire un peu de recherche sur l’internet. Meanwhile, des photos –

Categories: Environment, Farming, Provence
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Alain called us yesterday to say he had a barquette of strawberries for us – the first of the season. I took a picture of what was left of them after breakfast today.

My son, Jake, gave me a book for Christmas last year – Bringing It to the Table, a compilation of essays by Wendall Berry. Berry has been writing fiction, poetry, and essays – as well as farming a hillside in his native Kentucky with his wife – for over forty years. I had never read his work before, but his ideas about food, its production, and its consumption seem to encapsulate everything I’ve been thinking and learning about food, especially since moving to France nearly five years ago. As I ate the delicious utterly fresh little strawberries this morning in a dish of yoghurt that Kevin had made, I thought of these words by Berry, “A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes.”

It is so true. With each bite of these strawberries, we are fully conscious that they were planted by Anna and Alain in their nearby field, were grown with no pesticides, and that we even had the chance to help them along ourselves by weeding and cleaning up the row of little plants. And that consciousness has definitely deepened our appreciation, enjoyment, and confidence in this bounty.

Ruth

Categories: Farming, Friends, Provence, Uncategorized
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My plan is to document a year’s cultivation of Anna’s Field, starting with our participation this year in March, and continuing on through the year. As is obvious, I suppose, every time we visit the field the changes are many and obvious. Last Friday and Saturday (23 et 24 avril), Kevin and I planted twelve rows of tournesols – sunflowers – with Alain, while Anna stayed at home and prepared lunch feasts for us hungry field workers. I don’t know the actual length of the rows but they felt really long as we were planting them. A field full of tournesols is one of the many symbols of life in Provence and to actually participate in its life cycle is a such a joy. I can’t resist showing a photo of the pinnacle of that cycle from last year’s crop.

There are vast stretches of the field still to be planted, but already various fruits and vegetables are well on their way. Alain showed us different varieties of potatoes, fava beans, peas, artichokes, strawberries, raspberries, kiwis, pears, borage – with beautiful blue flowers which Anna’s bees love. Herewith some photos.

Ruth

Categories: Environment, Farming, Provence
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… I wonder where dem boidies is. Dem boids is on dem wings. Ain’t that absoid? Dem wings is on dem boids!  (Alas, just missed The Beat Generation.)

I’m a little slow, comme d’hab, with keeping up with the blog, but here goes. We went to work in Anna’s field – for the first time this year – on March 27th. I wanted to record a photo of the field with the date, to keep track of its changes over the growing season. We met Alain in the field – while Anna stayed at home and prepared a big lunch for her hungry laborers (Kevin, Alain, and me) – and we weeded and generally cleaned up a big long row of strawberries (fraises). After a long cold wet winter, it was nice to get back outside and, especially, on to the farm.

Ruth

Categories: Environment, Farming, Friends, Provence, Uncategorized
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