Planting and pottering

Seed trays ready to be loaded with soil

The “click-clack” machine that makes little indentations in the soil for the seeds

Seeds just planted

Evidence of some work being done at least!

We have been with our Toulouse hosts for nearly three weeks now and have been having a pretty relaxing time of it. After snow and some freezing temperatures last week I finally broke out the suncream yesterday and found out that plastic greenhouses in the sun can get very hot indeed. And this is only the start of spring. We have spent most of the time doing a combination of harvesting veggies for veggie boxes, sewing seeds, transplanting and thinning out seedlings and pulling up and weeding old and unwanted plants. It’s good to be involved in all the processes so we can see what happens to the end product as well being able to see how the teeny tiny seeds get to be well on their way to being edible green things. While the Ware-Jewell “sling it in a pot of dirty brown mud stuff and hope it grows” approach has produced some edible results at home, it is a bit of an education to see how much love and attention goes into producing healthy looking tasty veggies.

And the best thing is that there are rows and rows of delicious green things, without any chemicals, completely organic all looking just as delicious as those that have been plumped up and protected with nasty spray stuff. I have no idea what the organic vegetable death rate is compared to those dosed up to their little leaves with anti bug potion. Nor am I sure how the productivity levels, financial and time costs of organic versus non organic veg are. But all the plants that we have been working with look nice and edible to me and you can’t help wondering why more people don’t grow stuff organically. It undoubtedly helps if you have volunteers rather than employees readily reaping and sowing the produce eagerly attempting to improve their French………….

 

Breaking up the soil and adding stuff made from chicken pooh (Tegan couldn’t resist helping when she saw the mud!).

Lots of little seedlings in the small greenhouse

The big plants in the giant greenhouse

Harvesting “blet” – we think this is some kind of swiss chard

Preparing the ground for radishes

Apart from working in the field and greenhouses, Andy has also been helping to shift rubble from a wall being knocked down at the house, to the field where it is needed to add bulk to a dirt track. The host (Berengere), or rather her Dad is building a WWOOFers dormitory and while Andy was bashing down bricks and moving them, I helped to move the compost toilet from the barn to the dormitory site. Yes it was empty!

The hole in the wall

And the compost toilet in bits

It does feel like we are being ridiculously lazy here having spent the last five months sharing the workload and looking after Tegan at the same time. Here, when one of us works, the other is fully occupied with Tegan, the latter being definitely the harder job! We have made biscuits and bread, been for bike rides, checked out several playgrounds, been to a few markets and ensured that she has a daily nap. Tegan has also developed her very own version of table tennis, which involves running off with the ball and hiding it somewhere in the garden, usually difficult for adults to get to (like under a big bush). This only resembles table tennis in the fact that table tennis bats need to be carried at all times to give it an air of authenticity. In fact this is all a bit like being at home (except for the table tennis) and while running round after her and working at the same time is more challenging and more fun, it is good to get an idea of what real life may be like again when we get home. I already miss the hectic pace of trying to do at least three things at once while making sure she hasn’t eaten a mouthful of anything she shouldn’t have though!

Early borrowing of my clothes has started with a headscarf

And practising riding a scooter

I do actually think that our French is improving at last! I wouldn’t say that either of us is about to apply to the UN for a translators job, but we are learning all sorts of different vocabulary (mainly plant related) and the fact that we are taking it in turns to work means we have had more time to to some studying. Actually Andy has done some studying and is 2/3 of the way through his teach yourself French book. I am on page 73 of Harry Potter “a l’Ecole des Sorciers” (also known as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone), having decided that a children’s book full of useful magic-esque vocabulary would do just fine. And I have seen the film. It does also help that Tegan seems very keen on all the French children’s books in the house. It definitely helps to work out what they are about before trying to read them to her, although it seems that most of them are variations of stories about wolves and goats.

We have also been out and about to Toulouse again, and to Montauban where we got to practice some “hunt the parking space”. I think it is because there are lots of free car parks here (and in Spain) that means the notion of a parking space seems to get badly confused with the bit of road inside a car park designed to actually let you drive around it. And best not to actually be trying to park when someone else has seen the space……….We had a peaceful time though in Albi where we went to the Toulouse-Lautrec museum and had a look round the amazing cathedral. We also managed to go to “Atlantis” – a sort of indoor water park where Tegan got to splash around in the fun pools and we all got to play in the jacuzzis.

Archways in Montauban

Cathedral Sainte-Cecile in Albi