Listen to the full piece here:
Somécure, Montauban-sur-L’Ouvèze, France — “We work too hard, we don’t make any money and, worse, we are all trapped in our own separate worlds. The only time we talk to our neighbors is with the engine idling when we pass each other on the road, rushing somewhere else. In the old days, neighbors used to share equipment. These days everyone is more selfish. Now, people are too busy to lend a hand.”
The words are those of young farmer with whom I am sharing a beer. Next to him is his father, an old man who leans his back against a stone wall and smiles kindly over a big mustache but doesn’t say a word.
The young farmer has seen the world. He spent several years Down Under and knows there’s a different life out there. He is deeply tanned, handsome and rugged. He sports a gold ring in one ear and enjoys practicing his English on me — which in any case is better than my stilted French, especially when the topic is rural loneliness. He tasted that different life and liked it but in the end he came back to help his family because if he hadn’t, no one else would.
The reason this conversation is happening at all — both proving and disproving the diagnosis of my hardworking new friend — is because some dreamers got together and built a food truck to visit the small villages of this remote region northeast of Avignon where the hills begin their unrepentant climb to the Alps.
This is a beautiful land but hard for those who farm it. There is not a spot of level ground to be found. Fields are hacked out from the trees in places where the slope is slightly more gentle; lavender and spelt are sown in patches where they have thrived in the past. Cows are loosed into the steep forests to forage on their own. Flocks of sheep and goats are guarded from wolves and lynx by powerful white-haired dogs, the Patou.
The food truck is called Clochette and it visits a different village every day and sometimes two. Tuesday evening is the turn of Somécure, the minuscule village where I am staying and where I have family who work the land. The throng of people gathered around Clochette come not only from this village with its no more than 20 dwellings but from neighboring villages as well.
The sides of the truck open up. There’s a counter and shelves with local products for sale from these very farms. There is beer and lemonade on tap. Most importantly, there’s a bar that folds out and four stools.
These stools are in high demand.
A heat wave is raging across France so it feels especially good to knock off work and grab something cold to drink with your neighbors, something that hasn’t happened in a long time if I am to believe my friend. The conversation bubbles up. Neighbors who have lived decades next to each other but only exchanged words when something practical had to be settled or arranged are chatting animatedly.
It happened to me. For years I have visited this village. Not once did I exchange more than a “bonjour” with the neighbor who lives in the basement of the house next door. But on my last night our paths crossed and over beers I discovered a wise and sensitive soul. He plays music; we made plans to play together next year when I return.
It all seemed quite magical. But then again I was primed to expect magic from this land.
Though I am only a visitor here for a few weeks most years, I have seen how hard their lives are. As a tourist you see the idyllic French countryside, the fields of lavender and houses of hewn stone. While you are admiring the sunrise you might overlook the constant toil: the firing up of tractors before dawn even on Sundays, the arms covered in blood from helping to deliver a new calf, the accidents with heavy equipment that tear through families and livelihoods.
But these are tough people and they can take the hard work, the never-ending routine and the dangers. All that they can take; it’s the loneliness that will get you in the end.
Every morning as I write, a goatherd passes my window. She drives her tinkling, bleating flock to pasture. She never looks to the side, never smiles, always just pushing grimmly forward. What to me is picturesque and photo worthy is just the first in a long string of chores that will be the whole of her day. I did not see her come to have a drink at Clochette. Maybe she needs more time.
There were those who were opposed to Clochette. The dreamers needed some funding from the local government to get started. People said, what is the point? We have real problems to solve. It took three years for them to finally come around.
But, as I said, I was primed to see magic in this land.
Growing up in California, I was a fan of the French writer Jean Giono whose books were published in beautiful simple editions by North Point Press, a local literary press. He wrote about this very land and it’s people. Little did I know that later in life, this region would become part of my own story.
One of my favorite Giono books is “Joy of Man’s Desiring” where he describes a remote village whose inhabitants suffer a mysterious disease and are dour. A stranger comes to them and convinces them to give him money. He promises a cure. He disappears for a long time. They begin to wonder if he will ever return. He duped us, some say. When he shows up, he comes with a large sack. What’s inside? they all want to know. How will this save us? He tells them it is a sack of wildflower seeds; not a crop to plant and eat, just flowers. They can’t believe what they have done; why did they trust this con man? But he spreads the seeds all over the hillsides and when Spring comes, those hills explode with flowers. The stranger shows them a joy they had forgotten.
This is what I saw as I drank beers with these hard farmers. The dreamers had planted a seed and now something new was blossoming in the valley.
Subscribe to Little Epiphanies newsletter here: https://www.kevincarrelfooter.com/join/
Like this? Share it with a friend:
Leave a Reply