Monday

Today was potato day. I gathered nearly 100lbs of "baking tattys", and bagged them up. I also tried something new while dong them, listening to a book on tape, Alice in Wonderland. I'd never read it, and man is that book strange, intersting though. After potatoes I did some planning for the duck house, and then read for a bit.
There's a pond sort of thing near the farm, I don't think they actually own it, and they own a kayak, so the next thing I did was try that. I carried it over, got some strange looks from a farmer on a tractor, and dropped it in. It's one of those kayaks that's mostly designed for white watering I think, and it was a tight squeeze. On top of that, it's very tippy. I wobbled about madly for a while as I started to explore. It's only a medium sized pond, but the other side is obscured by trees, so it was fun to explore. It's quite pretty on the other side, but very shallow from years of silt accumulating. When I got over there, I must have disturbed some big ol' fish, and when it thrashed about it scared the shit out of me and nearly knocked me over, which would've been no good as I had my ipod in my pocket (not very good planning).
Once safely ashore I went and picked blackberries for a couple of hours while finishing Alice, and by then it was dinner and bed. A tiring day with all the potatoe digging and kayak balancing.

Vroom Vroom

Blog
Today was my second day off, and was as relaxing as the one before it. I slept in, had a light breakfast, and then bummed about during the morning. In the afternoon I went for a motorcycle ride on the Honda Rebel they have. It's a tiny bike, 125cc, which is half of the one at home, but it was still pretty fun. I rode out with no real direction in mind, and with great confidence that no matter what I could make it home... because I had a GPS. After getting turned around just going for a bike ride I figured that it was best not to take any risks.
I'm planning on building a duck house tomorrow and in the following days. It'll be a good activity to get me a little more busy, and it should be a fun project to work on. The past few days have been nice, but I'm realizing that I really need to try and make an effort an get myself a little bit more busy. By setting up projects and outings for myself I'm sure I'll feel like I'm getting more out of this experience. There is a castle that would be really interesting to try and visit while I'm here, and I've heard about some ruins in this area that are estimated to be 5000 years old.

French Hippies!

Today we went to an ecofair in a neighboring town. It was pretty fun, and predictably similar to an ecofair in the US. Bunches of well intentioned people getting together to basically sell their wares. It's a tad bit commercial, and there are a few really over the top crazies. There was an abundance of wine and we had a decent tabouli and pizza lunch (strange combo). I went for the run that I had told myself I woul do this morning, and it was marvelously tiring. I'm hoping to start running regularly, and maybe even time my runs to try and improve... novel.
I'm starting to wonder if I packed appropriately for the weather, the evenings have been down right chilly every night so far, and while reports say it'll warm up next week, I'm here well into fall, and my next stop is hours further north. Oh well, therere sweathers all over this country I'm sure I'll find one.

Crate of Carrots

Blog day 3
Today was another excellent day filled with adventure and excitement... or atleast carrot picking. They had a row of carrots not much smaller than the row of beans, and it yielded 34kilos of carrots... over 70lbs. After that we had a great lunch and then i just relaxed and went for a bike ride. The ride was fun, despite a seat that was too low and not adjustable without tools, and getting lost. It's very rural here, and every road looks the same, and for some reason I find it harder to remember street names in a different language. I got turned around just enough to make the ride a proper workout rather than just me touring about the country.
So far I've really enjoyed my free time here, but I know that in the not too distant future I'm going to need to ask them for the odd afternoon job as well. It's nice to have free afternoons, but I've felt a little bit anxious about spending my time just lazing about. We'll see, maybe I'll just suck it up and do whatever I want.
I'm honestly incredibly impressed by the extent to which Peter and Julie have worked towards being sustainable and green. They put in time every day both preparing for the winter, (harvesting, canning etc) and they put in some time working towards improving their home and their farm. Peter is working on a stone retaining wall which will go around their porch. I've learned a lot about simple ways for people to bring themselves closer to nature and a simpler healthier way of living. With some education and modern technology, being close to self sustainable seems not only possible, but more fun and relaxing. It'd be interesting to see how pared down this whole process could be so that it practically run itself.
Tomorrow we're going to an Eco-Fair being held in a neighboring town. Should be fun.

First Farm: First Day

Just as soon as I arrived I was wisked off to the first job. Peter was at their neighbors helping to clean the wheat they would buy. There was this great old machine, which I hope to get pictures of that had a few stages to clean the wheat. It blew out the husks with a large wooden paddle fan, then ran the wheat across a serie of gratings to remove the shell and grit. We ran 200 kilos through this ol' machine, which went suprisingly quickly, and it was my job to keep it full with new wheat to process. Pretty cool overall, if a little old and ineffective, some small stones made it through.
Then we got to the farm and I got a tour. I'll have pictures of the whole compound posted once i've both taken them and uploaded them. It's a really amazing little farm, that had been abandoned for around 20 years before Peter and Julie moved in and started work. There's loads to do, but they're making realy incredible progress, and they've only been here a little over one year.
Today I'll give an overview of the farm, saving more detailed stories for future posts.
They've got two awesome dogs named Willow and Hamish. There's 2 litters of kitten for a total of 12. They have 6 sheep an 3 goats, one of the goats is used for milking. There's a small pond where some ducks live, and they also have a dozen or so chickens and 5 geese.
They have a pretty good sized garden with the standard variety of vegetables, also some fruit trees mixed in. Alot of the agriculture technique they use is called companion gardenign, where certain plants help each other, with pests, nutrients, or support.
They have an awesome composting toilet system, that's probably one of the cleanest and nicest smelling bathrooms I've been in, period. There's also a 125cc Honda Rebel which they said I can take for a ride whenever I like, maybe tomorrow.
That's about that for an overview. This morning my project was to pick beans, and my best guess is that I picked about 4500 of them in 4 hours. Not bad for a days work, look for the picture of the wheelbarrow full of beans on flickr. My afternoon is now mine, and I plan to take some pictures and enjoy the beautiful weather.

Traveling Tales

First on the agenda is to reveal how I made it to my first farm. It was all pretty straight forward, flight, airport, another flight, airport, and train to Paris. Then it was time for me to find my hostel, which, in my infinite wisdom, I had neglected to write down the address of... or even the name. I stayed optomistic assuming that I remembered the general area well enough, and could locate my lodgings from memory of looking at it on street view. This turned out to be as impossible as it sounds. Unfortunately every street in the area looked promising, so this adventure led only to sore legs and a decreased moral. Fortunately, I had passed a bar that advertised free wi-fi, so I returned there (after more confused wandering) and ordered a large Leffe. I hadn't had much to eat that day so the beer went right to my head, and the internet ended up not even working, so I just read and finished my beer, and then rallied to head across the street, where another Wi-Fi was located. Finally success, I had another beer and a bite to eat, and was on my way to the hostel, which was not to far away, but still not anywhere near where I had planned to look. The hostel was fun, and the people were nice, altough one of them snored louder than anybody I had ever heard, which made for a noticably restless night. The next day there were a couple of train rides and I was picked up by Julie, the Scottish woman from my first farm.

First Post

This blog will be temporarily dedicated to my travels in France. After much prodding from my dear friend Shannon I have relented, and decided to spill all of my trials tribulations, adventures and emotions out into the interwebs. I'll try to keep in touch with people on a more personal basis but this will be a great way for everyone (me included) to keep track of me, and get a feel for what's been going on "avec moi". Next post from France (fingers crossed)