Betsy’s Blog, June 22, 2011

    From June 21,2011 Summer Solstice

            It’s a good thing we are coming home next week; these are getting longer and longer.

At about 5:15 this morning  it was getting light, and the sun won’t set until 9:20 at least, tonight, probably 9.30. It will remain light until about 10.15. We routinely are  asleep before that.  17 hours of light. I’ve never lived in a place like this.  No wonder you can hear farm machinery at 9 PM.  JP is working on his last painting, a view from the road to Chateau B….. where we get our wine, across the rows of grapes and up to this place. It is a dramatically hilly scene and he’s doing wonderfully.

All the farmyards I have seen, and you drive right through them on lots of these little roads, have old machines and  parts, a car on blocks, grass and weeds growing through old tires.  But the grapevines are another matter entirely. Row upon row upon row they stretch to the horizon in rigid straight lines and every one is espaliered to two wires, the leaves on the top are the same height, all the grapes are within easy reach.  In spots where a vine has been replaced, the little new vine is set at the proper distance and has a blue plastic collar to protect it.  The ground is red, FULL of rocks and free of anything you could call a competing weed.  Many rows end with a small blooming rose plant.  It is a triumph of order. Yesterday we saw one of the guys driving a little old white Lamborgini tractor the size of a small kyboda  but with tank treads, going up and down between the vines. As it toiled, it sang: Shrieka shrieka ginga. Shrieka shrieka ginga. Shrieka shrieka ginga. (accent the second shrieka. The g’s are hard).  It was the age to have been spraying bolts like Robby’s old Baghoe. A machine with a heart.  There was a big yellow plastic tank fastened to the back. Monsieur had a long thin metal tube attached to the tank with a flexible hose. He would stop at any newly planted vine and all the roses, and poke the tube down into the earth beside it. I thought he was measuring moisture in the soil, but he was simply spraying water two feet down next to the plant’s roots.  That is targeted irrigation.  By the way, the roses are more susceptible to the diseases that infect grapes so they serve as an early warning system. Today I saw Monsieur working on something in the pipe connections. These machines work like Trojans and are held together by love and necessity alone.

 In the picture above, that looks down one of the shorter rows, you may notice the harrowing that has been done in the middle. The machine for that was under the tree. There is such grace and beauty in those tines.  The front of the same tractor has an attachment of upside down L shapes. Along the inner tops and the insides of those L’s are heavy rotating blades. Evidently they drive down the length of the rows, harrowing the center weeds out and cutting the vines down and along the sides all at once. Clever. I don’t know if this is a spring or fall job, but it is one I’d love to see.  It couldn’t be now with everything fruiting…. But what do we know?

Charles says that at one time there were 100 people living in these few houses up here. That number would have been necessary to do the work of the land. Now we look out on solitary men on their machines haying or plowing or tending the vines. What a different experience from all the millennia before the last 100 years when groups of men, women and children turned out to plant, or harvest, or glean. Think of the singing, the  flirting, the comments back and forth, the sudden loves, the broken hearts, and yes, the broken backs, the immense weariness and hopelessness for those who had no interest in the land.  Look at all the paintings. You have to pause and marvel that you were born now and not then.

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By the way, stop signs here are just that. STOP, very helpful.

Also before I forget, the other day when I was at Prim’ Frais, (the grocery store with food but also things like soap and packaged coffee), there was the sound of a loud speaker, shouts and other noise and a bunch of vans went by covered with painted advertisements and people leaning of their windows waving.  All the store clerks went to the door to look and one of them ran out to the edge of the road. Soon the people in the vans were tossing things out of every window and she was scooping them up. The line passed on and she brought back her collection: a pen, a pad of paper, a small pack of cigarettes and a big chocolate bar. Apparently this is a “parade of promotion” going through little towns. When I stopped to get gas, the attendant was just coming back with her haul, which included a cloth shopping bag and a few other things.  I asked her how often this happened and she answered something about bicycles so I don’t think we were having the same conversation. As I drove home through the town, I could see other little knots of people comparing their goods and smiling.  Nice.

There are very few fat people here perhaps because of the much better diet. I think I have been losing weight myself. We’ll see soon enough. We find we eat less food and are easily satisfied.  We don’t cook, just “get by” on the bread, cheese, tomatoes, olives, pate, sausage and wine – and British Beer!  The wonderful cheese lady with her 7 named cows, “but of course!”, says she routinely wraps a cheese in her clothes( in her suitcase) when she goes abroad and never has a problem.  (Interesting aside. Her cow Revolution (born July 14) recently had a calf who was unnamed when I asked her.)  So I’m planning on that; I’m also thinking of bringing back some pesto somehow. If you are with TSA, our flight into NY on August 15 is on Japan Airlines… I’ll ask Elsa and her boyfriend, Eric, when they get here Thursday.  We can’t wait.