Final Word

H –When I told people before I left for France that I was going to spend the summer on a camel farm, their reactions were many and varied, but the general gist was “you’re mad”. My response was to admit to this diagnosis of insanity, but I would always add “at least it’ll make a great story for my grandkids.” And now I can say with certainty, Granny Harriet is going to have some corkers to tell.

So, this is my final blog. I’m now at home in Birmingham, sat in the kitchen, huddling against the Aga while the rain is pouring outside. Welcome back to the UK...

The road trip home was... um... interesting. We left the Maison on Tuesday morning. Scotty was packed in a tetris style, bursting at the seams with giant courgettes and jars of jam.

A statistical breakdown of the journey would read something like this:

1001km driven

3 days on the road

2 cheap and cheerful chain hotels (with questionable shared shower/toilet arrangements)

1 MacDonalds and 1 Buffalo Grill (not proud of either)

3 hours finding hotel in Poitiers during rush hour traffic

27 turnings Harriet missed on the motorway

27 times Andy had to bite his tongue after turnings missed on the motorway (sorry Andy)

45mins in Intermarche while Andy ‘expertly’ chose wines (“this one has a nice label”)

A 3am wake up call

A 5am ferry

5 hours crossing The Channel (spent snoozing and getting cricked neck)

2 relieved Brits back on home soil.

Andy and I arrived home 10 days ago now, and the readjustment has been an interesting one. After initally being greeted by parents and being suitable hugged and fussed over I was sent away to wash myself, clothes, car, etc. In short, a decontamination process. About four days later mum walked upstairs, poked her head around my bedroom door, sniffed and said “something still doesn’t smell right.” So the aroma of farm was more deeply engrained that I’d imagined...

I’ve also had a chance to think about our time on the farm. In terms of life experiences, three months at La Maison des Chameaux has given us so much. We’ve had the chance to sample country living, gain an understanding of animals and their wellbeing, meet and live with a variety of amazing people and improve dramatically our French speaking skills. And all whilst getting a tan.

As Andy and I head back to Nottingham this week for our final year at University it’s time to knuckle down to some serious studying. But I know that when we are in the depths of an essay crisis or wallowing in the pile of revision notes, we can always share a cup of tea and remember the days we spent working on a camel farm in the South of France.

“Le chameau ne voit jamais sa bosse mais celle de son frère.”

Strange and wonderful things

A:

I decided what I would write in my blog today while I was standing in the river by the old mill, with four camels behind me observing as I laboured about - splashing all over the place - to wash 3 sacks of newly sheered sheep wool (or is it shorn?). Anyone who has ever washed wool by hand will know that to get the grease grime pee and poo out of it is quite a task and leaves your hands and arms particularly slimey. As I persisted on, losing bits of wool to the flow and slowly becoming more slimey and more wet I took note of the audience to my struggle. A few chickens, taking pauses inbetween slurps of water to note my progress; the 4 camels continuing to look unimpressed at my presence in their river; and visitors to the farm peering down from the bridge wondering what the woolly beast in the river is.

The strange scene made me think about all the things I have done at the farm that I could have never foreseen (even being at a camel sanctuary for a start), and new skills I never imagined I might have acquired.

I was called out of my washing duties in the river to go and spin some wool in front of the public during the wool demonstration. I would have never picked myself out as a spinner, let alone imagined myself showing French grannys how to do it. Yet spin I can.

The unpredicted duties and lessons are not limited to just wool related activites. I have also learnt for example that Male urine is a strong deterrent to foxes. As we have recently heard fox cries at night - and given the amount of ducks/geese/small animals on the farm - the men of the household have been required to quite literally mark our territory around the farm (particularly by the duck enclosure naturally) which keeps the foxes at bay.

I have learnt how to keep animals, how to keep a camel at bay, how long an egg needs to be in an incubator, how to mix concrete, the best methods to pick up pig poo, that every french village has at least 3 hairdressers, how to clicker train a pig, animal related french vocabulary, that acorns are poisoness for llamas, how to catch a piglet, how to get an alpaca to lie down, how to take a goat round an assault course and various other strange and wonderful things - some useful and some that I'll probably never need again.

We have 3 days left on the the farm...

Skills

On my first day at the Maison back in June, Sarah and I sat down for a chat about the kind of jobs we'd be doing over the summer. Most things I had expected; working with visitors to the farm, organising school groups, marketing in local towns, helping with animals and the like... but spinning wool was something I never thought I'd ever have to get to grips with...

And so, Andy and I have a new and rather bizarre string to add to our bows. Spinning. I appreciate that this is not the most fashionable of skills, so without wanting to bore you with too many details, we started off with hand spindles, then were promoted to the spinning wheel and can now card, spin and ply wool.

Now, every day at 4pm I do a wool demonstration on the farm, which goes down a treat. Visitors guess different samples of knitted wool and then get a chance to try carding and spinning, before making a souvenir bracelet.

So as our summer in France is drawing to a close, and we begin to look back at the experiences we've had and the skills we've acquired, I realise something shocking: I'm now well on the way to becoming a medieval housewife.

Kamikaze Einstein

A:

Last night we ventured out from the farm to Maubourget - a nearby village - to see a 'Course Landaise', which is basically a bit like bull fighting, but instead of actually fighting the bull, they do acrobatics over it instead. Fair enough.

It is a rather bizarre spectacle. While a brass band played classics such as 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and 'Hot Stuff' from the Full Monty, we watched the acrobats dice with death, waiting until the last second as the bull charged them down to crack out a front flip/jump/twist over the bulls horns and head (naturally with the added twist that their legs were often tied together). At the end of each round they were given points by judges for their efforts and the audience would clap and whoop - particularly loudly if they had had an extremely close shave.

Early on an unlucky (or unskilled?) acrobat was gored as his performance went slightly wrong. As he tried to do a last minute step to the side to avoid the oncoming bull, he was caught by a rogue horn and thrown into their air. A few minutes later he limped off, hopefully just with dented pride. It makes you wonder whether they are actually brave or just plain stupid. Perhaps a mixture of the two.

In other news, Einstein the duckling almost had it after a kamikaze swimming attempt yesterday. Each day at feeding time we take out some baby animals for the kids to see and get up close to. Einstein suddenly decided he had had enough of sitting on one particular girl's hand, jumped off, and legged it onto the bridge. Yesterday, the river was fairly high and flowing very quickly. Einstein is an amateur swimmer to say the least. Not having a mummy duck to follow and learn the ropes from, he is more of a doggy paddler, shallow end, armbanded swimmer who doesn't even seem to like water too much. At that particular moment in time though, he had clearly decided that despite the 5ft drop from the side of the bridge into rapids (basically rapids for a duckling anyway) he would give it a go.

French mums and kids screamed and shouted as he battled against the current, and drifted downstream losing the battle. Heroicly I jumped off the bridge and dived after him, prepared to sacrifice myself to save little Einstein (some exaggeration...). I just managed to grab him before he went out of reach and dissapeared, and he promptly thanked me by pooing on my hand, much to everyones amusement. He is now back living with the chicks, and will be staying away from the river for a few days.

Visitors

Describing life at the Maison is no easy task. It is so much better if people can experience it first hand. The phrase 'seeing is believing' really takes on a whole new definition...

And so, as five ridiculously tall Brummies rocked up last weekend to get a taste of camel farm life I was very much looking forward to showing them how I'd been spending the summer. What followed was 48 hours of:

Courgette chopping, wool carding, tent erecting, disco dancing, wine tasting, dodgem crashing, crepe consuming, kitten stroking, lack of sleeping, tea drinking, jazz listening, duck eating, sun shining, rain pouring, cuisine sampling, trampoline bouncing, bracelet making, animal appreciating...

Madiran Wine Fete was one the highlights of the weekend. On Friday night we went en masse for the now standard and socially acceptable local disco. Although the Brummies were initially and understandably dubious, after a few beers and some classic tunes they were the life and soul of the party, line dancing with the best of them.

Fresh from his Summer Festival 2010 Tour (of where, we can only imagine... Ibiza? Glasto? Creamfields?) it was the turn of DJ Optima to amaze us with his mastery of iTunes and a smoke machine.

Thanks to Jack's ridiculously long stretch over crowds of avid fans (an assortment of about a dozen middle aged women), I am now also the proud owner of a DJ Optima one-size-fits-no-one T Shirt. It's emblazoned with the slogan "He's stronger than you" on it. Fantastic.

The next day we headed back to Madiran and arrived to what was a much more civilised affair as disco dancefloor had been transformed into a wine tasting garden. We paid 3 euros each, were given a glass and freedom to wander around and sample a wide selection of local wines. Tom and Katie fancying themselves as experts were swirling glasses, sniffing for bouquets and commenting on the barrel's oakiness. James, Nick, Jack and I were more focused on whether we were going to have nutella or sugar and lemon on our pancakes...

Considering us Brummies are an uncultured lot, in terms of experiencing new things, this weekend was incredible. I would never had guessed when we left school that that four years later we would be reunited on a camel farm in the south of France. It's a funny old thing, life.

Downsides

A:

All jobs have their downsides. At the camel farm, the downsides are:that we get woken every morning at 6am by Woody the cockerel, that my shoes are constantly caked in myriad of different types of poo, and of course that come the end of the day my hair is matted with camel drool and regurgitation, my arms scratched by rabbits, my fingers nibbled by goslings, my legs stung by stinging nettles... the list goes on. It is all most definitely worth it however, and we are rewarded at the end of the day with cold bottles of beer and mountains of delicious food.

My least favourite job on the farm is affectionately titled 'Avian Security Officer'. This involves distracting several chickens while the camel rides go on (so the camel doesn't throw a kid off while trying to kill the chicken). Bearing in mind the camel rides go on for about an hour usually, this task is most mundane and the chickens never do learn, it is a constant battle, and the filling up of the feeding bag (maize) has to be carefully planned so no chickens can get close enough to the camel while she is unloading/loading. Needless to say it is a stressful and complex task requiring much thought and planning. (even this I secretly enjoy but I had to have a 'least favourite'.)

This has been a short blog but we are off to Marciac jazz festival once more to eat, as we made over 1000 euro in one day yesterday so its celebration time.

P.S we now have 6 guinea fowl that were bought from the bird market, and another few chicks were born today. Oh and we also discovered 2 baby rabbits in the rabbit pen but we reckon they are a few weeks old (but were underground before).

Birthdays and Breakdowns

H - One day when stood in WH Smiths I decided that when I was grown up I would own a Filofax. I readily admit to suffering from a (severe?) form of stationery related OCD, and to me the Filofax is the ultimate symbol of organisation and adulthood...

On Sunday I turned 22. And what did I receive? A Filofax. Leather bound. With a matching Parker ink pen. Conclusion: I am now officially a grown up.

I had guessed that spending a birthday on a camel farm would be a one to remember, but I had no idea just how memorable it would be. The day started with Andy earning himself some serious brownie points by bringing me breakfast in bed. Hero. After a super busy day at the farm, it was about 7pm and we had just finished the last camel ride for the evening. Sarah asked me to help her get the saddle off the camel and as I went over she handed me a helmet... I was getting my first ever camel ride!

In terms of life experiences, a camel ride was pretty high on my To Do list, and it didn't disappoint. Ceefa the camel was most obliging, if a tad bumpy on the ascent/decent, but I won't hold that against her.

But little did I know that that was only the start of the evening's festivities. We had a delicious BBQ for dinner, and then I was advised to prepare myself for a series of challenges. The idea was that for each challenge I completed successfully I would get a present. What followed was surreal in the extreme...

My challenges were as follows:

1.) Climb the Mulberry tree - the tree that I once tried to climb and got stuck up for half an hour and couldn't get down. Result: scratches and bruises.

2.) Take a goat around the agility course - cue Buggertwo the goat going on strike and deciding that eating surrounding mint plants was a better use of her time.

3.) Do as many different animal impressions as you can in one minute - nailed this task. my animal impressions are second to none.

4.) Find and bring back 4 types of animal poo and arrange them in alphabetical order of species - I selected camel, goose, rabbit and sheep.

5.) Catch a piglet - nightmare. they're fast little buggers.

6.) Kiss Oakley (the labrador) on the mouth - absolutely foul.

7.) Eat 3 blinis specially prepared with love by Andy and Sarah - a mixture of pate, marmite, mustard, almond oil and garlic.... lots of garlic....

8.) With Andy as my trainer, pretend to be a Talulah and do the llama demonstration - no words.

9.) Find and pick the weirdest looking vegetable you can from the veggie patch and describe 10 ways you can use something that shape - I found an odd stunted courgette. I'll leave you to imagine the rest for yourselves...

And so, my 22nd Birthday drew to a close. Challenges met, presents earned. And to top it all off, Sam had made me a FANTASTIC cake which she iced herself with beautiful pink marshmallow icing. Divine. We finished the evening with a super competitive game of tracker in the woods and then sat around the fire. A massive thank you to all the team for making it such a great day.

Then I got another treat on Tuesday when.... THE ENTIRE EXHAUST PIPE FELL OFF MY CAR. Now, I always try to learn a new French word every day, but I really had hoped to learn the word for exhaust in other circumstances. Scotty the Peugeot 106 is currently with Monsieur Le Kwik Fit and I'm going to visit him with a bunch of grapes tomorrow to see how he is getting on. All 'Get Well Soon' cards most welcome...

H xxx