I was standing in three inches of snow, frozen to the bone, hefting a 20 pound mallet. It was four in the afternoon, the sky a menacing grey, white bitter flakes swept up into my frostbitten face by gusts of an evil wind. It wasn’t quite the picture postcard image of the South of France.

After a long day of repairing “la cloture” (the fence) we retired to the farm house, with the welcoming heat of a roaring fire, and I fell upon my meal of beans and vegetables with unbridled hunger, wolfing it down in minutes and demanding a second portion. “Encore? Mais alors, Patrick va deviner gros!” Laughs all around. Later, after the main course, cheese, desert, a second, a third glass of wine, coffee, cigarettes and smoking pipes, the conversation begins to flow. It is all in French, accents as thick as their farmer’s hands. They discuss politics, the impending election, the latest gaff by Ségolene, what strategy to employ to ensure Sarkozy does not become president, the happenings in the neighbourhood, other items in the evening news, and later as the night draws on, the conversation changes rhythm, we speak of literature, music, philosophy even. Instruments come out, and music is played, guitar, piano, violin, flute and accordion too. There is a man named “Siad” from Algeria who plays alone while the others watch, the flickering fire reflected in his deep dark eyes, while he sings heart ripping chansons from his native land, the Arabic words incomprehensibly beautiful.

Hanging out on the steps

We sleep like the dead, and arise early, the snow still falling, now a thick blanket across the ground outside. Breakfast is typically French - bread, toasted in front of the fire, with chocolate spread and a cup of strong café. And then we are outside again, frozen once more to the bone, driving stakes into the ground, hammering strands of barbed wire, stealing the occasional smoke, I truly feel like a soldier on the front of world war one, thankfully there are no germans firing at me. Au contraire, for there is a german chap working alongside me, who hitchhiked all the way from Frankfort, slept the night in some stranger’s caravan along the way, to work as a volunteer in these appalling conditions, and despite that was so irrepressibly jolly I couldn’t help but laugh.

And so it continues, the cold, the snow, the meals, the sleep, the endless hammering. After five days we have covered a remarkable 3 kilometers already. Our squad leader, a former physical education teacher turned farmer named Jeremy, seems to be inexhaustible. His frame not much greater than my own, but possessing such incredible strength, he could drive a stake into the ground with three mighty strikes, which might take me twenty. During the brief pauses we talk of the history of the farm, how he came to be here, and his personal environmentalist philosophy. He tells about the death of rural France, the small farms gradually being taken over by giant corporations who seize all the grants, who poison the soil with their chemicals, who overproduce to such a degree as to push the others out of business. He spoke of the English (or as they are fond of saying France “les Anglo-Saxons”) and with this he laughed heartily and slapped me on the shoulder, who have always dreamed of conquering France and have now just settled on buying it up piecemeal instead. There were English neighbours over the next hill, very sweet retired couple who had always dreamed of owning a small farm house in the south of France, but had not a clue how to farm and so produced nothing.

When the weather became even more terrible (hail, instead of snow) we finally had to retreat into the barn to work on the cattle troughs. Everything was in a state of terrible dilapidation. The former owner, we were told, had been left by his wife and had turned to the bottle in despair. The farm crumbled around him, for a farm is a fragile thing in need of constant repair, and eventually he was forced to sell. This opportunity had been seized by the current owners, who left their smaller farm of 20 years to work this bigger patch of land which they had named Le Maquis.

On the last day of my sejour the sky cleared, and for the first time the sun came out. At last, it was warm and I felt like I was truly in the South of France. From the top of the hill I could see so far, all the way across the valley of the Aude, to the distant blue peaks of Pyrenees, almost 100 kms away. I think it was good to leave then, my voluntary term of two weeks over, my body tired but invigorated, my mind opened by the experience. I had ideas of travelling by train to Madrid to meet my Spanish friend Jonas, but I was brought short by an SNCF strike. (SNCF is the national train operator in France, makers of wonderful high-speed trains that they regularly refuse to drive in order to extract more money out of the French population.)

I returned to Paris instead. Spring had arrived, the trees were in bloom, the birds wee chirping, the sun was shining, and it seemed more magical than before. To know a city you need to see all four seasons. Thus far, I had seen autumn, winter and the beginning of spring. Summer would be great!

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