Angers/La Petite Mane

Oh, these are all kinds of out-of-order. Hmph.

Back with the ol' Chateau d'Angers again after 3 years!

Being back in Angers was surreal. There were certainly some differences to be noted, such as not being able to sit on the grass at the park where we used to lay and tan, the font style being very different on my favorite brasserie, the installation of a streetcar system on Ave. Foch, and my favorite patisserie being closed. My beautiful house was still there and looking as beautiful as ever. We walked around a lot, saw the sights, had some ice cream, and just took in Angers. We were pretty tired, so we didn't go to any night clubs or anything for once. Jk.

The next day, we had to wait around for 3 o'clock so we could get on the bus to go to St. Michel-et-Chanveaux, where our first farm was. The bus ride was about 1 1/2 hours, and it dropped us off right in town. There was no car to pick us up, and the only pay phone in town was dead. We wondered if we should knock on a door and ask for a phone, but then a car sped up with two wild-haired young men and a dog. We knew this must be them.

The next three weeks at La Petite Mane were literally some of the best weeks of my life. We were living in the most unsanitary conditions ever (no potable water, no working toilet, 20,000 flies in the house, a mouse infestation, hardly ever using the refrigerator even for dairy products, mold growing rampant all over the walls of our room, etc.) but those were things that we just overlooked and became accustomed to. The first night that there was a mouse in the room, I couldn't sleep for hours and just laid there listening to it scratch around, but towards the end, I got used to the noise. The reason that we found it so easy to adapt to this way of life was that we were sharing our days with some of the most wonderful, unique, interesting, and generous people we had ever hoped to know. They were brilliantly entertaining, endlessly friendly, and so easy to love that we honestly felt like we were losing part of our family when we left 3 weeks later.

When we arrived, there was one other wwoofer named Sig. He was from Antwerp, Belgium, and he had a dog named Lou. Sig was so much fun to be around. He was a great cook and just a wonderful guy in general. He had a car, and he took us to the grocery store once. He was our age. Paul and Marc are the owners of the farm. Paul is 25 and Marc is 26.

There was a girl there who had started out as a wwoofer, but then was promoted to Paul's girlfriend. I was instantly connected to her. Her name is Alice, and she is one of the most interesting people I've ever met. She is 18 and had moved to La Petite Mane from Paris after discovering that she didn't want to go to med school. She decided to wwoof and really realized her passion for agriculture. She spoke impeccable English. She was born in France, then moved to Uganda, then Atlanta, then somewhere else I think, then India, where she graduated highschool, and then she moved back to Paris to attend college, while the rest of her family moved to China. She is such a fun spirit and I'm really glad I was able to make friends with her.

Marc's wife is named Saraswati, but she goes by Shanti. She is from Nepal. She and Marc met two years ago when he was wwoofing on a coffee farm in Nepal. She is the sweetest thing and introduced us to Bollywood movies. We watched 3 with her. She loves Nepali culture and talking about Nepal. She is a great cook and taught me how to make several traditional Nepali dishes. Actually, everbody we lived with is an excellent cook. We never had a bad meal at La Petite Mane. Derek and I cooked our fair share as well.

So the photos are out of order, but here they go anyway:

This is me working hard at the market in la Guerge de Bretagne on a Tuesday. I was really just getting coffee for Derek, Paulo, and myself.

This was probably the most work we ever did at a market. Here we are at the AMAP (CSA in the US) in St. Michel-et-Chanveaux, our little town. We were preparing 1 kg of tomatoes in bags.

At the farm, there is a goat. Her name is La Chevre.



Lettuce!!! Everything was 100% organic, which means that we used no pesticides on any plants. We had to get on our hands and knees to pick the weeds out of the plant holes so that they wouldn't choke the plants. Weeding was probably the hardest job we had to do.

Our last night! It is a terrible picture of the mobile home, but we're all there. Starting from the top left is me, Shanti, Marc, Loic, then Andreas in the middle, and the bottom row is Harmony, Paul, Alice, Derek, and Eva.

Harmony is from Australia and she showed up to wwoof on the day we were leaving. I was so sad! She is a great girl and so much fun to be around. I wish we could've gotten to know her better.

Eva is Sig's friend from Antwerp. Her mother lives in the town, and she knew Paul and Marc from a while back, so she recommended La Petite Mane to Sig when he said he wanted to go work in the country.

Loic is a friend of Paul and Marcs. He lives on the farm, but he doesn't work there anymore. He doesn't speak much English, so we communicated with him in French. He was so generous with us when we talked to him. He was gentle with his corrections and never made us feel bad for making mistakes. He is just a great guy. We miss him!

Possibly the craziest thing that happened during our stay was meeting Andreas. One day after lunch, Derek and I were in our room taking a break and reading, when we heard a stranger's voice from the kitchen. We couldn't figure out if he was German or Chinese from his accent, so we came out to get a peek. It turns out that he is this German cyclist who started in 2007 to cycle around the world. He was in Katmandu, Nepal, in 2008 when Marc and Shanti were there getting married, and he met them in the city. Marc wrote down the address to La Petite Mane and told him that when he was coming through France, he should stop there. 2 years later, and without any notice whatsoever, he knocked on their door. We sat in the living room in absolute raptures (I am reading a lot of Jane Austen) listening to his stories. He is an incredible man! His opinions are a little abrasive at times, but he is just straight-up one of the neatest people we could've hoped to meet on our trip.

The last night was Paul's 25th birthday. We had an extreme amount of chocolate that day! I made a German Chocolate cake from scratch, which was (if I must say) totally wonderful. We all gave him gifts and cheered and sang and toasted and I just reveled in the comraderie and love that was surrounding the table that night. It has to be one of the most pleasant evenings I've ever experienced. Marco, who is a huge music enthusiast, insisted that Derek and I play some songs for everyone before we left. We sang Little Bird, Lonliest Boy in Illinois, and a couple of other ones. Everyone was so happy and supportive of our performance. I miss them all so much as I'm just writing this!


Marc and Shanti like to act like they're beating each other up, but really, they're married and they love each other.

Here is Derek with a dog. This dog was owned by a couple of young French people who are traveling by mule-drawn caravan to Mongolia with their two small daughters in tow. They were very interesting people, but I wasn't sad to see them go. Their kids cried too much.

Odessa

Michael (traveling around the world), Sig, and Marco working with a mule to plow potatoes

Their delivery vehicle of choice is an old fire truck. They scraped all the letters off the side except for "sexy."

Driving around in the fire truck was fun. People would sometimes pull over and always gave us the right-of-way.

Anyway, leaving La Petite Mane was exciting in some ways, and totally heartbreaking in other ways. We're excited by the sense of time passing, the feeling of having learned and accomplished things, and all of that, but leaving Paul, Marc, Shanti, Alice, and Loic behind was really sad. We'll miss them. We all had tears in our eyes when we left that morning. I would love to return in a couple of years and work with them again. They are truly remarkable people with great spirits and unlimited joy. Just to work one day with them is to experience a life of choice where the people are happy to wake up and do their job. They walk around without much stress, whistle while they work, and sing to the plants. They take luxurious 2-hour lunches where they eat at the table with friends and family, and the conversation is never lacking. To be around them is to realize that life can be fun, and sometimes in order to assure oneself a happy life, one must create that life from scratch.