A walk in Aignan

View east from the gite at Chateau Lasalle
The Romanesque church in Aignan
View of Aignan, looking towards Pyrenees obscured by haze
Yesterday the afternoon got sunny after a rainy morning so after I cleaned up from weeding and painting some new shutters I walked into town and then through town to the communal forest and the little lake hiding way back in its depths. The lake is man-made and there’s also a small man-made sandy beach with some water slides. A boy was fishing from the bank and had some small successes in the short time that I was there. Because of the recent rain the air feels humid and the ground smells ripe, the woods were thick and overgrown. One farm I walked by had fresh haybales at the edge of the field, smelling warm and sweet. The neatest thing I saw was the old lavoir, a kind of communal clothes washing fountain, just outside town. There was a pond above it full of water lilies, its water dripping through a crack in the wall into the lavoir itself which is now slimy with algae. The benches on two sides of the square pool were still intact and the tiled roof supported by very old handhewn beams is also still intact. We mentioned it to an Englishwoman last night who was visiting - former area residents who have moved back to London - and she thought it would have been so fun to go and do the washing with all the other women… and Karina noted with some irony how much “fun” it would be to haul all your laundry down the hill and then back up it again, wet and heavy.

A little bit of French heaven

Friday, May 23, 2008
Chateau Lasalle, Aignan

We seem to have landed in paradise, or at least almost paradise; here there is weeding and renovation work and I think in paradise there won’t be weeds…. But nevertheless we are in WWOOF heaven.

Our hosts are Steve and Karina, originally from England, who are the same ages as Walt and I; they have 2 boys aged 12 and 9 and a little girl aged 4 who is outgoing and well adjusted and seems to like playing with Reed just fine. There’s only been blood drawn once and that was from Reed’s nose, when he bashed it on Ella’s head when they were jumping on the trampoline. Steve and Karina moved to the Pyrenees in France in the early 90s and bought Chateau Lasalle about 7 years ago. It’s a substantial stone house with parts of it dating back to the 1500s and maybe even earlier than that. Steve does a bit of everything – taking care of the land, gardening, working on the house, running an antique business, putting on art shows – and Karina is a freelance journalist. I've put a link to their website, www.oldfrenchstuff.com, in the title of this post.

We’re staying in the two bedroom gite that used to be a concrete block pig stable that Steve transformed into a lovely and comfortable little dwelling with a view of the east pastures where the sheep and two donkeys graze. You can always tell when people have a sense of design and Steve and Karina obviously do; the gite is decorated simply but with southern French style: lovely old pieces of furniture, lots of cushions with richly colored fabrics, blue and white walls, terracotta tiles on the floor, yellow and mint and pumpkin orange trim, framed antique postcards of the Chateau and Aignan, etc. And they feed us lunch and dinner every day; lunch is usually bread, salad, ham and salami and pate, and cheese. For dinner we’ve had roast chicken with chickpeas, roasted red peppers, and sweet corn; and last night was garlic parsley mashed potatoes and stewed beef from a taureau, a bull, which was killed in the bullfight held in Aignan twice a year or so. Apparently every little town in these parts has a bullring. Steve and Karina never go to the fight itself, but enjoy the meat, which is very rich and tasty. Steve says these bulls live a fabulous life, with acres and acres all to themselves for 3 years, until it all ends in a single bad afternoon. We drink wine that they get from the local cooperative; they take their empty bottles in and fill them up from the tap, like getting gas in the car. It’s cheap and good.

All this is in exchange for Walt and I each working 30 hours a week. Next weekend is an opening – another vernissage!, for those who remember our first experience at Verderonne last September – and we are busy making the front garden and terrace look terrific, as people who come to the opening will be offered a meal for a certain amount of money and they’ll be served outside if it’s nice. I’m weeding garden beds and raking gravel pathways, and Walt is helping Steve prepare the soil and get a new hedge planted around the perimeter fence of this part of the garden which will look nice and also keep the dogs in. My back is killing me but once my muscles get back in shape for bending over I’ll be fine. Next week I’ll help Karina start to get the food ready. I think I’ve just agreed to bake a load of brownies to put in the freezer, and I need to help her think of a starter too. It’s tricky, because she doesn’t know how many people will eat. So she has to prepare loads, and then put whatever’s left in the freezer.

The vernissage is a display of about 40 posters from 1968, especially from the month of May, a time of great civil unrest in France – they even call the people who were participating in the demonstrations “sixty-eighters” – soixante-huitards, I think. Steve is framing all the posters, which Karina inherited from her parents who were quite active in the demonstrations and were in prison in 1968. Her mother must’ve gotten out sometime, though, since Karina was born in July of 68.

The weather here is warm, and yesterday we ate ripe cherries from the tree; today we had salad from the first lettuce harvest of the season. The wisteria climbing up the front pillars of the house bloomed a month ago and so did the iris, and the lavender is just about to burst into purple glory. Everything is lush and green, and this morning we worked in the rain for a while, not minding it since it wasn’t cold. We sleep with the French doors in the bedroom open and wake up to birdsong, and sometimes a little donkey braying.

French customer service not an oxymoron

Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Aignan, Gers, Gascogny, France

A long day of travel can sometimes be uneventful and sometimes can be full of surprises, like yesterday, when the guard on the train came through and started asking everyone about their destinations and telling them in many cases they’d have to get off and change to a bus at Limoges because of a fire on the tracks or station at Perigueux. No trains running between Perigueux and Bordeaux, I guess. Our ticket said we were supposed to go straight through from Lyon to Bordeaux with no changes. So we didn’t understand what was happening and he didn’t take time to talk long with us, which left me feeling quite frustrated; but a helpful young Welshman who was fluent explained what was happening. So we loaded our stuff onto our backs and disembarked at Limoges along with many others, and then I showed the guard our ticket and our final destination and asked if it was possible we’d be still arrive at the same time to make our connection and he said in more French words, Stay on the train until Perigueux! I’ll talk to you more in a little bit! So back on the train we went.

Turns out there was not a hope of us catching our connection from Bordeaux to Mont de Marsan, since we had to take a bus instead of the train from Perigueux to Bordeaux, stopping at all the stations that the train would have instead of just cruising along at 110 km per hour on the motorway. It was a leisurely trip for 100 km through the beautiful evening light down many a winding road. We left around 7:30 and finally got to Bordeaux at 10 pm, just after sunset, after seeing so many picturesque little villages we started to feel there would be no end to them. Then, Bordeaux! Entering Bordeaux across the Garonne River on what is I believe the St. Emilion bridge, lit with lovely rococo streetlamps, and all the street lights on the strand and the massive yet delicate looking buildings reflecting in the water, well, it was tres jolie, to say the least. It was a much better view than I ever had when I visited the city 18 years ago and stayed at the auberge jeunesse/youth hostel. I was so glad we ended up on the bus at that point because we would have never gotten that incredible view if we’d come on the train. Even Reed was enchanted.

After leaving the Jura, we’d meandered slowly across the high elevation of the Massif Central, looping slowly from Lyon up to Roanne and Montlucon and then back down to Limoges. The northern Auvergne was beautiful and remote, but obviously just enjoying their spring. But when we got south to Perigueux and then down further to Bordeaux, you could just feel the warmth radiating from the earth, like the Jura was Canada and Gascony is Southern California.

Don’t let it be said that the French don’t understand customer service. Sometimes they may choose not to do it – maybe keeping their job doesn’t depend on their people skills - but when they do it they do it extremely well. Kind of like experiencing the affection of a cat as opposed to that of a dog. Because of the train delay we had to spend the night in Bordeaux. Arriving at 10 pm, we first schlepped our stuff across the street to the hotels we could see – all full. So when we returned to the train station information and help office and explained that we’d just come in on the bus because of the fire at Perigueux and therefore had missed our connection, not only did they immediately start looking for a room for us, they gave us some boxed lunches, bottles of water, and when they were unable to find a room at the usual places where the hotel will bill the railway, they apologetically asked if we would be willing to stay where we would pay up front but then be reimbursed by the railway. They also paid for the taxi to and from the hotel and the station. And they upgraded us to first class for the last leg of the journey.

Our room was in the non descript Accor Etap hotel but it was clean and comfortable and had a shower with hot water. Fortunately we had traveled with a great deal of food – leftover quiche and meatballs and fruit and a baguette BLT and so on – but the fresh bottles of water they gave us were very welcome, since the very slow train we were on most of the day had no beverages available and our 3 water bottles had been emptied much earlier in the evening. By the time we were in bed it was my birthday and I got kisses from both my boys in honor of the occasion.

French/Swiss Fondue

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
On the train between Lyon and Bordeaux

We were invited over Saturday evening for a “Swiss fondue made with French cheese” at Jean-Claude and Regine’s at 7:30 pm. Apparently there are several ways of doing fondue and the Swiss cook their cheese – gruyere and emmenthal - with the wine but with French cheese you make a sauce of potato starch, white wine, garlic, and kirsch, and when it is well cooked and thick you add the grated Comte cheese after you turn off the stove. When the cheese is melted you put the pans on the little burners on the table. Then you use your little fork to spear a piece of bread, which you then swirl through the cheese a few times in a circle – this is very important for the fondue, the swirling – and then remove it, set it on the edge of the pan and twirl it a bit to get the strings of melted cheese wound up, and then finally eat the bite. I was quite full after just one piece of bread cut into about 10 pieces. It’s very filling and rich. Afterwards we had some hot tea but no dessert because after fondue dessert is “dangerous for the digestion.” I wouldn’t doubt it!

Their house is still being rehabilitated after the major foundation and lime mortar problems due to the drought a couple years ago – lots of new piers going down about 10 meters to stabilize the structure. During dinner we learned that Jean-Claude’s father in Switzerland had been a gruyere maker. He didn’t have his own cows but there was a truck that collected the milk twice a day from the dairy farmers in the area and then the gruyere was made from that. It was Jean-Claude’s first job, making gruyere. We learned this about him after it came out that he was a jazz pianist too – he plays only by ear amazingly well, it was like having Scott Joplin in the room – and he showed us his new electric piano and let us try it out. It was amazingly like a real piano, with a piano’s touch on the keys and even a pedal. After the piano playing we had an aperitif of Champagne with vin de Mirabelle – a liqueur made from tiny yellow plums. The wine was poured several times during the evening, especially after I revealed that my 40th birthday was coming up. And then the Swiss chocolate came out despite the warning about no dessert, and we were sent home with a bottle of wine to drink on my birthday and a bag of Swiss chocolate to remember them by.

Their daughter Emilie hopes to be an au pair in an English speaking country and although I didn’t think anything about it at the time, the next day I found myself hoping that she will come stay with us next summer, to help Reed learn French and so that Walt and I can continue learning. Having a nice girl like Emilie would be a real help.

Chevre-Rit, St. Lothain

Yesterday the hoof men came to trim the horses hooves, which was an interesting time. Jean-Claude and two of his girls came first to help and then they arrived, looking like a combination of cowboys and military men in their buzz haircuts and fatigue-green clothes covered with special chaps that protect their legs when they're gripping a horse hoof between their knees. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of them working on the horses but I'll just say it's always a pleasure to see people doing a job like that, that takes strength and skill and a certain special touch too. The three adult horses stood patiently, waiting their turns, and it seemed that they were enjoying the process while it was underway. The younger horse was a little less patient but she did fine and she didn't phase them a bit. I didn't understand much of what Jean-Claude talked about with them but it seemed they did a lot of admiring of the young Aleesha, wondering if her father was a quarter horse. We also tried to explain that the Appaloosas come from our neck of the woods, and I think that we finally got that communicated. I suppose if I had done some charades it would have been easy to get across the concept of Indians but I didn't feel all that outgoing in the mid-day heat.

We've been buying goat cheese at the Bletterans market on Tuesdays from a youngish sort of intellectual looking guy. Each week we've communicated a bit more with him; the first week we explained about being WWOOFers, the next week he suggested we come visit his farm, the next week I said I'd like to visit his farm and could he draw a map for me? He did so, saying any day is fine at 18:00, and we visited two nights later, which was last Thursday.

We drove east to St. Lothain, discovering some absolutely gorgeous tiny villages along the way, including Monay. Bois de Gand is in a broad flat valley but the hills start immediately to the east of here, with villages built clinging to the hillsides or perched atop the peaks. Everything is built with the same warm yellow limestone or limestone rendering on the outside with tiled roofs, and the new buildings too, so the harmonious effect of that contrasted with the lush greenery (this region gets a lot of rain in the winter) is a feast for the eyes. My pasture-loving nature thinks, this is where we ought to live! But we know that the winter is too long and wet for our taste. But I'd love to vacation here again someday, staying in a gite and just walking down the country roads, like we're doing now.

When we found the goat farm owned by Mr. Richard Bruno and his wife we quickly discovered that the appointed time - 18:00 - is when visitors are always welcome to watch. We were among a small crowd of people milling around during the evening milking. Some of the younger kids were helping a bit. I was dumbfounded at the little tricks he employed to make milking go smoothly. I may not have explained how the goats are kept in place for milking at Fromentaux and probably every goat farm in the world: there are boards with V-shaped openings between them. The goats put their necks in the slots, bend down to eat their grain, and you drop a hinged board down over the wide part at the top so they can't pull their heads out. Well, Mr. Bruno's hinged board was operated by a pull-cord on a pulley that he could reach from where he is standing with the milking machine suction cups. So he gets about 6 goats at a time, they run up the ramp and jostle into their spaces for the big grain treat (he has 50 goats total), hooks them up, and when they're done he releases the board and the girls trot down a little ramp into their big indoor stall, with a door that is also operated with a pull-cord and a pulley. I was gaping and trying to find the words to compliment him on these effort-saving innovations, and he tapped his head and said something to the effect of, "I study."

He showed me the racks of cheeses that they make from 100 to 120 litres of milk each week, all of the milk raw, or "cru." It was all the same procedure as at Fromentaux - raw milk, added enzyme, held at a warmish temp for 24 hrs, then the fromage blanc is ladled into the molds to drain off the whey, salted after 24 hrs. and turned and salted again and turned out to cure - just with newer, nicer equipment and on a larger scale. This operation is just 2 years old; Mr. Bruno's family is from here, he said. My favorite part of seeing the fromagerie was the baby paraphernalia scattered around, as he and his wife obviously have a fairly youngish baby who accompanies his maman to the fromagerie for the cheese making and turning each day.

Aperitif at Jean-Claude and Regine's

One of the neighbors about two miles away is also a good friend to our hosts; Jean-Claude Ayer is a dedicated horse man and he has two of his own and boards nine others for neighbors. He comes by the house a couple times a week to check on our equine charges. Last night he came over, helped clean Aleesha's hooves since she stomps around a bit for Walt, and then we went with him back to his house for an aperitif. Walt also asked him about the lime rendering he'd done on the stable, which looks great but is worrying Walt because it takes him so long to apply it. Apparently it is a very difficult thing to do and Jean-Claude never tries it himself. So that was sort of reassuring in a way. The sections on the side of the stable that he's done look absolutely fantastic so I hope he'll have the patience to keep going.

Jean-Claude and Regine have two daughters of their own and 4 foster daughters, one of whom is special needs. Reed played with the 3 littlest girls in the sandpile while we settled down for drinks and snacks with the rest of the family at their huge dining table - it must have been 18 feet long. The Ayers house and stable have been in reconstruction mode for quite a while; apparently two years ago it was so dry and hot that the lime mortar in the stonework dried out completely (it's supposed to stay slightly damp from rain) and the walls started crumbling. The house has been shored up and is being reinforced but the old stone stable attached to the house is completely gone. Jean-Claude used all the old stones and tiles to create a well-drained area below the stable where he'll have a sand paddock. The new stable is in the process of being built, they'd just poured one of the big concrete foundation walls yesterday. Huge pallets of concrete blocks are waiting in the yard. The horses live in a temporary tent-like stable which looks quite clean and cozy.

Jean-Claude is Swiss and Regine is from Charente-Maritime out west, near where we'll be going in about a month. Both are willowy but strong; Jean-Claude looks almost completely pale skinned and Regine is darker complected with short black hair and intellectual looking glasses. I liked her right away. She was wearing a drapey, clingy flowered red dress over red pants with black heels - as if their entire yard wasn't a construction zone and she was in the city instead of on a horse farm. Their oldest daughter just finished her first year of University, studying literature, and she had enough English to do some translating for us when we got into a pinch. It was quite amusing at times because Jean-Claude is from Switzerland he'd tell us one thing about pronunciation or usage and Emilie or Regine would roll their eyes and tell us another way. We also learned a bit about the difference between formal/written usage vs. common/oral usage. French verb tenses are many and there are lots of nuances that I hope I'll learn eventually. Right now just being able to say "We have been" and "we will" instead of just "we are" is a major breakthrough.

The Ayers are wonderful people, the hour and a half just flew by while we drank rose' mixed with grapefruit syrup, champagne with creme de cassis, ate sausage and cheese and bread and quiche, and talked and listened in French, relaxed by our hosts encouraging attitude and good humor. What had been kind of a difficult day - Reed acted up after breakfast in such a bad way that I had to ground him to his room for most of the day and Walt was in a snit about the lime rendering - was completely rescued by Jean-Claude and Regine and their family.

Regine served us two quiches, one with bacon and one with leeks, which she had used in a quiche for the very first time. Coincidentally, I, too, made a leek quiche the other day for the very first time, with some of the leeks we harvested from the garden. Last year's crop had to make way for planting this year's crop.

I made the quiche the usual way, preparing a pie crust and fitting it in a big tart dish. Then I finely sliced the white parts of the leeks and sauteed them in a pan with some olive oil and sliced mushrooms, putting them in the pie crust and pouring the egg and creme fraiche mixture (about 8 eggs and a cup of creme fraiche) over the top. Salt and pepper the top, and bake at 350 until set. It was a great combination, highly recommended.

Fete Paysanne in the Jura

The weather has been blissfully warm and sunny for five days in a row and we've started taking our meals al fresco on the terrace. It's what we've been dreaming about since, oh, last November and it's incredible what fresh air does for the appetite and for my motivation to cook. I'm learning the art of fixing really good meals with a combination of fresh things from the farmers market, canned pre-prepared things, and stuff out of the freezer. Today's lunch, for intance, was a fresh lettuce salad with grated carrot with the dressing Isabella taught me (2 parts olive oil, 1 part balsamic vinegar, 1 big tablespoon Dijon mustard, and 1 part creme fraiche), bread from the boulangerie that I got on Saturday, herbed pork sausages from the freezer that I browned with some diced onion and then simmered all morning with half a can of canned lentils, water, and a sprinkling of dried veggie/herb mix, the cheese platter with a varied selection (Comte', two kinds we don't remember the names of, a fresh goat cheese that is gaining more character each day, and a Bresse bleu), and for dessert, some lemon cake that I baked from a Dr. Oetker's mix that Isabella had in the cupboard. We've adopted the farm and French custom of eating a bigger meal at lunch than at dinner; it seems to work nicely for our work schedule and also for digestion!

Yesterday we drove eastward, further up into the hilly country of the Jura, where the brown and white cows wear bells and clang harmoniously as they graze. The confederation paysanne fete was at a dairy farm just outside of Mignovillard, a very small town between here and Geneva. The architecture of the houses became more Swiss-like, with chalets and steep roofs with little pointy things on the roofs to break up the snow above doorways. The pastures were blazing green and many of them filled with dandelions, so big and beautiful it was almost as if they were cultivated on purpose. Certainly they're not in any danger of eradication; I wonder if the cows like to eat them? The pastures are edged with low gravelly lengths of what looks like collapsed walls but what are just ancient rock piles from cleaning out of the pastures, with trees and shrubs growing out of them.

The fete paysanne was fun and a challenge for our language skills, but we did the best we could, checking out the solar cooking demonstration, watching the horse spectac (a little show with 8 huge horses and their riders) and buying some gingerbread made with honey, some basil starts for the garden, and tickets for the repas paysanne - peasant meal. 10 Euros per adult and 6 for children got us a borscht-like soup, some boiled potatoes that had been cooked in a huge cast iron pot over a fire, tender roast beef, applesauce, a slice of bread and a large hunk of Comte' cheese, and some brioche and coffee for dessert. Thankfully there was plenty of shade and lots of tables set up in a tent (pictured above) and also in the cow barn, where some of the calves watched the crowds dine. We drank the water provided but others bought bottles of wine or fresh cider from some of the vendors present; the chatter was deafening, even when after we finished we headed up into a shady pasture for a rest, at least 300 yards away. Walt and I discussed whether or not the distant French chatter would sound the same if it was in English or any other language. I think it would sound the same, Walt thinks it would be different. Anyone done studies on this?

On the way home we stopped for an afternoon stroll in historic Nozeroy (pictured above), site of the ruins of a chateau built by some Prince and his ancestors whose last name was Chalon (as in Chateau Chalon, where we went last week) who used to rule this part of the world back in the 1400s and 1500s. These historically important villages are always up on top of hills, the better to see their enemies coming, and so the views are breathtaking (pictured above), especially now that the fields are so green and the trees are leafing out. I can see why people would put up with snowy winters here, if spring is this glorious all the time.

We've definitely got an owl and chicks living under the eaves, above the living room ceiling. We hear them in the evening and see the mama owl heading out on her hunting trips. And this morning, bits of moss and some sticks had fallen through the ceiling onto the stairs from an invisible crack between the ceiling boards. Walt and I sat outside as the sun set around 9:30 pm and watched the bats swoop silently around the yard eating bugs. I saw the owl for the first time too, just a light shadow that came out from under the overhang and was gone in a moment. Her wings don't make a sound. The chicks make plenty of noise in the evenings, though. They squeak and squabble and someone makes an eerie, long drawn out moaning cry that sounds almost alien.