Meet the farmers - and beekeepers, wine growers, goat breeders, cheese makers

This weekend France had a national initiative opening small agricultural enterprises to the public. Hundreds of smallholders, beekeepers, truffle producers, wine growers, cheesemakers, duck breeders and others opened their doors to the nosy public to show us how they do their work. De ferme en ferme it was called. From farm to farm.

Here in Provence dozens of enterprises took part and around 25 were open in the Vaucluse. My partner and I decided to go and have a look at a few. We chose 4 family concerns at Pernes-les-Fontaines - one keeping goats and producing goats cheese, then Domaine de la Camarette, which produces excellent wine and olive oil and also has a fine restaurant, then a market gardener, and a beekeeper/honey producer.

We started at the Chèvrerie des Fontaines where we were greeted by a loping sheep dog and two robust-looking hens. A shaggy dog was snoozing peacefully in the sun at the top of stone steps. We found the business owner, a young woman called Julie Christol, in the milking room, attaching the milking machine to the goats' teats.

She has several breeds of goat - the local traditional goat breed of Provence, a breed from the Alps and a couple of others. Only 35 in total. With those goats and their milk she has to make enough cheese to earn her living, selling at local markets. The milk is whisked off to a sterile room where it's agitated a bit (I didn't follow the technical stuff very closely) then it ends up on shelves where it sits for a brief or long period of time depending on whether it's to be sold frais, sec, or in-between. Flavours like shallots, herbs or peppers are added.

After meeting the bouc (do we still say billy goat in English?), a handsome animal with a long black beard, we had a look at the room where the milk is handled. Only through a glass door, though, as the hygiene regulations are fierce. Then we had a tasting, tried various textures and flavours and bought a few cheeses. Two little girls, 4 and 5, were helping their mother label little pots of faisselle, a traditional curds and whey product last eaten outside France by Little Miss Muffet. One of the girls made us laugh. My partner asked her what she was doing and she replied with a big smile that she was doing the vaisselle - washing up.

Patting the dogs, goats, chickens and children on the head, we set off to La Camarette. We know the restaurant well and it's well worth visiting - great food and great value produced by the talented chef, Hugo. (32 euros for 3 courses with the Domaine's own wine included.) But we hadn't had a look around the winery which is run by Hugo's wife who also has a small son and baby girl to look after while her husband works long days and nights in the restaurant. She showed us how the wine is produced, from pruning the vines, to harvesting the grapes, and finally bottling the wine, slapping on labels and selling it locally (and to one client in China!) Born into the third generation of a family of wine growers, Nancy Gontier's knowledge of viticulture and viniculture was impressive - the cépages from chardonnay to mourvèdre, grenache, the pinots, syrah and beyond, the machines and processes for making wine, the wine trade in France and abroad, the complex legislation governing the trade, and the protocols for achieving organic - bio - status.

I bought a few litres of red and of white and my partner bought some of the special cuvée she produced to celebrate the birth of her son. Next year, there'll be a vintage to mark her daughter's birth too. I also bought their excellent méthode champenoise which takes a full year to produce.

And off we went to the market gardener. Frederic Deloule's produce is organic and ranges from artichokes to tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, grapes and water melons. A group of a dozen of us took the tour with the farmer's tall, handsome son who smoked roll-ups as he loped about encouraging us to nose around in the rows of vegetables. The obligatory affable dogs - everywhere in Provence - strolled around with us. One looked closer to a bear than a dog but was very sociable. Like the animals, we followed our guide and heard about the irrigation afforded by the Carpentras Canal, the organic compost used to fertilise the produce and the plentiful insect life which somehow maintains a balance and seems to avoid devouring the crops. We were offered several dozen tomato plants at the end of the tour which we accepted with pleasure.

Next stop was the beekeeper and mielerie. Stepping over a large floppy dog, we shook Benoit's hand, the apiculteur, and started our tour. He showed us traditional beehives used in Provence, the Alps and the Cevennes. Some, used way back, were just old tree trunks, hollowed out and with wooden lids slapped on.

Benoit has 400 ruches or hives, which he makes and maintains himself. Each beehive is home to around 40,000 bees. (Yep, 16 million bees.) The hives have to be driven around the region, when plants are flowering, and located in lavender fields and so on. The honey is produced between June and September. We watched his sister filling pots and labelling them. She simply turned a tap on a vat to fill the pots but it's still a time-consuming, manual process, as is the labelling. And then the honey is taken to market. Benoit said his turnover is around 24,000 euros a year which means his net annual income from making honey will be considerably less. We tasted lavender honey, acacia honey and chestnut-flower honey and bought some of each.

As we drove away I reflected on the great day we'd had, courtesy of De ferme en ferme. What impressed me - apart from the beauty of the animals, processes and products - was the incredibly rich knowledge these agriculteurs have. It's the depth of knowledge which is so impressive. Knowledge of the history of making these products. Knowledge of the varieties of animals, of vines and vegetables and the nutrition which suits them and the maladies that afflict them. Of processes and subtle enhancements to them. Of local markets, overseas markets, laws, flavours... it's never-ending. Contrast their work, these small producers, with a person stuck in a shop selling tins of stuff, or someone stuck in an office rifling through files online, and the work of the beekeeper or wine grower seems rather magnificent. Their own bosses, in their own domaines, with their own plants and animals and their own rhythm of working. Each has a whole world of knowledge and expertise to revel in, as well as the beauty of nature.
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Hunting, herding, bee-keeping, carpentry and metal-work in Provence

These are glorious autumn days, this year in October. Warm, bright, sunny and often still, although the mistral and vent du sud blow periodically.

The hunters have been out in force for a couple of weeks now and this morning I was woken by cracking gunshot and hunters' dogs yelping hysterically. Another rabbit turns to paté, for a family from the local village, Velleron, to wash down with local red wine.

I was struck by the hunt today because I'm reading A Shortened History of England by George Macaulay Trevleyan. He was born in 1876, educated at Harrow and Trinity College Cambridge and fought in the First World War. Later, he was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. He wrote the book during the Second World War. In the second chapter (I don't always get to the last chapter of history books) he says this of the then-Celtic island:

"Agriculture was not the preoccupation it became in Saxon and medieval times. Hunting, fishing, herding, weaving, bee-keeping, metal-work, carpentry, and, above all, fighting occupied most of the [population's] time."

When I think of Britain today, I don't think of these occupations. I think of a vast public sector and businesses like Accenture, EasyJet, Pizza Hut, CapitalConnect and Carphone Warehouse (I've imagined those last two.)

Yet Provence is still home to those ancient occupations. The hunters are not men engaging in some esoteric and expensive "Hunt" reserved for the wealthy. They're just blokes out from the village, "taking a whirl at the rabbits" as PG Wodehouse described it. They dress in army fatigues, sling their shotguns over their shoulders and drive their beat-up white vans out here in the hope of stocking up their fridges. Occasionally they'll get a wild boar or a pheasant. They also keep an eye on the countryside and inform the police municipale if they see people building where they shouldn't and so on. Most of the hunters represent the latest of many generations of huntsmen in their families.

On to fishing. I walked by the river at the tiny village of Le Thor yesterday, revelling in the light reflected by the clear water as it rushed through the village centre. A couple of trout were basking in the sunlight on the riverbed. The river Sorgue is full of - stocked with - trout during the fishing season and fishermen wade out regularly into the beautiful wide expanse of water at Partage des Eaux (The parting of the waters) near L'Isle sur Sorgue. And this September I was mesmerised as usual by Les Halles at Sète on the coast where the fish market has a practically hallucinatory selection of fish and seafood. On the coast (as on the Atlantic coast, as in Corsica) you'll see men donning wetsuits to swim out and fish at sea. And you'll see them return with fish - most commonly daurade royale it seems to me - strapped to their belts.

Herding? Certainly. I wrote last year about the local berger, Antoine, who brings his sheep to graze here on patches of pasture in the forest. He recently arrived back from summer in the Hautes Alpes and I came across him driving his open-sided lorry down our track, two black sheepdogs keeping their balance in the back. "How did it go in the mountains?" I asked. "Not great" he said glumly. "We lost about 40 animals. Wolf attacks." Last year he had a huge and beautiful pyrénéen mountain dog, Barbar, protecting his sheep. Barbar's attention would wander though and he'd wonder off. I eyed the new black sheepdogs and couldn't bring myself to ask how Barbar had been punished for failing in his work.

My neighbour, Didier, keeps bees and I thought about them at the end of this summer. So warm has it been this year that we were all still swimming in the co-owned pool at the hameau along the track in October. I swam alone several times and noticed, on arriving, that the pool was flecked with small honey bees struggling not to drown. They'd obviously tried to drink, seeing the surface of the water was flat and undisturbed, but then they'd got into trouble. I hoicked them out but, extrapolating from the numbers that had to be saved, I calculated Didier might be losing between 600 and 800 bees a month in the last few weeks when fewer people are in the pool and the bees dare to land and drink. Next year I'll suggest we float discs of cork in the pool as little landing stages for them.

Metal work. Is still much in evidence in Provence. I want to hang a heavy curtain between my sitting room and kitchen this winter so I'm going to ask the local ferronier to make a curtain rod as he's already made all the others in the house, plus an intricate balustrade for the mezzanine.

Carpentry. Menuisiers, carpenters, are everwhere in the region. So are ébénistes, cabinet-makers. My neighbours have lodgers staying for ten months who're studying at the renowned school of ebenisterie at Le Thor. The students at the school are often older people who get sabbaticals from companies like EDF and France Telecom to train in a completely different discipline. Otherwise, they often get state aid and benefits to help them train for a new trade. Working with wood is still a big deal here.

As for agriculture, fighting and weaving... Everyone seems to be involved in agriculture - from my neighbour's cousin who grows cress to my farmer neighbour who grows grapes, abricots, figs and cherries. To the many small producers who sell produce at Velleron market most evenings, all year. I'm involved too in that I grow olives which produce a small amount of olive oil and help neighbours harvest their olives. I was struck by a trip to a friend's brother's place this weekend. François, the brother, has a vineyard of several hectares at Bollène. He produces grenache grapes for Mistralou wine. But he also grows a dozen varieties of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, potatoes and cardons. He has olive and fig trees. And a huge plaqueminier - persimmon - on which I estimated a thousand large orange cacis were ripening. Cacis are fabulous. A bit like oysters in that you need only open and eat them just as they are to feel you're eating a luxury. François and his wife Janine - in their 80s by the way - also keep rabbits and chickens so they have eggs, meat, salad, fruit, vegetables, olives and wine on tap from their few hectares. Their way of life is far from exceptional here.

Fighting. When Trevelyan fought in the first world war he may not have imagined all the wars to follow. Provence is a pretty peaceful place but of course Provençal people fight as humans always have. I mean professionally. A young neighbours' soldier boyfriend has recently returned from the Cote d'Ivoire following a previous tour of duty in Afghanistan. He's a bucheron by trade - a forester - but joined the French army for five years. He can't wait to get out. A brave young guy, it doesn't seem to be so much the fighting that gets to him. It's the endless hanging around in barracks, doing nothing.

That leaves weaving. I haven't met anyone involved in weaving. But maybe that's just because machine-made cloth is so cheap to come by. Yesterday I went in search of material to make the curtain I mentioned. I went to a warehouse at Le Thor (Tis- Tis) that was stuffed with tissus - fabrics - and off-cuts at bargain-basement prices. Gregoire is a similar business at Saturnin-les-Avignon. The quality doesn't look terrific though. So maybe there are weavers out there producing beautiful hand-made Provençal fabrics. I just haven't met them yet.

The Salt Flats of Salin de Giraud and the Camargue de Provence

I was bored last Sunday morning. My car had finally been repaired by a local atelier de carrosserie after a late-night crash at New Year and was sitting peacefully and intact outside among the pine trees. Did I have the confidence to go for a long drive?

No.

So I called a friend and we headed off to the Camargue in his car. One of the wonderful-fabulous-life-enhancing things about living in Provence is that more or less whatever countryside you want to get out into - barring glaciers and volcanic ash - is out there. Hills, mountains, sea, canals, garrigue, plains, vineyards, limestone caves, rivers are all within about an hour's drive. And the Camargue adds a unique wetland or marsh, stuffed with black bulls, white horses, pure-white egrets and pink flamingoes. Not forgetting the salt flats.

I've never found the lunar landscape of the saltflats terribly attractive but for some reason I decided they might be worth another look. I quickly packed up a picnic of a pain pavé, a large camembert, tomatoes, saucisson, rosé wine, ham, plus a hunting knife to cut everything up and we set off.

It was a warm sunny day (20th of Feb.) and the roads were clear down through Arles and into the Camargue. The marshy ground turns into salt flats or salins - saltworks - at Salin de Giraud and the sea water is kind of marshalled into shallow lakes by a system of old wooden locks with great metal nuts and screws that turn to let water in or keep it out.

There are huge hills of solid white salt along the coast with Mad-Max-style machinery, able to scale the salt and scrape it into containers I suppose. The machines are like angular insects, fragile-looking against the apparently lunar landscape. You can walk up to a viewing point and look out over these weird salt flats which appear blood red in certain light. On Sunday they were a wine red colour, looking in one direction, and glowed strangely yellow in another.

We left and went along to the long, very exposed beach nearby, to eat our picnic. The sun was strong and glancing off the Med right into our faces. A few couples were out walking their dogs, enjoying the February sunlight. Suddenly a couple on horseback arrived and hammered all the way down the beach, then returned. As they galloped, I saw the riders were two young women and they were obviously voltigeuses - acrobats who perform in circuses or other shows - as they swung themselves on and off their mounts, touching the sand then jumping back on, or balancing on one side of their horses with legs outstretched and an arm high in the air. One of the women performed a manoeuvre a bit like a handstand, and all this as the horses galloped hell for leather down the beach and back. It was beautiful to see.

For coffee, we went into Salin de Giraud. It's much more intriguing than I'd realised in the past. There are rows and rows of large terraces - identical houses which were built in the nineteenth century I'd say, for the workers in a local facory which used (and still uses) salt to make various household and industrial products. I guess originally the men also scratched up the salt from the salt flats - work now done by the stick-insect-y machines. I'll find out a bit more about the history though as it's not clear. I got talking to a young woman in the large bar/café there and she said that the houses were all built for factory workers not the saltworks. She was very young though and may not know the history. The bar/café itself was like a UK miners' welfare club - large, obviously built to take dozens of customers, with a long bar and - these days - a huge telly showing sport.

We walked around the village and it was interesting to see these rows and rows of homes, all identical. It showed very clearly that for the saltwork owners, or factory owners, the workers were just an undifferentiated bunch of Provencal guys. Not seen as individuals, there was no attemmpt to give them individual houses. Each house had a small identically-shaped shed in front of it and I guess that was for their tools. I had rather foolishly imagined that the salt flats' main purpose was to produce salt for people's dinner tables. Of course, most of the salt is used in the Alps, against the snow, and to produce industrial products. Only a tiny percentage ends up as refined salt to sprinkle in Provencal recipes.

There was also a large building from the same period which has been renovated but retains part of an entrance which still displays, almost obliterated, the words ecole ménagère. A school for maids. Presumably while the men were digging out salt or working in the factory their wives and daughters were learning to be maids, seamstresses, cooks and cleaners for the factory owner and managers. Certainly, on the edge of the village, by a pretty park, there are large houses with pleasant gardens which may once have belonged to the employers and foremen.

Returning home we decided to cross the Rhone by the little bac or ferry which takes a couple of minutes and costs 5 euros. The Rhone's not so wide here so I don't know why a bridge hasn't been built. It must be annoying for residents on the west side who need to cross every weekday for work in Istres, Martigues, Marseille or at Marignane airport. Or the petrol works in the Golfe de Fos. Again, I'm guessing but I think it may be to allow boats to pass to and from Port-St-Louis-du-Rhone. Otherwise, perhaps the guy making money from the bac is the local mayor's brother!

On the return journey we stopped for a while to look at the impossibly fragile flamants roses picking their way fastidiously through shallow water, dipping their curved beaks into the sea to fish out food. Some creatures just hark back to prehistory in their shape and form and flamingoes are among them. Cats feel very contemporary. So do sheep. They're animals man has manipulated and cross-bred for centuries. But tortoises, rhinos, elephants, lizards - they're creatures which are obviously as old as the hills and flamingoes have the same vibe. Their quirky movements, long curved necks and stick-thin legs seem to have evolved as slowly as the Camargue itself. As the sun set, they waded slowly into the distance, glowing pink, beaks bending to the water, legs making sharp angles to their feather-light bodies.

In the impressive terrain of Provence it was no surprise to see an immediate contrast in the heavy, solid black bulls which grazed nearby. Strange to think that these animals, so much more powerful than the flamingoes, are far more exploited. They're chased around the bull rings in Arles and end up in Intermarché, and then on Provençal dinner tables as saucisse served with aperitifs or as Gardianne de Taureau.

Yet even the flamingoes are used by the thrifty and industrious Provençaux, on cartes postales and to draw tourists. There is not much in Provence that isn't used to help people make a living. In the Camargue, from the black bulls to the pink flamingoes and from the white horses to the salt flats and the bac, pretty much everything is seen as a resource. Even the sand can be used to grow grapes. And the grapes are used for a light rosé wine which is perfect on a spring or summer's day whether you're sitting in a bar in Arles, watching voltigeuses on the beach or having a last look at the flamingoes as the sun goes down over the Camargue.

Choosing Vines for Soil in the Vaucluse

So I have two vines that aren't growing well. They're on each side of my terrace and have struggled since 2004. One grows and produces plenty of leaf but few grapes; the other is stunted and won't grow at all.

I was given the address of a pépiniériste (nurseryman) at Caromb and decided to go and talk to him. He specialises in vines. A neighbour who wants to expand his little plantation of 20 vines decided to go with me. When we arrived on a Saturday afternoon the pépiniériste was trundling about tinkering with a small tractor, accompanied by a vast white Pyrenean mountain dog, the type used to chase wolves away from sheep.

We got talking and as the dog beat its tail against our legs and woofed a bit, I explained the problem. What variety of vine did I have, he asked? I didn't know. Behind him were rows of small, healthy looking vines and a large poly-tunnel with the door open. Another little army of vines was growing inside.

Never mind, he said. The issue was to find vines that would grow. Presumably I wanted raisins de table? Not much point having grapes that make wine if you only grow 2 vines. But did I want grapes at all? A sterile vine wold be pretty but wouldn't produce grapes so I wouldn't be bothered about wasps in late summer. Mmmm, I thought I wanted grapes.

OK, he said. What type of soil do you have? Well, I replied, it's in pine forest, it's rocky. Limestone.
Ah. If it's calcaire he said, it's necessary to know whether it's actif or not? I had no idea.

Vines are apparently sensitive to calcaire actif and, if you have it, you need to grow vine varieties that can cope with it.

My neighbour wasn't sure if the soil in the hamlet near my home had active limestone or not. He had a note of the vines that currently grow fairly well on his land and, looking at those, the pépiniériste said it was unlikely there was calcaire actif
in the soil. He wasn't prepared to recommend vines without knowing more about the soil though and we agreed to find out. A proper soil analysis would be too expensive he advised us but we could talk to local agriculteurs who would be sure to know. At this point an old chap wondered over to us. He had just about the most French look I've ever seen in my life - huge white handlebar moustache, wispy white hair, a weathered and crinkled face, kind twinkly eyes and a great big smile.

Papa, the guy asked him, is there calcaire actif in the soil at Velleron?

Papa didn't skip a beat. He shook his head and gave us a concise discourse on the soil composition of pretty much the whole of the Vaucluse. (He added a short digression on cultivating truffles.) Anyway, it turns out that where I live, there's no calcaire actif to worry about.

That cleared up one aspect of the discussion. Things then got a little more complicated as we discussed planting, pruning and the months when different varieties produce their grapes.

My neighbour had quite a lot of questions and the last one was whether the pépiniériste could note down a few suitable varieties for his land? He still had several things to think about and decide he said, but in the meantime he'd like a list to consider. The chap laughed and said that in his house he had a book around 500 pages long on vine varieties. My neighbour had to make a few decisions about the type of vine and grape he wanted and then, when he came back with the answers, he'd get the recommendations he needed.

We chatted a bit longer and found out that this nurseryman provides vines (grafted, but that's a whole other discussion) to vignobles growing vines across hectare after hectare. He's used to supplying hundreds and thousands of plants at a time and yet here he was taking time to inform and advise us when he stood to sell a few vines for 5 euros apiece!

That's one of the things I love about Provence, and France in general - the care and pride and attention that go into so many activities whether agricultural, culinary or purely social.

We thanked the chap and set off for Velleron, stopping briefly in Caromb for a coffee. The little café was in darkness but a woman was sitting outside and welcomed us. "It's the crisis" she announced cheerily. "I didn't have any customers so I turned the lights off."

"Well you can turn them on again now we're here" we said.

As we sat in the weak February sunshine drinking rather bitter coffee, two workmen arrived and had coffees too. They jumped back in their van to leave and reversed casually into the car behind them as people quite often do here. They gave it quite a bump. The driver beamed at us and signalled "It's OK isn't it?" Yes, we nodded. It's OK.
He'd only hit the bumpers.

I got home pondering the expertise of the pépiniériste. He supplies fig trees too - naturally, since Caromb is the home of the popular Caromb fig variety. And almond trees. I bet he knows as much about growing figs and almonds as he knows about growing vines and grapes. Having a magpie brain that flits too easily from one subject to another, I find that mastery of fields of knowledge really admirable. And, to me anyway, knowledge of the natural world is far more seductive than knowledge of, say, law or economics. There is something very substantial about knowing the land, the climate and vegetation. Which is partly why we use the term grounding, I suppose, to mean steadying or stabilising.

I'll probably never gain the really thorough understanding or experience that people here have of vines or figs, truffles or oysters, olives or olive oil - but I have come to understand how much complexity and richness there is in each aspect of nature in the Mediterranean. It's pretty overwhelming sometimes but certainly fascinating. And while it's sometimes frustrating to realise how little you know about a subject under discussion it's often a joy to discuss, listen and learn. And to admire the knowledge of people here who really know their stuff.