a TON of apples

Just got back to the big city after 10 days in the country working on the farm of Dominique and Cyril. The same farm about an hour southeast of Toulouse where, if you will remember, I worked at last spring with my friend Lauren.


I found Cyril and Dominique as I left them, whimsical, teasing, thirsty for cultural exchange and hungry to cook good food together, although slightly more tired following the intensive summer/fall harvest than the previous spring. I also found a full house: there was an Irish couple and a German girl also working there, plus a Norwegian couple who joined us later in the week.

The extra hands were needed as they were preparing to make, pasteurise and bottle the organic apple cider they sell at the market. All in all we harvested 1,700 kilos of apples from 11 different apple trees, that's almost 2 tons!!



On Monday, Halloween, we rented a press from an association and began the long process. I only stayed for 3 presses and left just as they were firing up the large metal heating tank to pasteurize the juice. They were expecting to do at least 10 presses and yield about 1000 liters of juice.


It was wonderful to be back at their old farmhouse which is surrounded by the Pyrenees mountains. The leaves were just changing colors that week and in the hilly countryside we had outstanding views of the surrounding woods. I had one of those holy-smokes-is-this-really-my-life moments when I was sitting on the hill looking at the mountains with one of their dogs next to me, eating an apple I had just picked off the tree next to me.



The second night when Dominique pulled out a scrap piece of paper to scribe our "menu" for the week, complete with a homemade dessert for everyday, I knew I was among my kin. We ate just as well as I remembered last time: meat raised on their farm, fresh seasonal vegetables, and inventive dishes prepared with care. For them, taking at least an hour to prepare lunch and closer to two hours to prepare dinner is completely normal. Being down one or two people midday to cook is simply worked into their routine as enjoying eating and eating well is valued and it considered natural to spend time and energy on meals.

Unfortunatley the rabbits were very sick with a fatal illness. We took care of them for a few days but eventually they died. In happier news, they have a new piglet named Valentine who is absolutely adorable. She has taken up with Edmund, their massive male pig. Apparently the had originally put them in separate pens separated by an electric fence, but she "fell in love" and jumped the wire two times to be in the same pen as him, so now they are together, sharing the same little pig-house. Never one to miss a meal, she wiggles over his massive sleeping body blocking the doorframe to eek herself out to be the first to eat. Too cute.

In addition to going to the Saturday market in Muret, Dominique and Cyril have also started a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), or an AMAP (Association pour le Maintien d'une Agriculture Paysanne) in French. It is a "contract" between community members who would like to receive fresh produce on a regular basis and their local farmers. The community members are responsible for organizing the AMAP, and typically buy a "share" or "half-share" yearly and receive a basket of a constant weight each week containing different produce or products made from produce harvested that week. When I was there our baskets contained: potatoes, a little bundle of parsley, a few last summer peppers, carrots, chard, heads of fresh lettuce, fresh onions, beets, cabbage, and a bottle of their homemade apple cider. The agreement is based on the responsibility of the consumer pays the totality of the order up front, and the farmer, who provides the goods weekly. This system permits the small scale farmers to have a weekly income which they can count on, as it is more dependable than going to sell at a market. The community members come to pick up their baskets on a fixed evening.

This idea started in Japan in the 1960's when urban housewives and mothers feared the quality of the industrial produce they could find in the cities and organized the first teikis with smaller-scale local famers who did not cultivate using chemicals. This idea later spread to the US around 1985, and then to Canada. To find a CSA and support local farmers near you, try any one of these websites: Local Harvest, Farm Locator, or Eat Well Guide.

Back to work tomorrow. I'm starting to give more private lessons which is taking time. That's all for now.

For more photos from my farming check my Flickr account: http://flic.kr/ps/24jdkf 

À très vite!