Rockin´the Fields of France

I´m lying in my mom´s bed trying to put my last week into words and I don´t know where to start.

The beautiful old Normandy French farmhouse?

The 200 chicken?

The 840 onions I planted?

That doesn´t quite get the big picture. What was most amazing about last week was getting my head out completely for a while and diving into a totally new environment. Getting some space to my normal life to clear my head, think freely and experience openly a different reality.

This sounds so cliché but I don´t know how else to put it. Only when you get away for a bit you realize what´s good in your life and what isn´t. You have the chance to stop and look at it like it´s someone else´s. What it meant for me this time precisely is that I missed my husband dearly and couldn´t wait to be in his arms again, to realize that I can´t live in the place we live in now anymore and that it´s overdue we look for something new just for the two of us, and that I still love travelling to see new places and faces.

Also, for me it´s about getting to know other realities. I love imagining how it would be living this life that I see in front of me. I´m like a non-entity then, slipping into the shoes of someone else and thinking how it must be to be them. Try it, it´s fun and so interesting! It helps reassess your own life, too. Do I want this or that for myself, or also you realize nope, that´s not for me.

What I saw this time is the life of a young married couple who both studied and then after graduating took over their own organic farm and got a baby. Now they live with goats, rabbits, the 200 aforementioned chicken, a horse, mini-ponies, some bees, a dog , two cows and various cats in this old Normandy house

trying to make a living through selling eggs, animals, and the vegetables that are still to be grown (see -> onions). Also, they want to make it into an educational farm for kids, and they are in some associations of farmers and go to reunions all the time and do seminars and stuff. And if starting a farm wasn´t enough they have Hermine, a little cutie chubby baby of 13 months who sits around and gets excited by playing with the phone and then spends the time in the daycare from 12-5 pm so both parents can do some work outside. Must be great for her growing up like this – parents who have time for her with lots of cool stuff to discover around her that is not in the TV and also having contact with others from an early age onwards.

So, what is all this about actually? We did five days of wwoofing there. “We” ist the travel buddy group of me and Lori.

Sunday we caught the night bus from Berlin to Lille (33€ early booking promo, woop) and from there the TGV to Paris where we had a breakfast coffee in the sun at Gare Saint Lazare and then the next train to Lisieux in Normandy past cute little towns and maisons and chateaux nestled into hills, a little like the village in “Keeping Mom” only in French (a movie I recommend watching, by the way). Then we went further into the countryside to Vimoutiers where our host Vincent picked us up with his van and while we had felt like countrystyle already in our outdoor jackets in the city, we immediately felt overdressed and super clean in his car.

When we found out that our room was cosy AND heatable, we were immediately happy with our home for the next days. I never cared about things like cleanliness and comfort back when I was younger, but now I´m kind of over freezing in the night and sharing my old stuffy mattress with spiders and who knows what little creatures.

The next few days we spent feeding chicken (which was fun) …

helping building the Chambre Blanche, a room for the eggs (which I didn´t like but Laura did, I was too scared of sawing off my extremities by accident) …

planting 840 onions …

checking out the animals…

going ballader aux chevaux aka horse riding (which I loved but Lori didn´t because she thought it was too boring) …

We generally enjoyed being outside …

and our beautiful surroundings …

It was great!

But then we had done kind of everything, and the host mom was a bit of a…erm….bitch, and there was too much bread on the table for my vegetable-addiction taste, so we were ready to leave again on Friday morning. Also, we were a little shocked by how mean they treated some of the animals that they bred – the rabbits were seriously given wrong food (according to Lori, she´s the rabbit expert) and not given enough water and the beautiful Maine Coon cats were stuck in a stinky room and they were only there to reproduce, too. Whad? How can you do that to those beautiful creatures?

Friday, we left early, had a morning walk through Paris, caught a glimpse ofSacre Coeur and then travelled on to Lille to meet up with Laura´s ex-host-family from her nannying years that she hadn´t seen in four years, which was great and we sat together for hours chatting really nicely in French.

Even though it wasn´t the best weather Laura showed me the city afterwards which was really beautiful, and I loved the old houses,

the star-shaped Bastille, the little chocolate beignets from Paul´s that reminded me of a camping holiday with my family at Cote d´Azur when I was twelve and there was this man walking up and down the plage selling strawberry and chocolate beignets.

All in all I had a really great time again and it was amazing being in the countryside and practising French. I´m surprised how well my school French still worked, and even though my hearing was selective I was able to say nearly everything I wanted which I never would have thought when I was still in school. Plus, I learned all those really useful words like “pig” and “onion” in French!

Would I want to put on these people´s shoes for longer? Could I actually live their life? Nope, I´m good, thanks. I have this little countrygirl side in me that really enjoys the country stays, the calmness and self-sufficiency, the pleasure of eating home-grown food. But then countrygirl takes of her pink glasses and sees the hard reality too: Could I still enjoy all this when it was my responsibility to run all this? Be occupied with lots of projects at the same time, and if they fail actually not have anything to eat? Go out EVERY DAY to feed animals, grow and plant, even in storm, with a fever? Because there´s no waiting with growing season and no sick days or holidays. But what´s most important is that I don´t think it´s the same feeling when it´s all yours for every day of the year. It´s only so great because you don´t have any responsibilities – and when it gets boring, you pack up and go back. In your own shoes.

How to Budget Wwoofing France

- Get bus Promo tickets

- Rent out home room on Airbnb

- wwoof (for free)

= price for holiday equals zero, ka-ching!