in my shoes

When I talk to people about buying organic food, one concern always comes up: organic food is too expensive.  Marielle Senechal, a wife of an organic farmer and a nurse, has a simple answer.  She says, “I was raised buying the best quality of everything, but only the amount that we really need.”  She makes it a priority to fill her kitchen with as many organic products as possible because she thinks it is the best for her children and the environment.  It is not a matter of money, because she never looks at the chemical-laden food for comparison.

If I reflect back on my life, I think about all of the times that I filled my supermarket basket with a couple of extra candy bars at the cash register, or I decided to buy five yogurts for the price of one.  The marketing of the food industry is very strong, and it helps lead us to believe that we need more of the cheapest, sugar-filled, chemical-filled products.  It’s up to us to see through the marketing and decide what foods will truly make our bodies, our environment and our societies healthy.

A week and a half ago, people from the local community walked nine kilometers through the local farms and forests to a community market and picnic.  The idea is that everybody gathers outdoors together, walks to the community park, purchases organic produce and meat for lunch from local, organic vendors, and then dances traditional French dances together.  I had a wonderful time, and got published in the local newspaper “La Depeche”!

Unfortunately the article didn’t make it to the online version but this is the picture!

For the month of July, I will be on a farm about fifty kilometers away from Toulouse in the foothills of the Pyrenees.  When I look out from the valley that my tent sits in, I see tons of rolling hills scattered with green and gold farms creating a patchwork quilt reminiscent of Monet’s paintings.  Jonathan and Marielle Senechal moved out of the city and to this farm two years ago to devote their lives to organic living.  They bought eight hectares of agricultural land, began planting right away, and have been expanding the farm every season.

Like many places in the world, agricultural land comes with its challenges.  One of the biggest challenges is that one cannot build a permanent residence on agricultural land.  Stipulations like this have led hippies around the world, along with Marielle and Jonathan to build yurts.  Like the nomadic Mongols, Marielle and Jonathan raise their two year old daughter inside an 8 meter circular home made only of wood, cotton and wool.  They use an old camping caravan as their shower and they’ve turned a trash can into a composting dry toilet.  Although their home is considered a temporary structure, it is artistic, cozy, warm, and fully livable with electricity, a wood-burning furnace, a hot water heater, and a refrigerator.

Jonathan (pronounced Joe-nah-tahn) is the main caretaker of the land while Marielle spends a few nights a week as a nurse in a nearby town.  Carolina, a Brazilian woman, and I are WWOOFers on the farm.  WWOOF stands for World Wide Organization for Organic Farmers, and it is a network for volunteers to stay on farms as part of an international work-trade program.  We volunteer our time and elbow grease for at least four hours each day in return for immense knowledge about agriculture and alternative living, along with room and board (often on amazingly healthy, pristine land).

Carolina and I live in tents under a forest canopy.  Most days, we wake up at 6am and head to the fields to do some planting, harvesting or weeding throughout the morning.  In the afternoons, we enjoy the mandatory siesta on the land for a few hours (although sometimes I go explore the communities by bike or take a dip in the lake instead of sleep).  And in the evening, we occupy ourselves with random tasks.  You could find us painting signs, cleaning out the caravan, playing with Salome (the two year old daughter), or preparing dinner.  Three days a week you will find us at a local market selling our vegetables.

Days are long here and sometimes hard, but they are filled with a lot of love and learning.  I feel healthy and centered, and I am happy to be surrounded by nature!

I was so excited coming to France from Israel and India because I could READ for the first time in four months.  I finally found a practical, life-changing reason for all of the hours I spent studying latin roots back in high school!  I began my trip in southern France camping along the French Riviera by myself just outside of Nice.  I walked down the road and read signs for the patisserie, chocolaterie, for restaurants touting their specialized “cuisine,” and directing tourists toward the sea, “la mer.”

It was even more exciting when I went into the first supermarket and could read the price tags!  Pain = 0.5 Euro.  Lait = 1.5 Euro. La pomme= 2.5 Euro/kilo.   As I was camping, I decided that French would be an easy language for me to pick up because reading the signs was coming along so grandly.

That is, until I had my first dinner among French speakers!  I had picked up a few words like water spelled:  de l’eau.  I kindly asked for them to pass the water, “Da loo, si voo play.”  The man next to me stopped and stared blankly.

I repeated it again and pointed to the bottle.

He laughed and said, “Ah, de l’eau.”

I replied, “Yes, that is what I said.  Du laoo.”  He said, “No, no.  L’eau . . . eau . . . eau.”

I tried again, “Ooo.  Laoo.”  He just laughed.

Since this conversation, I have become more sensitive to hearing the differences in their “ooos.”  Sometimes the tongue is flattened a bit, somewhere between oh and uh.  Sometimes they round their tongue and say the beginning sound of a consonant like n, l or v.

I’ve decided that becoming fluent in French is very unlikely to happen during my month here.  Every time I try a word, somebody helps me to perfect my “ooo” sound.