Mars 21-22: One night as a baker

The brother of the Auberge owner is an organic bread baker in St Lo, and Laurent set up a night for me to spend baking with him and his team. Serge is a pretty strange man, “cosmic” in our terms, “mystique” as Laurent said. Really, he’s just a bit spacy, but kind of a religious nut. However, he also has a truly unique bread baking operation.

After the Friday market, I went back to the bakery with Ai and David, Japanese and French bakers respectively, who are interning with Serge for a while to learn about traditional French baking. The method seems to be the important part to the operation. There are three huge wood-fired ovens that are fuelled with fagots, or large bundles of thin sticks. Serge also has two mills that grind flour the day of bread baking, both whole wheat and spelt. This milling is what makes the operation really unique, but I’m not sure I understand exactly why one wants the flour to be so so fresh.



Around 5pm we stocked the ovens with wood and finished mixing up the first round of doughs. Friday night is the biggest day of the week in preparation for four Saturday markets. All in all, there were 700-800 kilograms (or 1520-1760 lbs) of bread baked that night. Serge does six kinds: white, half-whole, whole wheat, rye, spelt and gache, the traditional Norman sort of sweet bread made with eggs and milk.



Dinner at 8:30pm, and then we didn’t stop til 5:30am but for a short juice break around 1:00am and breakfast at 4:30am. I spent most of the night weighing out dough to be shaped into loaves; I didn’t feel fast enough or neat enough to shape loaves much. I also got to transfer hot coals from one oven to the other and do a tiny bit of taking loaves off the peel Serge uses to clear the oven, plus loading the trucks for market. Somehow, I didn’t feel tired, and the time passed quickly enough.



Over all, I felt a bit like a cog in a well-oiled machine. Serge and Martine, the one woman who works for him, were like clockwork filling and emptying the ovens. David and Ai kept the loaves coming. I again got a good sense of the kilogram and at least improved in my weighing over the course of the evening. As important as the process is at this bakery, I think it may overshadow the end product that I find kind of lacking. It’s an old-style loaf, very simple without a greatly defined crust and a very dense crumb, too dense for me. It gets dry quickly, too. But it’s honest to its roots and made with hard work and quality ingredients. I’d like to spend a night baking somewhere a bit more standard…

Mars 15-17: Indian/Japanese/French/English/American weekend

On my first Saturday, I went grocery shopping with Chantal after dropping the girls at swim practice. We then watch a bit of their practice at the St Lo municipal pool which was really, really nice. It seems that cities and towns in France are the ones with pools as opposed to the U.S. where it’s more often the high schools and universities. The team wasn’t huge and not very competitive-looking, but it was fun to watch a swim practice and remember my long days in the pool.

Chantal then dropped me at L’Auberge where I met up with the American WWOOFers who are working there now (Robert and Megan who used to work at Thomas Keller’s Buchon in Las Vegas), the Japanese chef on a stage (who we called Francois), and the Japanese pastry chef (Eku) and the English sous chef (Ashley) who both live here. After a tour around to see the green-building house, the natural water filtration system, and the pigs, I went back to the kitchen where I mostly watched the preparation of that night’s dinner. L’Auberge is only open for dinner on Friday nights, plus the first Saturday of every month. That Saturday, however, was big Indian dinner for friends in celebration of the chef/owner’s son’s birthday and their recent return from holiday in India. Eku had gone also, and Ashley had spent three months in India a while back, so there was some experience on hand, if not anyone who actually grew up with Indian cooking.


The food was delicious and a spicy change from the Normandy fare I’d been having. Rice, fish curry, onion baji, cauliflower masala, tandoori chicken, interesting coconut/potato porridge, raita, lassis, and naan cooked in the wood-fired oven. And on top of all of that, there was a strawberry birthday cake, rice pudding (made with Camargue red rice), and incredible chai. And all of the meal save dessert was eaten with our hands, most even sticking just to the right hand, as would be done in India.


After cleaning up the kitchen, Ashley drove Robert, Megan and I back to his house near Avranches on the coast. The next day dawned and stayed grey and rainy, so we scrapped plans to see Mont St Michel and instead spent the day cooped up inside the house eating, talking, drinking, playing board games, listening to the BBC and watching some Eddie Izzard online (who knew he was that funny?). Robert and Megan are moving to the Boston area when they get back, so we talked a bit about the organic/local food scene there. I also took a walk along the coastal path in the grey bay sand. The island of Mont St Michel is visible across the bay even from near Avranches, 20km away.



The next day we drove there, and Robert, Megan and I had a walk around the small town, then through the abbey itself. I have to say I was pretty underwhelmed with the abbey, especially for €8,50. I suppose the architectural style itself is more pared-down than other sites I’ve seen, but it just didn’t have the majesty of, say, the Palais des Papes. But then again, it was an abbey and intended to be a place of reflection for monks rather than a showcase for the Pope. The town was over-run with Spanish and English teenager groups, so we were glad to leave at the end.

Mars 10-25: Work on the farm

Laurent grows organic vegetables at his farm. He’s got four large high tunnel greenhouses, acres of fields, plus a building where he cleans and prepares the veggies, and storage part of the building for crops like potatoes, onions and celery root that are harvested in the fall and sold all the way through the spring. He’s one guy with lots of land, and I wonder how he manages in the height of the season. Every summer, they have a stagiare (or intern) from a Russian agricultural school, and they get WWOOFers, but still!

At this point in the season, not much is going on. There is even less going on right now because the family is moving house this year, and Laurent couldn’t start planting on his new land yet because of this late spring. Normally there would be garlic, onions, other salads and spring cabbages at least in the ground. As it was, there were the greenhouses, cabbages, Brussels sprouts and carrots in the field, endives growing insi de a small building, and storage crops.

I started my first Monday morning with sorting oca for re-planting, a funny root crop that is pink and bumpy. I forgot to take a picture of it, but one of thest little guys looks startlingly like a sumo wrestler.


From that, I moved on to onions which would be a nearly-daily companion over my time chez Laurent. I had watched farmer Dave at my farmers’ market clean onions during the market, and here it was my turn. Yellow, pink and red onions remained, and it was my job to chuck those that were sprouting or mushy, and make presentable for market the rest. It was repetitive, often cold work given that I was standing on a concrete floor in rubber boots (even with two pairs of socks!). I sometimes warmed my feet up by sticking them directly on the glass front of the fireplace.



I also harvested spinach in the tunnel, Brussels sprouts in the field, and endive from underneath sand and hay. Most endive nowadays is grown in nutrient-rich water, but Laurent still does the old way in dirt.



Market days were particularly fun. I helped sell a bit at the St Lo market on two Fridays where I gained a better sense of a kilo, learned what measure a livre is (one half kilo), and confused customers with my American accent. Laurent is one of a few producteurs at the market where most people are marchands. This is the big difference between a French market and an American farmers’ market – producers verses re-sellers.

Laurent also sells at the market in St Pair on the coast, to three organic grocery stores in the area, and to a few restaurant accounts. The day I went to the St Pair market, I actually took a walk up the coast to Granville, a nice seaside town where I enjoyed some of the best scones I've ever had. So un-French, but so delicious.


In addition to all of the vegetables, the farm also has a number of animals that belong to another farmer. Sheep, two goats and a few pigs are around. There are two cats who are mostly wild, but fed milk and cat food every morning, and the family has a very cute dog, Noisette, who would often hang out near us during the day. She alternately stood inside the shed peering out or basked in the infrequent sunshine outside.




And leaving the cutest for last, there was Coco, Claire's pet lamb who I got to feed from a bottle a few times. Man, was he adorable.

mars 9: Arrival in Guilberville, scene setting

I arrived at the St Lo train station, and it was pretty easy to find Laurent, the next farmer. He was there to meet me with younger daughter Claire, 12. We drove the 30 minutes back to their house mostly on a five-year-old Autoroute (the biggest kind of French highway) that you could hear from the farm. Though the farm is technically in Guilberville, it’s not near the town center that I never actually visited.



I was shown my cozy room on the first floor, and then I hung out a bit with Chantal, Laurent’s wife while she cooked up the week’s potage, or pureed vegetable soup. Cooking was briefly interrupted by a leak from the shower on the second floor, but it stopped quickly. All five of us (older daughter Helene is 14) sat down to dinner that Sunday and every night at the table in the kitchen where there is also a wood-burning fireplace that heats. Dinner was eaten out of one bowl or off one plate for each in spite of the different courses. Soup was cleaned out of the bowl with bread before the main dish, which was again cleaned off with bread before cheese. Cheese was a selection of yogurt, fromage frais (like thicker yogurt), an Emmenthal-type, Pont-Leveque and Camembert, the last two of which are typical Normandy cheeses. Dairy is what Normandy is known for, and Chantal and Laurent grew up here with a taste for it. In spite of this being a vegetable farm, we ate surprisingly few vegetables – mostly just in that soup or in periodic salads. Too bad since they looked yummy!



Breakfast every day was also eaten out of one bowl, a sequence for me of OJ, then yogurt with muesli, and then coffee with which I had at least one slice of bread with honey or jam or peanut butter or their all-natural Nutella-type spread. And after every meal, the table was cleared and then wiped down to get rid of crumbs on the plastic tablecloth.



Laurent and I lunched together most days since Chantal was at work and the girls at school.

Meal times with the family were scenes of more in-depth conversations than I imagine most families have at the table. Topics ranged from the reasons why people think they need religion to Helene’s genetics homework to the current violence in Tibet/Nepal.

The room we ate in was next to a hallway holding the bathroom and toilet, and then the farthest room was an unheated mudroom/laundry/refrigerator/dishwasher/cool storage room. There was also a sitting room with a tv on the first floor that was rarely turned on, mostly to watch the weather reports.



And what weather did we have! The first night I was there, Laurent noted that a “tempete” had been forecasted, and it was indeed a tempest the next morning with very strong winds and driving rain. This happened a few other times while I was there, and the trade-off seemed to be clear skies and cold, or rain and warmth. Of course, there were also the cold rainy days which contributed greatly to my slight cold.

Over my two weeks chez Laurent, I learned a lot about French politics and government, organic regulations and farming here, and soaked up their general outlook on leading a life expressly not geared towards consuming. Their basic philosophy was quite in tune with mine, and it was a great family experience.

I also enjoyed some great walks and runs in the area around their house which is near a new installation of wind turbines. The house was also located close to the crest of a large hill which afforded incredible views of the next valley and of the sunset.

mars 7-9: Sick in St Malo

I took the train from Rennes to St Malo on March 7, arriving there in the mid-afternoon. I had booked myself a nice hotel for my last two nights before returning to farm time, a treat especially after the one in Rennes where I was kept awake by the loud drunk people in the street. Mireille, the proprietress, was warmly welcoming at Hotel San Pedro where I checked in and dropped my backpack before heading out for a walk on the beach.



The hotel was less than five minutes from the beach which was reached through a small opening in the ramparts that surround the old part of town. Old is a relative term here because almost all of St Malo was destroyed during WWII and rebuilt according to old photos of the town. The ramparts and fort at the corner of town were nearly all that remained. But the new buildings are pretty nice looking, though all very similar in their grey stone construction.

The beach, however, was absolutely lovely. One of the things to do in St Malo is to walk out to two small islands during low tide: Grand and Petit Be. They are connected to land and each other by skinny rocky causeways. Low tide is very low there, and high tide is very high, a difference of about 12m of water. (This whole area where Brittany meets Normandy in the bay of Mont St Michel has very very big tides.)



The islands are rocky bits, though the larger also had its grassy spots and even some wild arugula. But the most notable thing about the rocks is that they are covered in mussels. They're simply everywhere in huge numbers. There are also oysters and snails and cockles, but mussels above all. I had to take my shoes and socks off for the walk back since the tide was starting to come in, but it was good to get my feet in the ocean anyway.



After I warmed up with a coffee at an organic roastery and shop where I had a good chat with the owner, a German man who's been working in the organic industry for a long time. He also suggested the place I had dinner which was indeed very yummy.


However...

It also made me very sick, or at least I think that's what did it. Instead of heading to Mont St Michel on Saturday as I planned, I spent all day in bed napping, watching French tv (including some rugby which I don't understand), having a chat with Tim, and eating the tea and biscuits which Mireille had the cleaning lady bring up to me. She had, the day before, said she'd leave me out coffee and a croissant for my pre-trip early breakfast, but I left her a note of thanks letting her know I was sick. I was very happy to be in good hands and not in a hostel or less nice hotel while sick!

Feeling much better the following day, I could appreciate the delicious breakfast of breads, tea, jams, yogurt and more. I then had a walk on the other side of the beaches where I experienced again the ridiculously changeable weather of Brittany. It was sunny, calm, windy, cloudy and rainy in the course of my hour-long walk.


At the end of my three weeks of solo travel, I was happy to catch the train to St Lo where I would meet up with my next WWOOF farmers.

mars 5-6: Rennes

Rennes wasn't so much of a destination as it was a stopover for me. I managed a few important errands while there: update blog a bit, do laundry, buy new cell phone (lost the first somewhere during cycling), but new camera cable. I didn't do much walking around there because my knee was killing me post-cycling, so I sadly didn't see much of the city. I did do the recommended walking route for tourists on a rainy morning, but that was about it.


Rennes is well-known for its big Breton parliament building which survived a 1720 fire and which was rebuilt over a five-year period after another fire on the roof in 1994. Sadly, tours inside were not on the days while I was there, but the outside is reasonably impressive, and I apparently didn't take a photo...

I also took in one very nice, short concert at the Rennes opera, however. I noticed a listing at the tourist office for "Happy Hour" at the opera on Thursday night which was a one-hour concert with commentary with music focusing on operas with Breton themes, whether they were set in Brittany or inspired by Breton legends. The crowd was much like lots of American classical music crowds -- lots of older folks, but also a sprinkling of people my age and at least two young boys who did not look too excited to be there. Four singers and a pianist worked through the repertoire with comments in between from someone I assume to be a music director or something. I think my favorite song was from an opera about a man who works at a small train station in Brittany. The opera house itself was a cool building, and its inside ceiling also had a traditional Breton mural.



Also found a pastry shop run by another meilleur ouvrier de France where I bought dessert one night. The bird's nest looking thing has chestnut sweet paste as the spaghetti.


Really not much more to say about Rennes!