I have decided to give you all a little peek into my travels and farm life after almost 3 weeks of no blogging. I am writing to you now from the Foures cheese farm in Milhas, France. The next biggest town is where we sell the cheese, and it is called Aspet. The Tour de France passes through there every year (notably climbing Col du Porte d'Aspet). After that there is St Gaudens, where I arrived by train last Sunday evening, then Toulouse. We are situated up in the mountains not too far from the great peak of Mount Cagire (I think that is how it is spelled). It is absoluetly beautiful and I am having a great time, but before I go into much more detail I will give you a little summary of where I was before coming here:
Prague: I stayed with a camp friend, found live music every single day, and ate goulash! It is a beautiful city with great colors and a crazy language!
Florence: My fav! Beautiful and full of things to do and see. I climbed to the top of the Duomo, hiked up to a church overlooking the city that has an incredible cemetary, and ate amazing gelato! I also learned how to make gelato when I took a pizza and gelato cooking class! Then there was the Chianti hike and wine tour--gorgeous, in all senses of the word! I also visited with an old camp friend who is studying abroad there for the summer. So good to be reunited in Europe!
Venice: Despite the rain when I arrived, I managed to do a lot of sight-seeing. I visited the Duke's palace at Plazzo St. Marco and the glass blowing island of Murano. I couldn't get enough of the bridges over the canals! So cool!
Nice: I absoluetly loved my time in Nice. I met some awesome people and together we went to Antibes and Cannes for the film festival. I may or may not have seen Maggie Gyllenhaal :) We ate a little picnic dinner on the beach, then watched the old Titantic film, A Night to Remember, on folding chairs wrapped big plush blankets once it was dark.
Barcelona: A really awesome city with tons to do and see, but I must admit, I was way too lonely in Barcelona. I would love to go back some day with people I know. It was great to chill on the beach every day though!
And that brings us to the farm!
Everything is going really well here and I have done sooooooooooooooooooo much! I dont even know where to begin! The basics are: milking the sheep twice a day (turns out what I thought meant little goats means female sheep!), picking fresh cherries and strawberries, de-pitting the cherries for making jam, cheeeese makiiiing!, brousse making (essentially cottage cheese made from the milk that is left over from making the cheese), and playing with the pet wild boar haha They took the little thing in after Jean-Louis killed its mother while hunting this past Feb. His name is Roui Roui (like the sound it makes). He is like a dog, it is so funny! Ginette loves him :) Actually...it might be a girl...anyway, it lives under the porch in a pen where they usually put a dog or a sheep that's going to give birth. It smells pretty bad, but it's cute nonetheless.
I am very lucky with this family because they are patient with my French and I work along side them, not FOR them, which was one of my worries going into wwoofing. The couple who run the farm are Jean-Louis and Ginette Foures. Their daughter, Gael, is living with them until her little house down the road is ready. She is in her early thirties and it is her computer that I am using. Oh, and she has a pet raven named Corback that she carries with her almost everywhere (except the market, of course). Their son, Louic, lives up the road with his wife, Sevrine, and 3 kids--Louise, Gillien, and Juliene. They are my favorite family in all of France--absolutely adorable and genuinely amazing people. Louise is 7 and is learning English in school, so I teach her words every once in a while. She has really taken a liking to me and I am going to St. Gaudens with her and Sevrine tomorrow to watch the rehearsal for her dance performance since I wont be here for the real thing.
I have watched Jean-Louis make the cheese (which is a cow and sheep mix) one time, and I helped the other wwoofers make the most recent batch. The other wwoofers, a couple, left today. They left a week early because there was too much work and not enough play. It was the guy's idea and his girlfriend wanted to go out more and see things/places. So now I am the sole wwoofer for the next 2 weeks! Which means that I get to make the cheese next time! Yaaay! That also means that I am trying to milk faster to make up for the loss of two other sets of hands. Not that it really matters since Jean-Louis can milk 3 sheep in the time it takes me to do one! But I a, speeding up! I started to milk with two hands at the same time this afternoon. Before I could only get the job done milking one side at a time. It is not as easy as Jean-Louis makes it look!
There have been a lot of things that I have had to get used to in terms of cleanliness and manners, but I am trying really hard to adapt and not let things get to me. For example, the water from the sink goes into the creek next to the house, so they avoid using dish soap when washing the dishes. Instead, they just use hot water and a sponge. The sponges are grody, and I have a history with grody sponges, so that has been a hard pill to swallow. I am getting used to it though. I try not to think about it too much.
I have managed to get some blisters on my hands, and 2 of them opened and are pretty gross right now. Plus they sting when I milk the sheep! They are slowly healing though. I have also managed to trap myself a flea (or two...) which is obnoxious because it keeps biting me and I have itchy bites all over :( There aren't any fleas in the house because Ginette treated for them recently, so we think I got it in the barn where the rabbits and pigeons are kept. We are washing my sheets anyway and also the clothes I have worn most recently in the barn (which is basically just what I have worn all week since it is not worth it to change into new clothes all the time).
I bought myself some boots for three euro yesterday after nearly a week of using my sneakers. The poor things are in quite a state right now! The boots suit me muuuuch better in the barn with all the poop everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. I have been pooped on at least three times. Oh, and I was licked by a baby sheep this afternoon. I took that as a sign that it was the day to shower.
My vocabulary has swelled to include all sorts of useful words, from blister to stinging nettles (my arch enemy) to wild boar. I have read almost every Asterix and Obelix comic book in the house (they are the French equivalant to Micky Mouse and Donald Duck I would say). I also bought a historic fiction novel which I am enjoying, and Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, which is the story of the hunchback and Esmerelda etc. Essentially, I am speaking and reading and listening to only French all the time. Writing this in English right now is actually kind of hard. I find myself forming sentences in a French form and not knowing how to terminate them! Also, it is hard not to think of words in French first! I take all this as a good sign.
I am very lucky with this family because they are patient with my French and I work along side them, not FOR them, which was one of my worries going into wwoofing. The couple who run the farm are Jean-Louis and Ginette Foures. Their daughter, Gael, is living with them until her little house down the road is ready. She is in her early thirties and it is her computer that I am using. Oh, and she has a pet raven named Corback that she carries with her almost everywhere (except the market, of course). Their son, Louic, lives up the road with his wife, Sevrine, and 3 kids--Louise, Gillien, and Juliene. They are my favorite family in all of France--absolutely adorable and genuinely amazing people. Louise is 7 and is learning English in school, so I teach her words every once in a while. She has really taken a liking to me and I am going to St. Gaudens with her and Sevrine tomorrow to watch the rehearsal for her dance performance since I wont be here for the real thing.
I have watched Jean-Louis make the cheese (which is a cow and sheep mix) one time, and I helped the other wwoofers make the most recent batch. The other wwoofers, a couple, left today. They left a week early because there was too much work and not enough play. It was the guy's idea and his girlfriend wanted to go out more and see things/places. So now I am the sole wwoofer for the next 2 weeks! Which means that I get to make the cheese next time! Yaaay! That also means that I am trying to milk faster to make up for the loss of two other sets of hands. Not that it really matters since Jean-Louis can milk 3 sheep in the time it takes me to do one! But I a, speeding up! I started to milk with two hands at the same time this afternoon. Before I could only get the job done milking one side at a time. It is not as easy as Jean-Louis makes it look!
There have been a lot of things that I have had to get used to in terms of cleanliness and manners, but I am trying really hard to adapt and not let things get to me. For example, the water from the sink goes into the creek next to the house, so they avoid using dish soap when washing the dishes. Instead, they just use hot water and a sponge. The sponges are grody, and I have a history with grody sponges, so that has been a hard pill to swallow. I am getting used to it though. I try not to think about it too much.
I have managed to get some blisters on my hands, and 2 of them opened and are pretty gross right now. Plus they sting when I milk the sheep! They are slowly healing though. I have also managed to trap myself a flea (or two...) which is obnoxious because it keeps biting me and I have itchy bites all over :( There aren't any fleas in the house because Ginette treated for them recently, so we think I got it in the barn where the rabbits and pigeons are kept. We are washing my sheets anyway and also the clothes I have worn most recently in the barn (which is basically just what I have worn all week since it is not worth it to change into new clothes all the time).
I bought myself some boots for three euro yesterday after nearly a week of using my sneakers. The poor things are in quite a state right now! The boots suit me muuuuch better in the barn with all the poop everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. I have been pooped on at least three times. Oh, and I was licked by a baby sheep this afternoon. I took that as a sign that it was the day to shower.
My vocabulary has swelled to include all sorts of useful words, from blister to stinging nettles (my arch enemy) to wild boar. I have read almost every Asterix and Obelix comic book in the house (they are the French equivalant to Micky Mouse and Donald Duck I would say). I also bought a historic fiction novel which I am enjoying, and Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, which is the story of the hunchback and Esmerelda etc. Essentially, I am speaking and reading and listening to only French all the time. Writing this in English right now is actually kind of hard. I find myself forming sentences in a French form and not knowing how to terminate them! Also, it is hard not to think of words in French first! I take all this as a good sign.
This will probably be the last wwoofing entry (unless something ridiculously amazing happens) since I do not want to write too much in English while I am here. I am looking forward to a good continuation here with the Foures, but also looking forward to my return to Italy and a short stay in Geneva where I will be reunited with more friends from the states!
