Oli

On the 28th August, I left the straw house to head to my final stop; a homestead further east. Lulu followed me hopefully up the driveway with a stick, but decided I was a lost cause as I loaded my rucksack into the boot of Cecile’s car and myself into the passenger’s seat. We were…

During the first week at the farm in Medoc, I joined my hosts and some of their friends at a Ginguette. Ginguettes were outdoor bars that opened exclusively in the summer months. They were fairly modern inventions having only caught on in the last twenty years or so. Finding out about these felt like a…

The next stop was a non-production farm in Medoc, Gironde. Non-production farms didn’t sell produce to customers, so these farms tended to be smaller and less formal. I pulled in at the train station on a Sunday afternoon and was collected by my co-host, Claire. The drive to the property passed through fields, small homesteads…

I arrived at a vegetable farm near the town of Preuilly-Sur-Claise on a sunny Monday morning. At the end of a dusty driveway there was a large chicken coop containing about ten hens, several chicks and a cockerel called Bacchus. Behind the chicken coup was a barn, which was busy with activity. There I met…

I arrived at my first farm in the late afternoon on Monday the 5th June 2023. It was an indecisive day in France, with the weather alternating between humid and bucketing with rain. My host farmer (l’agriculteur) was a rural-looking French man named Marcel, who collected me in an old Renault from the train station…