dimanche 25 septembre 2011

AUTUMN IS (REALLY) HERE

Waiting for a little surprise this week I wanted to give you a faint glimse of my summer and schooldays.

En attendant une petite surprise je voulais vous donner une petite aperçue de mon été et de ma formation.

One of my working experience farms, Jardin de Mazet in Monoblet, the Gard département

The autumn has officially started and of course the temperatures have fallen though it seems next week will be fine. The nights are chilly but the afternoons can still be hot, though not the days it's raining.
The farm of Mazet is terassed: all plots are small and they cascade from the top of the hill down in multitude of terasses. They grow many medicinal plants. On the background you can see their séchoir, the plant dryer house.
 
Thyme and cornflower drying inside the dryer .
 
It's the time of year there hovers in the air a smell of the "day after a good night of wining" as stated one of my collegues. The roads are filled with tractors getting their cargo of grapes to the wine cellar. We at the agricultural school have the "gos fortune" of having a cave coopérative, cooperative cellar just behind the school house, so that we really find ourselves in a constant atmosphere of grapes becoming wine...
 
The other day we made a visit at the organic agriculture fair in Valence and saw a lot of lovely tractors.
 
I've also been working in a plant nursery, the Pépinière du Grand Plantier at St. Ambroix, also in Gard.


One wednesday we were at the producers' market in Uzès where I saw this alembic for distillation of rose water.
 
 
We've also been a lot outside, doing botany lessons with our professors.
 
Now we have essentially exams and the finishing of the professional project in store 'till mid-october. At the same time I'm looking for a piece of land to start farming allready next spring. I'll keep you up to date.
 
Have a nice autumn - or spring if you happen to be Down Under, where the Rygby World Cup has just kicked off. And no, I'm not backing the French team, les Bleus, I'm All  Blacks all the way.
 
Bon début de l'automne officielle à tous mes lecteurs!

Aucun commentaire: