French farm job change Day one: Nothing

Because all day on the road! In the morning, I took a bus from Busse to Paris, then a train to the town, and finally took the village cab to the farm! The farmer was very enthusiastic to give us a house tour. It's really huge! I think it can accommodate at least ten people, and I love the simple but story-telling decoration!

The farmer is a real designer, and occasionally goes to Busey workshop, the house that houses his three studios: design, textile and sculpture. We have dinner together in the evening, green bean soup with toast, and pasta with vegetable olive oil cheese that he grows.

The only problem is that, like Busey, it's cold at night and there's no heating. Who would have thought it would still be winter in June!

Day 2 of French farm job exchange: Go hiking

Today's topics are: supermarket shopping, collecting nettles, lunch, going out for a hike, meeting in the field to learn about next week's work, going to play with donkeys, dinner.

At ten o 'clock, I was woken up by a friend. After washing up, I got into the car borrowed by the farmer from the neighbor and went to the supermarket to buy the food of the week. He said we were going to a Belgian supermarket today, but it was our Colruyt warehouse. But the big warehouse in the French town is much more elegant than Busset's, with a brighter whole and orange arched ceilings. I bought a lot of food, including four chickens (the farmer said they would only eat this kind of meat), lots of fruit and vegetables, Belgian chocolate (which I picked out), and carrots for George and Gilbert (two precious donkeys).

When I got home, I helped organize the food, then picked the nettles with scissors at the back door. I'm gonna make nettles and mashed potatoes on bread for lunch. At noon, I roasted a chicken and served it with mashed tomatoes and Onions in oil. It was super delicious! I want to copy it when I get home! We finished with a plum sauce yogurt dessert, which everyone loved. Plum sauce was made by the farmers themselves last season. After eating and cleaning up, everyone was busy, and we decided to go out and visit the small village.

Everyone who enters the Village will see the entrance that says "Village Fleuri", a village full of flowers, and it is literally full of flowers planted by the villagers. We also met a very fat baby Labrador along the way, and her owner, who spoke excellent English, told us that the baby was named Honey. Honey's fur is very soft and very close. Her owner says she likes pretty little sisters.

Then we decided to hike up the mountain. The road was all muddy and not very easy to walk, but it was a short walk. The best part was meeting the Danial family, the donkey mother and father and the baby donkey. I named the baby Danial. What I didn't expect was that they liked us so much and cooperated with us to take pictures. They followed us when we left, like they didn't want us to go. All the way down the hill was straw about as tall as I was, and the map said there was a path, but it wasn't like a place where people used to walk. Fortunately, the shawl cut the spine and came down smoothly.

Then he went home for a meeting, and the farmer set out his tasks for the next week: weeding, spraying, adding straw to the field, throwing snails (it's been raining a lot lately), hanging the vines well on the wire, and removing the sick leaves. Also to pick up soft and hard moderate donkey dung for fertilizer, and small wooden sticks to bake bread. I said my favorite thing to do is hahaha! After the meeting, we went to feed the donkeys carrots, and George and Gilbert followed us all the way, and we caught them pretending to eat grass underneath. Stephane's favoring George. Gilbert's gonna be jealous.



The third day of farm work change: the official work

2024.6.3
I got up at eight o 'clock in the morning to wash up, ate bread, butter, eggs and coffee, and went to work promptly at nine o 'clock. First, the sick leaves in the field were picked, weeded, and then the hay was spread. The sick leaves in the field were mostly withered yellow. Later, he went to the back wall to remove the diseased leaves that had grown bubbles on the vine. Farmer Stephane says it's downy Mildiou, caused by the recent rain and lack of sun exposure.

It had rained the day before, so there were lots and lots of snails on the leaves. I picked all the big ones and sat them in rows. I also adopted the most beautiful one as a pet. Dinner is served after four hours of work! I had potato, onion and radish pie for lunch. It was super delicious! I love pastas with crispy crust! Thank you Martin for preparing the food for us! My best friend didn't like it, so I ate hers too. And rice with carrot puree and butter, which is a novelty for the first time but it's really good. I find I get very hungry when I'm working. I have a huge appetite and I can eat a lot.

Afternoon is completely free time, we deal with each other after each other, lie in the room together massage chat. We didn't have dinner until after 9pm because a Swiss boy had joined us at the cabana 🛖 and Stephane had picked him up at the train station. Originally from a town near Basel, he used to work as a mechanical engineer, doing things like ventilation moderation, and says he started the gap year after ten years of burnout. I used to wwoofing in southern Italy.

It was almost eleven o 'clock after dinner, and a long phone call with a future colleague ended a rich day. The first day of work was actually very frustrating in the weeding process, because it was really difficult to uproot all of them, and I felt that I was a grass killer. I said I had to go to the market in Brussels to buy mint leaves, and I didn't have the heart to cut them down and throw them away, and Stephane asked me to take some more home to keep when I left, and I said "ha ha ha ha ha ha!"



Day four of farm work in France: Getting better and better

2024.6.4
At nine o 'clock in the morning, I finally saw a sunny day here! We helped our aunt Martin clean up the kitchen,
I washed all dishwasher resistant utensils, and I wiped down all countertops. Martin says I parfait 😊. I'm better at cleaning up the kitchen than mowing the lawn. Then I went back to the field to weed and spread hay with my friends. The best surprise was that when we took all the roots to the backyard, our two donkeys were waiting there. They actually ate all the roots! Looking at them chewing so sweetly, I suddenly feel that weeding has a new motivation. We also found a baby snake, we were surprised and happy, my good friend said she had seen something like it before, so she was not afraid at all.

Stephane, the farmer, was so weird working with us today, pulling weeds in the field with his back up against the ground. I had a lot of quinoa mixed with salad for lunch, all summer flavor, and there was very little meat because the party had vegetarian. But every time I eat it, I feel comfortable and light. I love it! After lunch, everyone was taking a nap, as if I was the only one in the world, so I took advantage of the beautiful sunny day and went out for a walk with my camera! As if back to childhood in the summer, Wuhan every summer is huge hot, adults will sleep, I secretly ran out to play. Walking on the road only met two people in the village, but met three white cows and two sheep, but also saw the bridge through the village, the small bridge water beautiful!

The photos are still in the camera to be processed, and these two days are too full of reality to pay attention to the camera. Let's talk later. Haha! Dinner was served outside because the weather was so nice! The only problem is that the temperature drops very, very fast after dark, and after eating, the bottom of my feet are frozen, and I hurried back to bed.

2024.6.5
I started work at 8:30 today. Fortunately, after greeting the farmer, he left for the rest of the day. We took three or four breaks on our own because we were all very tired, mainly because we hadn't slept very well lately. I don't know why my sleep seems to have been stolen, it is difficult to sleep at night, and I can't sleep at all in the afternoon, so it is a little uncomfortable to get up early and do farm work. My friend said that everyone else was chilling and drinking beer on the steps of the roof, but today we were drinking tap water on the steps of the basement

The work is the same as yesterday, but we have a clearer division of labor! Because I liked our donkeys so much, and they liked me so much, I took the grass roots out to the back yard for them to eat, and spread hay over the fields. My friends are much more patient than I am, so they all work hard on weeding. On the way, I also called a Swiss brother to touch the fish together, and he was responsible for weeding in front of the yard, but not the kind of uprooted.

At noon, Martin invited us to dinner and she made my favorite tarte! Because my friend does not eat radish, she also specially made two flavors, a potato and a radish, I love to eat! Ah, right! Martin watched me haul grass for the donkeys in the morning, and she brought carrots so I could feed them. She had to communicate with her through my broken francais, but she was very friendly and wiped the donkeys' eyes with tissues. I love Martin!

In the afternoon, I lay in bed with my friends and chatted, feeling so happy! Tomorrow, a good friend is going to leave, go back to make up the exam, I am super reluctant to give up her, because she is our main force of weeding. I finally got roast chicken for dinner. I haven't had meat in days. A good friend of the northeast picked up the chicken rack directly to eat, too cute! I suddenly miss Jinzhou Barbecue and Shenyang chicken grill!

The best part of the day was that we went out for a walk after dinner and the Swiss brother joined us. Then I crossed a bridge into the field and found that there was no way to go back, but to go back the same way. After the sky all dark down to find the stars!!! I told them that's what I came to WWOOFing for. As we walked along the village path, we played songs and chatted with the stars. When we got home, no one wanted to go to their room immediately, so we sat at the table where we had dinner yesterday and looked at the stars together. This is the best night ever!
Happiness!!