Protests, Neo-Peasants, and WWOOFing Part II

A few definitions are needed before this post (complete with pretty pictures!) proceeds:

WWOOF:  World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.  According to their Web site:  “WWOOF is an exchange - In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles.”  The only requirements are that you show a genuine interest in learning about organic growing, country living or ecologically sound lifestyles and that you help your hosts with daily tasks for an agreed number of hours.  The host farm’s obligations to you are that they  grow organically, are in conversion, or use ecologically sound methods on their land, provide hands-on experience of organic growing and other learning opportunities where possible, and provide clean dry accommodation and adequate food for their volunteers.

WWOOFing: participating in WWOOF

Neo-Peasant:  A little term that Kelly and I came up with to describe our hosts, Katia and Thibault.  Generally speaking, a peasant is an agricultural worker who owns or rents a small plot of land.  Traditionally, they have often been at the bottom of social hierarchies.  A neo-peasant, is one that reveres this tradition and views the working of the land as the highest possible calling.  A healthy dose of Socialism/off-grid living/general fight-the-man attitude is also needed.  And, when in Europe, an obsession with pastoralism and dreadlocks is often included

So, since this post also holds the possibility of getting very long very quickly, let’s break it down:

Setting: rural France, Maritime Alps

Housing:

Our WWOOF Farm

People:

Katia, age 38ish, born in a nearby village, left for London when she was 18 to study photography, dress-making, and pottery.  Quickly fell in with the local Jamaican-Rastafarian population, had 3 children (now ages 12-15) with one, then left him to come to France because he got cold feet about moving to a Rastafarian commune in Ghana.  She worked in a nearby village at a nursing home before buying her property (2.5 acres) in 2005.  Her current interests are: Hinduism, the color purple, being a peasant, raising bees, and baking bread.

Katia Baking

Thibault: age 28, grew up 10km away on a sheep farm, he’s only been on a plane once–and hated it.  His interests include: anti-modernity, playing the guitar, his 15 month-old son, cooking food, not participating in “leisure” activities, and Tibet.

Thibault and Etoine Sifting the Grain

Now, let’s begin.  Kelly and I were first inspired to WWOOF thanks to a farm called Rio Muchacho that we visited while backpacking the coast of Ecuador. For me (Kristin), especially, opened my eyes to the world of permaculture-based land management. Also, the adventures of Christy and Lewis, a Christian couple with a very similar outlook on life as us WWOOFing through South America was very encouraging. So, when coming to France, we thought we’d give it a go. Also, coming from the very densely populated Seoul, we thought it was about time to breathe some fresh air and get out into the country.

I must repeat: we signed up for WWOOF primarily for learning about how to grow things responsibly with the land, so it was a little odd, when we found ourselves in a tent with 11 people on the farm (their friends came over to visit) and working about 2 hours a day.  The first day we straightened out the raspberries in their little garden patch.  Total time duration: 1 hour.  The rest of the day?  Hiking near the national park and playing with the dog.  The next day:  watch Katia make bread.  Knead a few loaves.  Other duties included braiding onions and wandering around medieval villages while she sold bread.  None of them took us very long, and we got pretty excited when we got our hands on some scythes and chopped some branches.  So, a lot of hiking in the mountains and helping them in their subsistence-farming methods, but not a lot of learning…which we came to do.

About the time we were taking a chainsaw to some fallen trees on the property, we started learning a bit more about their philosophy.  One that is pretty European and that I had completely forgot about from my post-colonialism Caribbean literature class: Pastoralism.  Katia started explaining that we were cleaning the land.  My face was rather blank and confused…Growing up in the Northwest meant that any “cleaning of the land” means fighting rain, marshlands, hacking rather futilely at a lot of underbrush and blackberries and everything is rotting anyway.  In my mind, the environment doesn’t need people picking up branches off the ground for it to function.  But then again,  my ideas came about from some ideas from the turn of the century (Roosevelt era/national parks I think) that we don’t need to interfere for life systems to function.  The other view–more of an agrarian one–is one Katia and Thibault subscribe to more.  California might be a good example in the US:  in order for people to live in forest-fire areas, they must maintain the areas.  They have to clean up a lot of brush so that people’s homes (and people!) don’t go up in smoke.  But, if the people weren’t there, even the fires would have a place in the circle of life.  Cue Lion King music.  (Also cue my college roommates, Lindsey and Joelle singing this in masks in the basement of the LP).

Another key difference:  Kelly and I like learning about this stuff because we think it’s important for the environment and, ultimately, for us.  Katia and Thibault do it so they can be self-sufficient.  They want to be self-sufficient so they don’t have to be a part of an organized system.  AKA fighting the man.  Being a peasant.  They were pretty into being peasants and it was pretty inconceivable that we weren’t into being peasants, too, you know, being into the earth, medieval farming practices (blowing chaff away from the grain with nifty wind machines, terracing hillsides, using heirloom produce/seeds, etc.), not bathing, using bartering and trading of goods vs. buying.  While for us it was pretty inconceivable that they liked organic farming, but were dumping non-biodegradable soap and waste into a creek that other people used as a water source, weren’t really handling the human waste situation that well, a lot of their staple food was not organic, and they had extra parts cars laying everywhere, with black oil slicks beneath the cars on the earth…to us meaning they weren’t that dedicated to the environment and more dedicated to traditional peasant practices, with the important twist that they were not dependent of a feudal lord.  Or a part of a society with traditional peasant roles.  And that despite their independence, they were entirely dependent on government welfare for schooling and medicine.  They reaped the benefits of a system that they refused to pay into.  Needless to say, although we had organic farming in common, we came at it from two totally different points of view.

Also, Kelly and I are Americans, if you haven’t noticed.  We’re pretty legalistic, as far as the world’s cultures goes.  So, when we heard about WWOOFing, we understood it (please see definition from Web site above) as working a few hours for them (willingly!) in exchange for accommodation, food, and learning.  Cultural exchange would be the icing on the cake.  For them, they didn’t really need us to work (they only needed WWOOFers about 2 weeks out of the year, but had them much more frequently), gave us lots of food when they were happy, little food when they were grumpy (they were quite moody), and pretty much just wanted us around to share new recipes with them.  We felt like it was kind of a weird exchange.  Add that to the incredibly awkward family meals, with Thibault butting heads with girlfriend’s 3 teenage kids, screaming matches in French, and the general disrepair of the farm, we were ready to go when the time came.

So, in sum, what we learned/what we enjoyed:

1.  Every WWOOF farm is radically different.

2.  Blueberries like the acidity in pine wood chips.

3.  Pastoralism is really big in Europe.  Even bigger than in the colonies that they populated.

4.  The Maritime-Alps area is insanely beautiful.  An area that I doubt we would have explored if not for the farm.  One that we would probably not have explored as extensively if not for the particular farm we stayed at.

5.  You can use sourdough as a starter for bread instead of yeast.

6.  My hair has huge potential for dreadlocks.  It started clumping after week one.

7.  French is less close to Spanish than I thought.

8.  Weeding is necessary in non-permaculture conditions.

9.  France is old.  Really, really old.

10.  The word “partner” really means the person that you have a kid with before leaving them for another partner.

11.  Eastern European hatchback 4×4s put up a hell of a fight.

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