The Slow Life

Life has been pretty slow on the farm, which is a good thing. It is nice to have time to appreciate our surroundings and contemplate things. Being in this state has been messing with our perception of time. It's one of those things where it seems like we have been here way longer than we actually have, but when we think about it, a glimpse of actual time peeks in and for a moment it does seem like its only been two weeks.

Anyhow, here are a few pictures to sum up our last week.

Every morning we make our way down to the garden and see this, the potatoes. Its been really nice to see the land change by our hand. Since we've been working here, we've prepared the land and planted over 60 tomato plants, about 40 squash (green and yellow zucchini), rows of onions and shallots and rows of haricot vert. Its bittersweet that we won't be here to see these grow larger than spouts, but pretty cool to know that in a few months they will be eaten by the neighboring villages.

Here is Jacques, plowing some land where, today, we just planted tomatoes. I've also been playing around with the cool filter features on my camera.

Tomorrow is market day and Casey spent the first half of the morning harvesting these radishes, along with snow peas, herbs and fava beans.

We also got some asparagus, but this is just for us to eat as there aren't enough to sell just yet.

During our time off we've been exploring the area. We are situated in a beautiful valley and it has been refreshing to be surrounded by nature in bloom.

Today, we just came back from visiting a few wine cellars, tasting wine and buying a bottle or two. Here is one of the vineyards with the Gorge d'Heric behind.

On our way back, we explored an old medieval town. It was charming with narrow streets, old, wooden doors and, for the size of the village, a surprising amount of cats.

I got lucky with this shot.

We passed by a cemetery to get a better view of the town.
Something about this crucifix really caught my attention. Throughout Europe, I've seen a bunch of these, but I think the stormy weather playing off the solemnness of this drew me to it. Kind of creepy.

After our work day, when the weather is nice, we've also been going on small walks throughout the area. It's nice grabbing our cameras and walking through the lush green without necessarily having an objective.

This is a typical path we take. And typically, I'll be saying, "Oh man! This is so nice!" while we walk along it.

The other day, we stumbled upon this cool old truck. It's hard to see, but the tree is actually growing through the hood of the car. Judging from the size of the tree, this truck has been here for a while.

Our little day trips have been taking us to a lot of water. There is a river that flows through the valley, and naturally, the most scenic places to hike to are near the water. Since I have a fancy new camera and can finally control my shutter speed, I've been having some fun.

This one was taken at the Gorge d'Heric. The hike through the Gorge d'Heric, similar to a protect park in the States, was really nice since it followed the river for most of way until the trail started to climb. As if to answer a hikers dream, there is a bar at the top of the trail, waiting with a nice cold one and sturdy seat.

Not too far from the farm is a little waterfall that we walked to the other day. Again, I had fun trying to capture that cool, smooth camera effect of a longer exposure. Don't think I quite have a grasp of it yet, but practice makes perfect. The waterfall was quite small, and not much to see, but we had fun there.

We spent, maybe a little too much, time skipping rocks. I think Casey and I both had the best skips of our lives here. Maybe it was the perfectly smooth rocks or maybe it was because we hadn't done it for a while, and thus we were older and stronger, but it's an awesome feeling to see that rock keep going!

One thing that has been evidence of time passing is the changing of plants. Since we have been here, we have seen the once brilliant Irises slowly fade and the slower to bloom roses show their faces.

We've also seen the cherries transform from hard, green, olive impersonators to dark maroon, plump and ready to eat cherries. I took this picture a couple days ago, and already these cherries are brighter red and will be busting in couple more.

Some tree are ripening faster that others and are already quite tasty!

We're here for one more week and then we're off to make our way down to Italy via the South of France. I'm sure I'll have more to report before we start our travels again.