How to Cook a Sheep's Head . . .

Recipe from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1859.

(My British friend, and mutton lover, loaned me this old book.
It’s a frightening look at what it was like to live over a hundred years ago in England. Needless to say, I won’t be serving this at any of my dinners.)

To Dress a Sheep’s Head.

742. INGREDIENTS.—1 sheep’s head, sufficient water to cover it, 3 carrots, 3 turnips, 2 or 3 parsnips, 3 onions, a small bunch of parsley, 1 teaspoonful of pepper, 3 teaspoonfuls of salt, ¼ lb. of Scotch oatmeal.

Mode.--- Clean the head well, and let it soak in warm water for 2 hours, to get rid of the blood; put it into a saucepan, with sufficient cold water to cover it, and when it boils, add the vegetables, peeled and sliced, and the remaining ingredients; before adding the oatmeal, mix it to a smooth batter with a little of the liquor. Keep stirring till it boils up; then shut the saucepan closely, and let it stew gently for 1 ½ or 2 hours. It may be thickened with rice or barley, but oatmeal is preferable.
Time.---1 ½ or 2 hours. Average cost, 8d. each.
Sufficient for 3 persons.
Seasonable at any time.

St. Roger

Monday is Toussaint here in France, All Saint’s Day. The French, seemingly very secular people, take the day very seriously. The businesses and government will be closed. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is buying their chrysanthemums to decorate their loved ones’ graves. Roger told me he was going today to buy his flowers in a neighboring town, and at the same time, he would pick up my sacks over there for bagging my walnuts. I asked him why he was buying flowers. He looked at me in surprise and said, “Why it’s Toussaint!”

He estimated that I have around 600 kilos of nuts. That’s not very much when I consider all the backbreaking work I did to get them off the ground. And I fear that I will not bring in more money than Mr. Reste did last year . . . which was my goal. Roger has agreed to handle the sale of the walnuts for me. I told him that I thought that a French man who used to raise walnuts would get a better price than an American female who doesn’t know a thing about walnuts. He agreed.

The Toussaint before we purchased our place, I was staying in a hotel in the eastern part of our departement. One crisp morning, I looked out the window and saw a beautiful sight in the covered market in the square: hundreds of pots of colorful chrysanthemums lined up for sale. I had a dinner engagement that evening in Toulouse, and so I went out and thoughtfully purchased a plant for my hostess.

That evening when I arrived, I proudly handed her the pretty flowers. She didn’t say anything. When I was helping her clean up after dinner, I noticed that she had put the chrysanthemums out of sight in a corner of her apartment’s terrace. I just assumed that she didn't like chrysanthemums.

A year later, I was studying a French lesson regarding French Holidays, and discovered that chrysanthemums are only to be put on GRAVES in cemeteries! Quelle horreur! What a faux pas! I must have appeared as the Grim Reaper when I showed up at my friend's door. I immediately called her up from the States and apologized. We had a good laugh.

All the French schools are having their two week holiday that centers around Toussaint, so our town is filled with people from other parts of France who have come back to visit breathing family members and the others who are filed away in those French grave vaults.

When you die here your coffin is laid on top of, side by side, and eventually under, the other coffins of all your other family members. At least your bones aren’t alone through eternity . . . you’ve got your mother-in-law right there with you. It’s pretty easy to research your family tree here . . . they’re all shoehorned in the family vault.

In the U.S. we’re always paying lip service to the importance of family, but here in France they live it with their de rigueur Sunday family meal with all the relatives, their reverence for their dead ancestors, and a true respect for their blood relatives which includes a strong attachment to their ancestral lands and home.

Tonight, I go to Francine’s for dinner. We’re celebrating Roger’s birthday with a dinner . . . two days late, because I thought it was today! Another hideous faux pas on my part. I’m bringing the cake. Roger’s bringing champagne, even though I volunteered to bring it, and Francine is doing all the cooking. Two other friends are joining us.

Roger came over last night around 6:45, just before I was heading off to a dinner with my British friends at 7:30 (who apologized for serving shoulder of lamb, but I swear it was mutton . . . make sure you read the mutton recipe I posted). Roger never comes over in the evening to socialize. He said he hadn’t seen me for a while so he thought he'd pop in. I told him that I’m just too tired and dirty in the evening to come over and knock on his door begging for ratafia. He said that the new batch of the ratafia that he just made will be ready in three months.

I mentioned his birthday party coming up the following day, and he said that his birthday was the day before! Luckily, I had purchased a fancy box of expensive chocolates for him just a few hours before he showed up so I was able to quickly demonstrate that my intentions to remember his birthday were honorable. The chocolates were beautifully wrapped, with the elegance that only a French chocolate store can produce for a food gift. He was very happy to get the chocolates and to know that I had remembered his birthday. He told me that birthdays were never celebrated in his family. He didn’t know why.

Last year I gave him a painting I made, in the manner of Henri Martin, of St. Cirq Lapopie. He loved it. He went and had it framed and hung it up with a light over it. I meant to paint him something this year, thinking that I would have time because I thought I would be finished with my nut harvest, but I still haven’t finished the nut harvest. (Despite an earlier post which might have led you to believe otherwise.)

I felt really badly that I had missed his birthday, because I had wanted to go over that exact evening for a drink with him, but thought that since I was tired, and since we were meeting for dinner on Thursday, I would be polite and not invite myself over for drinks. When I closed my shutters at 7pm, because it was getting dark, I noticed that his outdoor light was on, which it never is, unless he has lit it for you when you’re leaving. The French are very, extremely frugal with their electricity usage. So when he told me, in essence, that I had missed his birthday I felt rotten that he had been alone for it . . . and I assume that the light was lit for me.

All month I kept writing down that I needed to plan a party for Roger. And so when Francine said she would have the dinner for him I was happy that Roger would be honored and that I wouldn’t have to worry about planning the dinner . . . especially when I was still harvesting nuts. But I blew it. And I feel horrible. Even though he’ll be thrilled tonight with our drinking and eating and singing for him, I’m sure he was disappointed that no one came over to visit him on his birthday. I wrote down in my organizer in big letters on the monthly calendar that on October 26, 2005 it will be Roger’s 77th birthday. So I won’t miss it.

The End of the Harvest

Picked and sorted nuts this morning.
I probably only have about three more days left of harvesting nuts. I have to admit that I’ll miss the daily forced labor. Without it, I’ll have to start up my mindless running . . . at least nut picking burns calories for a purpose. Next week, I’ll spend my days sorting and bagging nuts. Then I’ll have the fun experience of getting screwed by a nut broker. But it’s all part of my French experience. I’m going to see if I can talk Roger into going with me to dicker with the nut broker.

The other day I took a break from my nut harvesting and sat on the ground to eat an apple. Blanche came moseying over to see what I was doing. I offered her a bite of the apple, but she wasn’t interested. I realized that I had never bothered to look at the number on her ear tag. When she had to stay in her shed all day, before we built the pasture fence, the tag was covered with dirt and unreadable. But I noticed that it was clean and at my eye level because she was nuzzling me so I read the number: 0372!!!!! In French, that reads zero-trois-cents-SOIXANTE-DOUZE! Blanche and Soixante-Douze were destined for each other. Wouldn’t it be cool if we were all born with some sort of marking on us, sort of like a puzzle piece, and all we had to do to find our soul mate in a single’s bar was to match up that piece?

Today, I was sitting out in the noyer, sorting through a bunch of nuts that I had piled in the wheelbarrow, when I heard Thérèse’s familiar “coo-coo,” which is the French equivalent of the English “you-who.” She was fumbling with the gate latch and looked so cute with her little basket full of Moissac grapes in one hand and a big bunch of zinnias in the other. Blanche and Soixante-Douze saw her coming, and they approached stealthily from the side. I could see what was about to happen, but Thérèse was oblivious as she tried to figure out the idiosyncrasies of the gate latch.

I decided I better get up to shoo Blanche away. Thérèse is a petite woman and Blanche is a giant sheep so they are almost equal in height. Thérèse was a bit shocked to turn around and find Blanche muscling in to try and wrestle the flowers from Thérèse. Initially, Thérèse said, “Bonjour, Moutons,” thinking that acknowledging them was the polite thing to do, but when she saw that Blanche only wanted her for her flowers, she quickly squeezed through the gate to stand on the opposite side of the gate and she shouted, “Au revoir, Moutons!”

The weather here yesterday and today has been uncommonly beautiful. The temperature this afternoon hovered around seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit, a few white sheep clouds floated through the sky, pushed by a slight breeze. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it won’t rain tonight so that I can run the machine one last time through the large noyer. The rain is predicted to start Monday, together with a ten degree Celsius drop in temperature.

Tonight I’m going to an incredible restaurant about twenty miles away with a girlfriend. For all my squeamish, left-wing, California readers, I’m going to indulge in some creamy foie gras for my appetizer. Last time I was there I had a foie gras brûle – pieces of foie gras cooked in a custard of eggs with a caramelized topping. For my main course I ate an incredible piece of fish that the French call sandre. It was an unusual, but delicious dish as it was covered, and roasted with, a layer of finely sliced potatoes. You don’t often get fish served with potatoes . . . unless the fish is fried. For dessert, I had some caramel raviolis in a crème sauce. Superb!

Thinking about this Bill O’Reilly hoopla in the U.S., I have come to the conclusion that Karma must exist. For isn’t it ironic, that he, the instigator of the French Boycott in the run-up to the Iraq War, now, more than anyone, badly needs the support of the French: for if there is any country in the world, where the culture and the population would support his right to play out his sexual fantasies with an employee, it would have to be the French. But I don’t think that any Frenchman or woman is going to utter a word in his defense. Désolé, Bill!

Have Your Cake, And Eat it Too

Not much to report on today.

Yesterday, I started picking nuts at 8am and could only continue until 11am. My hip joints felt like jelly. I was truly worried I was going to collapse. I had picked nuts for ten hours the day before and there was no way I was capable of picking for another full day.

I felt badly because the nuts that were falling out of the trees were large, beautiful
ones . . . the ones for which the broker pays you the big fractions of a centime. I decided that part of my problem might be my lack of nourishment. I had been getting by on small quantities of fried potatoes, lemon yogurt, a daily piece of chocolate, tea, walnuts, and Roquefort cheese. (Yes, this is the diet I eat to maintain this new, svelte body of mine.) So I took a shower, and headed off to town to find a restaurant at 1pm.

The place was full. The elusive Monsieur Fargal was seated at a neighboring table. I suppose he'll start showing up all over the place now that I finally tracked him down and have a rendez-vous scheduled with him. He greeted me and assured me he would be at my place the next week to check out the roof; and by the way, he’d like to introduce his eating companion, the man who gets rid of termites. Did I have any need for him? No, not yet; but I’ll take his card because by the time any of you roofing guys take care of my needs, I’m sure the termites will have settled into the rotting roof timbers. What a racket those two men had! Fargal takes a year to get your roof repaired; in the meantime the termites show up, Fargal suggests this man and gets his kick-back. I noticed that Fargal fought for the check and he won, paying for the meal.

Two fleshy American women sat at the table on the opposite side of my table from Fargal, regaling a diminutive French woman about the American presidential election and lamenting the high price of gasoline in France, while admitting that we Americans have been “spoiled” with low gasoline prices. (God I wish I could escape this election, and I wish I could escape Americans talking about the election!) I noticed that the two American women had the exact same distribution of fat on their bodies. I’m beginning to see that there is an “American Body” and it’s not Pamela Lee Anderson or Paris Hilton, it is more Bella Abzug or Janet Reno or Barbara Bush (just wanted to cover all my political bases). Americans look round. These two women, I’m sure they weren’t related, had the exact same double chins hanging from their faces, and the thought crossed my mind that we Americans are indeed spoiled and it’s not beneficial to us: we eat too much, drive too much, consume too much, we are just TOO MUCH.

To be fair though, Monsieur Fargal could stand to loose some weight; and he must be dieting, because he removed the whipped cream off of the top of his dessert and he heaped it on top of the whipped cream of the skinny Termite Man’s dessert.

If you read that New York Times article I linked to in my post “It’s Always the Mother’s Fault” you’ll remember that when the researchers conducted a word association test with American and French subjects regarding food, when they mentioned CREAM the Americans said something like “fattening” and the French said “whipped!”

You’ll be interested to know that the American women told the waitress they didn’t want any dessert. However, the tiny French woman ordered dessert and then shared it with the Americans.

You’ve got to love a country that wholeheartedly embraces all that’s meaningful in life without guilt. I read recently where the French average the most sexual encounters per year than any other nationality: 137. Let’s see, they eat bread and drink wine by the bucketfuls, have lots of sex, are skinnier and healthier. No wonder I love living here.

And, while the U.S. is spending tens of millions of dollars on abstinence programs in middle and high schools, the French are resigned to the natural fact that teenagers have sex lives. They arm their school infirmaries with the morning-after pill and provide free condoms, and as a result the average age for a French teenager to lose his or her virginity is higher than the average age for an American teenager, and the French teenage pregnancy rate is only 25% as high as the American rate. So tell me, which country has their head screwed on correctly when it comes to food and sex, the most fundamental components of life?

Lest all of my American friends are now afraid to visit after reading the above diatribe, I have this recent anecdote to report. I had some American friends stay in the house for a night when I was in San Francisco, and I left the key with Monsieur Besse so he could let them in. When he returned the key to me, he said, “I thought that all Americans were fat, but all your friends are thin.”

Back at the restaurant, when the waitress came to ask me if I wanted dessert, I haughtily answered, “Non.” I wasn’t going to put my American pounds back on! No double-chins for me. No round body for me. So I by-passed the tiny dessert that Monsieur Fargal ate, the one with the yummy looking whipped cream on top, paid my bill, and then walked my svelte self to the car, where some workmen were kind enough to stop traffic on the road in both directions so I could back out safely.

Then, craving something sweet, I DROVE to the supermarket, BOUGHT a box of six rather large Belgian honey-waffle cookies, and ATE THE ENTIRE BOX!!!!!!!

So the moral of this story is two-fold: Judge not least you be judged and learn to eat dessert like the French do!

My husband called . . .

. . . this morning to take issue with a post I made a few days ago, "Tax Day." In it I stated that I would be content to simply wander through nature with him and my sheep, eating off of the trees and vines. He says that is absolutely not true, and as proof, he will submit the new American Express statement that covers the two weeks I was back in San Francisco.

It's Always the Mother's Fault

Thoughts on nut picking:

If reincarnation exists, I don’t want to come back as a squirrel.

For the first time ever in my life, I am in the position where I have to actually plan and force myself to consume calories so I’ll have enough energy to function.

As I was hauling my nuts in my wheelbarrow to the little nut factory, an image of the Keebler Elves popped into my head.



Ohhhh, my aching back. I cannot use the nut machine because it has been raining every day for a week. So I go out and pick nuts, off the ground, by hand, for four to six hours a day. Lately, it has been six hours a day. The washing and arranging of the nuts in bins takes another two hours. I pick in the rain, in the hail, in the cold. The wear and tear is starting to get to me. However, I’m the thinnest I’ve been since 1992 and there’s no way I would have put myself through such suffering in a gym to achieve this weight loss, so forced labor has its upside. The downside is that there’s no one here to appreciate my new-improved body.

There is another "downside" to losing weight in France. While I'm at the farm for days at a time, without having any outside input, I admire myself in the mirror and think I look really hot . . . my rear-end looks really small and firm. But then, I finally go into town to the post office, and I'm standing in line cockily thinking I look fantastic, and then I notice that the three women in the line in front of me have smaller and firmer rear-ends, and one is in her sixties! So that experience was a great emotional setback, discovering that there's more renovation work that needs to be done on my rear-end. A very sad thought if you knew how many nut-picking-squats I do each day. If I was in the U.S. I would strut into the post office knowing that the odds would be extremely high that I would have the best looking rear-end in the building . . . maybe the entire city block. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17EATING.html

But enough about my rear-end.

Blanche and Soixante-Douze are keeping me company. Yesterday, Soixante-Douze approached me and allowed me to briefly pet her nose with my finger. So we’re making some progress in our testy relationship. I think she’s developing an interest in me because she now views me as a source of food. I have been giving each of the sheep their own bucket with a little bit of corn and grain in it each night, which makes me a very attractive sight to the two of them. They come bounding across the walnut grove when I come out, call for them, and shake the pails. It’s a very amusing sight because Blanche is so large and fluffy that she looks like the Michelin Man lumbering towards me at great speed.

The sheep graciously keep me company while I’m picking nuts. They wander around, silently grazing; and when they’re finished, they come back and lie near me and chew their cuds. I really enjoy the sight of sheep lying on the grass. The sight epitomizes the peacefulness I feel here. And the two of them look so huggable when they’re sitting down because they curl up their scrawny legs underneath their bellies so that they appear as big round huggable blobs. If I am in need of a short break, I go and sit with them.

A few nights ago, I finally took the time to spread straw in their shelter. They were staying out under a bush in the rain, or when they wanted variety, under a big pine tree, and so I’m trying to entice them into using their shelter by decorating it with straw and stocking it with their salt block and nightly serving of grain. While they head for the bush or tree when it starts to rain, they don’t seem to care about getting entirely out of the rain, and I think that they need to get in the habit of staying in their shelter, because all this rain can’t be good for them. There is a hoof disease that sheep get if their feet are always wet, so I would like them to start using their shelter so they can at least dry their shoes out. Blanche is very white now, and those of you who know Blanche will be happy to hear that even her black tail is half white now.

Blanche is a very beautiful sheep. However, it is always an embarrassment for me when visitors catch a glimpse of her derriere. While it doesn’t bother me, (that’s what unconditional love will do) it seems to horrify others. As my son describes Blanche's tail as having dreadlocks – urine soaked dreadlocks.

The late Olympia had a very cute long, fluffy white tail because she would lift her tail when she urinated. Soixante-Douze has a white long tail because she squats and lifts her tail when nature calls. Blanche just lets loose, soaking her tail. So while the front and sides of her are very attractive, her backside is a fright.

There are two theories regarding this lapse in hygiene. My husband thinks that her tail was broken at some point before I brought her home. But watching Soixante-Douze, I’ve developed the theory that Blanche, not being raised by a sheep-mother, as Soixante-Douze was, but instead being brought up in an orphanage and by a human-mother, Blanche never watched other ewes going to the bathroom. So she doesn’t know that she should squat or lift her tail. I should have taught her this maneuver.

It’s tough being a mother. Every “failing” of your child can always be traced back to you. There are so many variables involved in child and sheep raising, that it’s hard to get all aspects of the business right.

Tax Day in France

Yesterday was property tax day.
I felt a strange sense of happiness as I drove down the winding road through the autumn tinged vineyards. I was happy to be giving a check to a government that supports the same ideals I support: universal healthcare, quality public education for every child, reproductive freedom, liberté, egalité, and fraternité. I was also happy to be paying the dues for living in this wonderful land. When I drove into town, the French flag was flapping over the mayor’s office, and I smiled, thrilled to be a part of the daily life of this beautiful, intriguing country. I’m going to apply for my Carte de Sejour soon . . . I want to stay here much longer than six months a year. France isn’t perfect, but it comes close enough for me.

My husband will be THRILLED to know that I finally got Fargal to come out and give us an estimate for replacing the roof on the mill. You might recall that back in June, I complained about Monsieur Reste because here he was our handy-dandy-drive-us-crazy caretaker and he hadn’t bothered to tell us that the roof was caving in on the mill. By the time it was discovered, the tiles were dropping three stories to the ground below, posing a danger to anyone walking by . . . for instance Francine and her 89-year-old mother who walk the back path to visit me on Sundays. When he was here in July, my husband called up two people to give us devis (estimates). The incredibly handsome carpenter arrived within a couple of days, and the devis arrived the following week. The very ugly carpenter required two telephone calls to get him out to look at the roof, he arrived a month later, and we still haven’t received a devis three months later. I say we should reward the incredibly handsome carpenter because he showed the initiative to get us the devis quickly, and perhaps that is also an indication of how thorough his work is. However, my husband wants to give the homely carpenter a shot at the work because he is a neighbor; and, my husband wants another devis to compare to the incredibly handsome carpenter’s devis.

Back in August, I went to see Fargal, the roofer that everyone says does great, reasonable work. (The other two roofers have great references as well.) The woman in Fargal’s office had told me that Monsieur Fargal was very busy but that he would call me when he had time to come out and measure the mill. In two months, I haven’t heard from Fargal and so every time my husband calls me, which is at least every day and sometimes twice a day, my husband asks, “What about Fargal?” I find this question agitating because it zaps me out of my blissful state of reverie and requires me to make a foray into the world of commerce . . . and it also requires me to MAKE A LIST OF THINGS TO DO. I hate making that list, because everything on it requires that I interact with the modern world, and I want to remain in my own little world here on the farm.

So, donning a suede mini-skirt, tight body suit, and boots, I thought I would follow my French girlfriend’s advice, which was specifically to wear a low cut top with a short skirt if you want to get something accomplished in France; but it was cold and my low cut top would not have swayed Monsieur Fargal so I opted for tight. Luckily, it was raining, and so Monsieur Fargal was sitting in his office when I arrived, unable to be outside working. At first his secretary closed his office door a bit, because she knew the reason I was making an appearance, I had been there twice before. She wanted to hide Monsieur Fargal. But, I thought he must have been mesmerized by the mini skirt and boots, for he joined in the conversation.

He wanted to know if it was an emergency. No not yet, but it might end up being one if the mill collapses.

He wanted to know if we were converting the mill into a gite. No, I don’t want any more tourists here.

He wanted to know if I was English. No, I’m American, but I’m a poor American so give me the French price.

Okay, he said he would come out next week, on the 26th at 2pm. By the way, he’s totally bald and chubby. I’m still rooting for the guy who quickly gave us the devis. I smiled as I turned to leave when I noticed he was looking at my legs. But then, when I got home and was changing into my overalls to pick nuts, I realized that maybe he was wondering why I was wearing such weird striped tights . . . think Pippi Longstocking. So I don’t know if the trying to be sexy tactic worked or not. When you’re forty-six it’s hard to tell if the “sexy” card plays well.

Triumphant, I went home and picked nuts. It has been raining so it’s too wet to use the machine. That’s the problem with the machine: when you really need it, after the rain has knocked down massive quantities of nuts, it doesn’t work. So I have to pick the nuts from 150 trees. And just to clarify for you city slickers, these nuts are lying on the ground which means I have to bend over or squat for every single one of the buggers. I was thinking about how I won’t bend over to pick up a penny in the street in San Francisco; but here I’m bending over thousands of time to pick up something worth a penny or less. Needless to say, my derriere and legs are in great shape.

If you’re an organized person, nut picking can be very frustrating. The first couple of years, when I wasn’t even the one responsible for the harvest, I would go out and be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the job. But this year, knowing that I have to pick up every nut on the ground, I tell myself to be calm, to do as much as I can, and to slow down when my back starts aching. I’ve found that I work best in two hour shifts with an hour in between each shift. I would be fired if I was a migrant farm worker for demanding such exorbitant breaks. But I find that while the first two-hour stint is painful, if I take the hour-long rests in between, the next two stints become easier, almost fun, although tiring.

Around four yesterday, a tremendous rain and hail storm hit. I toughed it out, but finally went in the house realizing that I had to change my drenched clothes because I was too cold, and that these walnut trees have shallow roots and easily tip over so I was in danger staying out there during the storm. When I returned after the storm had passed, there were just as many nuts on the ground than before I started working. On one hand, that was disheartening, because I didn’t appear to be making any progress in cleaning the nuts off the ground; on the other hand it was exciting because it meant that there would be more nuts for a larger harvest, and these nuts were clean and shiny and fun to pick up, in comparison to muddy nuts that have been lying about for an extended amount of time.

I was back in one corner, picking up wayward nuts that had fallen into the untrimmed brush and I noticed that there were two apple trees. I was wondering why the sheep liked to hang out in this corner, and figured out the reason when I saw the half eaten apples strewn among the nuts. This tableau got me to thinking about how we humans are always so stressed running around wanting more, more, more, when in reality that state of affairs is an affront against Nature. We’ve been given everything we need by Nature to live a happy life: loved ones for companionship, sheep for clothing, nuts and apples falling from trees, berries growing on the vines, water for drinking. In reality, we are all born into the Garden of Eden, not needing anything but love, warmth, and food. But because we have listened to the snake (society, marketers, and governments) we are under the totally wrong impression that we must have more, more, more . . . more than love, warmth and food. And all this more, more, more brings us is obesity, pollution, stress, depression, war; oh, just add anything bad you can think to that list. Why do humans discard Eden and opt for Purgatory instead?

I was crawling around in the sparse grass, scooping up the nuts, and enjoying being in the mud and the rain. It was a particularly sensual experience which reminded me of my childhood on the farm in Ohio. We used to play all day in the woods, and that’s where I developed my attraction to that birth/decay smell that is Nature’s musk. I was thinking about the garden of Eden, and how there isn’t much of it left anymore, and how in reality we’re all born into it, and it’s our choice not to partake of the pleasure and abundance which Nature bestows on us. It’s my theory that the rampant depression that plagues modern society is the result of being estranged from Nature. Maybe French peasants were incredibly depressed three hundred years ago, but I theorize that they weren’t . . . they weren’t told constantly that they weren’t rich enough or beautiful enough by billboards, radio and television, so I think that they probably possessed a sense of contentment with their “poverty” that eludes modern man. They built the rituals of their life and family around their work so their entire existence was centered on a dependent and mystical relationship with Nature . . . and I have to believe that when such a close relationship exists with Nature, then Man is in his natural and most optimal state.

So yesterday, I’m writing in my journal and I realize that I have everything I want and need. Isn’t that a marvelous, stupendous, liberating realization to have? Funny thing though, everything I want and need isn’t what I thought I wanted and needed when I was spending my time on Russian Hill in San Francisco; no, those needs were much greater and much more materialistic and unfulfilling. Living and working in the Natural world, I realize that I need very, very little to keep me contented. I also realize that if I had absolutely nothing in the material sense of the world, I believe that I would still find contentment if I could just wander the countryside with my husband, son and two sheep . . . eating apples, nuts, and berries and walking south into Spain for the winter. If I lived like that, I wouldn’t have to spend four months, stressing out, trying to tracking down a roofer to give me an estimate to replace the roof.

Buying a Property in France

This is the answer to the question "Why did you choose your area or village in France." A friend of mine is interviewing me for a book and this was the answer I gave her. I thought I would post it here because EVERYONE, American and French, ask me this question when they first meet me. I'm thinking of printing this answer off and just handing it out whenever I meet someone new.

The idea had been percolating in my mind that I wanted to purchase a farm in France. But I hadn’t verbalized the idea to my husband because I was CERTAIN that he would say NON.

When he told me in 2000 that he was going to go with me on my French vacation, I started looking at properties on the internet. I contacted two realtors, both were in Normandy, and after an initial reply, they never got back to me again. So I gave up on realtors.

Why Normandy? I was looking for one of those old farms where all the buildings formed a square or rectangular formation with the house . . . sort of a mini fortress. Most of these seemed to be in Normandy. I didn’t care about the weather or the scenery; I was just interested in finding a working farm. I knew that I didn’t want to be in Provence . . . too developed, too overrun with tourists in the summer, and I wanted a farm with cows and sheep and Provence farms seemed to be all crops. Also, I’m very pale and don’t tan well so I didn’t want to be exposed to the sun constantly down there. I didn’t want to be in the northeast or near Belgium, because we’re Jewish and I psychologically, didn’t want to be near Germany . . . I also knew that my husband would never agree to buy a place in the zone where the Germans had invaded twice in the past century. (I am three-quarters German Catholic by birth.)

The southwestern part of France where we ended up did not interest me because 1. I had never been to see it, and 2. I wanted to be closer to Paris than to Barcelona.

After the failure to get anywhere with the two Normandy realtors, I kept searching the web . . . staying away from realtors, because I now considered all French realtors flaky, but I kept searching for information on relocating to France. I found a site, www.investinfrance.com This is a chamber-of-commerce type organization which is funded by the French government for the purpose of attracting businesses to areas of France that have high unemployment.

We have a tiny children’s video business, that makes full-length videos out of stage plays, and so I e-mailed Invest in France a one-page proposal to open up an office in France and hire five employees, mirroring my office in San Francisco. We had filmed in Europe previously and relocating to France actually seemed to make sense at the time.

They had a representative contact me from the Los Angeles office. The office had received seventeen positive replies to my proposal from different towns and areas in France. I took all the proposals that were on the western side of the country and told the LA office that we would give them a week to tour us around. Then I told my husband that this is how we were going to spend one of our three weeks in France. I have no idea what he thought. I remember that, to my great surprise, he didn’t protest. Invest in France does offer incentives for businesses to set up shop in France, and I made this pitch to him and he was intrigued.

The week spent with Invest in France was a WONDERFUL way to see the country. We had to pay for our hotel and travel, but they made all the arrangements and they bought all our meals, morning, noon, and evening. So we saw the best that the areas had to offer. We toured and were wined and dined from 8am in the morning until midnight each day . . . it was hard work! We met mayors, actors, local businessmen. We toured Bordeaux, we toured small villages. We viewed beautiful properties that the mayors were willing to finance for us. They staged elaborate dinners and lunches in chateaux for us. Each region tried to outdo the last region. Ironically, we chose to purchase our farm in the region that didn’t go to any great length to impress us!

We ended up buying a farm in the Midi-Pyrennes, in the departement du Lot. I think they didn’t try to impress us because they have Airbus and all their supporting industries so we were very insignificant to their office. However, the man in charge of the Cahors’ development office was very smart and had all sorts of great ideas about how to market out tapes in France and Europe and we liked that. We also liked the weather which was warmer down here than in Normandy, Brittany, and around Bordeaux. I thought Brittany was more beautiful, and the property we found up there was my DREAM French property, but the weather was too much like San Francisco and at the time we were looking we thought we would still be spending half our time in San Francisco . . . so we wanted something different when it came to weather.

So in July 2000, we decided that we would purchase a property in the Lot. Having decided that, in order to insure that I established a beachhead in France, I decided that since my son was about to enter high school, I would start him in France. We enrolled him in a private, English language school in Toulouse. He boarded with a French family that school year.

Surprisingly, my husband never got cold feet. At Christmastime, he flew out with my brother (a rancher from Montana) to look at properties in the Lot. So they were viewing property at its most unsightly time of the year . . . no vegetation, and the weather was very cold that year. I had been out in October/November for two weeks and so I gave them some realtors and some properties that I wanted them to look at. All of my choices were much more romantic looking than what was finally chosen . . . and all of my choices were in the opposite side of the departement than the one where we bought.

We ended up buying in the wine country . . . I was interested in the sheep country!

At the time, he was looking for property, we were in the process of purchasing my father’s solid-state control manufacturing business. The loan had been approved and we thought that we would close that deal in January. My father ended up backing out of the deal; but not before we purchased our property. Thinking that we would eventually start manufacturing in France, because the biggest customer of that business had just expanded to Europe, we were looking for a property that would allow us to have a small manufacturing plant. I wanted some out-buildings that we could convert into manufacturing facilities . . . I didn’t want to clutter the French countryside with more modern steel buildings.

So our criteria was:
A working farm
A stream or river running through the property
Large outbuildings
A woods
Isolated so that we wouldn’t hear traffic

I wanted to be much more isolated than we are on the property my husband chose. We’re only 5 kilometers from a town with all amenities, and that’s a bit too close for me. However, when my husband called from France to discuss the property he had found, the one we bought, he made the pitch that he thought I wouldn’t want to cook every day, and that I needed to be near restaurants even though I said that wasn’t true. He also liked the fact that the town had a movie theatre.

My husband has never lived in the country so I think he was projecting his desire not to be isolated on to me. Because I really do wish that we were farther away from civilization than we ended up being. I am off the road, but I can still hear it when a car goes by on the road . . . and that’s the main thing I dislike about our property!

He seemed to be enamored with the property, and so I said to go ahead and buy it without me seeing it. He was intrigued by all the mechanical aspects of the water mill. (Ironic since we haven’t had water in the canal since after the first summer here.) He did send me photos via the internet. I thought that if I had him wait until I could get out there to view properties that 1. his enthusiasm would cool off, 2. we might never agree on what property to buy.

The property has a working mill (the water was flowing then) which can generate electricity so that was an added attraction to my husband regarding the potential manufacturing facility. In addition, the mill had been operating until very recently and was the site of heavy truck traffic so the neighbors were used to the noise and nuisance of light industry on the property.

So he put down the earnest money, and we closed six months later in June.

In April, I came out to visit my son during his spring break. I drove up to view the property and I hated it. I didn’t call my husband for three days because I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to say anything nice to him. He said he was willing to lose the earnest money (which was substantial) and we could look for something else. But I found it difficult to believe that he was willing to throw away that much money and I wasn’t foolish enough to throw away that much money, so I reluctantly said we should go ahead with the deal.

I spent two months here at the farm that first summer. When I returned to the U.S., my husband had stayed behind to finish up the walnut harvest and I received a letter from a cookie factory that wanted to buy the place. I threw the letter away because I didn’t want to sell my “ugly” little farm. I had fallen in love with the neighbors, and the village, and the area.

The French have a word, terroir. And its meaning, as described to me by a local vintner, means that a good wine is an expression of the land in which its grape vines grow. I feel that I have found my personal terroir. I thrive here on this little farm . . . creatively, personally, spiritually. This farm wasn’t the perfect image of my French fantasy, but it was the place I’ve been searching for all of my life . . . since I moved from my childhood farm in Ohio. This little patch of land is where I have found contentment and bliss and I am certain that it was my destiny to end up here.

SIRK: the kitten that wouldn't die

Ah, nothing like waking up to a fresh new morning, padding down the stairs in my fuzzy pink slippers, eager to have that first sip of tea, and finding a big pile of cat poop in the middle of the kitchen floor. I guess that was the “sign,” the reminder that I needed to fulfill my promise to you, dear reader, and tell you the story of Sirk, the kitten that wouldn’t die. But first, I must pause until I stop gagging.

I think I can go on now.

Sirk (or Cirq as we spell his name in honor of the pretty village of St. Cirq Lapopie) is a not politically correct acronym that my son came up with: Semi-Retarded-Kitty. When we had the invasion of cats this summer, Cirq’s mother was dispatched to cat heaven, along with Cirq’s siblings.

The other cats were not interested in having Cirq around them, and so he started hanging out near the kitchen in the hopes that someone would take pity on him and feed him. He was a very tiny kitten, he showed up with a bit of blood on his forehead so we thought he might have been shot in the slaughter that destroyed his family unit, and he tended to walk as if he was drunk . . . hence, the reason for his name.

However, he was affectionate, and my son took a liking to him, and wanted to let him spend the nights in his bedroom, but my husband said “no way.” He didn’t want cat hair in the house. So Cirq ended up being the personal pet of the executioner of his mother. Life has its bitter ironies.

One night, when we were coming home in the dark from dinner, as I pulled the car in the driveway, the headlights shone on Cirq who stood stunned, immoveable in the middle of our path. My son got out to pick him up and bring him closer to the house, away from the road, but as he approached, Cirq ran away. And we never saw him again. My son would often wonder out loud what had happened to Cirq. We felt sorry for the little survivor, being so small and alone out in the wilds.

My son flew back to the States in mid August without seeing Cirq again. When I flew back in mid-September, I still hadn’t caught a glimpse of Cirq. When I left for Paris, I left seven cats at the house . . . including the despised Rapist. None of these cats were friendly, and none of them ever approached me. In fact, they would flee from me if I was walking towards them. I was hoping they would all leave since I hadn’t left instructions for anyone to feed them while I was away.

When I returned two weeks later, there was a nice looking, young male cat sitting by the door, who expressed his desire to be petted by winding his flea-hosting body around my ankles. I thought he was a friendly little bugger and petted him. I paid the price for being friendly as I was awakened during the night by intense itching on my wrists and ankles.

I told my husband about this strange cat, and when I described him, my husband said it sounded like it was Cirq. Yes. That was very plausible. After all, the cat had the same mark on his face that on Cirq, we had thought was a bullet entry wound. So admiring his pluck and his affectionate nature, I started letting him spend the nights in the kitchen. He spends his days sleeping on a faggot of grape vines that Roger gave me to roast duck over.

Until this morning, he has been very tidy and has been able to refrain from defecating or urinating in the house. He very politely deposits his waste in a little pile of gravel and dirt directly in front of the mailbox in front of the barn. There is a slight stench that greets guests upon arrival at our house, but as long as I don’t have to clean a cat box, and as long as Cirq doesn’t go in the house, I am willing to put up with having to remember to go around the pile whenever I make a trip to the mailbox.

I think his accident was partly my fault. I was very tired from my five hours of picking walnuts off of the ground by hand, and let him in the house earlier than usual so I could go to bed early.

Take it from me; a pile of cat poop will wake you up much, much faster than a cup of coffee.

Sheep Cry

I had a friend staying with me for the past week, and we spent Saturday afternoon and night in Toulouse. Her plane was scheduled to leave early Sunday morning so this seemed like a fun way to finesse the schedule.

At 6:30 in the evening, while we were still window shopping, rain started falling. Luckily, I had carried a small umbrella with me and we shared it as we made our way back to the Place du Capitole where our intended restaurant was located.

As we walked, the rain intensified with each step. My left shoulder and side was soaked, her right shoulder and side was soaked. Then the hail started to fall, and the rain was so heavy, that we were forced to stop and seek shelter in a small eyeglass store. The street turned into a river, with swollen tributaries pouring into it. The Petit Bateau shop across the street was not living up to its name and it started to flood. The women clerks were wielding mops to futilely push the water away.

I was hoping that Mother Nature was not giving my little farm the same treatment. I was nervous all night having imagined the scenario of big Blanche and little Soixante-Douze and all the walnuts floating down our flooding ruisseau, down the wide river all the way to Bordeaux and then dumping into the sea.

When I drove back home in the morning the weather was parfait: dry, clear, unseasonably warm and sunny. I wound my way home on the small back roads through slowly drifting leaves. Boar hunters roamed the hills in their orange vests with their dogs bounding ahead of them. I pulled into the driveway, pleased to see the blue shutters of the house surrounded with its pots of bright geraniums and hyacinths all welcoming me home.

It certainly didn’t look as if it had rained a single dropl while I was gone. The ground was almost sandy it was so dry. The nuts were still here, not on their way around the Horn of Africa. The sheep were lying down under a tree trying to keep cool, chewing their cuds.

I picked nuts for five hours yesterday afternoon . . . by hand. I didn’t take the machine out because I had ran it over the entire large grove the previous day, and there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of nuts to pick up; so I thought I would profit from the exercise, bend, squat, bend, squat, bend, squat; and, I also didn’t want to deal with the dust and the noise of running the machine; and, there’s no reason to waste gas when I’d rather pick up nuts with the birds serenading me and packs of boar hunting dogs howling in the distance.

At one point, I took a short break to go over and pet Blanche. Soixante-Douze still isn't interested in the joys of human contact. Blanche was lying down, and I sat down with her to hug her. She had the saddest look and I noticed for the first time that she had tears under her eyes that dried into a shiny film on her hair. (She has hair on her face, not wool.) I was worried that she might be sick because she seemed so listless and not her usually happy self.

As the afternoon languished into evening, the constant howling of the dogs made me think that perhaps Blanche sensed that there was a hunt going on and this was what was upsetting her. I really think that theory is the correct one because once the howling stopped, she and Soixante-Douze got up and started eating, and later, when I called them, Blanche came bounding towards me, and was very affectionate. All traces of tears or sadness were gone.

I don’t think that Blanche was frightened for herself by the howling packs of dogs. If that was the case, I think she would have hidden in her shelter, or under her favorite bush, or would have come running to me.

I think she was feeling a deep sense of sadness and sympathy for the hunted boars.

Monsieur Burc is our local carpenter and he’s also the head of the local boar hunting association. For months, we’ve been waiting for him to give us an estimate on the repair of our mill roof. In the summer, he was too busy with work. But then boar hunting season began in September and he's too busy hunting. Roger even badgered him last week on our behalf. But still, the only time I see Monsieur Burc, is when he’s dressed in orange, scouting during the week for places to hunt boar, and then on the weekend when he’s out hunting boar. Yesterday, I drove by him as he and a large group of men were standing at a crossroads, everyone of them with a gun slung over their shoulder. I said bonjour to him, but thought better of nagging him about the estimate in front of his hunting buddies. They waved me on through the intersection.

I told my husband last night, that if the boars wanted a safe place to hide from the local hunters, and their leader Monsieur Burc, they should congregate in our mill, because Burc won’t set foot near it until hunting season is over.

The LeMonde newspaper web site has a very accurate weather forecast for every departement in France. I pulled it up last night, and they’re predicting heavy rain for us the next five days. We really do need the rain here, but it means that I will be hand picking nuts every day this week, and lots of nuts because they fall more rapidly in the rain and wind. The nut machine doesn’t work when it is wet. The wet dirt and mud clog up its brushes. Blanche and Soixante-Douze will get needed showers. But the mill might collapse as its roof caves in and then I’ll have a big mess having to get rid of all the dead boar that took refuge in it.

Nut Hiatus

You haven't heard much from me because I'm been harvesting the nuts and I have a guest from the U.S.

I'll be posting more regularly starting next Monday.

With some help from Monsieur Besse, I figured out how to use the nut machine, the nut washer, and the nut drier. So the nut factory is up and running.

I'm hoping that the dry weather holds up and that the machinery doesn't break down.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I'm Going Nuts

I hope that I will be able to adequately explain what a horrible day I had today.

At times I was crying, cursing, or laughing like a madwoman.

The day started out beautifully. I wrote in my journal. I followed my exercise regimen, I worked on my novel; I was clicking off the items on my to-do list faster than you can say “Type-A Personality.” At 11 am, I ran into town in order to pick up the dry cleaning that I had left there three weeks ago. The proprietor keeps such strange hours that each of the other three times I tried to get my clothes in the past five days, she was closed. I ate only fruits and vegetables for lunch . . . I’m trying to wean myself off pizza in anticipation of the pizza man leaving on his vacation, and in the hope of making my exercising more efficient.

Not being loaded down with greasy pizza, I skipped out of the house after lunch with my plastic pail in hand, and picked up nuts in the small back walnut grove. While I was picking, I was thinking about how this was a day where the reality of living in France was nicely measuring up to my dream of living in France: beautiful weather, birds singing, sheep grazing, me reaping Nature’s bounty. There were a lot more nuts today than there were yesterday, and so when I had finished in the back, I decided to tackle another item on my list: learn how to use the nut harvester.

Over the telephone, my husband told me the three possible places where the instruction booklet for the harvester might be found. I couldn’t find them in spots one and two. The manual might be behind door number three, however, I could not get the lock to open that room . . . even though I’ve done it many times before.

Okay, well, the manual is probably in French, and I don’t need it any way. And it turns out that I didn’t need the manual. I figured out everything by myself. The harvester is stored in a small garage which is attached to a strange “wing” of our house that was built on in the 70’s. Since I hadn’t operated the machine before, I thought it would be wise if I pushed it out of the tiny garage and then started it outside.

I was able to push the machine to the lip of the garage door, but couldn’t get it to budge over the lip. So, I decided to start the machine there, where it was half in and half out of the garage. It took me a few tries, but I finally pulled the cord with enough force to start the engine. I put the machine into reverse, and away we went. Then, getting too close to a small embankment that drops down into our yard, I moved into first gear. And away we went, and went, and went. I couldn’t get the machine to stop. The brake didn’t work. I couldn’t move the gear into neutral or reverse. I was heading over a concrete embankment, crashing through a hedge of bamboo, and certain that I was going to topple into Monsieur Foissac’s walnut grove. Because the concrete wall was just an inch or two higher than the ground, the machine couldn’t push over it, and just sat there spinning its wheels until I figured out how to shut the contraption off.

The front wheel was hanging over the wall, but it looked to me as if I could back the thing up if I could start it again. After what seemed like hours, but was probably only about a half hour, I finally got the thing running again . . . but only after I had fiddled with the gear shifter and it now appeared to move easily. So I put the machine in reverse, and Voila! was thrilled that I was moving backwards.

But wait! I couldn’t get the brakes to work, and while I was fretting about that, I forgot to maneuver the joy stick steering mechanism, and so the machine and I now plunged over the embankment into the yard, taking out a piece of a small hedge . . . that I didn’t think was particularly attractive in the first place. So now I had done it. The machine was stuck so that there was no possible way I could get it out.

At this point I cried a little bit at my lack of control over the situation; but then I thought about the irony involved in the situation. I have constantly bitched about this machine since the time my husband purchased it. Just the other day he told me that if I wanted to sell it, then I should sell it. And here, the machine was getting its revenge on me. It was doing its best to KILL ME. I started laughing hysterically.

Feeling foolish, I trudged over to Roger’s, rang his doorbell, and lucky for me he was home. I told him I had a big problem, but that it would be easier for me to explain it if he came over to see the problem. I don’t know the French word for “stuck.” He said he’d come over with his car. I said it would be better if he came over on his tractor with a chain.

He showed up about fifteen minutes later and was a little shocked to see what I had done. I was grateful that he didn’t laugh. The two of us spent about forty-five minutes pulling with the tractor, and pushing with our bodies. It is amazing how much stronger he is than I am . . . yes, he’s a male, but he’s almost seventy-six years old.

On his tractor, he pulled the machine and me on the machine because I had to steer it to a flat area between the barn and the ateliers so that I could practice using the machine. He looked the piece of metal crap over, and said that I hadn’t damaged anything. He wanted to know if there was an instruction manual and I said if there was one, I couldn’t find it.

I had told him earlier that the mishap occurred because the break didn’t work. When we were on a slight incline he showed me that the brake did work. Okay, I thought, then perhaps I had the wrecks because I couldn’t change gears easily.

I didn’t feel like starting the beast up while Roger was still there. I needed to go in my house, sit down, breathe deeply, and make myself a smoothie. I said “merci beaucoup” and he told me that if I needed more help with the machine to come and get him; although he had only ridden on the thing for a very short period and didn’t know anything about it. He told me to stay away from the river bank, and then he went home.

I went in the house and made my smoothie. Not wanting to let that nut machine get the upper hand, I ventured outside fully expecting that I could operate it now that I had a flat, open area. I wasn’t looking forward to trying to start it up again, but surprisingly, it started easily. I took off, the gear shift was working well, but then again I couldn’t get the damn thing to break, or change gears into neutral. I hopped off and quickly shut off the on/off switch.

So the piece of junk sits outside tonight, staring at the house, plotting how it’s going to exact its revenge on me for not wanting it here in the first place. I’ll try and get Roger over here tomorrow afternoon, after he’s had his nice relaxing Sunday dinner at his cousin’s house. I want him to look at the brake, and the gear shift to figure out why they won’t work for me when the machine is running; and, I’d like him to turn on the gas powered nut drier for me . . . I went in to do it myself this evening, but then, remembering my horrid day, thought better of the idea.

I’ve got to go take a bath now. I smell like a sheep. Feeling sorry for myself, and seeking solace, I went and hugged Blanche for comfort. She’s very fun to hug since her wool’s so long now . . . unfortunately, she’s very smelly.

You’ll have to be patient for the cat story.