The Farm
From the journal I kept while WWOOFing in Southern France: December 28th, 2010 5:30pm
More olive picking today, and I did not tire of it. I loved climbing to the very top of the tree and picking the branches clean of their fruit. The view of the Combes Longues and distant Esterel Forest from a tree is different from the perspective one gets while sitting on a chair or patio though the scene is basically similar. To be balancing precariously in between branches as opposed to sitting comfortably adds a realness and excitement to the experience. The latter too closely matches the position from which we watch television: the not-quite-real world. Standing in and looking through an opening in the tree, thinking about how few people I know will ever have this experience in common with me is the pinch that proves I am not asleep. Je ne me reve pas.
February was an exciting time of year though it is inaccurate to romanticize it as a period full of life. Life was plentiful, sure, but it did not exist without balance.
While on the farm, there were days I happily watched the goat kids jumping awkwardly around the pen and piglets swarming the troughs for petit lait. But there were also days where I witnessed still births; found kid goats barely breathing covered in their own diarrhea; and picked up dead piglets, stiff, because their mothers had laid on them during the night. This was part of the job, a necessary part of the job. I learned a lot in February.
