What not to do

We got away from Hambers in Normandy about 9am and it was really just a long days driving. We passed through the Loire but you wouldn’t have known we were in a major wine growing region and we saw a couple of small chateaux. We stopped for lunch at a lake beside the Vienne River near an impressive chateau and there were huge salmon jumping in the lake. We arrived in Anlhiac about 6pm and met Leni, and had dinner and chatted. We started off outdoors because it was another gorgeous day and we stripped some dandelions to make wine with. Dinner was white asparagus and fresh homemade mayonnaise followed by chicken, which we had indoors as thunderstorms came in. The thunder and rain continued all night. We were staying in the barn, which is attached to the house and is set up as a gite and is really lovely. It is an old stone Perigordine building with a high beamed ceiling and has lovely views onto the courtyard and village.
Monday morning was wet and miserable and after a gentle start (Leni doesn’t start till after breakfast at 8.30) we spent the morning cleaning windows. We had our regular lunch of goat’s cheese, ham and bread with the leftovers we had been sent off with from Karen. After lunch we strolled down into the village, which is really traditional and very cute and then did some weeding in the garden. The soil is basically clay and it was rather like glue, it doesn’t really seem like its had any compost or anything added to in some time and was pretty hard to work in. We gave up when it started raining again and spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening reading books. Leni also had a cousin visiting for the evening and we had a late dinner and did the dishes then it was well past bedtime and we were both still tired from the long drive. Leni has done the opposite to what Karen and John have done – she’s worked on the house and courtyard and largely ignored the land and is now getting started on the land. It means that living is more comfortable but the land needs a lot of work now. She has been harvesting and processing the walnuts from the three trees and is now thinking about getting some ducks and geese to help keep the grass down as its currently being strimmed on a regular basis.
Tuesday morning was a bit dryer and it had been clear overnight so we started out in the garden before breakfast but it was just a gluey bog and we had to abandon. Breakfast didn’t actually happen till 9.30 by which time we were starving. There were no indoor chores to do for the rest of the morning and Leni eventually suggested we go out for a while. However the weather was awful and we needed to be back by 2.30 for the walnut cracking session with the ladies from the local village. So we just hung around and read more books and got some Internet time to catch up with folk. Lunch also happened late and we were just finishing as the ladies arrived. Leni carried on making a cake for afternoon tea before joining in. it was a very enjoyable afternoon cracking nuts and listening to the ladies chatting in French. As the day went on they got faster and faster and more and more heated and we understood less and less until there was really no point trying. They are pretty speedy with the nuts and we got through quite a lot. Then it was time for tea and flapjacks and the ladies headed away. We cleaned up and then it was time to make dinner which somehow took till rather late again after Leni being interrupted by several phone calls etc. Dinner was galettes and they were yummy. We had them with butter, goose rillettes, and with goat’s cheese. We also got to compare a local goats cheese to the ones I’d made and although they were slightly different varieties I liked mine better for texture and density and flavour, so I was pretty pleased with that.
Wednesday morning was also wet and we abandoned even trying to be productive other than doing a bit of housework. Again there was no plan for the day and late morning she suggested we go out for a drive (in the pouring rain again). We found out her regular routine is to go and sit in the café for a couple of hours in the morning and read so that helps give some structure to our day but its all still pretty vague and getting frustrating. Her meal routine doesn’t work for us – we need breakfast before 9am and then she doesn’t have lunch till about 2 by which time we are starving then the evening meal is really late and sitting heavily when its my bedtime. She also doesn’t appear to work much but rather do a lot of socialising. We need to get our own routine going but she is unable to tell us the plans for the day until mid morning by which time we’d be long gone if we were going to explore. Its fair to say we are not bonding with her and although she doesn’t expect much work from us (4-5 hours a day), its badly organised and we are hungry a lot of the time. It’s a good thing we’re not doing much physical work, as the meals are pretty small too. Anyway we found out she has wireless internet access so got set up with that and spent the morning organising things and making some muesli for breakfast. She will only provide bread or oats for breakfast and since too much bread is not great for me and we are about to run out of goats milk for porridge I’d have a problem with breakfast – we thought she’d said if we wanted to make muesli we’d have to buy all the ingredients ourselves too but we were able to use her ingredients. We also made some soup for lunch and then we spent the afternoon cracking nuts again. She did a few with us but then had to go for her siesta. By the time we finished I needed some fresh air so we went for a walk up the lane and the countryside is really pretty. We did get sodden but had a warm kitchen and dry clothes to come back to. Dinner was about 8, which was an improvement, and was a pot au feu, which is a big boiled pot of meat and veges and you have a bowl of the broth followed by a plate of meat and veg. It was really tasty.
Thursday was an improvement in the weather and there was no plan for the day again other than she was going to a plant exchange market. We were going to go too but after she blew up at us when we asked if there was more marmalade (and ranted for a while about how much all the food costs that we are eating) we changed our minds and went towards the Vezere. We’d also had some very stressful news form home and were both really upset by that (which she also knew about). We stopped at a tourist attraction about prehistoric life and ended up buying a ticket to visit three different attractions. Le Thot is where we were and it had a museum type introduction to the life of people in the caves of the Dordogne area and information about the paintings in the caves and the animals that were around at the time and in the paintings. They also had an outdoor exhibit of the live versions of the animals or at least their closest modern cousins. There were some animals that they had bred various breeds to get as close as they could to the prehistoric version. We had booked a tour in English of Lascaux II cave so had a bit of time to kill in between so we had a stroll around Montigniac and had lunch in a restaurant the town is really pretty – as are almost all Dordogne towns – and we had a nice galette for our lunch and shared a mug of cidre on a roof terrace overlooking the river and the town. Lascaux II is a reproduction of the original cave and we had decided last time we were here not to visit for that reason but since the triple ticket was a good price and we felt really in need of a treat we went in and were very pleased we had. Even though its technically fake they have reproduced it centimetre by centimetre and they think its accurate within 5mm and building the 40m section of cave took eight years. The paintings are reproduced by the original methods with the original pigments used and took six years to do. The tour was excellent and the guide very entertaining and the paintings were amazing. The way they had used the contour of the cave to help depict the animals was very impressive but in some ways it was almost more impressive that that had been recreated so accurately. We headed back to the house after our tour and got on with cracking nuts, as Leni wasn’t home yet. We chatted with her friend Andy who had arrived late last night and when she got home she was perfectly friendly. However then it came time for her tea break and she made tea for her friend and boyfriend and never even asked if we wanted any then moved our nuts that we were working on so they could sit at that particular table and never said a word to us. She said to her friends that the three of them would sit and have tea while we made the dinner. We were pretty upset by being treated as slave labour and not even shown any common courtesy, never mind thanked for doing nuts, or dinner, or dishes afterwards. We decided we do not need to be treated that badly and will probably leave either at the weekend or just after. However later in the evening we did manage to get her to show us the garden and what we could work on in the garden for the morning.
Friday was another beautiful day and we got on with weeding and digging over the garden bed we were allowed to do. We finished that in two hours and went up to the house to ask what else we could do and she really lost the plot at us. We eventually got out of her some more work to do, although she was pretty sarcastic at times and very aggressive and went back down to carry on weeding and digging. She has no intention of planting the areas we are weeding and digging and thought it was ridiculous of us to suggest we could plant the bed we had just dug because its clear she doesn’t have any plants and that if we cleared all 4 beds today we could possibly plant later on. Andy cam down after a while and chatted with us and basically said we are doing a good job and that he finds her very difficult to and described her as scatterbrained. However we were both pretty upset and progressed our plans to leave but we just couldn’t decide when. We decided to give her the benefit of the doubt again and carried on with our work until it was too hot and then sat and did some nuts for another hour until she got home from the café. We think Andy also had words with her as she was a different person altogether when she came back and made a nice lunch and organised for us to go to the medieval walnut press and even offered to do the dishes after lunch so we could get going. The niceness is now almost as disturbing as the temper tantrums. We had a fantastic time at the mill, which was really interesting, and we took lots of photos of the process of the nuts being ground by a huge stone wheel, heated over a wee fire pit and then pressed. The smell of the walnut oil was just amazing. We also got chatting with a man there who turned out to be the president of the truffle growers association of the Aquitaine region so it was really interesting to talk to him too. We were even happier with ourselves that we managed all of this in French without a word of English. We didn’t understand all of what was being said but I did get enough to know that the mill owner was a bit sleazy and although it was very interesting I wasn’t sad to get away form him. When we got back to the house everything was still very pleasant and we had a nice dinner outdoors again with a bottle of wine and tried some of the walnut oil from the press on salad, which was divine. Leni remained pleasant all evening and also actually did some weeding in the evening herself. The nuts that we’ve been cracking go to the modern mill on Tuesday and we can go and watch that and she also has a free ticket to a big agricultural fair next week that we can go to so we are contemplating staying on. However I think we are agreed that if there’s another outburst we may just walk out. If she stays nice then she is actually very nice but I still doubt we’ll bond!
We got an hours weeding and digging done on Saturday morning before Leni left for the weekend on a tea-making course. We headed into Perigeaux to the market. It took us a while to find the market despite being in the town centre and ‘you can’t miss it’. However it was a pretty neat experience wandering round having samples of different producers fois gras and all sorts of variations on serving it. We also tasted some local wine and beer and sausage. One of the things lots of places were doing was various fruit preserved and stuffed with fois gras, particularly figs. We thought that might be a novel seasonal marketing opportunity for us if we can make our own fois gras and grow figs. We bought a nice piece of chevre for our lunch and headed south to Bergerac but got there during lunchtime so the wine museum we wanted to go to was closed. Instead we went and had a picnic lunch in the grounds of Chateau de Monbazillac, which is famous for its dessert wine – the perfect accompaniment to fois gras. It’s a gorgeous chateau with a great view over the surrounding Monbazillac and Bergerac wine regions. Once lunch finished we had a tasting at the chateau and then took a scenic drive back to the house. We went along the Dordogne, through lots of pretty Perigordine towns and then up the Vezere. We saw a gorgeous campground right on the riverside at a beautiful converted farmhouse and thought it rivalled the campground at Les Eyzies that we’d like to go back to. We are still weighing up our options for staying and leaving and camping there for a few days sounds great. The weather had improved rather markedly and it was frankly hideous being in the car most of the day and I was fairly wilted by the time we got back. Steve did some strimming while I made dinner and then we had a pleasant evening with Andy chatting and cracking more nuts. It was interesting to hear his views on how Leni is managing her place because they coincide well with ours.
Sunday was another hot day and we got more weeding and digging done for most of the morning and learned heaps form Andy about composting and soil management. We retreated out of the sun for lunch and a couple of hours cracking nuts then all three of us went for a drive to chateau Hautfort which is just down the road but it was really expensive so we didn’t go in. instead we had a nice stroll around the village which was really pretty and Andy bought us an ice-cream. It was a lovely afternoon and a nice relaxing evening having dinner and drinking cidre and chatting. Andy is a great guy and really generous with his knowledge and very enjoyable to be around.
Monday was a bit cooler and we got as much done in the garden as we could. Eventually we all decided we couldn’t do any more without checking with Leni what her plans were for it or we’d just we wasting our time and energy. Andy is absolutely right when he keeps reinforcing to us that we actually are learning a lot from being here about how not to do things and that we will be better smallholders/farmers and better WWOOF hosts for it. It started raining in earnest at lunchtime and we retreated indoors for lunch (I made a yummy tagliatele with a sauce of ground walnuts, local sausage, garlic and Provencal herbs with a bit of stock). We did some Internet things after lunch and exchanged contacts with Andy and looked at each other’s website/blogs then got on with cracking more nuts for part of the afternoon. It kept raining all afternoon so we did some reading and chatting and made dinner and Leni got back about 4 and had to go for a rest for a couple of hours. She was feeling very sorry for herself and claiming to have a terrible chest infection which had turned to bronchitis (I’ve never seen anyone with a chest infection look as well as she does and have no cough or shortness of breath, however…) but she was perfectly nice. We got a relaxing and early night. We have sent out a lot of emails trying to sort out farms to go to but are not hearing back from most of them so are getting a bit worried. We are also trying to organise to got to our next place early to get away from here – particularly as Andy leaves on Thursday and there is not reason for us to be here after that.
Tuesday was walnut pressing day and we set off after breakfast (a sleep in for us and early for everyone else) to the mill. The process and equipment was almost identical to the medieval mill with only a few small differences like that they added salt to the heating walnuts to purify the oil and they added water to the nuts being crushed so had a paste that went into the heater. Each component of the process was shorter and the fire was hotter and of course all the equipment was driven by hydraulics rather than the water mill. There was a lot less attention to detail and where the medieval mill paid careful attention to not waste a drop of oil or a cernal of nut there was actually a lot of waste in comparison. The rest of the process was the same in that the customer was plied with homemade alcohol. We came back to the house and had lunch (English roast dinner) then Andy and us went to the truffle museum at Sorges. It was really interesting with lots of detail on the technicalities of growing truffles, which was really interesting to us, and also lots of history of the truffle in the Perigord. We had a drive around the local area and saw some truffle production areas and some old and new areas as well and it was all fascinating. We did a few chores in the evening but basically had a fairly restful day.
Wednesday made up for Tuesdays restfulness. We were already working in the garden when the church bell rang at 7am and didn’t go to breakfast till 9. A plan was made over breakfast and we broke it to her that we were leaving in the morning, which she took remarkably well. Then Andy and we carried on in the garden and moving and cleaning the caravan while Leni went out to get more fuel for the strimmer and to her café. Lunch didn’t happen till 2pm by which time all three of us were hungry and grumpy. Leni had lost the plot at Andy during the morning as well and he was planning not to come back to visit her again. I nearly lost the plot when she got out my Caerphilly cheese after lunch and said we should have some of that. I said no as it wasn’t ready yet and she said it would be fine and cut herself a slice and one for Andy. Andy looked at me and shrugged apology but said it was very nice. I tasted a bit more that she had also cut and then Steve put it away. She was apparently quite miffed by that, as she didn’t come back to the table again. The cheese actually, I think, does need a couple more days but is good. It’s still a bit rubbery and a bit salty but I think that will improve so I’m quite pleased, but was furious at having my cheese just cut into against my request. She has frequently told Andy to just help himself to our computer and our coffee and anything else of ours and while we and Andy know that’s ok its actually not up to her to offer. She’s really rather rude. We had a quiet afternoon relaxing and went for a stroll around the village to take some photos and eventually had dinner about 8pm of galettes and I made some pesto of rocket from the garden and walnuts, which was very tasty. It was late by the time we finished dinner and I was tired and fed up. I will be very glad to leave here tomorrow, as I don’t actually think she’s and nice person at all. She can be generous at times and does do some nice things – like she bought some goats milk for us to take with us in case they don’t have any at our new farm. But those things tend to happen mainly after she has done something awful and I guess they are by way of apology. She has fed us some nice local food and we have had some good experiences but I dread her coming back whenever she’s out. I have enjoyed the work in the garden and am satisfied with the job we have done even though I don’t think she’ll get round to doing much with it and most of our work will be wasted, however she did thank us and express that it was a great job at last. We are planning to do a few hours work in the morning and then head away and relax for a night at Les Eyzies or another campground by the river, which I am looking forward to. Some time to gather my head together before we start afresh with new people on Friday.