Mike carrying the kiwi branches. He hates kiwi trees now.
by Azure
This is long overdue and it won’t be very coherent, but this is the best recap I can do now…
When I got to the farm, Claude was the first person I saw. She was having a meeting with a guy from the Bio department and he was sort of checking up to make sure that her practices were on track with their standards. She wasn’t expecting me so early and had to put on her glasses to see who it was. When she realized it was me, she greeted me, not warmly, but as warm as she had ever been towards me. She directed me to Margarite’s house and as I was climbing the hill, I ran into Mike.
When we got to the apartment that we had shared the year before and that he was then inhabiting alone, it was a mess! There were dishes all around and he was obviously sleeping on the couch and had a “meditation station” on the floor, which consisted of a pile of blankets in front of the bathroom. The toilet seat was up and he ran around trying to tidy up, not unlike someone would do on a first date. He apologized for the mess and told me it was sort of his bachelor pad. I suppose this is really what Mike would do if he were single, you know, go crazy on honey tea and meditate on the floor a lot. (read more, I could lie and say there are awesome images here, but I won't, it is just a really long post)
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?”
Posted on April 3, 2010 at 3:09 am.
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.”
Posted on March 16, 2010 at 2:44 am.
by Mike
Azure and I, picking olives, noticed that the sky was getting dark up the valley. We asked Margarite, “Is it going to rain?”
“No, it won’t rain,” she said.
We didn’t really believe her, so we kept working. But the darkness grew and we were startled to feel an icy wind flee down the valley in front of the cloud.
We looked up and saw that the darkness had crossed a ridge and was heading for us and whether it was rain, it was serious. (read more)
Posted on May 4, 2009 at 10:27 pm.
by Mike
UK resident Ellen Frye paid us a visit in Nice this weekend and we had a ton of fun. Ellen got to ride the scooter along the coast into Nice on Saturday morning, then we immediately went to Italy for a multicourse lunch that featured much food and much wine. We drove to the town of Eze where we saw the best view on the Riviera. Then we went back to the hotel and checked our email for a while.
For dinner we went to another Italian restaurant – La Voglia in Nice – and had their antipasti misti that included most conceivable foods.
The next morning we went to Antibes and talked about things that were impossible. We walked through the market and along the old wall, we/I had a great conversation with some Harley owners who had fascinating jobs & lives.
Finally we drove up to the farm and introduced Ellen to Margarite, Claude and a new-born goat:
It was an eventful visit to the farm – it was the first time that the year-old goats were to go outside the barn, so Claude gave us all bamboo sticks to guide them and the adults down the hill. It didn’t prevent them from freaking out and one ran all the way back to the barn. Azure had to go and fetch him and carry him to the others, and even when he was within eye and earshot of the others he still didn’t get that he’d have to actually walk to get to them, so he started going the wrong way again. Eventually he was herded to his mother.
We then sat down and made a little fire in the woods on which Claude boiled some water for tea. We had tea and talked about Corsica and cheese.
When we were done with the tea Azure grabbed the pot to bring it back to the house, but Claude said to leave it for the next time.
Posted on March 16, 2009 at 1:13 pm.
by Azure
Before we met with Claude for the first time in Nice, Mike turned to me and promised that he would be on his best behavior, but he couldn’t speak for the hawk. He was the only farmer in the valley with a mohawk and his favorite saying is “You can’t tame it, you can’t tame a hawk.” In French, his favorite topic is something to do with rabbit’s milk cheese. On the first day at lunch he mentioned it to Margarite and Claude. Do you milk the rabbits, he asked. I think they thought he was more city than they could handle until they realized he was joking. A week later, when Margarite looked puzzled with another of his comments, Claude said to her, don’t you know he could be joking at any time.
This blog is a funny thing. It captures bits and pieces of our day that make us think or change, but the majority of our time is spent on things far less serious. Today, we walked around and sat in a hotel. What do you write about on a day that you sit in a hotel? We usually don’t write anything about that.
At the farm, there were a lot of animals to play with. There was a goat that would butt your knee whenever you went in to the pen. I would find excuses to go in so he would play with my knee. Another kid would always jump up and try to eat my sweatshirt. It was cute. I spent a lot of time with goats on or at me.
There was one night when we were out taking night photography in Margaret’s garden. We saw that a rabbit had escaped, but was hanging around the pen because he wanted to be with his friends, but still wanted freedom to roam in the garden. When we told Margarite, she insisted that we spend about an hour chasing the rabbit around, trying to get him back in the pen. Four people trying to herd a rabbit is not enough BTW. We had to try again later and still failed. The rabbit finally chose to go back in on its own.
There is a guy, Marciel, who we were never able to fit into any of the stories about the farm. He was the guy who lived next door and worked for them. He wore a Chicago hat everyday and I think he must have had a stash of beer in the back of Margarite’s kitchen because he would walk in and grab one every evening. He would stand in the kitchen and talk so unfiltered with her. He would get really animated with her and Claude and use words like “Putain” in regular conversation, which translated means “whore.” I am still not sure what the conversations were about.
And then there is all the time we spend riding. Everyday we are not working, we go for a long ride. If our trip was a pie graph, 40% would probably be riding. There’s never much to say about it. It’s always beautiful and always fun, but it’s more of a picture than a post. Or in our case 4,560 pictures. It has gotten to the point where we’ll see a beautiful hill town or an ancient cemetery or some cows roaming free on the road and we won’t even stop. A dime a dozen!
We spend an unusually large amount of time talking about, or if we are stopped, talking to animals. There are so many here and they are still fun to see. There are so many dogs, just running along the road, miles from any town. So many sheep grazing sometimes in front of you and so many cows and horses that just look at you.
And of course we talk about the blog a lot. We read and edit each others posts and make comments. We write almost every night in some capacity. It got out of hand one night in Nice when I had to lie to one of the Austrian girls. I told her that we were going home to have sex, so I didn’t have to nerd out and tell her that we were actually going home early to edit a post.
Oh and then there are the internet cafes. We spend about an hour in a cafe each day uploading things and doing whatever. When we were staying in Sartene, going to the internet required driving to the next town where we would always go to the same bar. The guy who works there got so familiar with Mike that he gave him his email address and phone number without Mike even asking. He’d give us free drinks too, since we are in there everyday.
I don’t know what this post is about. But, I do know that sometimes this blog gets thick and when I read back through, it doesn’t capture the times when life is just going. I think this trip is one of the most interesting we’ve ever taken, but I just wanted to talk a little about the normal life between the posts.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R9M4asxDlQ&hl=en&fs=1]
Posted on March 4, 2009 at 2:58 am.
