Sheep Devil

Yesterday was a rather hectic day. The local organic mineral supplement / dewormer for farm animals sales woman stopped by the farm. The woman stayed for an hour and a half selling her products and talking about everything under the sun including her pool that’s shaped like a bean. She talked a mile a minute (in French) with the local accent. In the afternoon, I went to the local 2 hour French class for immigrants with Louisa. Then we picked the kids up from the school and Harmonie was bitten by the village dog! After the chaos, I was rather looking forward to a quiet afternoon all alone on the farm while Louisa and the kids took Stuart to Auch, so that he could head to the airport for a weekend trip to England.

After some time on the computer, I went outside to enjoy the view and read my book. As soon as I got outside the donkeys, goats, and sheep saw me and assumed I was there to feed them. They all lined up along the electric fence, which is just in front of the house, and got that sort of crazed hungry look they get before each feeding. I hadn’t been out there for more than a minute when I turn around just in time to see a sheep run straight through the electric fence and then stare at me with an expectant look on its face. I had time to say “Oh shit!” before one more sheep charged through. I thought for sure the whole herd was about to follow at any second.

What's wrong with this picture?

My mind was racing thinking what the hell am I supposed to do? I tried shooing them back in, but they were more interested in the grass. Rosie the goat was already on the wrong side of the fence, so she came over to see what was up. Rosie always jumps over the fence to hang out on the human side. She just wants to be a part of whatever fun the humans are up to as well as eat the greener grass. So anyways, I had three animals on the wrong side, although I wasn’t worried about Rosie because I knew she’d go back when she wanted to. I didn’t trust the two sheep though, and all the other animals (donkeys, sheep, and more goats) were still staring at me. Neddie the donkey kept baying at me, and the sheep were breathing super heavy. I tried to think of what food I could grab the fastest to lure them back into the field – carrots! I ran into the house and grabbed some. Rosie was very interested in the carrots and was all over me, but the sheep couldn’t have cared less. I gave the carrots to the goats and the donkeys.

I knew the only other option was to grab a bucket of corn. I grabbed the feed bucket and ran around the back of the house to the garage to find some corn. Then all the chickens saw me. After only a few days they now associate my legs with food, so I had about ten chickens following me and of course a few followed me into the garage. I grabbed a little corn and then coaxed the chickens back out. When I came back around the house with the bucket of corn all the animals were totally alert and watching my every move. The escaped sheep started walking towards me and followed me up to the edge of the fence. The fence is the first electric fence that Stuart and Louisa set up. They tried to do it on the cheap, so it’s a total mess and a pain to deal with. I’m typically not supposed to open and close the fence because it’s so difficult to keep the wires from getting tangled, so I really didn’t want to open the fence to put the sheep back in. I threw some corn over the fence, thinking the sheep might run back through. They just looked at me like I was crazy and went back to grazing. Rosie on the other hand, was quite excited and kept trying to stick her head in my bucket. I kept pushing her back, but she got more and more aggressive. She started trying to head butt me, so I started yelling at her and pushing back. Since she wasn’t getting her way she then reared up on her hind legs. She’d done this to me a few days before though, so I knew she was only trying to scare me. I kept yelling at her and using the bucket as a shield from her horns. She did this about five times, so I eventually gave up and gave her a little pile of corn. What a pain!

Rosie

After much deliberation, I decided I’d just have to open the electric fence. This consists of unhooking four long wires from a post and trying to not get them tangled as well as not get shocked. Opening it was the easy part, and the sheep followed me right in. Even Rosie followed me in. I dumped the last bit of corn in the field and hurried back out. I started trying to put the fence back together, but of course, the wires had somehow gotten tangled already. I got one line of wire back in place when another sheep barged through! I was thinking you’ve got to be kidding me! I was out of corn, and didn’t want to get more with the fence open, so I just kept working on the fence. I got the rest of the wires in place, but it was totally tangled, so it didn’t much resemble a fence.

The other damn sheep that escaped was grazing away not paying any attention to me. I couldn’t shoo it back in, and by this time I was fed up. I decided I’d just sit and watch it. I sat on a rock for a few minutes watching the sheep. They are really bizarre creatures. They never stop grazing, so they make heavy breathing noises in and out of their nose. They sound sort of like lawnmowers. After a few minutes, the sheep walked up to me and sniffed my face for about 10 seconds and then went back to grazing. Bizarre. I was getting bored, so I tried to shoo it back in again, which miraculously worked this time. Thank goodness! I had all animals back inside. Now the only problem was the mangled fence.

Sheep Devil

I could’ve just left it, but I was worried it would be too easy for another sheep to walk through. The anal side of me was also taking over. I decided to just try to fix the wires a bit and hope I didn’t get shocked. Of course I got shocked, and it hurt! I got the wires mostly untangled, but the last one somehow got totally screwed up to the point where I couldn’t get it latched back on the post. Great! I could’ve just left it in the first place, but no, I had to fiddle with it. Now I was left with an even worse gap in the fence, and I got shocked again. I didn’t know how to turn off the electricity to the fence, so I just said screw it. I read outside keeping an eye on the animals until it got dark. By this time they had gotten over all the excitement and were scattered through the field. Louisa eventually came home and wasn’t worried about it in the slightest. She didn’t even bother to fix the fence until the next morning. She did have a good laugh over the story though.

The Farm

I’m finally getting around to writing about the farm that I have been living on for five days now. I’ve either been too busy or too tired to write in the afternoons. The farm is in the Gers just outside of a small village called Montesquiou. The farm is owned by an English couple, Louisa and Stuart. They have two kids, a girl and a boy. Harmonie is 4, and Phoenix is 3. They moved to France 3 years ago with the intention of buying a small farm (about 5 hectares) where they could live off the land and be self sufficient. 18 months after they arrived, they bought this farm which is 50 hectares. Instead of just living off the land, they are now full blown farmers.

The Farmhouse

They have only been living on the farm for 18 months, so they’re still in the stage of getting everything going. They have a lot of animals! There are six dogs, two feral cats, two donkeys, three goats, about fifteen sheep, two sows (each with about five piglets), about seven other pigs, three geese, ten ducks, and maybe 55 chickens. They have a vegetable garden with tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, squash, carrots, grapes, strawberries, figs, and peppers. Their land is broken up into prairie, woodland, and fields for grains. They haven’t started growing grains yet, maybe next year. Everything is organic or in the process of becoming certified. The house is a typical old French farmhouse with lots of shutters and red terracotta roof tiles.

They bought the house from an old and slightly crazy woman. She had been living in the house with about 30 cats and a pig. The animals pooed everywhere. It was a total mess. Louisa and Stuart have put a lot of work into just making the house habitable.

The view from the front of the house. Sometimes you can see the Pyrenees.

My job is to help out on the farm for five hours a day, six days a week in return for a bed and three meals a day. I have a bedroom in the house, which is great because I thought I was going to be living in a tent in the barn or in an outbuilding. My main task in the morning is to feed most of the animals while Stuart and Louisa are getting the kids ready for school. I start at 8:00am. I feed the pigs (but not the sows and their piglets) and sometimes the donkeys, sheep, and goats depending on where they spent the night. I then feed the little chicks in the barn that are maybe a week old. Afterwards I move onto the chicken kingdom which is on a little hill behind the house. There are two hen coops, and then four smaller coops which hold either “teenage” chickens not old enough to be on their own yet, a rooster with a few hens for mating, or just roosters. There is another large holding pen for the ducks, two of the geese, and a lone rooster who likes hanging out there. The chickens are free range, so each morning they’re let out of the coops. They are free to wander around the farm looking for food and laying eggs.

The whole house with the barn attached

After I’ve fed all the animals, I look for Louisa and find out what we’ll be doing the rest of the day. Every day is different. So far I have harvested potatoes, picked tomatoes and strawberries, mucked out the chicken coops, walked the dogs, cleaned sheep wool, picked weeds for the pigs, collected donkey poo, and made sheep poo tea. I imagine you’re wondering what sheep poo tea is. Louisa collects sheep poo and then puts it in a pillow case, ties it up, and then puts the pillow case in a large barrel of water. The water becomes infused with the sheep poo and she then uses it to water the vegetables. And why do we collect donkey poo? It’s too strong to leave in the fields because it’ll kill the grass that feeds the animals, so it’s put in the compost pile. It also helps keep the weeds down in the compost. Another odd one is cleaning the sheep wool. There is a huge pile of sheep wool behind the barn. Today I had the task of picking big pieces of straw and chunks of poo off the wool and putting it into laundry bags. The bags are then put into the bathtub with boiling hot water which dissolves the sheep oils. Afterwards, they are laid out on sheets on the lawn to dry. Louisa and Stuart plan on using the wool as insulation. It’s going to be a slow process.

The view from my bedroom windown

In the afternoons I’m free to do whatever I want. I usually find something to help Louisa with in the kitchen. It’s harvest time, so she has a ton of fruit and vegetables that need canning or cooking. I helped her can a batch of pickle when I arrived. I’d never heard of pickle, but it’s a British thing sort of like chutney made from fruits, vegetables, and spices. I haven’t tasted it yet because it has to sit for 2 months before you open the jar. It looks good though. We also made plum jam the other night and we’ll make cherry jam soon. We have tomatoes coming out of our ears, so we’ll either can them or make tomato sauce. We’ve been drying the smaller tomatoes in the oven to make “sun-dried” tomatoes. They are then either eaten (delicious!) or put in jars with olive oil. Louisa even gave me a few of the jars to take home.

That’s the quick and dirty of the farm. I’ll fill in more about the chaotic life on this farm as well as each animal because they’re pretty funny.

View from the vegetable garden

The Loire Valley to The Gers

Martine and Pierre dropped me off in front of the train station in Tours Sunday morning. Unfortunately, they couldn’t come inside because there was no where to park the car. Sunday was a madhouse in Tours. It was the day of the Bradarie which is a twice annual sidewalk sale on crack. Every shop in town participates displaying their sale items on the sidewalk. All the squares fill up with merchants as well. There are rides for the kids, crafts, and food for sale. We left the apartment at 8:30 in the morning and the frenzy had already begun. There were people everywhere. Streets were closed and policemen were directing traffic, or supposed to be. They were actually just standing around chatting.

Ayumi got out of the car with me and went to the station. My friend Konomi also met us at the station to say goodbye. She gave me a little present of a Japanese cookie (kind of like a giant rice cracker), a cute note, and a little charm to hang on my cell phone. The charm has a little cup and a piece of sushi – super cute! The two of them saw me onto the train, and then I was off.

Konomi and I with the present she gave me

The agenda for the day was quite a big one:
09h13 depart Tours (by train)
09h18 arrive in St Pierre des Corps

09h26 depart St Pierre des Corps (by train)
12h01 arrive in Bordeaux

12h38 depart Bordeaux (by train)
13h43 arrive in Agen

16h25 depart Agen (by bus)
17h57 arrive in Auch

19h10 depart Auch (by bus)
19h40 arrive in Mirande

Mirande to the farm (~20 minutes by car)

It was fun stopping in Bordeaux. I’ll have to come back sometime. The town looked really pretty and the train station had great architecture. The countryside surrounding it, naturally, was covered in grape vines.

Bordeaux Train Station

Vines outside of Bordeaux

I made it to Agen without a hitch where I had 2 and a half hours to dilly dally. Martine and I thought I would be able to deposit my backpack in a locker at the train station so that I could explore the town a bit before leaving for Auch. Unfortunately, the train station had no lockers. I decided to walk around the town a bit anyways because I wanted to check out the prune shops, since Agen is the prune capital of France. I forgot it was Sunday though, so evidemment, all the shops were closed and the town was deserted. I walked about ten minutes in the heat and decided that was enough! With my big backpack, I was also a walking target for stares and a few comments from random men on the street. I returned to the station and took a cafe instead.

The rest of the trip was fairly simple. I caught both my buses, each of which took me deeper and deeper into the country. The terrain became more and more hilly, and the people gradually became more and more casual. I started to hear a slight difference in the accent too. It’s apparently pretty strong in the South. Louisa from the farm found me in Mirande and took me to the farm. The farm is gorgeous, but I’ll have to fill in all the details later. We’ve got to go move the donkeys and sheep now!

Driving into the Gers by bus

View of the sunflowers from the bus (ready to be harvested)

The Last Supper

Martine let me choose the menu for my last meal at 7 Place de la Resistance last Saturday. She had told me about a dish the other night of potatoes stuffed with fresh foie gras, so I requested that with boudin blanc and a galette cake for dessert. Unfortunately, there was no fresh foie gras at the Monoprix since it’s really something you eat in autumn/winter. Instead, Martine found pied du porc pané, which is pig’s feet rolled in bread crumbs! She had told us about the dish before, but was not able to find it until today. She requested four pig’s feet from the butcher who, upon learning she was going to serve it to two foreigners looking to experience French food, gave her a lecture saying it was not something eaten very often by the French. We’d be better off eating something like boudin blanc or boudin noir. He went on for 5 or 10 minutes, but Martine took the pig’s feet anyway.

Back at the apartment we got started on the galette. The cake consists of pâte feuilletée filled with a layer of vanilla almond custard. It’s a cake traditionally found during the month of January to celebrate the Epiphany and called Galette des Rois. A small trinket is stashed in the custard, and whoever finds it in their cake gets to be king for a day. Martine used store bought pâte feuilletée (similar to puff pastry), and we whipped up the custard. We had to make two batches of custard to get the desired amount of filling for the cake. The custard didn’t quite turn out as hoped. The flavor was okay, but a little weak. The cake overall wasn’t great, but it was fun to make. I’ll have to try it again when I get back to the states.

The galette and...Ayumi?

The pig’s feet just needed to be thrown in the oven, so they were done in a jiffy. The potatoes were served with crème fraîche and we each had one giant pig foot on our plate. It was without a doubt the most bizarre thing I’ve ever eaten. There is only a tiny sliver of meat on the back side of the foot which is delicious. The rest is just super gelatinous fat. The flavor is interesting and very different, but it was pretty difficult to eat the whole thing. It was sort of like eating 2 cups of animal fat. Ayumi didn’t like it right off the bat. I thought it was okay and ate about half. Pierre, who also came for dinner, has never been much of a fan of pig’s feet and really wasn’t all that interested. Martine had luckily anticipated this and bought some boudin blanc, so we cooked that up and were all satisfied. Martine loves pig’s feet, so she kept what we didn’t eat for leftovers.

When it came time for the cake, Martine said that it’s traditional for the kids in the family to hide under the table and call out who gets each piece of cake (so there’s no fighting over the trinket in the cake). She said we were going to follow tradition even though we didn’t have a trinket and that I had to stand in the corner and call out who got each piece of cake! I followed orders. After returning to the table and digging into my cake I found a rather large piece of aluminum foil. I thought it rather strange and quite careless of Martine to let a huge piece of foil fall into the custard. I realized it might be something else though, and unwrapped it to find a charm bracelet! Ayumi and Martine had stuffed it into the custard before cooking the cake when I wasn’t looking.

Martine and I with the orchid I gave her

It was a fun night, and I was sorry it was my last. My stay with Martine and Ayumi could not have been better. I will really miss them. Ayumi has already made plans for us to all meet again in France in 5 years.

Tours Langues

Standing outside Tours Langue on my last day

My 6 weeks at Tours Langues are complete! I loved it. The school was exactly what I wanted. It was small and personal. The teachers were good, friendly, and really looked after the students. Some of the students remain in Tours for as long as one or two years, and they need help with getting cell phones, finding apartments, traveling to other cities, looking for apprenticeships, etc. The teachers really go out of their way to help the students out. There were a ton of Japanese students at the school who were all really friendly. There were also Mexicans, Spanish, other Americans (only my first 2 weeks), Italians, and Africans. The class sizes were small - 10 students max. The school was in an old building just off of Place Plumereau which is the center of the medieval part of town.

Class Life

The view of Place Plumereau from my classroon window

My friend Judith left the week before I did, so our class had a little fete and we all brought food from our country. I asked the class what American food they wanted and EVERYONE requested brownies, so I found a recipe for Cheesecake Brownies on David Lebovits’ blog (my fave baker). He is an American living in Paris, and all of his recipes have the ingredients’ measurements by weight as well as cups/spoons. This came in handy since Martine only uses a scale to measure her ingredients. The brownies turned out pretty good. Judith made a banana cream tart from Mexico, my teach, Virginie, made a chocolate cake, and the Japanese students made an assortment of food that I had never seen or tasted before. Everything was super tasty!

The spread

The following Friday was my last day of class as well as Ayumi’s. She starts a month long course in flower arranging on Monday at a different school. On top of that, it was Sayumi’s birthday, so Virginie (my teacher) baked two cakes – one yogurt and one chocolate. Sayumi’s host mom also baked a chocolate pear tart, so we pigged out during the break. It was sad saying goodbye to everyone, but we’re all Facebook friends now, so we can keep in touch!

Did I mention there were a lot of Japanese students?

Eating cake with my afternoon professor, Yannick

Last day of class

Mauvais Anglais

I have seen a plethora of poorly translated English here. The best are the Japanese t-shirts with English on them. Ayumi told me it’s cool to wear clothes with English writing on them, but all the ones I’ve seen have bizarre statements that just don’t make sense. Here’s a perfect example:

Oil Spill a la Francaise

For the last few weeks my upper body has been pretty tight, and I’ve had a lot of headaches, so I decided I’d get a massage in Tours. Martine new of a place and she made an appointment for a “California Massage” for me since my French isn’t that good yet. The night before the appointment I somehow managed to completely screw up my neck while sleeping. I’m not sure what I did. All I remember is feeling a big crunch in my neck, and then I couldn’t move it. So evidemment, I was in a lot of pain when I woke up (and still couldn’t move my neck). I was, however, relieved that I had the massage later that day, so I just needed to make it through class.

Class was bearable but painful, and by the time I finished and started walking to my appointment my head was stuck tilted about 25 degrees to the right side. I made it to the location, Esthetic City, checked in, and waited a few minutes in a bright red chair that resembled a giant hand. A young woman called me back who was maybe 18. She turned out to be the “masseuse”. She led me into a tiny room that was almost completely dark and started giving me instructions. I picked out the words “clothes”, “door”, and “table”, after which she pointed to a small plastic wrapped package about the size of a tea bag on the table. I realized the package was paper underwear commonly provided in spas. So then I clarified... “Okay, you want all of my clothes on the back of the door and you want me on the table?”...”Yes”. Then I noticed there were only a few towels laid across the table, no sheets or blankets to snuggle under like in the States. So I pointed at the towels and asked “Do you want me under these?”...”No, on top of.” “And do you want me face up or face down?”...”Whatever you want. You’ll turn over half way through.” So now I understood. The woman wanted me butt naked except for some flimsy paper underwear on top of the massage table with nothing to cover me. I’m accustomed to the massages back in the States where you’re naked, but it’s like you and the masseuse pretend you’re not naked by moving around the blankets to uncover the area being worked on. Anyways, when in Rome, right? She left me to undress, and I couldn’t help but start laughing as I unwrapped the paper undies.

I figured I’d ease myself into this experience and start face down. As I laid there waiting her return, I suddenly had a flash that maybe I hadn’t understood and the woman was about to return to find me totally naked lying on the table like some bizarre sci-fi movie. Fortunately, it turned out that I had understood correctly. I figured all this was really no big deal if it meant fixing my neck, which I hadn’t had the chance to tell her about yet. I also thought it weird that the table didn’t have the special face pillow attached at the end, so I had to gingerly lay my face down turned to the right which was the only direction it would move at that point. After she returned, I was waiting for her to go through the usual questions of what areas I wanted her to focus on, did I have any injuries, did anything hurt right now, etc? But no, she immediately started dripping cold oil all over my body. I didn’t have the nerve to attempt to explain in my broken French, but I soon realized it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had.

She started by lightly running her hands up and down the length of my body smoothing out the oil. I assumed this was an initial movement just to help me relax. It took a little while as she had probably poured about a gallon of oil onto my skin. She had also turned on some music which sounded like waves crashing on a beach. I thought, “Well at least that’s normal. Waves are relaxing.” I was soon oily enough that I could’ve been roasted on a spit. I remember thinking, “Okay, the real massage is going to start any second now...” But no, the “masseuse” continued to just lightly move her hands up and down my skin - sometimes left to right and then right to left, and occasionally even in circles when she really wanted to be daring. The music had also changed for the worse, of course. A saxophone had begun to play on top of the crashing waves which resembled Kenny G a bit too much for my taste. It then transformed into some sort of 80s sci-fi movie soundtrack (which actually seemed fitting for the situation) and then morphed into a cheesy piano ballad making me feel like I was a character in a bad romance novel. All I could think was, “Oh shit. I can’t believe I’m about to spend 65 Euros on this. At least, I don’t have to tip in France!” Now and then I heard her yawning. I thought, “Yeah, I know. I would be bored too if I had to do what you’re doing for an hour.” I think I even heard her burp once.

After 30 minutes of this invigorating experience she asked me to turn over. Don’t forget, I was totally naked (except for the paper underwear)! I reminded myself that it’s totally normal to walk around topless on a French beach, so why should it be so bizarre to do the same in a private room with a masseuse? I kept my eyes closed which helped me pretend that if I couldn’t see her, maybe she couldn’t see me. So the act of spreading oil around my body continued for another thirty minutes. It was bizarre to say the least.

The massage finally ended, and the “masseuse” left me dripping with oil on the table. I had to use the towels to attempt to wipe myself off. I got dressed feeling the oil soak into my clothes, and then my shoes kept slipping off my feet because they were so greasy. I paid my 65 Euros and left with my head still cocked 25 degrees to the right.

I’m sure there are some good masseuses in France, so I’m not trying to discourage anyone else from trying. Just stay away from Esthetic City on Rue Bernard Palissy.