by Caro Feely
While I toughed it out with perimenopause, Seán was finding Zen in our second vegetable garden. Our first failed despite great effort. It was a patterned geometric wonder – 'worthy of Versailles' according to Sonia, our neighbour. Mental labour – mathematical triangulations for perfect proportions – preceded physical labour. We dug, added horse manure collected from a neighbour, redug. Regardless our vegetables were a disaster.
Thinking like Dubliners, we had set the garden in the sunniest spot of the farm. On the high Garrigue in south-west France, the sunniest spot was perfect for scrubby herbs: thyme, rosemary, lavender and sage; our rosemary bushes became so large and thick they were more like trees than shrubs. It was too hot and dry; the vegetables, especially softies like lettuces, didn't have a hope.
Seán moved the garden down to a half-shaded field relatively close to the house. It was full of thistles and didn't look good but the middle shade it offered and the proximity made it a sensible choice. He began with a small bed and grew a few veg. The following year he increased his garden and his yield. The following year he did it again. One foot at a time, the garden expanded into a glorious profusion. He was like Jean Giono's 'man who planted trees'.
When we started our adventure it was a high-five achievement when we had a dinner produced exclusively from our farm. Now there were times in the year when everything came from our garden and I felt slighted if I had to buy vegetables. There was something deeply satisfying about harvesting from the backyard.
Seán grew 50 kilograms of potatoes (almost enough for our year's supply), countless pumpkins, butternuts, beetroot, onions, garlic, chickpeas and the usual garden suspects of tomatoes, courgettes, lettuce and beans. He became possessive about his garden.
'Don't touch anything. Tell me what you want and I'll get it,' he said.
I was the idiot that would pull up lettuces that weren't fully ready or harvest tomatoes before they had reached their heavenly peak.
'As of today you can pick all the baby tomatoes you want,' he said. 'They're almost over. We need to eat them or preserve them.'
Ellie and I obeyed, pulling luscious baby tomatoes from the bushes and eating as we went.
'One for the basket, one for me,' I said, popping another into my mouth.
'It's like a big market where everything is free,' said Ellie.
'Except if you count Papa's work. He enjoys it so it's not really "work" but it does take muscles, brains and time. But you're right – it's free in the sense that we don't have to pay money for it. Also it's right here, and when we pick it and eat it straight away, the vitamins are higher and it tastes better.'
'And they store better out here than inside. We've been eating tomatoes since early summer and now it's autumn,' added Ellie.
'Good point,' I said. 'Usually they keep better on the plant than off but if we leave them too long they'll still rot.'
'And,' said Ellie, giving me a professorial look over her glasses, 'there's no transport, no carbon dioxide to bring them to us.'
'Good thinking, Ellie,' I said, surprised that she had thought of this aspect.
'You know we're doing the law project at school, trying to work out ways to decrease carbon dioxide emissions?' she said.
I nodded, realising her school project must have helped to spark this reflection. With the United Nations Climate Change Conference Talks in Paris looming, the subject of how to decrease carbon dioxide emissions was getting more airtime.
'We might even go to Paris if they choose our project. Then we'll visit parliament and we'll get to have the goûter at parliament.'
'I wonder if they have their own garden there,' I said.
'If we go I'll ask,' said Ellie.
'Sorry, Ellie, I have to go,' I said, feeling sad to leave.
I was so enjoying our chat but I had a large group arriving in a few minutes.
I finished washing the tomatoes as the minivan of guests arrived. I got through another packed day, nerves jangling. I worried that my stress was visible but the feedback forms were glowing. The only suggestion for improvement was to iron the tablecloths. Usually I could rely on drip-dry to leave them wrinkle-free but rain the day before had meant I had to use the drier.
When I came in that evening, Seán was in the kitchen chopping a mountain of fresh spinach from the garden. He didn't greet me or kiss me as we would have when I got home when we lived in the city. We were like passing ships in the night. I was lucky if he grunted at me in the morning when I took a cup of tea up for him. There was barely a connection.
'You need to take care of your daughters,' Seán said. 'Teach them how to take care of their hair. Ellie's hair is in a knot again.' He didn't even look up.
Ellie came through. The entire middle section of her hair, from neck level to lower shoulder blades, was a solid mat of dreadlocks.
'I recommend cutting the hair,' I said.
'But they love long hair,' said Seán.
'You love their long hair,' I said.
Seán loved the girls' long hair but I didn't want it. Long hair was a responsibility. It needed to be brushed morning and night and washed regularly. In winter they needed to blow-dry it and neither of them did. If I didn't dry it for them they went to bed with wet heads. But they were attached to it, perhaps from years of positive reinforcement by Seán. Sophia had a little less hair and was a little more responsible. Ellie needed supervision – if I didn't remind her she didn't brush her hair, and even with reminding she sometimes didn't do it; she could be a bit of a rebel. I had spent an hour and a half a bottle of conditioner teasing a smaller knotted section out a few weeks before. I really didn't want to go through that nightmare again. A wave of anger surged through me.
'If you like the long hair so much, you get the knots out,' I shouted at Seán.
I felt like hitting him. I did not have time for long hair. Violence rose inside me; frustration that I wasn't being the mother I should be thrashed up against the pressure I felt about getting ready for a group arriving in the Lodge that evening and another group for a tour the following day. I still hadn't got to the emails that had come in. I hadn't had time to respond to all the previous day's emails despite getting up at six and not stopping. Clients expected responses in 24 hours. I tried to do that and if the pressure was too much, like now, within 48 at the very worst. I slammed the door and went to find Ellie, who had disappeared back up the stairs.
She and I closed ourselves into the tiny shower room and I poured the other half of the bottle of conditioner on to the knot and began teasing the hair out section by section. I was as gentle as possible but Ellie started crying, partly because of the tugging and partly because she was upset about the knot and my anger.
'We're going to have to cut it out,' I said. 'This is way, way worse than last time. You have to brush your hair morning and night. You have to be responsible, Ellie. You can't have long hair if you aren't going to look after it.'
I felt furious – with myself, with Ellie, with Seán, with a world that said they needed long hair.
We braved it out for an hour. Eventually Ellie was freezing, and I felt like I had arthritis I had been bent over her in the shower for so long. The knot was almost as big as it had been at the start and we were both crying.
'I'm going to get the scissors. It's the only solution. The knot is too big,' I said.
Ellie cried even harder.
'It will grow back, Ellie, ma chérie,' I said.
'OK,' she said finally through her tears.
I wrapped her in a towel and went to fetch the shears.
I cut off the clump and tried to tidy it up around the edges then we sat on the bed exhausted. I hugged her small, towelled figure in a deep embrace and we stayed there, meditating, trying to find peace between us.
'I am so sorry, Ellie bug,' I said and held her closer.
Once we got a grip on ourselves, I dried what was left of her hair.
'It's not so bad,' she said, looking at herself in the mirror.
'No, you can barely see it,' I said. 'It will grow out in no time.'
I gave her another tight hug.
'Neither of us wants this to happen again so you have to brush it morning and night. I can't go through this again. Not ever.'
She nodded.
I hugged her again and we descended the stairs for our spinach dinner.
Along with the visits at our farm, the accommodation and organic wine, we offered multi-day tours and vineyard walking tours that went beyond our estate. I had recently found a new route for a walking tour around the area of Monbazillac that included a stop at Michelin-starred restaurant La Tour des Vents for lunch, a visit to an organic winery and a walk around the grounds of Monbazillac Castle. I had done it a few times and it was becoming a favourite, but as I took off from the village of Monbazillac with my latest group we passed a farmer spraying herbicide on his vineyard and I wondered if it was such a good route after all. I led the group as far away as possible but we could still smell the weedkiller. I felt anger boiling inside me. It was wrong that this farmer could legally pollute the air we were breathing with a carcinogen. In time we will not believe that humankind could have been so stupid. Jane Goodall recently wrote (in Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating) about how future generations would look back on this dark era of agriculture and ask in disbelief, 'How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?'
Our route took us through light woods and vineyards. As we walked I explained the different plants and trees, especially those we used in biodynamics, like the nettle, willow and horsetail.
'There's a hazelnut,' I said, pointing to a coppiced tree in the hedgerow of the adjacent pasture.
'Sometimes it's hard to tell it from other trees with similar shaped leaves until you get up close and see it has slightly furry leaves,' said Royce, a tall North American.
'Interesting,' I said. 'I never stopped to feel the leaves. Giving leaves textural consideration makes a lot of sense – it's another identification point.'
Another machine was lashing spray on to a vineyard up ahead. I considered an alternative route that was longer but one of the group had owned up to a sore knee minutes before so I was hesitant. A little closer to the sprayer I recognised the winegrower.
'Phew! We can pass,' I said. 'That is Kilian of Château Kalian, an organic vineyard. We'll have a bottle of his organic wine with lunch.'
We kept walking for a while then I called a halt for a break. I laid out my waterproof jacket and sat down to serve homemade elderflower cordial and organic biscuits.
The group's happy chatter filled the air while I located myself on the map before closing it into my backpack.
We set off again, picking up the pace, and came to a familiar fork in the road. Despite having done the walk many times, I experienced a momentary doubt about which way to go. I knew the route so well. I took the right fork but a few minutes later didn't recognise where we were. The person with the sore knee didn't need to walk any extra miles. I stopped and took the map out of my bag and tried to orientate myself. I couldn't work out where we were or where we needed to go. My brain shut down. I felt panic rising. We walked back to the fork so I could look at the signs.
'I'll look us up on my phone,' said Royce.
'Thanks, Royce,' I said.
'How many times did you say you've done this route, Caro?' asked Joyce, the lady with the sore knee.
'So many. I think I got disorientated because the seasons have changed since I was here last,' I said, my face going red with embarrassment.
Royce's phone showed to go back the way we had come. But it showed we had such a long way to go to the restaurant that I was sure it wasn't right. I hesitated. Had I got us that lost? Were we so far off our target? I doubted myself. For a few minutes I looked at my paper map and at the phone. Part of me said, 'Trust the new technology – it has to be right', and the other part said, 'Stick with your gut instinct'. I had to make a call.
'We must stick with the way I originally took us. The seasonal change and the new paintwork on the house disorientated me,' I said, sounding more convincing than I felt.
Joyce looked dubious. I didn't blame her. I led us back up the road, my heart racing. This had never happened to me, even on a brand-new route. I was always sure of my direction and this one was a regular, familiar route for me. As we popped out of a small forest I saw the restaurant in the distance and felt lightheaded relief sweep through me. The map on the phone had the restaurant address as a place completely different to the actual location of the restaurant.
I chalked another negative mark down to the awful transformation I was going through; perimenopause symptoms included memory lapses. Or perhaps it was nervous-system disruption from the chemicals being sprayed next to our path at the start of the walk. I would never know. I wondered how I would regain the confidence and satisfaction of my group although being on the right path had helped already.
At La Tour des Vents, after nibbles of potato and aioli (a garlic mayonnaise) and tiny wraps of smoked trout, we delighted in an amuse-bouche of mousse de courgette et fausse terre Parmesan (dark savoury Parmesan biscuit crushed to look like soil and crumbled over courgette mousse) then a starter of tomato soup laced with olives and jambon de Bayonne perfectly paired with a white wine from Brigitte Soulier of Château La Robertie, a feisty woman I had got to know through a Women in Wine group. We continued the feast with guinea-fowl fillet wrapped around a langoustine with a flamed whisky langoustine sauce, stuffed courgette flower and spinach with cream, paired with red wine from Château Kalian, the winegrower we had seen en route. With the fine wine flowing, my memory lapse faded like the wisps of mist on the river below us. By the end my guests seemed to have forgotten but I had not.
At home I checked in with one of our hazelnuts. The leaves had always looked flat but close up they were furry. I rubbed a leaf between my fingers. It smelt like hazelnut. Now I went around feeling and sniffing the leaves of other plants and took more notice of the texture.
My experience with Ellie's hair had shown I wasn't keeping it together on the family front, and the walk and my double booking showed I wasn't on the work front either, but I couldn't let the lapses destroy my confidence. I had a packed schedule through to the end of October and harvest was in full swing. We had harvested the Sauvignon Blanc and the Sémillon. The reds would be next. I wondered if I would make it through the week, let alone the next four – at which point things would slow down and winter would arrive. I had never relished winter; now I found myself desperately looking forward to it. I picked a lavender flower from the pot outside my tasting-room door and drew the calming aroma deep into my being.
CHAPTER 8
TAKE TEN DEEP BREATHS
A petite woman with jet-black hair and a tall, slim man with sandy-brown hair walked up the Gardonne platform with suitcases.
'You must be Caro. I'm Chris and this is Dave,' said the woman in a warm voice, introducing them both with a flourish. We shook hands.
'Welcome to Aquitaine,' I said. 'It's great to meet you.'
We chatted as we made our way to Château Feely. 'We have limited time to travel since Dave still works full-time. I don't think he will ever stop working,' Chris said and gave a delicious laugh that filled the car.
Her laughter set me at ease. With the intense week ahead, their easy manner and good humour were what I needed.
'I'll run through the itinerary so you know what is happening over the next few days,' I said. 'Tomorrow is the Wine Adventure at Château Feely so you'll spend the day learning about wine at our organic vineyard. Wednesday you go to Bergerac for the market and the cookery class with Stéphane at Table du Marché. Thursday we will be harvesting our Merlot everyday red so there will be noise in the courtyard from around five in the morning and lots to see. Then we go to St-Émilion for the grand cru classés tour. Friday is a rest day for you – phew. Perhaps you can take a relaxing walk up to the Lion D'Or for lunch. Saturday is
our vine-shareholder harvest day with a picnic for lunch then the harvest dinner in Saussignac, and then Sunday is a vineyard walking tour with lunch. That takes us to Monday, when I'll bring you back to the station where you just arrived. How does that sound?'
'Perfect for us,' said Chris. 'But it sounds like quite a packed agenda for you, Caro.'
