Down On The Farm

Well, hello all!

I hope you are well and happy! We are at Bonzom, an organic farm 60 km's south from Toulouse, at St. Suzan (between La Lez and Foix), a tiny village, and it's magical..... we are working on the farm and in return we get fed and housed in a dilapidated old caravan, and it's amazing! I look forward to the daily tasks, which range from weeding the leek patch, to seeding, to weeding the leek patch, to planting little sproutlings, to weeding the leek patch, to making aubergine chutney and cucumber and onion pickle and climbing fig trees. I feel like I am learning so much, and I'm remembering it all for when I one day make my own organic market garden, with a goat!



We are staying with Marion (French) and Mike (Southerner) and have spent time with their three boys, teaching them Shit Head and Black-Jack, and dice of course. They are a wonderful family. They toured as a circus for 20 years in France, Spain, England and Portugal and their house is a montage of circus stories, costumes and photos. They are truly admirable in the way that they strive to be fully self-sufficient.

The house is set amongst the foothills of the Pyrenees and is laden with crawling flowers, bales of straw and junk. There is a mad dog called Cobie that barks at empty wheelbarrows furiously and there are 4 tiny kittens that we're trying to tame! The landscape is just beautiful, rolling hills, incredible sunsets, and the Pyrenees are dramatically outlined bythe early morning mist, dwarfing the fields and villages before them (I am so poetic today).

We generally work from 8 - 2 pm and have a ginormous lunch at about 3, lasting until 4, followed by pots and pots of tea, the first we've found in France. Luckily the family are big cheese lovers! Surprisingly, they are just as offensive as Ben and so we get on very well, someone mentioned the 'frogs' at dinner the other day, to which Ben replied 'Who are the frogs again?' Marion asked if he'd rather we talked about 'roast beef'! That shut him up.

I don't want to leave.....

Pictures: Mike and Marion's house, Mike and Marion working the land and the Pyrenees as seen from St Suzan.

Alfie Hits The Road

Mange tout, mange tout!

Well, we’re having a lovely time, and Alfie’s having the time of his life, you’ve never so many Renault Trafics in all your life, it’s incredible, we think we’ve seen over 200. Alfie keeps insisting that we take a picture of all the girls from behind, so we have a growing library of Trafic’s, he’s like a van on heat!


We landed in St. Malo and explored within the walls and drove down to Dinan in the afternoon, a beautiful town with windy cobbled streets and boulangerie’s a plenty. We then camped in Paimpont, a tiny village whose forest lays claim to being the home of Merlin. We walked through the woods to see Merlin’s tomb where we got spiritual before washing in the fountain of eternal youth…my visions of pure cascading water tumbling down rocks were slightly halted by the stagnant murky algae infested pond that lay before us, but, it’s all about what it represents, isn’t it…..?!? Even so, we decided to give the all over wash a miss.

We then left the rolling hills of Brittany and entered the Loire Valley with its starkly contrasting landscape of flat moorland. We went to visit Kim (CELTA Kim) in Nantes and were welcomed with wine and crisps. Kim’s street is amazing; it buzzes and is pres de a wonderful cheese shop. I felt like I was in Amelie…..

Alfie then decided to take us to Noirmoutier, an island west of Nantes. The whole island appears to rely upon salt as its trade. There are beds of water all along the roadside that evaporate and leave piles of salt. The town was, again, beautiful, with whitewashed walls and blue shutters, and flowers spilling out into the tiny, cobbled roads.

After Saintes, we went to Bordeaux where we bought a fine bottle of Bordeaux red for 1 Euro (72p), from the classy establishment that is LIDL. We drank the expensive bottle (£2.50) next and carried on with our evening of Black Jack and Shit Head! What party animals!

Now we’re in Mont De Marsan, we’ve decided to have a day without driving, Alfie’s done very well so far. Talking of driving, I absolutely love driving on the right, it feels so much more natural that on the left, I actually find myself getting quite excited at the prospect of a round about…..perhaps not having a telly is getting to me after all. We camped under an acorn tree last night, and approximately every 19 minutes there was a colossal thud, then a slow rolling sound as the acorn casually dropped onto the floor, it was funny the first 3 or 4 times, but then it started to send us a bit nutty! HA HA!

The weather’s been lovely, blue skies and sunny hot days. We’re having breakfast (bread, blayney jam or cheese) lunch (bread, cheese) and tea (veggie things) outside, even though you have to wear slippers and a hoodie at breakfast, it’s sunny but bloody bitter. Each morning we take it in turns to get up first. Whoever gets up has to put on millions of layers, turn on the gas, connect the water and make the brews. By 9.30-10 it’s pretty warm.

Hopefully we’re going to work at a woman’s house north of Pau in a few days, decorating for fodder, then on a farm in the Pyrenees, that’s what I’m really excited about! We might even get to make Goats cheese and look after animals. In return, we would be fed and housed but I think we’d still stay in Alfie!

Keep in touch peeps, hope you’re all well and happy,

Love Jude and Ben x x x x x

P.S. The pictures are of me brushing my teeth, our lack of a cupboard, since it fell down as i was driving on a really busy road and some washing hung across a bridge in a town, lovely x x x x x