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.