We go to Dominique's again and Suzi and I will be cooking. Today there will be hummus and eggplant chips among other fancy vegetable dishes. Decoration remains an important element. Below a duck joins us. He has quite a hairdo!
There's plenty of zucchini but the flowers make it better!
Patrick is on vacation and busies himself running to the store for more items, taking pictures and I'm sure, many other tasks behind the scenes that we don't see. It's not a very good picture, but I left it because it's the only one I have of the entrance to the cabin. You can see also in the lower right hand corner some preserves that have already been put up for the winter even though it is still the middle of the growing season. I'm not exactly what is there as I didn't really notice them too much until one day Dominique has us packing chunks of zucchini.
This time instead of using egg on the eggplant, I put salt between very thin slices (I usually don't take the time for this important intermediate step) and the end result is thin chips that are for the most part quite crispy. I LOVE crispy things - like crispy French fries that don't really taste like potatoes.
Well, as usual, you can see that pretty much all the food is gone. But again, I notice everyone looks tired. I wonder why??
I take some time to find a wild pig in the cloud formation. Or, is it a baby elephant with its mouth open?
The moment of truth has arrived. Pierlo calls for volunteers to wash the dogs with a tick spray. All I can think of is the time our dog Amigo (a German Shepherd) was lost for over a week while we were on vacation. When we came home we canvased all the nearby shelters and found him just in time before he was to be destroyed. He came home with a pile of fleas it took ages to get rid of. It took at least 3 applications to get them off him as well as out of the house.
I've never seen these squiggly tomato stakes. I suppose it's just been a long time since I grew tomatoes.
After the dishes, Suzi and I continue wit the weeding.
There's that magnificent artichoke bloom again, this time sheltering a few bees.
A final thought about the day or some future plans for the next day?
At home at last. Sandrine arrives and I ask if I can help her pick the dinner. I take my camera as I realize I don't have a picture of her yet as she only comes over at night for dinner after her day job. She is telling me it is time to start pulling the quinopods (the wild spinach we use for salad and soup as well). She has left many of them in various places in the garden so they will continue to self seed. They really are so delicious, much better than cultivated spinach!
It is Sandrine who, when she returned from Paris, brought to the worksite a couple of books on the building of straw houses. She said it was a movement begun in the United States, and at first, she and Pierlo couldn't find books in French as they began their odyssey. In one of the books she brought, I found two houses in Massachusetts as well as one in Rhode Island. Having had this experience, I hope to visit these houses sometime in the spring of 2012.
For those who have some interest in more information, here is just a basic site (in English - je m'excuse pour ceux qui ne savent pas anglais, mais dans le temps, je voudrais traduire ce site en français, - dans un futur un peu loin) about straw bale houses:
Just highlight the site, then right click and it will ask you if you want to open (or "go to the site." Click on that option and the site will open.
http://strawbale.com
One particularly interesting fact I noted on this site (of course among many other bits of information) was the piece on how straw bale houses are able to carry the vertical as well as the lateral loads: "Recent engineering has shown bale wall assembly to be structurally sound even in the most volatile earthquake zones of California." I also think the writer answers other questions that remained in my mind about straw bale houses.
This site also has several little You-Tube videos and of course the writer of the site offers advice for sale: workshops, videos, etc. There are many such sites and now many books both in English and at least some in French. Of course, they are not all equal as there is more than one approach in this kind of architecture. Dominique has a few small books in French in her library that I was able to take a quick look at during a break after lunches. In the situation here in the Pyrénées, Pierlo has learned on site in other parts of France and has become an expert. Because in a previous life he was a computer expert, he has undoubtedly learned something on the web as well as through building his own house.
There are not many straw bale houses yet, but certainly, as I've already mentioned, many people pass through this area of the Pyrénées (some locals as well) looking for information on this kind of construction. In the last week of my visit, Dominique received a request for an "interview" about her house which would eventually be aired on TV. She wants to consider this request carefully as this kind of "life project" is not just about a house, but also about how it is being built (Wwoofing). She suggests she thinks she should invite the reporter to come and spend at least a week living on site. Apparently there have been other such "reports" (in the media) that have focused on non-essential or even damaging "information" about what Pierlo and Dominique and others are about in this kind of venture. Certainly "publicity" is not their thing, although with a lot of such interest, there could be a job here in the long run for Pierlo who is not sure what his future will be after his house and Dominique's is finished.
For now, I must move on to finishing the rest of my (and in some measure, our - the group of Wwoofers with me) experience here in the Pyrénées. Perhaps at a later time I will get back here to this page of my blog to more properly document this interesting movement.
Perhaps Marion, our architect, will get back to me on what she has found in her year of working at different sites in France. I know she is writing a paper (memoire) on her experience. Perhaps she will became an expert in the future and make a contribution to this eco-friendly kind of way to provide for one's family. For one, I wish her the best whatever she chooses to do in the long run. Certainly the kind of experience gained through Wwoofing is not only professionally rewarding, but also spiritually rewarding in that it puts together so many different people sharing not only in the host's "life project," but each one forging one's own life adventure.
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