travel journal: Toulouse to Saint Affrique, Saint Affrique (1 through 8)

After two trains and a bus, we made it to the very small town of Saint Affrique, France. From Toulouse to Narbonne to Montpelier to Millau to Saint Affrique, every town we arrived in got smaller and smaller until we (along with the only two other passengers that were left on the bus) got to our destination. We were greeted by the very kind Marielle and her two eldest kids and got into the car for another 30 minute drive. We are officially off the grid. The farm is located on the very end of a long dusty road, overlooking beautiful rolling hills. The family has been so kind and welcoming, and we're slowly getting adjusted to their way of life.

Day one at the goat farm. Our tasks today started with a tour of the farm and a bit of light weeding in the organic vegetable garden. We took the goats out to graze, while Clement (the man who helps run the farm) introduced us to them all (about 30 females in all, with 3 teeny tinys, a couple of adolescents and a hilarious older male goat, Grenouille, French for 'frog'). After lunch, we spent some time doing a bit of heavy lifting, breaking down wooden palettes and such, and ended our day with a lesson in milking the goats. It was pretty educational and straightforward (except for an especially fussy older female) and a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to getting into the swing of things here, spending more time with the animals, and getting a lesson in cheese making (as every meal has ended with bread and some amazing different types of goat cheese!) More to come.

Day two. Things have been going well. Early morning goat milking, 7 am everyday. There's nothing glamorous about milking a goat, but it's been interesting learning about the animals and seeing the product form from the direct source to the delicious end result. We did odds and ends otherwise today, helping in the kitchen a bit and another round of milking at 5pm. All in all a really great day. We've gotten used to the way of life here, all except maybe the "dry toilet". It's essentially an outhouse with saw dust to remove any smell, which would be fine except for the fact that the stall is kind of flimsily put together and totally exposed. Call me conservative but it's weird when a goat and some cats are watching you use the restroom. Pictures to come..more on that later.

Day three. After our early morning milking we did a couple random tasks around the kitchen, a bit of cleaning and some tedious lentil sifting and picking some thyme to roll the fresh goat cheese in. After lunch we learned to use this giant machine that removes the hull from raw wheat and blows it away using a hand cranked fan. After about 180 kilos of raw wheat and a very good arm work out, we brought it inside to pick out the little stones. Around 5 instead of milking the goats we decided to take on dinner, so we made pumpkin curry and chapati in honor of our hosts who love Indian food. Even without certain spices I think dinner turned out well, and we spent the evening listening to the results of the French national elections and playing games before bed.

Four. Despite the fact that the family keeps vegetarian and the farm is organic so no pesticides are used to kill bugs, controlling populations of animals on the farm leads to some unpleasantness. In the goat barn there is two separate pens for the new kids-- when asked why they were separated the answer was one was for milk and one was for meat. This I understood, despite my already attachment to one of the friendlier "meat" kids. Another moment happened while cleaning out the wheat milling machine. We took the tarp off to find three very newborn (maybe a day or two old) kittens. Clement very quickly picked out the females and, as we and their intern stared on aghast, put them into a burlap bag and straight into one of the bins of reserved rain water. Uh, WHAT? We were stunned as Clement explained it was the only way to control the population of cats (which is already pretty out of control on the farm) and he didn't enjoy it. Yes.. Neither did we.

Five. So much milking, so much sorting wheat. Too tired to write.

Six. Today was pretty standard, we cooked a bit which was nice. Starting to feel the long work days, but still having a good time. It's been really fun getting to know all the people who live and work here (and the animals), I feel like we're starting to settle in. We were talking about the different sections of the US today like the midwest, west coast, etc. and then about the "rust belt" and the "bible belt" and were told that we're currently located in what in France is called "le diagonale de vide" which refers to a large Southwest to Northeast strip of nothingness. We're really in the middle of nowhere.

Seven. The weather is definitely getting warmer, and we felt it today breaking down wooden palettes in the morning and then in the afternoon again. It was a long and exhausting day, and the monotony of the work didn't help much. It essentially involved breaking apart boards that have been nailed together to salvage the wood for the fire-- I guess the palettes were free because they're normally thrown away so they try to recycle the wood on the farm. The day ended laying around the yard listening to Thomas (a guy who WWOOFed on this farm 4 years ago and never left) play the accordion and enjoying the view of the hills. Whenever one of us says something that Thomas doesn't understand he's gotten into the habit of yelling "DingDongDingDong!" because he says that's what our English sounds like. When we were talking about one the goats with a bell around her neck he exclaimed "Her bell! DINGDONG! She's American!" Hilarious.

Eight. Today was our last full day on the farm. It was stone oven day, which meant after the first round of milking all the baked goods, bread, etc. were baked for the week. We started by letting the giant oven heat up, feeding the flames until the stone was as hot as it could get. The oven is really interesting in that you don't continue to add wood or continue to feed the heat, you just bake things in order of what temperature they need as the stone cools down. First was bread, and a lot of it. The farm harvests it's own wheat, takes it to the mill to make flour, and bakes the bread from it. I've never seen all those steps taken in one place so I was pretty impressed. After the bread, tons of cakes, cookies, and savory tarts were baked, followed by potato au gratin for dinner tonight. At the very end we toasted off some walnuts and called it a day.. after one more round of milking the goats of course. We've both spent a bit of time making cheese as well in the past two days which has been fun-- it's a surprisingly simple process in the world of organic cheese making. We basically just took the milk from two or three rounds of milking (which is on average about 25 liters), let the curds separate, skimmed, and then let them dry out in different stages with a little salting in between. The end product is anything but simple-- rich, creamy and fresh, and it's saying a lot that we can still enjoy the cheese when we've been around the goats as much as we have been. We leave early tomorrow for Millau (they sell goat cheese there in the market so we'll get a ride) where we can catch a bus. We've decided to head back to Montpelier because we liked the town or what we saw of it in the brief couple hours we had there last week. It'll be nice to get back to civilization, but our brief time here in the diagonal nothing has been lovely.