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 my host, Pauline, unloading boxes of tomatoes from a walk-in refrigerator. Too busy to drop the tomatoes, she asked another worker, Christophe, to show me where I could drop my rucksack. Around the other side of the barn, was a clearing with six small caravans arranged in a circle. The caravan on the far side was mine, so I poked my head in to look around. Half the space was empty besides a bench and a cupboard, and the other half consisted of a pile of stale foam mattresses that doubled as a bed. In the cupboard I found an orange blanket, a pillow and several spiders.
“There are more blankets and pillows in the shed” said Christophe helpfully, pointing towards a collapsed outhouse with no door.
I decided to take my chances with one blanket, and went to find Pauline to see if I could be useful.
Pauline put me to work straight away washing potatoes. It turns out there’s a machine for this, one of the rare examples of automation on Organic farms. The potato-washing-machine took in dirty potatoes at one end and, depending on the direction of rotation, would rinse them or plop them out the back into a waiting box (boit). After putting a few crates of potatoes through, I wheeled a cart of clean ones back to Pauline who then set me up preparing bunches of basil (basilic). During this I met Jade, an intern with excellent English who had just returned to the farm for her third visit.
Not long after, at around twelve thirty, the farm calmed down for lunch. This was a standard occurrence in France; between the hours of twelve and two everything was closed, the streets went quiet and the roads were empty. In smaller towns (villes) and rural areas this effect was even more pronounced. Walk along any street and you would see no-one except the occasional face peering from behind a half closed shutter. Lunch at the farm took place under a makeshift canopy outside the kitchen where three sofas were arranged. The canopy successfully trapped all the flies (les mouches) that hadn’t made it to the kitchen, but it was the heart of the farm where everyone stopped to meet, talk and eat. I met the rest of my co-workers and was given some basic tips about where to find the bread and brioche. No-one mentioned the toilet though, which turned out to be a dry-toilet (une toillete seche) in an outdoor cubicle. Dry-toilet was a generous name for a bucket of soil, where instead of flushing the user just adds dirt. A cartoon sheep on the wall told me that after two years, the soiled soil would make a great compost.
Bacchus shrieked ‘good morning’ at his hens, and the sun rose on the caravans. Despite the hot days, mornings in France were cold and dewey. I counted the number of bites I’d received during the night before taking a shower. For the days work I was tasked with helping Michel, one of the salaried workers, with weeding (desherbage). This and harvesting (recolté) were the most common tasks at the farm. We had four rows of cabbage (choux) that started off invisible beneath the grass and other weeds that had grown up around them. We went through on hands and knees, pulling up the unwanted plants then laying them back on the ground around the cabbage shoots. The idea was to trap moisture in the soil which would otherwise have been evaporated off by the sun. We went through two adjacent rows at a time, working in pairs to do all four. Michel whizzed past me a couple of times, weeds flying, and by the end we had just about uncovered all the cabbage.
Another method we used was to lay out tarp (bâche) over the ground at the base of the vegetables and just wait for all the weeds to die. This worked well, but the tarps were often about thirty meters long and folded up on themselves which allowed rainwater to get in, causing them to be heavy and at risk of damaging the crops when moved. This was an example of a good idea executed in a heavy-handed way, a reoccurring theme on the Organic farms I visited. Jade seemed deeply impressed by my suggestion that we could just drain the tarp by lifting it in the middle then both walking towards opposite ends, allowing the water to flow out, and she suggested that I pitch the idea to the farmer, Emmanuel. I never got around to this, partly because Emmanuel refused to speak any English and seemed to think that I was fluent in French. Whenever we spoke, he would talk non-stop at speed in colloquial French. I got the impression that my suggestion would trigger a long one-sided conversation, so left a diagram by the sofas instead.
The Farm at Preuilly-Sur-Claise practiced Permaculture. Online definitions of permaculture are poor, but you could describe it a set of practices that are sustainable in the really long term. This applies to farming but also to cultural and social practices, where harmony is found in all aspects of life such that the new mode of living can be sustained forever. Where the bucket-toilet fits into this I’m not entirely sure, especially given that the farm already had plumbing, but with their methods, the folks at the farm were able to produce high quality vegetables every week for the market and for AMAP (Association pour le Maintieu d’une Agriculture Paysanne). AMAP was a scheme that allowed customers to subscribe to a farm’s harvest and in return receive a regular delivery of produce. The idea enabled consumers to support local farms and worked well for farmers as they had a steadier income stream.
At risk of becoming permanently cultured, I made plans to return to the Chateau near Chinon after a week. The insights into organic farming had been interesting and the people were nice, but one week of the caravan was enough. On the last day I set off down the drive, side-stepping the chicks that had escaped the coup. Bacchus was also roaming around, having been given free rein of the farm since he was due to be slaughtered the next week. He yelled another ‘good morning’ as I passed – or perhaps a prophetic ’goodbye’ – and I headed out the main road to hitch a ride.
