Rosières

I leave you with the next chapter in my retrospective recollections of our backpacking tour!
In the arid mountains of Ardeche, nestled among the many tiny towns there is Rosieres. Although there are supermarkets around, many of the local community source all of their fruit, veg and wine from local farmers. Mael and his family are organic farmers. They have been living on their farm for the last 5 years, and Lisa has been visiting them since the beginning. Since then, Mael has expanded from a few organic vegetables, now bringing a large array to the market; tomato, cucumber, capsicum, eggplant, red and brown potatoes, red and brown onions, garlic, and a pile of chillis - customers can take one for free.
After resting, we were straight to work on the first day. Mael’s father Guy showed us how to prepare onions. This involved removing the excess stalk and the dirty and loose outer layers. When we started we faced two large wooden pallets piled with dirty onions. An hour later, we could hardly see a dent in the pile. But we had prepared about 30L each of onions that looked ready for a supermarket shelf.
The next day we got to work around the greenhouses. He has three of them standing, with rows of tomato, eggplant and cucumber throughout. We were collecting tomatoes, dodging the ones that had been cast aside for being rotten or not properly formed. Another common chore is organic pest control! Obviously they cannot use pesticides, so unfavourable insects are dealt with the old fashioned way – search and squish. The most pervasive invasive pesky pest was the ‘dorifor’. It is a ladybug-looking insect which we sometimes found on roughly every third eggplant bush. They are prolific breeders, a leaf covered in eggs or newly hatched babies are often seen. A good way to stay on top of these pests is to spend 15 minutes once or twice a day checking for them. If they were left uncontrolled, a large proportion of the crop would be destroyed by the end of the growing season.
Guy is an excellent chef. The produce that is unsellable at the markets (for cosmetic reasons) is enough for large feasts for the family and guests. Our favourite of his dishes was tart au corguette (zucchini tart). A staple of their meals is a large cheese platter with bread, present at all lunches and dinners!
A benefit of such a large house means they have ample room for visitors, as well as an extra wing which can be used by private stayers. It was now a few days into our visit, and a family came to stay for the BNB experience in the private wing. The night of the family’s arrival, Mael’s mother and friend came, as well as Jehan and his fiancé (Andrea). This was the makings of a party at the farm. We finished our work for the day in the afternoon and were told to be ready for Petanque and Apertif (drinks, finger food and ball games!) The open gravel driveway serves an additional purpose as a grand arena for the much loved sport of Petanque. I can best describe this game as an alterntive to Boule/Bocce/Bowls with some essential differences. First: it is much much more serious than the alternatives. Don’t even attempt to eyeball or estimate which ball is closer, you must measure precisely. Second: the game is played, as mentioned, on gravel. There is a real learning curve, its unpredictable and unforgiving terrain. Third: there are two distinct kinds of shots. In boule you may attempt to get close to the ‘jack’ and hit an opponents ball out of the way. In petanque, they are more distinct. You may, as normal, go for a good positioning of your ball on the field. If, however, you are attempting to disrupt an opponent’s position, your shot resembles more of a kamikaze-style bombardment. Watching established life-long players ‘shoot’ your ball out of the way is both impressive and brutal. It doesn’t serve you to get too arrogant early in the play.
Alas the next day was an early rise. Lisa and I worked alongside Mael and three of his proteges. We were tasked with harvesting rows of red onions, thus giving us an insight into another stage of the process for this vegetable. You wouldn’t have guessed that there was anything of value in this large field. Visibly over-run with weeds, it had only been 6 months since this land had been completely turned over and planted with the young onion bulbs. Moreover, the weeds had been intensively trimmed back just 3 months ago. This still didn’t seem enough to hold back the knee-high jungle through which we foraged for the red onion stalks, some of which were only 10cm tall, and others were still mostly buried. They were, however, quite evenly spaced in defined rows and distinctive enough for it to be manageable.
After three hours of harvesting, marked by the bell reminders from the nearby clock tower, we were worked out. The others continued on, but Lisa and I being WWOOFers rather than employees, didn’t feel guilty jumping into the ice-cold pool. Yes, even Lisa was straight in! It was that hot. It had only been an hour on the first day of arriving before Lisa mumbled subtly “I don’t think I’ll come back again during summer times...”
On the next morning it was time again to go to the market. This time, it was the local moderately sized, Aubenas market. Regardless of the market’s size, it is a common strategy to overstock. It has been known (at least anecdotally) to dramatically increase sales in fresh produce when customers can see an abundance of fresh looking vegetables. As many supermarket chains in Australia do the same thing, I would expect it has some research behind it. It’s also intuitive - nobody wants to buy the last tomato, surely it wasn’t the best of the bunch, and how degrading would that be? So this being our third and final market, we had the packing and unpacking process down to a fine art. Mael’s van had comfortable space for 3000L of fruit/veg crates and had a dedicated spot for the large fold-out tables and shade umbrella. On top of everything we stacked the empty plywood mini-boxes on which the vegetables were presented. Sure it would be more efficient to sell them straight out of the plastic storage tubs, but the presentation of the produce is very important. The store really does have a nice aesthetic when it is fully presented.
So after waking before 6am, driving home at 3pm we were well overdue for our daily lunch then siesta. Lisa didn’t waste the 10-minute’s worth of car travel, she was straight to sleep. After adequately feeding ourselves we were all thoroughly exhausted. Mael was determined to get 5 minute’s sleep. Lisa was already out like a light, and I was ready to follow. However, I felt bad for Mael who had a great deal of solo work to do before sunset. We set out for what would be my last afternoon of work. We collected many litres of zucchinis – I practiced my French counting out loud, there was about 105 of them I recall. Following that we also collected a similar amount of tomato and watermelon. Finally we were done! Needless to say it was a quiet and relaxing final night for us. The next morning we were up bright and early, en route for Barcelona, Spain!Read more