The Escape Goats: Mission Complete

It all started when we decided to escape our job looking after a gorgeous guesthouse in the South West of France.

“Why on earth would you leave?” I hear you cry. Well, it was the picture perfect job until the boss/owner/designer/reality TV star arrived for a whirlwind of a visit. “The food was too bland, and by the way there wasn’t enough salt in the quiche” she told us. It was a real kick in the guts after we had slaved away in the kitchen for the four days she was there, as well as keeping the house clean, acting as her personal assistants, trying to source a couple of ducks for dinner (two hours before the dinner guests were due to arrive), and mucking out the stables when we had a spare minute. As Madame was going to spend the summer in residence, we decided to throw in the towel before the warm weather arrived.

Luckily we had a back-up plan hidden in our sleeves. I had always wanted to give wwoofing a go after experiencing wwoofers on our farm in NZ when I was a child. Now we had the perfect opportunity to try it out.

We set off with a mission to keep our spending within our 2000 € budget leaving us only 10 € per day. We also wanted to:

• learn more French and languages of any other country we traveled to
• learn how to keep bees and make cheese
• learn more about farming and food in general.

Six months, 9 farms and a few countries later, I can proudly say we have achieved all of the aforementioned goals bar one. Despite our attempts to stay on budget it was practically impossible not to go over. We ended up spending just under 3000 €, an average of 15 € /day. Not bad I reckon.

Some highlights (and low-lights) include:

• Taking numerous bleating baby goats on a beautiful drive in the foothills of the French Alps (although unfortunately for them they were about to become Easter dinner).
• Being screamed at by the wealthy Milano woman: “Yan! Always standing! Help!” (she had difficulty pronouncing Ian’s name).
• Experiencing the real Tuscan tourist free country side and tasty wood-fired bread oven treats in Pari.
• Bee stings, an authentic Italian Mama in the kitchen, and sleeping under the stars while the fire flies put on a show for us high in the Calabrian hills.
• Being scorched by the Sicilian sun then soothed by the chilly waters at Fiumefreddo beach.
• In Germany a mosey on the Mosel river led us to delicious wines made from the steep vines.
• Living in a yurt for a week.
• Cleaning the dairy shed at a Black Forest dairy farm.
• Returning back to our first hosts at Les Seilhols to rest our weary wwoofer bones at the end of our journey.

Most importantly, it was the people that made our journey amazing. We will never forget the generosity we received from our hosts. At almost all of the farms we stayed at we were made to feel at home. It is not simply an exchange of labour for food and accommodation and that is one of the great things about Wwoofing.

A Swiss Family Holiday // Hitch-Hiking Hassles

We’ve left the Schwarzwald, taking with us a few extra pounds of fat and memories of early mornings, fresh pine forests, and fresh cow dung. Unfortunately, a certain scent, which can only be described as slightly fishy and rather unpleasant, permeated our luggage at some point. As clothes-washing facilities were not available to us until a few days after leaving the farm, we’ve had to put up with the occasional unpleasant whiff coming from our clothes (I’m assuming this wasn’t too awesome for the people around us either).

Our next stop was beautiful blue Lake Geneva, where we spent 2 nights at a wonderful little hotel near Nyon.

View of the lake and mountains from Nyon:

Brocante market in Nyon:

We met up with Anna and most of her family who were celebrating Anna’s brother’s 50th birthday. We all had a very nice meal at the hotel, followed by games of night-tag. Anna’s family members speak primarily Swiss-German, but are also all fluent in French and English, and all three languages were flying around the dinner table.

All-in-all it was a very nice and relaxing holiday. Getting there however was neither nice nor relaxing.

We took a train from the Schwarzwald to Basel (a city on the border with Germany), but continuing by train to Nyon was going to be very expensive, so we decided to try hitch-hiking. We managed to get a ride from the city of Basel to an AutoGrill on the highway where we proceeded to spend a few hours getting more and more frustrated. Eventually we got a ride to Bern, which was only about a third of the way, so we decided to take a train from there. The trip took us about 6 hours longer than it should have and we got to Nyon completely exhausted, but we managed to save a whopping 52 Swiss Franks (43 euro)! Not really worth it at all. The view of the sunrise from our room the next morning made things a bit better though:

Even though our first long distance hitch-hiking attempt wasn’t a complete success, we decided to give it another go. This time an even more bold journey: Nyon to Montpellier. By car it should have taken just under 5 hours. It would have cost about 180 euro to take the train all the way, which we thought was a bit steep.

We were hoping to get to Montpellier by 3:45 pm so we could catch the last direct bus to Prémian (back to our first wwoof hosts at Les Seilhols); however, we had a bit of a late start and didn’t get into Geneva until noon, so we had no chance of getting to the bus on time. We were dropped off in the center of town and didn’t know exactly where to go from there.

Geneva, it’s okay:

Rather than risk walking through the suburbs for several hours trying to find the right highway onramp, we decided to bite the bullet and take the train to Lyon. Thanks to a Swiss surcharge, this ended up costing 70 euros. In Lyon we were faced with the same problem, so we took a short train to a nearby town to the south called Vienne, spending another 15 euros. By this time it was 5 pm.

We got a ride from a guy who took us closer to the main highway. From there we got picked up by an Algerian man. He played the same song over and over and took the slowest road possible through all the crappy towns in the Rhone valley. We ended up in a dump called Le Pouzin. It was 7 pm and we were less than halfway there, so we decided to give up for the night. We also decided to sleep in the rocky hills behind the town in order to save money. Not quite 5 star accommodation, but pretty good for the price:

Despite having a not very refreshing sleep (camping without a tent or any sort of blanket doesn’t work that well in most places), we got an early start the next morning and set off determined to make it all the way to Montpellier. We got picked up quite easily, but each time they were only going a little ways in the right direction. Four rides took us from Le Pouzin to Pierrelatte, a whopping 50 km to the south. We still had another 140 km to go and we were tired and sweaty and sore and just wanted to get there, so we hopped on the train.

Forty euros later we were on our way to Montpellier. It was supposed to get in at 1:30, plenty of time to have an ice cream and check out the town before catching the bus. Unfortunately, we were delayed in Avignon for almost two hours for some reason. We got into Montpellier just before 3 pm,  only to discover that the bus station had been moved to the outskirts of the city. We got on a tram with 30 minutes before the bus left and 17 stops before we got the station. We got there about 5 minutes after it was scheduled to leave. Luckily it was a bit late, we still had some energy left to chase the it down as it was leaving, and the driver was nice enough to stop for us.  Two hours later, we were back at Les Seilhols. First order of business was a hop into the creek for a good clean.

We ended up saving only 50 euros and it cost us an extra day of travel, but at least we tried. Now, it’s time to do something about that horrible smell on our clothes, then go dig up some potatoes…

Black Forest Living

The alarm wakes us up at 5.45 am every morning (except on Sundays we get a sleep in). We slip into our overalls and gumboots and head to the stall. Thirty-two dairy cows await us in the stall, they have just spent the night in there and it is our job to clean up their excrement.

Dairy farming in the Black Forest is quite different from dairying in New Zealand:

• It´s much less intensive here with an average herd size of around 40 or so cows compered to 350 in New Zealand.
• On this farm it takes about 1 hour to milk 32 cows. There are only 5 sets of milking cups, so each cow must wait its turn to be milked. In NZ with a rotary dairy shed it takes about 1 hour to milk 250 cows.
• Black Forest cows must spend the Winter inside the stall. In the Summer when the cows get to graze in the field the milk is sold as weide Milk (grazing milk).  Lucky NZ cows enjoy grazing the fields all year long.

We´ve also been learning about forest management. The Black Forest isn´t really that black at all, in fact, it is an area comprised of well managed forestry blocks scattered amongst farmland. The predominate tree here is Spruce, but at 1000 metres they are very slow growing. Our hosts, and many other Black Forest farmers are phasing out Spruce and planting the  faster growing North American import – Douglas Fir. One can expect the Schwarzwald to be dominated by Douglas Fir in 50-100 years time.

On Saturday, fresh trout from the river was smoked in the smokehouse and friends and neighbours were invited for a fish party. We ate a lot.

The next day we thought we would have a break from eating, but it was grillen day at the little lake house.

Our host Micheal says that ´the Black Forest man likes to eat´ and that pretty much sums up what we have been doing in our spare time.

Schwarzwald

After a short  holiday at Lake Titisee, we are now at our last wwoof farm in Germany. It´s in the Black Forest, an area I  previously associated with cake and ham – from now on I´ll think of milk, wood, and cow shit.

It´s a slight change of scene from our last two wwoofs in Germany as it is a real farm. The Bärmann family (that means bear man, man) live in an obscenely massive wooden house surrounded by 80 hectares of fields and woods, where their 34 milking cows roam.  The main farm activity is milking, as well as maintaining the grassland for hay and the forest for wood.

There are four generations of Bärmanns living here, most of whom don´t speak English – luckily Michael, who runs the farm with his father Heinrich, speaks decent English. We´ve learned most of the important words like cow, calf, wheelbarrow, hay, and break (free-time), so we usually know what Heinrich is saying to us (or at least sometimes).

The house, as I said, is massive and was built in 1827. The living space only takes up maybe a quarter of it – the rest is the milking barn, hay barn, areas for wood storage, and other storage areas that don´t appear to be used anymore.

 Unused loft of the house/barn:

Michael´s grandmother lives in another wood house next door which is even older. It has a little chapel in front of it, which is apparently a common feature of many black forest farmhouses. Sometimes in winter they get snowed in and somebody needs to be married or buried, thus the need for a farmyard chapel.

Black Forest Cake for the Birthday Boy

 

 

We just happened to be in the Black Forest or Schwarzwald region of Germany for Ian´s birthday…..

Yurt Life

In Gerhardsbrunn we live in a yurt
From the sky comes thunder and lightning
The rain started gently, just a spurt
Now a downpour, the sound is frightening.

Claus and Luisi – our generous hosts
The work is easy yet they feed us the most
We weeded the garden and went for a hike
Mowed the yard and then borrowed their bikes.

Three families live in one big old farmhouse
Everyone pitches in when works needs to be done
They all get along, except the cat and the mouse
Atomkraft? Nein danke, they get power from the Sun.

Night photos:

A Mosel Mosey

We’ve been moseying on the Mosel river which is famous for its delicious Riesling wines produced on ridiculously steep vineyards.

To be honest I hadn’t even heard of the Mosel  river a couple of weeks ago but I feel very privileged to be here. We sent out many last minute wwoof requests to farms in Southern Germany but most farms replied and said they were already booked up with wwoofers. Fortunately, Uschi and Jürgen agreed to host us for a week at their home in Traben-Trarbach, a cute village situated on the Middle Mosel.

Our hosts have three small vineyards and make excellent organic Riesling. We’re too early for the harvest, but we’ve been helping in the vineyards with weed control and learning how much work is required to keep vines on such steep inclines.

The vineyards are not machine friendly so most grape growers are dependent on herbicides to kill the weeds. Jürgen relies on good old manpower to get rid of the weeds amongst his vines. One of the three vineyards is too steep for the tractor, so the weeds must be removed with a hoe. We spent a morning hoeing up the rows with sweat dripping off our faces.

Jürgen and Uschi have been very good to us. They’ve made us feel at home and cooked us lecker (delicious) meals served with lecker wine.

Jürgen took us to his mother’s house where the wine is stored in the museum-like celler. Old instruments of the trade were hung up on the walls and there were mould covered wine bottles in old wooden crates. Very, very cool.

The tasting room at Jürgen’s friend’s wine celler