Quarter Year

That afternoon, I took a nap and he worked for a couple hours before the family went to town to pick up the third sister from the airport. Mike and I used the time to go into town and get a few things. The freedom of being able to just go to town was a huge deal to him. He had to take the bus to Nice a couple times. It only came twice a day and came back once a day. He had taken a different bus to a town down the road and had to hitch hike back.

Since all of the sisters were in town, we ate lunch by ourselves. It was fine, a simple meal, some vegetable soup, corn and beet salad and some bread. It was probably the nicest meal we had the whole time I was there.

My feelings about going back to the olive farm were these, I was neither excited nor dreading it. I didn’t feel that we had left on the best of terms, but they weren’t horrible. I went back because Mike was there and from what I understand, he went back because he had a respect for the place and felt a connection with it because it was the only farm that we had worked on.

Needless to say, I didn’t have the same nostalgia about the place that I did before. I was prepared to do crappy jobs and work alone and not really get a lot of positive interaction with the family, so it was fine when that happened. The first morning Mike went off to do the hard labor that he had requested and I was to make confiture (jam) with Claude. Mike had told her that I wanted to learn how to make jam and I was really excited and sort of shocked that it would happen. I was actually skeptical. And I was right, it was too good to be true. Claude showed me the process. You sit in a room with no heat (there was still snow on the ground outside), by yourself, washing the oranges in water that is barely above freezing level. Then, you cut them open to find no juice, but many seeds and you dig the seeds out. If there are too many seeds, you take the whole inside out and keep the orange rinds. They were the saddest of the sad oranges in the saddest of the sad settings.

I finished the whole bunch right at noon and we were off for lunch. After lunch we went back to work. I never got to see the end of the confiture-making process because I was too busy ramassaying (picking olives off the ground). This wasn’t my very least favorite job, but it isn’t too high on the list. In fact, when I got sick last year and Mike had to pick olives off the ground by himself, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the reason we ended up leaving so abruptly. It isn’t so horrible of a task if it is sunny and there are people around to talk to, but when you are sent to do it, it is almost degrading. It is monkey work and you feel less important.

That being said, I didn’t let it bother me much. I think coming to the farm with low expectations and the knowledge that I was only working for 2 days made anything bearable. I suspected that I would have these tasks, mainly because I knew how much time it took to earn Claude’s respect and I knew i didn’t have that much time OR the desire to do so this time. I just did my job until the bells rang 5pm, then went on my way. (we would later find out that WWOOFers were only supposed to work 4 hours a day, 5 days a week–we would work 6.5 hours a day, 6 days a week)

Mike was doing something else that afternoon, moving branches around or something and he would pass by and whistle at me. Even that quick exchange made me feel like someone cared about me and it made picking olives not so bad.

At one point, Claude needed me to cut the blackberry bushes back, so that Mike could dig them out. This job required that we work together, something which I believe Claude tried endlessly to avoid. It didn’t slow our work at all, but it did make it MUCH more enjoyable. In fact, we would have been much happier doing all the tasks together and probably would have worked better and faster.

That night we ate dinner with Claude in her place. Despite the fire, it was cold inside as usual. She wasn’t feeling well. When we got to her living room, there were only two comfortable chairs by the fireplace. I pulled over a regular chair from the table, but she said something and went off into the other room. She proceeded to take an electric saw and cut the legs off of a broken chair so that it was at the same height. I sat down. Claude told a story in French that I understood 1/3 of, then she went to bed.

On that night, we thought of the word for Claude–martyr. There is no other way to describe her. The sadness that we felt for the place the year before, I can’t help but think that is how she wants us to feel. The place doesn’t have to be sad at all. It is what it is because of what Claude and Margerite make it.

Mike later told me that Claude had told him that “people idealize this slow way of life, but it is hard, you are constantly fighting against nature.” Her life is a struggle because she makes it a struggle.

The next day was easier. I ramassayed alone in the morning and after lunch. They told me to go find olives on the ground and pick them. Most of the trees had been picked, so I had to hunt for them, but I filled two baskets full. I was a ramassaying machine. I was literally digging them up out of the ground to fill those baskets. This year I wasn’t doing it for Claude and Margerite to succeed, i was doing it so I could succeed at not being sucked down into their misery. At lunch, Claude came to the table with Margerite and Monique (the youngest, prettiest one, who we found out had cancer last summer). Monique seemed nicer this time. She was personable and real, still distant, but I think that’s how she was raised. Claude sat at the table with her head in her hands. She was so sick that she couldn’t even eat, but she still came to the table. It was a scene, people trying to talk without paying attention to the woman bent over in pain at the end of the table. She should have been in bed, but it was in her nature to suffer, and I think, have everyone else know she was suffering.

At 4:30, I took my full basket up to the house. Margerite gave me another quick job of pulling weeds in her garden. I could see Mike now, he was finishing up with pruning the Kiwi trees. It was a hard job and I didn’t envy any of his hard jobs. At 4:55, he came over and watched me work. He was done because it was close enough to 5pm to be done and he reminded me of that.

Mike took this picture when he quit at 4:55 and watched me work for 5 minutes.

Neither of us have jobs like that. We don’t quit at 5pm, we work until we finish or get to a stopping point and it felt incomplete to just walk away.

Before we went down to the apartment, Margerite told us that Claude needed us to work on Saturday. Mike had told Claude that we were going to go to lunch in Italy on Saturday and we needed to leave early. But, she needed us to work in the morning, so we did. Mike dug holes and planted fruit trees, I weeded a garden that I didn’t even know existed. We didn’t make it to Italy in good time. It didn’t matter, though, the place was closed for for repairs and we ended up eating elsewhere, but it was still bitchy. We could have been upset, but we really weren’t. I remember thinking as I was pulling up the lawn of weeds that covered the few puny lettuce leaves that I was just so happy that I was not sad. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it isn’t. I didn’t have to live like Claude and I didn’t have to think like Claude and even though she could keep us there working, when we wanted to be eating delicious Italian food, she couldn’t make us feel as miserable as she felt. It was a win. Wow, this is kind of a mean blog post!

And we did end up eating good Italian food. And the Italian people were nice to us and invited us back for a party! Which is one of the reasons we thought, “Why do we want to move to France instead of Italy?”

One of the workers has installed himself in this little room, it’s kinda his home base for the workday. Beautiful walls.

I’m sure not everyone will like this, but it’s one of my faves from the batch. I wanted to create a picture that showed how I saw the Jeanne d’Arc statue with its emotional power, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it. When I saw the result I was really excited – I’m happy that I’ve learned enough technically that I can start with a picture in my head and bring it into being through the camera. Mmmmaybe I’ll brighten it a bit.

by Mike

A wedding party from LA showed up yesterday so we had to tip-toe around and stay out of the chateau proper. They were playing rap in the dining hall which was evidence of a horrible disconnect. I like rap, but on your first night in a chateau? We could sense that their pace of life was different than ours had become over the course of the trip and it was grating to be around.

Whatev. I’m obviously just territorial (even though the chateau isn’t my territory).

Anyway, we arrived in London safely and are in wonderful Ellen’s wonderful apartment. We walked in and she had a chicken roasting in the oven, herb potatoes and a fennel salad waiting for us. What a welcome! Tonight we’re off to what’s been touted as the best Indian food in London. My whole body is watering at the thought.

I decided I wanted to take a few more pictures but I didn’t want Azure to be bored, so I said she could go back inside since we were so close to the driveway and I was over my fear. Well, that was a bad idea. She went to do some emailing and when I clicked the first shutter for a long exposure (Click, 1, 2, 3, 4….) the night started growing larger and I felt like little eyes were watching me. I heard noises like a tin can being swept in the forest and another bird took off and my heart went from 70 to 150 bpm in a flash. So I ran out of the allee and when I was finally in the open I set up for another picture. I opened the shutter and counted. I heard a noise in the forest again, but then it got really silent. There are really no good options for night in a forest. You don’t want it to be too quite nor too noisy… I was crouching down for the photo and at that moment there was a loud splash behind me that seemed to be coming at me. I turned and in a moment of completely unplanned instinctual response I literally hissed in the direction of the noise.

I thought, “ok, this shit is getting to me,” so I went back to the chateau and found Azure and we walked briskly back to our room.

by Azure

My birthday was a typical day here at the chateau. I got up and started working on our painting project in the morning. At around 1pm we stopped for lunch. Since it got sunny last week, we have been having lunches out on the back patio under the columns. Mike made a tomato sauce (tomato, red pepper, eggplant, zucchini) with an egg in it over pasta and we had a mache salad with beets, kiwi and tomatoes.

For the “special” birthday dinner, we started with Kir Royals on the patio with creme fraiche and smoked salmon and caviar (caviar is pretty normal here, cheap and easy to find). Even though it was just the six of us, we still ate in the fireplace room, since I love it so much.

Mike made a chicken caccitore with potatoes and I made an unsuccessful Oeufs a la Neige (Eggs in snow?). The neige turned into a baked pancake when it should have been a fluffy snowy thing that sits in english cream. Luckily, Linda had made a walnut and chocolate flat-cake, so we put that in the creme. I drank Negrita and coke all night, the others had their choice of red or white wine.

After dinner, we talked by the fire and I got some beautiful soaps and some stiff french linens from everyone. Mike got me treats, popcorn, the Negrita and coke and some mache seeds for taking home. It was a lovely day to add to the list of lovely days here. It feels like everyday is my birthday!

It turns out, the milk they had given us was pure, unpasteurized, whole goats milk. Which, on another note explains some things about the bowel movements that were happening on the days when I thought I was drinking 2%. The good news was that they had all the supplies, so Patty drove Linda, Cryus, Mike and I to go get more milk and petite lait.

It was 6pm when we arrived and she happily gave us all that we needed for only 3 euros. This time I got enough for two more trials, one slow cooked and the other faster cooked. She filled the buckets we had brought and sent us on our way.

When we got back to the chateau we realized that we had forgotten the fresh milk. Linda, Mike and I piled back into the car and drove back out to interrupt their dinner and retrieve the milk for brocciu.

After dinner, around 11pm, we started the first trial. This one was slow cooked. I added less salt this time and the proportions were perfect. It got hotter and hotter and finally when the bubbles parted we waited longer and sure enough the brocciu arrived! I scooped in out and put it in my little pot and couldn’t wait to taste it. I got a little spoonful and put it in my mouth and it was so so bad. It tasted just like curdled milk. I had to spit it back into the pot.

Try number two, we figured we had overcooked it time before, but being almost 1am by this time, I had to heat it quickly. It went faster this time, I didn’t spend as much time watching it. I feel like I am getting to know the milk, so I don’t need to. Anyway, when it heater up, I didn’t want it to sit in there too long again, so I turned off the burner as soon as it split, but the brocciu never arrived at all. It was just foam! Again I was so disappointed.

Perhaps it is actually really difficult to make brocciu like people have been telling us. Mike could see that I was getting really down. He told me that when Phillipe had asked how many times Mike thought it would take us to get it right, Mike had answered 10. That made me feel a little better, but I am just not good at this whole persistence thing. That’s Mike’s department. I guess I need to learn that too. I’m counting down though, only seven more tries until I eat the sweet brocciu.

Cyrus and Patty wait patiently while the supplies are bought at the cheese farm.

by Mike

It was a take-your-pants-off-and-use-them-as-a-pillow kind of day on the lawn.

The chateau seems to collect characters, one of whom is Patty, an American ex-ish-pat who’s living on the chateau grounds for now but nothing’s ever really declared here. Where will you live next year? Eh. What did you do for a living back home? It doesn’t really seem to come up. What’s the latest on the financial cri- don’t even think of bringing that here. Here’s one thing I’d love to share about her, though – she collects bones for soup stock. She boils the bones “to nothing” over days, mixing them with lettuce or brandy or whatever’s around and adding water as needed. Her last stock was 72 hours of boiling. We haven’t tasted one yet, but I’ll write about it when we do.

During the days we walk the treed trails on the grounds, we work in the garden, we cook a little lunch, we investigate mysterious buildings on the 50-acre property. The days are great. Night, though, surges onto the place. It paints the windows black, it suffocates flashlights. It squeezes my ribcage until it itches and it makes footsteps sound like faint music. Night sneaks into every empty room, making noises along the way, and waits, and you can hear your breath the whole time. The chateau is enormous, it’s too big for the night.

At dinner Patty talked about the ghosts. There’s one that sits down on the edge of her bed while she’s sleeping, she can feel the impression. Someone else talked about a man in a long coat coming into the room at night and speaking French. Apparently the long coat man has been seen a couple times here – he belongs to the chateau, the story goes. I was wondering what I’d do if I came face-to-face with the man in the long coat one night, too late, maybe too drunk. I’d like to think I’d talk to him and find out what he’s about. But that’s not what I’d do.

After the ghost stories I stayed up to take some night photos of the chateau from the entrance. It was midnight and clear, a moonless night. Here’s how night photos usually go – I click the shutter and start counting. I look up at the stars, I look for other angles I could try, I listen to the night until I get to whatever I’m counting to and then I close the shutter.

Here’s what happened last night on this ancient property: I clicked the shutter and started counting. I was counting to 50. When I got to 10 I heard footsteps in the trees that never materialized into a person. I noticed that the vapor from my breaths wasn’t disappearing and I wondered how many breaths the air could accumulate. When I got to 20 I could sense someone was behind me. I looked over my shoulder into the thick darkness but I kept sensing they were behind me after I’d turned. At 30 my heart was racing and I was taking shallow breaths so I might be able to hear anything coming at me. My ribcage was itching and I was imagining my death. At 40 the tree I was under burst into noise as an owl decided to flee right at that moment. At 50 I closed the shutter, grabbed the camera without looking at the photo and sprinted back to our room where Azure was waiting for me.

So that’s what I’d do if I saw the man in the long coat – I’d sprint.

(this was written on the wall when we got here….)

It says, “FATHERLESS – Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still.”

I want to do a re-enactment of this, maybe holding a cat up to a picture of a dog.

by Mike

Last night I met some very nice railings in the chateau’s stairwell.

by Azure

The chateau will always need something done on it. When one project is finished, another shows up. I was glad to see that this hadn’t changed since the last time.

Our current project is repainting the windows for the reception hall. The caulk was old, so we took the rotting stuff out and laid new beads. On Tuesday, we will start the painting.

It had been sunny in the mornings with clouds coming in later. It rained the first two nights we were here, but now the forecast calls for blue sky days everyday.

Mike will lay the caulk and I will do the finish work, since I have more experience from boat detailing. His job takes a little less time than mine, so he has some extra time for taking photos around the property or napping.

While you are working, it is common to hear the birds, a particular big man at the chateau likes to talk a lot. Patty will talk back to him, just to show him that he isn’t that big afterall, but he doesn’t get the message. He just keeps cooing.

You also find some kitty problems from time to time which need to be dealt with.

At night, we have found a new best friend in the hot water bottle that Linda gave us. It stays warm and keeps our feet toasty all night long.

by Azure

A quick back-history on where we are staying… In 2002, when Mike and I had only been dating seven months on and off, Mike went to study in Bath, England. Not knowing what to do with myself, I went to visit with the idea that I would travel around Europe on my own for a couple months. As it turned out, my cousin Kim and her fiance at the time, now husband, were care takers at a chateau in France for their family friends from San Juan Island, Nash and Linda. I decided to go visit Kim and Adam for a while. Mike came to visit that Christmas. The following year, I returned with my mother and my friend Cori and my mom’s friend Cari for Kim and Adam’s wedding.

I honestly didn’t think I would ever be back here for any length of time. When we found out that our scooter was illegal, however, it changed our plans more than we expected. A passing comment lead to a call that lead to an email that lead to me calling Nash and finding out that they would be here at the exact same time that we needed a place to go. A quick train ride from Paris led us here, meeting a family that we had never met before in their chateau 6000 miles from where either of us were from.

I was reluctant to come back for a few reasons. First, I felt that the experience that I shared with Kim and Adam in 2002 was so unique and special that I couldn’t hope to recreate it in any way. When I returned for the wedding, it was hard seeing the chateau on such different terms. The first time I stayed here it was quiet, there were only three of us living on the grounds and at night we had all 15 bedrooms to ourselves. There were no rules or schedules and we shared fires and dinners and talks every night. At the wedding, with the place full of people, there were more rules and deadlines and obligations and I had to section off the new experience so it didn’t taint the old in any way.

When we returned this time, I prepared myself to section off another part for this experience. I didn’t know what to expect and it wasn’t really clear what we were going to be doing here. However, upon arrival, we found that this place still cultivates the pace of life that we had become so addicted to the first time that we had visited.

We got in at about 5pm and walked around the property. The place looked exactly as I remembered it. We sat down for a slow dinner with great food and wine and conversation and we sunk into the slowness and haven’t sped up since.

This pace is possibly where my heaven exists and coming from a week of my lesser hell it is only highlighted even more. My heaven is a place where no one has anywhere else to be for long long periods of time. This is a place where people expect to eat together without the television on and where it is expected that it will take a couple hours at least. It is also a place where all of the participants appreciate food and appreciate the process (both Linda and Patty are high caliber cooks and Linda loves to garnish).

I have expressed my love for this lifestyle before, when we were in Brazil with our friends and we all knew we were going to be hanging out every day and every night for over a week. What I was surprised to find is that I am enjoying it so much even with people that I had never met before. I think this place draws it out of you. But also, the people who are found hanging out at a chateau in St. Julien L’Ars in March are also the kind of people who are taking life pretty slow.

I don’t want to seem like I’m all “best time ever” but today was the day I realized that the dinners weren’t going to stop and I changed into chateau gear. Literally. In 2002 my chateau gear was an over-sized navy blue vest with a duck apron underneath. Today I found a floral dress/apron that I put on for the brocciu making and don’t plan on taking off.

Check out a few photos from the last 2 visits to the chateau.
Look how young we are 2002
The wedding 2003

by Azure

I attempted my first unassisted batch of brocciu today in the kitchen of the chateau. Everyone else had gone to the brocante (a big flea market) in Chauveny and Mike and I stayed back to have a leisurely lunch and make the brocciu.

Patty had introduced us to her cheese man who is impossible to get near at the Chauveny market, but parks his cheese van by the Abbey on Fridays and is available for chatting. We had asked him for some “petite lait”, pronounced “petite lay” which, coincidentally, Patty would also love to receive from the cheese man, though not for the purposes of making brocciu.

He brought us two buckets of it to the market (for free) and told us where to go to get the fresh milk. We went to the farm and asked for some fresh milk and they brought us 2 liters for 2.50 euros. A cheap project!

When I started the process today, it looked like everything was going well. I figured out the temperature conversions and did everything right on schedule. We figured out that at the exact same moment that the pot boils, the brocciu arrives. We watched and watched and it started to smell like cake, just as it should. It arrived. The foam on top began to part and we turned off the flame and I dipped my ladle in the pot to scoop it out and there was nothing there. What happened to the brocciu????

We had done everything right, I checked and rechecked the proportions and couldn’t figure it out. The tough part was that I could see the brocciu in the pot, but every time I tried to scoop it out, it went through the holes. I then realized that the woman, instead of giving us fresh-from-the-udder goat milk had given us normal drinking milk. Sure enough, I took a sniff and it was so mild. I drank a little and tasted normal, 2% or maybe even fat free.

Mike said that he hadn’t thought it would go smoothly the first time. I was disappointed, but with the discovery of the wrong milk, I was relieved that it wasn’t human error. I could at least have hope that I could still make brocciu given the correct ingredients.

I have decided to try again. I’ll have Mike call the farm ahead of time and ask for all the correct ingredients. I am determined to get this right before leaving here, so I can be confident that I know how to make it. Stay tuned for its arrival.