Busy in the Kitchen

It's heating up here! It's finally staying sunny and hot. The tomato plants are perking up, the eggplants are starting to grow, and the zucchinis are getting huge! The mosquitos are coming out, too! I have a lot of bites now, so I'm getting used to it, but I'm certainly learning that they don't like to be out in the sun; these mosquitos would rather swarm around in the shade or as the sun goes down. The sun is my best friend here. All the farmers are happier as well.



Besides the weather, the kitchen is heating up also! On Tuesday night, I made the warak 'enab dish, which is Lebanese stuffed grape leaves. Even though the measurement system here is different (they use grams instead of cups) and the stove top doesn't have a low setting (only high, haha), the final dish was a success! The family had never ate it before, but they enjoyed it. The girls didn't seem used to having a salty dish, but they still tried it. The other WWOOFers loved it! The Japanese one hopes to make it in Japan for her friends. She said that putting lemon with rice is a new taste for her.



On Wednesday, the other WWOOFers cooked! Naoko made a fried Udon noodle dish with zucchini, sautéed potatoes and carrots in soy sauce, and a basic noodle soup. For dessert, Alison made Eve's pudding, which was a baked cake with apples on the bottom. She added a strawberry sauce to it, and said that we should pour heavy cream on top, too. It was terrific, but not the sweet kind of cake that I'm familiar with. I guess I have an American sweet-tooth, and she cooked something I would find to be bland British cuisine. Even so, it tasted great, and the smell of baked apples in the oven reminded me of home.

While on the topic of fruit, I got to pick my first fresh fruit from the farm to sell for the market: red currents! The plant is beautiful. The leaves look like those of grape vines. I didn't find the fruit so great, though. It tasted very tart. In the gardens, I have also been spraying with more copper nutrients because there still has not been enough sun for the potato and onion plants. I have also been weeding. Ja-Ja just planted a lot of new salad plants. The varieties are endless! Even at the market, customers really seem to be picky about their lettuce. The Freanch seem to know what varieties they like best. I sneakily planted a red lettuce plant myself. I think I'll watch over it as if it were mine, hehe. We also did more raking of hay in the fields. They smell of fresh-cut hay is spectacular, in my opinion. It's similar to burning wood, in a way.

I learned that Chérif and Ja-Ja have a certain rotation for their plants. Once a vegetable has been completely gathered from a garden, they weed it, put some dung on top as fertilizer, and till the soil. When they put in more seeds or baby plants, it's always of a different vegetable. For example, potatoes followed by lettuce. They never replant the same vegetable within a three-year span. With this system, the plants are less likely to get diseases. There are other benefits for the soil as well. Perhaps that could be a tip for you gardeners out there!

Okay, time to go back to the kitchen! Naoko and I are cooking a "Goodbye dinner" for Alison tonight because she is leaving Sunday morning. She has always wanted to go to South America, so we are cooking Mexican for dinner: guacamole, cinnamon rice, and a spicy chicken salad. The avocados are very expensive here, and come from Israel. It's times like these I am very thankful for California and its produce. Hurray for American farming!

Misty Mountain Top

It's been extremely rainy here lately, so I haven't been assigned much work to do. Ja-Ja and Chérif are taking this opportunity to do lots of errands, such as getting baby plants from other farmers. They have an arrangement or system with a few other farmers in which one farmer will grow a lot of one type of plant from their seeds and then distribute them as baby plants to the other farmers in this network. Then, during the next month, it's somebody else's turn; another farmer distributes their baby plants to the other farmers in the network. I think that they do it pretty much only with lettuce, but I'm not sure. Even so, I've ever seen so many lettuce varieties in my life here! Tomatoes, too! Chérif told me that they get all of their tomato plants from South America, which I thought was interesting. I think that they do that because they know that they are organic plants. They also get there organic sugar from South America because France does not produce any organic sugar. Thus, in order for the family to sell fruit preserves at the market with their organic certification, they are waiting now for the sugar to arrive. Sometimes it takes a long time because customs agents think that the powdery substance from South America could be hiding something else, if you know what I mean.

So we've been doing a lot of waiting on the farm, especially for the rain to go away. I got cabin fever a bit and decided to go running, even when it was still drizzling a bit. Of course, it then poured later on in my run, but c'est la vie. At least a got to see beautiful scenery! The clouds were low around the mountains, which gave the forests a very calming and mystical feel. I later watched a French film with French subtitles, too, so I've been working on my French. I bonded a lot with the other two volunteers here as well. This experience is definitely producing relationships that will last for a long time. I hope so, at least!

I hope to have more news in my next post. There are still lot more fields to collect hay at, so I will hopefully be more active and productive soon. Tonight I am going to watch a highly-anticipated soccer game: France vs. Italy. Watch it if you can, or the highlights later on. It ought to be a thriller! Both of these great teams are fighting to stay in the tournament (this game is for the elimination of the loser). It's crazy! (C'est fou!)

Making Hay While the Sun Shines

I've certainly learned that you've got to have brains to be a farmer! First of all, there's got to be a method for the madness. Farmers seem to work non-stop. There is always soemthing to do on the farm. Since everything is right outside your front door, then it's easy to be overly committed. Ja-Ja decides what she will be doing for the day based on the color of the moon in the morning. Chérif told me that her madness is based a theory by a German named Steiner (or maybe Schteiner, I don't know). Many other farmers use his theory as well. I'll definitely look into it more soon, but it's very interesting, even somewhat mysterical. Secondly, the farmer should probably be a mechanic, haha. Even most organic farmers depend on machinery. I guess that shows how industrial we have become. Two of Chérif's machines have broken down in the past few days. Both are for cutting and gathering hay. One got fixed because another farmer was watching nearby when it broke and he came over to help. Thank God he was there! He even stayed for the rest of the evening just in case we needed help again. What great solidarity and teamwork in the farming community!

Speaking of hay, that has been the focus for the past few days. The sun has finally been staying around and the storms have stayed away. All of the farmers in the area are cutting, gathering, stacking, and storing the hay. The whole family has been involved here! I have been raking hay mostly so that the bailing machine can get to it easier. I have also been turning hay with a pitchfork in a smaller field so that it can dry faster. While gathering the haystacks, I helped load them on a trailer, organize them, rid on top of them up to a storing building, and then throw them off to be stacked inside. My back hurt a bit and my arms got pricked a lot from the tough ends of the hay, but I felt so good being able to help. This was productive exercise! I also got to work on my tan some more, hehe. I got my first feelings of really feeling like a farmer girl! I almost felt like I was on the prairies of central USA. It probably smelled the same at least!

There is a new WWOOfer volunteer here from Japan! Her name is Nowko. She speaks English alright, but is learning French for the first time. I have been providing a lot of interpreting and translation services. Hurray! It's good reinforcement that reminds me that my French is getting better and I am hopefully on my way to becoming bilingual. Nowko is extremely polite and friendly. She studied in college to be a dietrician and she is very interested in medicinal herbs. She is always curious and anxious to learn. It's great to learn from her to about Japan. For example, she said that Starbucks is everywhere and a common snack to buy on the streets of Japan are rice balls filled with cooked tuna! I love her passion for knowledge and healthy way of looking at life. She always makes me smile more!

Even though she doesn't know much about soccer, she came with me to Chérif's parent's house to watch a soccer game. The UEFA Cup is going on now. This tournament involve many teams from around Europe. I think that 2 games are played everyday. Italy has already been knocked out, and Poland beat Germany! It's very exciting. Try watching if you can!

I've still been eating and drinking merrily here. We ate fresh fish fillets from the Mediterranean for the first time. It was a lot like tilapia. We have also had more potatoes in honey, steamed green beans, ground beef patties with rice, roasting chicken with baby potatoes, vegetable stew, and more. I southern French specialty is a spread made of cod and oil. It is so good on hearty bread! It is made in Portugal, too, but they ate potato to the mix, too, I hear. We are always eating salad with are meals still, with a homemade vinegarette. The berries are getting very red and ripe now, so Ja-Ja made a berry cake. I ate it with mango ice cream! I also bought some chestnut spread and chocolate spread from the store. They are very unique to Europe, I think. Chérif told me more about organic wines and I am anxious to try them. They are often unfiltered and don't have and strange additives that some wines have to make them stronger, but takes away from the pure taste of the wine. One I can't wait to get is from Louis Julian. The winery is actually in this region! I also tried a local, amber beer on tap. It was extremely refreshing and crisp. There are a lot of natural springs water sources here that contain water from the mountains, so I think this attribute made the beer taste superb!

I went to the markey again on Saturday with Nowko. I saw some familiar British people who are here now living in their summer homes. For the first time, Ja-Ja brought fava beans, red currents, and a different type of baby squash. She brought more eggs, green beans, raspberries, and squash. The eggs, green beans, and strawberries are very popular here. I got some complements on ly French, but most people like to bring up that I have an English accent. I like to correct them by saying that I have an American accent, thank you very much.

It's probably going to rain again tomorrow, so I'm not sure if we will continue getting more hay from the other fields. We already have about 200 bundles or haystacks, but there a plenty more fields to go! As I already said, though, there is always something to do on the farm. Maybe I'll get to watch a movie if it rains a lot, hehe. They have a lot of Disney movies I would like to watch, yeah!

I miss you all and hope everyone had a spectacular Father's Day weekend! Bon fete! (Have a great holiday!)