If you picture the picking being done by armies of pickers, bronzed peasants or students on gap years etc. forget it, it just doesn't happen like that anymore. It did until thirty or forty years ago: a local who owns vast vineyards inherited from his father told me that he remembers when he was a lad his father hired students for the grape picking. Apparently, the local men had a faiblesse for les jeunes anglaises who liked to come over to improve their French and earn some money grape picking to supplement their university grants. Now, most viticulteurs in this area have specialised machines driven by one man which straddle the rows of vines and strip off the grapes as they go along.
Some small growers still hand pick but it's hard, back-breaking work. We did it once when M.Rossignol was alive. He had only a few hundred vines and used the grapes to make wine and eau de vie for family consumption or to offer to guests at his table. Several of us, friends mostly, walked the rows of vines snipping off the bunches of warm sticky grapes with secateurs and transferring them to the panier carried by a companion who would then trudge off to unload them into the trailer. Returning to the chai, the grapes were tipped stalks, the odd leaf and all into a big mechanical wine press. After, we drank a toast to health and a good harvest in le mou, the grapejuice from the initial pressing. This year's harvest too looks to be a good one thanks to the permanent sunshine of the spring and early summer and the humid heat and heavy, almost tropical rainstorms of the last few weeks.
A few days ago Paul phoned to ask if I'd like to accompany him and a visitor, Roger, on a short hike to explore the GR36 north of here. The GR36 is a long distance footpath which has fascinated us for a long time. It has taken on almost mythic proportions in our imagination and we fully intend to walk it one day.The GR36 links the English Channel to the Mediterranean, over 1000k of footpath or should I say footpaths because in reality the Grande Randonnée is a series of interlinked footpaths and trails which combine to form a route leading southwards from Ouistreham near Caen in Normandy to Bourg Madame in the Pyrenées Orientales and then a short hop over the mountains and into Spain!
The Grandes Randonnées criss-cross France and can be followed easily with a good hiking map and an ability to interpret the red and white striped signs, les balisages, which mark the route at frequent intervals. The signs or blazes ( as they are termed in English, Paul informs me) can appear in the most incongruous of places. We've found them on trees, on walls, on drainpipes, telegraph poles, rocks, on trunks in hedges, on rocks and very often on the road surface itself. Follow the direction to which the blaze points and you can't go wrong! But beware a red and white X which warns you that this is the route not to be taken. I think Robert Frost would have found this very useful information and it might have saved him a lot of agonizing.
Leaving the village and following the blazes we soon came across a curious version of a lavoir. A lavoir is basically a wash-house where in days gone by, before the advent of the washing machine and presumably piped water, the women of the village took their laundry and did their washing communally.Lavoirs are built over a spring or a stream or next to a small river.They are usually small wooden structures, often open to the elements with a tiled roof overhead.To get to the washing platform at the water's edge you have to descend several steps.
This one was different however. It was fitted with wooden platforms suspended by chains on both sides of the stream. Once the washerwoman had stepped onto the platform it could then be highered or lowered by operating a windlass type mechanism in order to ensure a comfortable working distance just above,or at,water level. Presumably in winter, when the stream was likely to be in spate, the platforms were raised and in summer and periods of drought the opposite applied. The whole thing was ingenious and I've never seen one like it before.
Walking on through meadows and woodland we noticed a proliferation of sweet pea plants in the verges on either side of the path.A first they appeared wild but it soon became apparent that they were the remnants of vetch crops planted by the farmer to be ploughed back into the soil in order to improve the nitrogen content. The beautful little pink flowers brightened up our path on what was otherwise a grey and sombre day. As we headed further north the heavy clouds closed in and a light but persistent drizzle began to fall. You could hardly be blamed for thinking you were in south west Wales rather than south western France!
At eighty seven Mme.Rossignol has been unwell for sometime.Once a busy farmer's wife, she loved her animals and spent all day,everyday, tending to them and her vegetables. M. Rossignol spent most of his time on his beloved tractor out in the fields in all weathers. A giant of a man whose height and weight would have made him the perfect second row forward in any international rugby team. I once saw him tow a heavy touring caravan almost fifty metres with his bare hands and he was about sixty five then!
The Rossignols were virtually self-sufficient. They made their own wine and liqueurs, grew all thier own vegetables and kept pigs,rabbits and chickens. Madame is always tellings about when she had her own troupeau de chevres and shepherded them around the fields from dawn until dusk.Now only the chickens remain and even they have become too much work for her and so a neighbour and I look after them, an arrangement which suits us all very well since everyone gets to share the eggs.
Madame Rossignol's pride and joy has always been her cockerel. She loves to hear it crow at daybreak. As she says, 'Si on n'entend pas le coq c'est triste et c'est plus la campagne!'
There have been a succession of coqs and in recent years we have taken to naming each incumbent. The last two were named Désiré and Lionel.The magnificent Désiré who could have posed for a bronze statue of le coq français lived to a ripe old age. Sadly,earlier this summer when Mme. R was in hospital, Lionel le coq crowed his last. Apparently, on a day when Mme. Duval was feeding the hens, the proud creature threw back his head, crowed loudly and promptly keeled over. When Mme. R heard les tristes nouvelles on her hospital bed, she phoned me and asked me to go to la foire de Rouillac on the 27th of the month and purchase a new cock from one of les marchands de volailles. I must buy un coq demi-nain since the hens were themselves demie-naines we had bought there together two years ago.
The 27th coincided with the visit of my daughter, her husband and our grandchildren and so we all set off together in search of Lionel's replacement.
The foire occupies the whole town for the whole day and virtually everything stops to give way to the buying and selling of everything from livestock to fruit and vegetables, plants, clothing, fish and seafood, tractors, tools, wine and lots of other things too. Having perused all the poultry stalls the little ones finally chose a handsome little demi-nain coq with a bright red comb and classic plumage. Before he had been plunged unceremoniously into the cardboard carrying box he had been named Edouard.
Unfortunately, Edouard has proved to be something of a misfit. He hasn't crowed yet, much to Mm.R's chagrin and skulks rather than struts around the yard attempting, unsuccessfully, to ingratiate himself with the matronly hens. However, there might be hope yet.We've recently added another four hens to the poulailler.They are younger birds, mere girls you might say, and Edouard's life seems to have been transformed. He ignores the older birds, no longer skulks and struts around after the younger hens, following them everywhere, unable to take his eyes off them. A case of 'plus ça change' perhaps?
Footnote: Edouard still hasn't crowed yet but that might change too. Watch this space!
