Calvados

Yesterday was a grand adventure.  After five days on the Côte d’Azur with a great friend of mine S____ we both went our separate ways.  Starting in Nice I left the hostel, Villa Saint Exupery Beach around 8am and took the tram to the train station.  The tram runs very frequently and traverses the Place Massena, where we were staying, as well as follows a path through much of the city.  After two stops, I hopped off and lugged my baggage to the train station.  Luckily there were no stairs, although stairs were to come.  I was early so I sat down and had some breakfast while I watched all the frantic travelers wait for their departures, or for their friends and families to arrive.  The trains were all on time, which was great because the day before all the trains had been at least an hour late.  My train eventually got a “voie [track]” so I headed over and found my car and my seat.  Unfortunately with random assignment I was not by a window but I decided to sit by the window anyways and maybe nobody else would come.  I was in the double part of the double decker train and at 9:43am my train departed for Nice and headed north for Paris.  After the first stop, Antibes I think an old man got on and it turned out that he was assigned my seat, alas, I moved to another row so that I could still have a window, but then later another couple came on and I was in their seats, so I decided just to move back to my non-window seat.  I drifted in and out of a dazed sleep and right before Avignon, the old man got up and gave me his window seat.  Passing Avignon was sweet, but then a young girl, no older than 12 got on and again I was in her seat.  But I passed the time watching the countryside of France pass before me on the TGV.  

Arriving in Paris I grabbed by baggage from the train and found the number 14 metro line to take to Bercy where I then took the number 6 metro line to Gare Montparnasse, near where our apartment was in 2001 I believe.  Lugging my bags was difficult, although thankfully it was not as hot up north as it was in the French Riveria.  I got on the train at Montparnasse and I did not have a seat assignment so I just chose a seat in on of the cars and found one without a ticket indicating cars and seats (because apparently some people did have assigned seats).  A woman congratulated me on picking such a good seat and it was only about halfway through the ride that I realized I was in first class (strange since I had not paid for first class), but nobody came to check my ticket so I had plenty of legroom as well as a seat facing the direction the train was going so I could see the countryside of even further north pass before my eyes.  I arrived at the train station in Vire, a small town in Normandy and I waited for about 15 minutes for the woman from the farm who had left a voicemail saying she would be a bit late.  Not a problem and I was glad to have the opportunity to stand for a while.  She finally came in an old car that smelled wonderfully of farming, much like our old neighborhood in West Braintree. We talked all the way back to the farm, about 20km from the train station.  Upon arriving at the farm, which is huge dinner was semi-prepared but V______ made a sauce for the pasta and we all sat down to eat, while watching Olympic swimming of course!  Not long after dinner we all headed to bed, as everyone seemed exhausted, I slept in V_____’s daughter’s bedroom.  Originally I was going to share a gite with another girl who was staying for one night, as it turns out she is coming next week, so V_____ moved me to the main house “so that I could be with everyone else.”  I slept very well and the rooster didn’t crow until 8:40 (that I heard, very impressive). 

A bit about the farm, from what I can gather: V_____ and her husband, who works at a large enterprise of pigs further north bought the farm about 4 years ago and her husband occasionally comes down, but it is mainly V_______ that runs the farm.  There are cows, pigs, sheep, donkeys, ducks, geese, chickens, goats, bunnies, kittens, and maybe more that I haven’t seen.  There are also a number of gardens of various sorts.  Before coming to this farm in Calvados, V______ worked at another farm doing medicinal and aromatic gardening so I think there is still some of that here as well. There are also a number of “gites” which are very popular around France. People, often families, can rent out the gites for a week or so and spend the time on vacation at the farm.  Each gite is equipped with a kitchen and beds etc, as well as the experience of living on a working farm.  The farm seems very old, although I am not sure what year.  Cider or apple juice (I’m not sure exactly which because we seem to have both here) is made on premises and is sold in a small boutique on the farm.  Groups of kids, families, other tourists, stop by the farm and pay a few Euros to visit the workings and the animals.  The farm is entirely organic and as V______ is very adamant about not wasting everything and recycling as much as possible.  Much of the food scraps we save for the pigs and V_____ won’t by cheese with plastic rind, etc so to minimize the carbon footprint and use of petrol on the farm.  I think I have quickly adapted to life here, it is pretty relaxed and a much different day from my time in Avignon studying all the time, or even my vacation on the Côte d’Azur where it was hot all the time.  The other people working here besides V_____ all seem to come from different facets of their lives.  There is one other WWOOFer at the moment D_____ who is in the process of looking for a job and at 37 he doesn’t seem to know exactly when he would stop WWOOFing but he lives not too farm from the farm, further north and his brother also works on the farm (although I don’t think his brother is a WWOOfer).  Then there is P_____ who I think is a volunteer.  He seems very much content doing whatever it is he does.  The brother of D_____, S_____ I’m not sure what he does, he doesn’t live on the farm, but he seems to know things very well.  I think he might be making bread this afternoon in a wood oven outside by the sheep.  Then there are two other young people on the farm who live close by and work on the farm.  I’m not exactly sure if the farm pays them or if they are volunteers but they all seem very acquainted with the workings and processes of everything.  N_____ is the last person working on the farm.  He is a student of birds and trees, from what I can understand, and he has been doing an internship for the past two months with V______ as part of his studies.  He leaves tonight and he says he is going to come back in about a month to WWOOF and finish whatever he needs to finish for his internship.  I am the only non-French person but my French seems to be holding up just fine and they seem grateful that I understand and catch on quickly to what they are saying.  This morning I helped N_____ hack some weeds over by where the geese are kept and although I’m not exactly sure what the plant was, my fingers are still a bit tingly from whatever prickly things were on the stems.  We prepared lunch all together, everything from the garden or from the animals, which is great!  A busload of kids came around lunchtime and they ate out back and then this afternoon will get a tour of the farm.  I’ll try and update when I can, there is no wifi here but I’m going to try and upload both text and photos from one computer to another, hopefully it works out.  Until next time.  Bisous.

 Click the map to enlarge.  Currently I am in a small town called Saint Jean le Blanc, near Calvados which is in the region Basse Normandie in the upper left part of the map, west and a bit north of Paris.  Avignon is in the department  Vaucluse, Provence-Alps, and  Nice is on the Cote d`Azur.