Bodhi On Wheels: March 2015

We settled right into our next WWOOF stay, an organic vegetable production in L'Hérault to the northwest of Montpellier. This continued on themes established on our previous stay in Provence: AMAP, a great variety of vegetables, pleasant labor tasks related to vegetable farming, and an abundance of delicious vegetables to eat! We were hosted by generous people, discovered some great natural areas in the vicinity that quenched our addiction to bike and foot travel, and met a cast of characters who'd all come round to pitch a hand in organic farm operations...

THE PEOPLE:

Our hosts: Matthias and Patricia. These two live and breathe vegetables!

Look who's startin' to like having all these organic vegetables around all the time!

(L-R): Matthias, Patricia, Flavio, Vivian (completing a weeklong internship at the farm), Katy.

Flavio, from Paris, was a WWOOFer here for 2 months, and we spent the first week of our stay together. He is also cycling and WWOOFing. (shown here at his departure). Note how the lack of an infant simplifies your baggage needs!

Bo hitches a ride with Nat, a WWOOFer from Wallonie (French-speaking Belgium).

Lunch is always a pleasure here, usually involving some detailed dialog from Matthias. (L-R) Matthias, Patricia, Nat, Remi (also from Wallonie), Elodie, Alexis, Katy, Bodhi.

Alexis and Elodie showed up to WWOOF during our third week here. They are a young French couple a short ways into at least a 6-month/one year WWOOFing tour around France and hopefully Ireland.

Alexi and Elodie travel with this motto, which reads: "If you think Adventure is dangerous, I suggest you try Routine; it's fatal." Brilliant.

Elodie and Bo jaunting about.

Matthias' batteries run low.

Hiking in the hills on our time off.

Katy shown with Remi and Nat. They are both from the Liège area of Belgium.

Jeff happily collecting some specimen fennel for the evening meal.

Bo takes a break from the hard work.

THE PLACE:

Matthias, who is of German origin but has lived in France for over 25 years, rents the house and property from the neighbors, who are also German. They have restored various buildings on the property and have set up several gîtes.

Dawn frost on the adjacent fields. Although it dipped below freezing on several nights, in general the weather here is much more moderate than where we have come from (Vaucluse).

For the first time since Annick and Thierry's in October, we are housed in a caravan. Luckily, there is an electric radiator placed in the middle.


Bo came to like our digs here. Our caravan's name is La Bohème, The Bohemian.

Although it's mid-February, you can see it wasn't all that cold. Nappy-free time next to the cabbages.

Afternoon light on the adjacent fields.

Matthias and Patricia cultivate about 1 hectare at this site, and another hectare 2km away...

... where they plan to move (and eventually build a house) later this summer.

The Herault River flows past less than 100 meters from the house. We would come down here for daily walks, which became Bo's favorite activity around the farm.

Gettin' an early start to a very important life skill: skipping stones.

One thing is guaranteed here: you will eat heaping plates of fresh-picked organic vegetables. Twice a day...

... along with the best salads we have EVER eaten. Matthias himself is an avid lettuce cultivator, with the following varieties growing at the time of our stay: batavia, batavia rouge, little gem (sucrine), Romaine, Romaine rouge, pain de sucre, salade paumé. Topped with organic olive oil, vinegar, nutritional yeast, tamari, and some fresh radishes and parsley - what more can you ask for?

The neighbors have a donkey and three goats, catching Bo's attention nearly daily.

Greenhouses, carefully maintained and simply beaming with beautiful lettuce and cabbage, amongst loads of other things.

Red chard, which we'd never seen before.

Storytime in the caravan.

Nothing to do but watch the drizzle on a cold rainy day.

THE WORK:

Although they mostly deal with AMAP (French equivalent of CSA) groups, Matthias and Patricia also sell vegetables by personal orders received over telephone, and soon-to-be online.

Seed germination trays, which we will plant out during our stay.

Onion and lettuce trays all ready to plant.

Katy and Matthias harvesting mache (corn salad in English, we think) for the AMAP baskets.

Patricia and Jeff digging up carrots.

Bo checks out a row of young spinach plants.

This tool is called a bineuse à roue, or a wheeled weeder. Jeff is working a badly overrun carrot bed here.

Katy, Patricia and Flavio attend to the mache.

Katy plants onions...

... first dipped into a mycorrhizal fungus mix to help spur productivity and to build fungus levels in the soil of the farm.

Bodhi Fell, helping out in the greenhouse.

Harvest, harvest, harvest: these are really high-quality vegetables! Carrots and yellow carrots...

... beautiful beets...

...freshly-harvested broccoli...

...a striking Romanesco cabbage.

Careful with your harvest when this fella's around!


For 10 years, Matthias and Patricia have provided vegetables for an AMAP group in Pézenas, about 25km away. At this point in time, a group member offers his back garden as the distribution site, making for a lively ambience on Friday evenings...

Between 6-11 varieties of vegetables are to be found in any given week's baskets. This time of year, they tend to be diverse... above there are leeks, lettuce, mache, parsley, potatoes, squash, apples, carrots, fennel, etc..

This lively crew is here to help out with the basket distribution on a given Tuesday (held at the farm).

A particularly-enticing panier.

OUT AND ABOUT IN THE REGION:


Most of the surrounding region is devoted to grape production for wine.

On our first free weekend we walked a loop in the hills above Lieuran, with some panoramic views.

Pyrenean sheepdogs are large, white and - in this case - very friendly. We encountered this one minding a flock of sheep on his own up in these hills...