The Factory

Rosemary here, writing for the first time in quite a while, with an adventure update!

About a week ago, we left Chris's family's place, where we've been since January, to go off on a new adventure. We left our fledgeling garden in good hands, and as it had been raining profusely for several days prior, our various water collection systems were all full, and the ground under the mulch was plenty moist still. (Turns out that once things warm up, mulching does turn out to be a big life-saver. It might have just been that we mulched that first bed too early.)

Through internet searches of intentional communities in France, we came across the Peace Factory, a start-up community at the site of an old mill and tanning factory about 20 kms northeast of Carcassonne, in the southwest. Their website says "Need a place to stay? We need volunteers!" (it's owned by an English woman, thus the English) so we contacted them and they basically said we could come whenever we want, and stay as long as we want. Sounded good enough to us. 

We hitched out here in one day, luckily, taking six different rides and having to wait and walk a fair amount, but all in all it seemed like we had pretty good luck. And we got to talk with some pretty neat people, and all different kinds of people at that. There really doesn't seem to be any kind of profile for who picks up hitchhikers (except that each ride was either a male-female couple, or a single man; no single or multiple women). We rode with a middle-aged business man on his lunch break; a chill, young, self-employed carpenter who hitchhiked all over europe a couple years ago and plans to start up an intentional community in the next few years; a retail salesman on his way to a market who drove 150 kph (that's 93 mph) down the highway, chain-smoking and music blaring; a fairly straight and uptight-looking young couple on their way to visit an aunt for the weekend (if I'd seen them anywhere I wouldn't have thought they were the kind to pick up hitchhikers!); an older couple who told us a lot about the area we were driving through, which they seemed to really know and love; and finally, a youngish guy all fancied up for a night on the town, looking like a lounge singer or something, with hair slicked back, gold chains, wearing a white chinese-style-inspired dress shirt and white dress slacks. Talking on his cell phone to his mom. An eventful day, but a long one, and we were really happy to reach our destination!

And what an awesome place it is! Nestled in a little ravine with a river (La Dure) running through it, this factory was in operation until 1991. Louise, the current owner and only full-time resident (at the moment), bought the place about 15 years ago, and is now getting to work on trying to turn it into a community. There's a lot of work to do, and she's pretty busy with her own work (she's a Nonviolent Communication teacher, specializing in getting NVC programs into the French school system) so she basically trusts volunteers to do whatever they think is needed around here. We have a little house that we're sharing with three young guys from England, who have been here a couple weeks already and are leaving in a few days, but the weather has been so nice that we've been sleeping outside since we've been here. Louise has given us some NVC workshops (fun to see these super-shy, somewhat awkward  19-year-old guys, who will hardly talk to us, practicing communication!) and has shared with us some of her ideas about how she'd like to transform this place, but other than that it's been pretty much the two of us hanging out, exploring, coming up with ideas and making stuff. 

The exploring part has been my favorite. This place is just crazy, half of it totally run down, the other half in the process of being run down. Buildings full of old metal machinery, piles of stiffened leather, caved-in roofs and missing floors, old cargo elevators, old wooden stairs you tap with a stick to make sure they're solid, and then gingerly step up onto, hoping they won't break, bats galore, and the occasional awesome find, like these cool wooden wheels we're going to bring outside and use as raised garden bed frames. Oh and a big house that had a fire in it a few years ago, and is still full of personal belongings. From the outside it looks like an abandoned mediterranean villa, overrun with wisteria, two giant palm trees growing in front. Somehow an image of feral royalty comes to mind. (Walking through the house, mill and factory buildings actually reminds me of the video games Chris plays sometimes, with room after room of old broken stuff coated in dust, stained walls, dark corners, machinery that hasn't worked in decades, all surrounded by totally overgrown vegetation. I keep expecting aliens or zombies or whatever to jump out from around the next corner. Too bad I don't have my five different machine guns, a bunch of first aid kits and some extra life power. Or whatever that stuff is.)

We haven't completed a whole lot of projects yet, partly because exploring this place is just so fun, and partly because we've also been exploring the surrounding area. The little village, Montolieu, is totally awesome, and is apparently a big tourism destination for the literarily-inclined, with some 15 used and rare book shops, a book and paper museum, and many local artisans of various sorts. And the countryside around here is just incredible. One of the highlights was yesterday when we went for a hike in the hills and came across a perfectly ripe red cherry tree. We climbed up into its branches and spent the next half hour stuffing our faces before continuing on our walk, which took us on an 8-km loop through the hills, through several different kinds of vegetation as we changed altitude and south-to-north-facing slopes. 

Another element to our time here has been some new friends we've made at a local farm. The day after we got here, last Saturday, we hitched into Carcassonne for their weekly farmer's market, hoping to glean whatever we could from the leftovers. Apparently, they're much friendlier toward the end-of-market crowd than they are in Montreal! We had one guy even hand us a whole crate of perfectly-ripe tomatoes. And from another stall we got a crate of squishy, bruised nectarines that made a delicious compote that lasted us all week. Amid the stalls, there was one that stood out as a little different. It was one of only two organic farms that we saw, and it was the only one that had some different kinds of goods, like bags of acacia flowers and homemade veggie pâtés. We talked briefly with the two women at the stall (one middle-aged, another who I guessed was about my age, both who looked a little bit like hippies), and then went on our way. On Tuesday, we went with Louise to the local farmer's market, which is at an organic farm just outside of Montolieu, and discovered it was the same people! And the two women remembered us, especially because as they were leaving Carcassonne after the market on Saturday, they'd seen us trying to hitch a ride back to Montolieu. They'd been full, otherwise, they told us, they would have stopped for us. They invited us to come with them that evening to see a film about agriculture in France, Solutions locales pour un désordre global (Local solutions for a global mess), which was surprisingly very good. Aside from the ending, which was a bit disappointing (hopefully Chris will write a post about why, because I'm running out of time to go into it), we really liked it. And we had a good time with the farmers and their friends, and we've been back to visit them a couple times since then. Turns out the younger woman is an intern there, completing her studies in agriculture. She knows A LOT about organic agriculture in France, about the laws and history and all that, which is really cool. And she knows a lot of people who do all sorts of permaculture-type projects in France, and can hook us up with some other communities to visit where we could probably learn a great deal. 

So, that's all for now. Haven't taken any photos of this place yet, but I'll get on it and post some soon! And I'll also post the most recent photos of our garden back at Chris's family's place on our photo album, because we've gotten quite behind there as well. Really, it has grown and changed a lot since what the current photos show! [Addendum: new photos of the garden are now up! You can click on the link in the left sidebar.]

Hope everyone reading this is well and enjoying the spring!