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I'm not on the farm anymore
Personal differences have compelled me to leave the farm early. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
The location was good enough to make me stick around; I loved hiking in the Pyrenees - which I did nearly every day - I liked the food - which, to her credit, was awesome - and I felt the need to live a low impact life after flying here.
I'm not saying all WWOOF farms are like this; I live a low impact life - or as much as one can have while drinking coffee and eating chocolate - because I think that it's important to moderate and reduce my carbon emissions. And some of the people on the farm had been woofing elsewhere - on producing farms, which even grew all their own food - talk about how welcoming and helpful the families can be. But sometimes, things just don't work out at a personal level and you have to move on.
So, I've been planning on leaving for a while now; today I'm getting on a train for Montpellier and am going to hang there for a while, check out the place de comedie and so on.
Yesterday was an awesome day; I bought myself a two liter water bottle and then hoofed it in the Pyrenees for a while. I went up one of the trails out of Laroque and ended up in Sorede - took all day, and they are only 2 km apart on the plane of Perpignan. That's what happens in mountain terrain!
I'm not confident enough to eat them, but I saw a bunch of mushrooms that I think are edible - they are orange at the edge and brown in the center, with brown gills, and they bruise blue if you peel the cap. We found a few on the farm a while ago and they went into a great risotto.
I had to take a bit of a break about halfway through; about one o'clock, the UV and heat get bad enough that it's a bad idea to do anything but sleep for a couple of hours. Thankfully, I planned ahead and a book with me - watership down - and sat in the shade next to a stream for a while. Apparently there are mosquito problems in this part of the world, but comparing the situation to say Halliburton or Algonquin, it just doesn't exist. I have received one bite in the three weeks I was here.
Dinner was very tense, but things got a little better after a while. I really stopped caring, given that I was going to, and have, leave this morning.
After that, we headed down to Chez Claude, awesome place, with cheap wine and good beer. All the woofers went, with the sons - they are a lot more friendly with a couple of beers in 'em. I hadn't told everybody that I was leaving, and frankly some of them will find out this morning when I don't show up for breakfast, but nobody really needs an excuse to go for drinks.
I highly recommend drinking chardonnay and eating black olives on a hot summer night in the south of France, btw.
That was when the best part of the day happened: it turns out that the local policeman lives above the bar patio, and about eleven, he popped his top and started yelling at us to shut up. In his boxers and nothing else. It was awesome, but this is the thing about French police: if they tell you to shut up, you shut up, because they can make your life miserable. And I would rather not see the inside of a French jail anytime soon.
So, I left this morning, and am sitting in a bar in Perpignan; I'm getting on the train to Montpellier in an hour, and I'll tell you guys what that is like when I know myself.
Au Revoir!
- comments
xxx really enjoyed reading your blog sorry meant to give 5 stars