Bon soir from a mouth full of grape seeds and fingers full of garlic - and KIWI!

Just a quick hi from our new, and hopefully (! - ?) last, European home: a CSA (known in France as AIMAP) in the south of the country, near Toulousse.

Our good friend Chelsea just sent an email asking about where we are, what we have most recently learned, and what this place is like generally. I will use this forum to respond.

The countryside is gorgeous, with highways lined with plain trees with bark that recall sycamores, and our countryside surrounded by fields of corn and newly reaped stubble and rock, yappy dogs, young horses, chickens and, if you are lucky, one lone peacock.

One of the highest truths that I have learned in my time abroad is that nothing in western Europe comes close to a flattering comparison with the conflagration of October's Eastern Woodlands. But autumn is beautiful here, and in other ways surprisingly and strangely similar to those spent in Wisconsin and New England in recent years.

Namely, we spent our first two days here mashing, pressing, siphoning, drinking, pasteurizing and bottling cider made from the 48 different varieties grown in our farmer, Phillipe's, orchard. Oh, the amber mellifluous. Cider for breakfast, lunch and dinner, covering our pants, sticking to hair, and scenting our hands (already apple-colored from handling the hot bottles) sweetly.

And today filled us up with another smell likewise reminiscent of places like Overlook Farm and Potomac Vegetable Farms down in Virginia - garlic! Loads and loads of bulbs, beautifully feathered, splashed in violet, dusted in dirt, which we pried and broke with our hands into what the Spanish call dientes - teeth. (The French word, gousse, translates less attractively into "pod" or "legume.") Each little clove - a clone of its mother - will be planted into the earth, quietly and slowly sending up a sprout which, come spring, will break the surface and meet the sun. It will gain in strength, eating sunlight and sending it underground, eventually growing a new bulb, plump and swollen with moisture and bite, which will be harvested in high summer.

Today also found us in the grove of espaliered kiwi trees! A frost is predicted for this evening, and Matt and I worked with our two fellow WWOOFers (hailing from Wales and England) and two of their friends, picking the last of the hairy fruit. This was incredibly pleasant - beautiful weather and enjoyable company. The kiwi are still very hard and sour - in a word, unripe - but after being in storage with apples (whose natural and constant respiration of ethylene gas aids the maturation of other vegetables and fruits) for a month or so they will be soft and sweet with the kiwiness of the kiwi.

The computer is acting up so I will sign off for now. Love to everyone. As I just wrote in an email to the Warrens - Matt and I definitely have a count-down going to November 11th, and while we are certainly enjoying ourselves this side of the Atlantic, America feels better and dearer all the time.

With love,
Jenny

Itinerary

Today is nothing but a grey watercolor wash in the sky, with muted grass and sheep just beginning to stir, and our last day in Ireland.

We are taking a bus from Cork City to Dublin, another from Dublin to London's Victoria Station, and then a last to Amsterdam - !

We will then proceed to visit friends in Breda, Holland before returning to Paris for a few days. And then we WWOOF at our LAST FARM before trekking back to Barcelona, and then flying HOME!

Unfortunately I can't write anymore now. Thanks to all the comments and emails regarding the last post. Love you all!

Jenny and Matt

Reflections on Ol' Ireland

Dear readers. I apologize for being so long in writing, and wonder if anyone is still out there?

We are still in Ireland, caught up in the middle of a delightful morass of gorgeous days. This is one of the best - puffy with white and wide cloud shadows, ultramarine inbetween, green and smooth and sheep-mown and voluptuous below -

I wrote to my father that this part of Ireland reminds me very much of Wisconsin, the driftless region along the Mississippi. The first time that I woke up here I thought that that was where I was - in the midwest, mysteriously redeposited, and I was confused, but glad.

Before going into particulars, I would like to begin with an explanation of why I've not written. The underlying reason is The Future. Both Matt and I have been very preoccupied with searching for people to stay with in Amsterdam, arranging dates to be in Paris, and attempting to find farms to WWOOF at in France. We must still find a place to fill out our last few European days in Barcelona...

And this is not to mention how consumed we have been by the sorting through of the excess of opportunities regarding 2010 farm apprenticeships, internships, academia, living arrangements, etc!

And of course, weeding a place like this:

the raised vegetable beds

Or, triumphing in a place like this -

the pond garden

Plus, attempting to resurrect some semblance of correspondance with the people back in the Old Country, which is in no way Europe, but indeed America. And not only with the people, but with the zeitgeist itself. It has been very strange to be on this lovely property full of Time magazines and cable TV, to try easing myself back into a little bit of knowledge about what is going on in the States, and seeing that politically everything seems in quite a tangle and the recession is still on (though getting better, at least for some?). Part of me is glad to be in Europe in a time like this, though after much thought, the current events also encourage me to return home.

* * *

There is always such a fine line between August and September, and I have actutely felt this line for many of the days that we've been here. School beginning, the air sharpening to a crisp, pungeant companion. The silence brought on by autumn's arrival.


Sometimes when I am in the vegetable garden, spreading rotted manure or weeding, I can feel the preparations into autumn, eventually into winter. There is literally nothing to be heard, the atmosphere stagnant but for its clean chill, and only occasionally is there the flutter of one bird, or the gust of a sparrow flock.

It is dragonfly season. Sitting around the pond having tea, we watched them hitch upon each other, flitting, darting, curling their tails. When I go walking around six, just at the crease of afternoon and evening with Cosimo, they fly above me and swallow up the midgets (this is what the Irish call midges).





Maile asked me if I am constantly happy and meeting with good adventures at every turn. I realize that I have been incredibly optimistic in these blog posts. As travel tends to be, these months continue to be concentrations of life. Very exciting, rather over-whelming, full of human drama and joy and longings. I miss "home" (in spite of the allusiveness, for me, of this word, as I've been such a transplant for so long, between Milwaukee and New England, finding that word in people oftentimes moreso than in places) - I miss that concept, that aggregation of places and friendships, and I miss it far more than I thought that I would. I think part of the isolation is due to the difference in this sort of travel to the sort that I had done before. Though I've lived in a few different places, it was usually for enough months to establish some sort of a community, to become involved and see fruits of labors.



Thinking back, we have left many legacies. Potatoes in Alpine France, Coffee stains in Italy, lettuces in West Cork and a corrugated iron roof in the Mediterranean. But when we left France the potatoes and their leaves and stems were still in the ground, and we hardly got a chance to witness the absurd miracle of the roof that Matt and Isaac erected down south.


On the other hand, we ate cheese from the milk that we kneaded out of goats and had soup from the lovage that we harvested with Francoise's gorgeous Opinel knives from the Savoie, and here we came upon surpises of potatoes while turning the soil up, after weeding it faithfully, which gave gumption to a good omelet and now fill the kitchen with their small and plump bodies.


Being in Ireland has leant itself to a wealth of revelations and contemplations. Brilliant books, old friends, new friends, the grace of an immaculate landscape, the change in complexion after days of rain. And being on this small holding has been a welcome respite, a cloister of flowers and plans, and I think that when we'll be in Amsterdam on the 29th, and America in November, our time in County Cork, and our 180-some days (and counting) on this continent and its islands will have helped us be ready for it.


With that, I will leave you for now. It is too rare a day (as Jane Austen would put it) to spend it inside.


With love,

Jenny

These, and more pictures, can be found here.
Also, I have finally gotten the chance to upload some of the various little films that we have taken, which can be viewed here.

Again, little time.

Just wanted to let you all know that we still exist, and that we are still doing so in Ireland. I just had a really, really lovely week with the Taylor family up north in County Donegal, and I highly recommend to anyone the music festival in Kilcar that they put on every August. It was beautiful to spend time with so many pub sessions, a tatooed harper, various cliffs, waves, surfer children and, most of all, very good friends all sidled up by the turf fire.

Speaking of turf, while in Kilcar I read an editorial in the Irish Examiner and learned that peat bogs are basically carbon sponges, as they retain ten times as much carbon as any other land area (including forests). These fires are so ubiquitous in Ireland that when we were driving home from Donegal the whiff of them would visit me inside our stuffy rental car.

Anyhow, we are quite ready to move on to our next farm, and while there it seems that I will have much more time for blogging. It is only a 45 minutes' drive from where we are currently living, but worlds apart, and Matt and I are looking quite forward to it.

I really wish that I have had more time for the blog, but I have not given up on it! And I do hope to breathe some new life into it in the next few days, once we are resettled and proper.

Take care,
Jenny

Buckets of rain, Buckets of milk

As the rain "lashes down" on this amazingly grey and blustery day I figured that I would share some of the work that we are doing.

With Gerd and Renate on a rare, few-days' holiday, I have been the sheep milker and tender, which is pleasant with such well-loved, clean, kind sheep. Renate is their usual shepherd, and they certainly are "one-woman sheep," leading to a bit of kicking and recalcitrance in the sheep house/milking stand. But I think that we are all coming to a bit more of an understanding of each other. It is amazing, the difference in different sheeps' udders. These sheep are far more full of milk, are milked only once a day, and take me about ten minutes to finish off. I get most of it out in the first five minutes or less, but spend quite a while trying to knead and punch out the rest. (When I say punch I refer to an imitation of what lambs do when they milk their moms - hitting the teat in a way with their nose to urge out more milk.) I am getting used to them, though, their pink pink teats and varied attitudes, and it will be too bad when I have to hand them back over to Renate tomorrow.


In the grand tradition of my friend Emily I have also nearly triumphed in a skirmish with a terraced herb garden, attempting to uproot and unscrew the legions of morning glory vine and grasses, while trying to preserve the poppies, cosmos, thyme, chives, rosemary and marjoram etc in the process. Some nasturtiums and poppies unfortunately ended up in the weed pile but the compost will be all the better because of it, and the slugs hopefully more pleased to be in the pile rather than the garden.


Matt has been doing various grunt work involving the digging of gravel and the strimming of polytunnels and will be doing hedge trimming once the weather clears.


In the polytunnel many bushels of beans have been picked and mold removed, tomato offshoots pried away and grape vines trained to the piping. There is quite a lot of mold in there, reminding one of the importance of ventilation, which perhaps could be utilized quite a bit more in their polytunnel. Most of the polytunnel onions and garlics have been harvested and crocheted in baling twine for storage in the winter cow house.


Lettuces have been stepped up from their initial germination flats and more seeded, along with a flat of fennel. Next week we will be transplanting the bigger seedlings into the greenhouse where the peas used to be, and harvesting and freezing ever more beans, and dealing with a big onslaught of new guests and their children for "children's days."

Our friend Angela has left, leaving us with more time alone, which is both good and sad. And a calf was finally born! The day after its birth it escaped into a nearby wood causing much anxiety and confusion, but happily the rascal was found and now enjoys a pasture with its mom and aunt in our backyard.

That's all for now. I am going to return to the pile of National Geographics, farming literature, and wool at the house. Take care and love to all,

Jenny

A home!

Well, a home until August 25th at least. Matt and I officially decided that we will be here until then.

I will write more later today or tomorrow, but now I have to go weed an herb bed. Take care!

Love,
Jenny

Oh goodness gracious.

Hello everyone,


I can write with a bit looser of a belt as Matt and I just bought library cards and can thus use the internet for free, every day if we want. (More like once a week, though.)

We will definitely be staying through the beginning of August, so if you can write real quick, and want to, I can give you our address if you would like.

***

It has been so wonderful to be able to sit in meditation twice a day with Gerd, a co-owner of the farm who has been meditiating for the last 26 years, and Angela, their charming and chatty guest who is full of fantastic stories from her native Switzerland, as well as her many Asian travels.

I have done a bit of meditating in the past but it has been far too sporadic to ever become something especially rewarding or even peaceful. In the last week it has been immensely pleasing to get incrementally (by the smallest centimeters) better at simply being, and "nothing more, nothing less," for an hour a day.

After meditating in the morning (each session lasts half an hour) we have a fantastic breakfast of porridge, toast, fresh milk, bananas (sometimes, !!) and a great medley of various pastes and jams. The breakfast is rife with conversation about nearly everything under the sun, from the habits of the Swiss Army to the Irish Catholic Church to linguistics, et al, et al. We have several similar principles and thoughts and many different ones, and interesting insights and experiences from our varied backgrounds.

The work, as Gerd might say, is Vanderful (so different from wonderful), full of flowers and stringbeans and weeds and fertile ground and funny dogs and wonderful meals inbetween. Yesterday was especially satisfactory, with Matt planting a cherry tree and strimming (weedwacking) and shoveling and me transplanting herbs and calendulas and tying up renegade peas and weeding and weeding and weeding. Renate (Gerd's lovely spouse) and her gardens are just so great, full of color and knowledge and flavor.

I have to go look up some books. Take care, everybody!

Love,
Jenny

Oh, PS! Those of you who are interested in organic farming in a big enough of a way should look into books by LR Miller and his publication, "The Small Farmers' Journal." He is so incredibly inspiring, encouraging, and a very great light for the American organic community.