Quarter Year

Misplaced Winter

by Mike

Claude looked younger in person than she did in my memory, though she assured me that she has, in fact, aged a lot in the last year. She cried on Christmas: her olives froze for the third time in the year, which meant that they’d be useless for jarring and therefore the harvest, and a large chunk of income, was lost. (What she learned while we were there, however, is that they might still be usable for some low-quality oil.)

This kind of winter has never happened before here: Margarite, 89 and living in the same room in which she was born, says the climate is changing. They were looking at the weather in Vancouver during the Olympics and saying, “We wish we’d had their winter.” This farm is on the French Riviera, need I remind you. There were a few toe-numbing mornings when I’d shuffle across my small room, peak out the window and see snowflakes tumbling through the olive leaves.

I told Margarite that maybe I should stop driving my car when I get back home. She looked confused. “I think driving is causing climate change.”
“Nahhh,” she said. Now I was the one that looked confused.
“Yeah, I think it is. It’s industry and chemicals in the air. The industrialized food chain as well.” I said.
“I don’t know…” she said.
“What do you think is making the weather so crazy?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it. But it’s changing.”

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Tags: claude, climate change, daily life, organic farming