WWOOFing on Farm #1: Moulin de Braux
Moulin de Braux was a very special experience for me, and one I will cherish. The farm is set in Braux which is close to Dijon in the Burgundy region of France. As I took the train into the area, I saw huge fields of luscious yellow flowers. Not dandelions as you see in Canada, but instead (as I learned later), these fields grow either mustard or canola flowers (for canola oil) both plants are from the same family, so look similar. Also, the French countryside is truly beautiful - with these fields of yellow flowers and vibrant green meadows in the hilly regions. Of course, spring is probably the best time of year to see this.
The Moulin de Braux farm is run by Luc and Martine.
As many other organic farms, I soon learned that it struggles financially to stay afloat. Not everyone in France wants to buy organic, and despite their size they get no support from the government. Thus is a constant fight to stay successful with all of the work that needs to be done in producing lots of vegetables organically. They produce lots of vegetables, including carrots, leeks, onions, and varieties of radishes. Greens include swiss chard and spinach. Every week they have a market in a local small town, and then bi-monthly they have a market in Paris.
What I liked about the farm was that there were a lot of people to work with. From Paul, the New Zealander who has a semi-permanent stay and usually works with preparing carrots and helping at mealtimes, to the various apprentices at different levels who learn by the experience of working with Luc on the farm. So at mealtimes we had up to eight people at the table. This was great for my learning French since the others were around my age and I was able to spend time with them after working by watching French films, visiting local towns for drinks, etc. A breakthrough for me was being able to hang out with the other farm hands and really feel like I could engage in debates and conversations fully in French, getting to know them as friends. I will miss them, it was hard to say goodbye. Overall, the social aspect of the farm was the most rich part of the experience of living and working at Moulin de Braux.
Coline and I:
Katie (who came from the United States to work for 3 months) and her hilarious t-shirt:
Oh and I can’t forget Canelle, the mischievious dog:
Daily life
Each day we met for breakfast at 8 am. After breakfast (usually at around 9) we began work. I worked in the fields until 11 am, at which point I returned to the kitchen to prepare lunch. Then I would work again after lunch (2 to 3 o’clock) and work for 2 more hours. So essentially I worked 4 hours in the field, and 2 hours in the kitchen. Normally WWOOF-ing is 4 hours, but I really wanted to help more since I believed in the farm.
Work in the fields consisted of activities such as: weeding, planting bulbs or seeds, watering seedlings or young plants, cutting/washing vegetables for market, and harvesting vegetables such as leeks or spinach (which was really fun to pick). I found it very satisfying to work outside doing these things, and then for lunch just going into the cold storage room to “shop” for the meal. The feeling that we were producing all of the things we ate was really amazing. At the end of the day, it never failed that I felt very fulfilled in the work that we did.
Here is a picture of the cold storage room where all of the vegetables were kept for the markets:
Here is my bedroom in an adjacent large house to the farm. I really loved it and especially the bed, since it was a joy to be comfortable and warm after a long day of hard work.
Food
I loved the mealtimes at the farm, and really learned a lot about French culture and how I would like to run my own household. I also did lots of cooking, and grew to love the roasted vegetables, grains, and hearty salads I prepared as staples for the family.
Every morning, the first person in the kitchen at 8 am would prepare tea for everyone, usually types of green tea like regular or green tea with mint. They would set out large bowls for this tea. Then they would cut the bread and start to toast some. Once everyone was sitting down and Martine would say her quick prayer, we began to eat. Toast with different types of nut butters (hazlenut, almond, sesame, etc) and jams. Everything we ate on the farm was organic, even the products purchased from stores.
Lunchtime was around 1:30 in the afternoon. I would come in from working at 11 am to start preparing it, since it took a long time to prepare the vegetables and greens for eating. Vegetables had to be cut and scrubbed, greens washed multiple times. We usually put things through some vinegar and water for one final cleaning before we ate them. I learned that with these organically grown vegetables, it is good to have the skin on them since it is good for you to eat. The typical vegetarian meal I would help prepare would consist of a hearty salad to start, then a grain (quinoa, brown rice) with a legume (lentils, split peas) and one or two types of cooked vegetables. These were usually roasted in Martine’s excellent crock pots with olive oil and sea salt. We ate quite a bit at this meal, which was the largest of the day. Dessert was usually cheese for those who ate cheese, which although I don’t eat it think it is a very balanced way to eat it since you treat it as a treat, not something you smother all over your meal.
Here is the typical salad we ate every day, and which I grew to love. The dressing is made from different types of oil, vinegar, and traditional mustard varieties that are locally produced in Dijon. The bread is organic, and produced by a local bakery. Something I noticed that I really liked in France on farms was that you usually knew the people who made your food, and had relationships for example with the bakers who baked your bread. It was yeast free, since Martine believes that is healthier for the body. Carrots (yellow and orange varieties) and types of radishes were grated in a food processor for putting on your salad. Also, Martine taught me a recipe for something called “gourmandise” I think, which is toasted sesame seeds, ground in a mortar and pestle with sea salt. It is a very tasty topping, that you could consider somewhat like parmesan in that it has fat and saltiness. I found out later that this is a common French recipe, and I even saw it packaged and being sold in a health food store.
Dinner was very small since we have such a big lunch. It is usually independent and self serve, but sometimes Paul would prepare a soup using whatever was leftover from lunch.
There was no alcohol really allowed on the farm, for reasons I won’t get into, but one time some of us went into the local town, Semur, to spend time at a bar and have some drinks. I tried a local specialty called Kir, which is essentially white wine mixed with blackberry syrup… delicious.
Exploring the area.
As I mentioned, small towns in the French countryside are truly lovely places to be. I visited Dijon, Semur-en-Auxois, Montbard, and Flavigny. I saw that small towns in this area of France are very clean and orderly, have beautiful stone houses with lots of heritage, and have lots of green spaces. Of course, this time of year has lots of luscious vegetation.
In this part of France, I saw small lizards like I had seen in Spain, lots of snails, and large birds such as hawks or herons. They were very timid and scared of people, and as I biked one time I could always hear the scurrying and rustling of hiding lizards as I passed. This is something I saw on my bike ride to Flavigny, along the Burgundy canal:
I will spare you more photos of my smaller trips around, but you can check out my Flickr albums for more. There is so much to relay about this experience, but some more details from my journal: it took getting used to being so dirty all of the time (I had purchased a good rain jacket and rubber boots in Barcelona luckily, which were needed), international calling was free on their landline which was a treat since I was able to call home fairly often, the internet was very limited since there was only one computer with slow internet that happened to be in a room occupied by lots of bees (and since I am a little scared of bees, I hardly ever wanted to be in that room, you can understand), people in France greet each other by one kiss on each cheek, and I really learned that French is much more complicated than they teach you in school (not just a simple translation from English as I was taught when I learned French).
My experience in learning French very interesting. In the first few days of being fully immersed on the farm I was very overwhelmed with the conversations at the dinner table where people spoke very quickly, and often when working in the field I would never know when someone was speaking to me if I was looking away, since sometimes I tuned out the streams of incomprehensible language. I did my best to speak well, and then one night we watched a film entirely in French. That night I tossed and turned, unable to sleep with my mind racing to attempt to deal with this sudden influx of continuous French. Then, miraculously, the next morning I woke up and could understand everything that people said at mealtimes… that was when my true French learning began.
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