The heading had to be in French as for the afternoon we were thrown headlong in to french life and I loved it. Basically it was an arranged get together for a better life in the Cantons of Caylus and St. Antonin Noble Val. We had an animatrice who is being paid till the end of 2012 to organise rural activities to enrich our lives and this meeting was on the theme of gardening. About 20 French country folk and 2 English met in the Salle de Fete at Verfeil to discuss 'manure' We sat in a ring and introduced ourselves and what an eclectic and diverse bunch we were. Many were farmers or farmers wives, many were ladies with potagers who liked cooking, some grew flowers,even a couple of us had donkeys, so could talk passionately about manure.After introductions we discussed the aims of the group and along with arranging to visit each others gardens and have fetes with the produce a bold plan was formed. Verfeil in the past had a Fete de la Soupe in September and we are hoping to resurrect this old tradition. We then walked off to view Olivier Bonifaces vegetable garden which was a very imaginatively planned vegetable patch, well manured with donkey poo..He was one of the chaps pushing for the Soup Festival and as he seemed to be growing peas there were many jokes that we would be having 'pea soup' Our aims for the year are
1. To share our passion
2. To be in contact with other passionate gardeners
3. To promote solidarity
4 To know better our close envirnoment
5 To know and value our local producers
6 To be inclusive
Wow!
Then we have a list of 7 people who have agreed to open their gardens. The first being Mr Montauban at Arnac, a producer of bio salad.We have had contact with him before as we bought our last bales of hay from him for the donkeys. Our visit there reminded me of the H.E. Bates novel The Darling Buds of May.
If you have a half decent level of French and are interested in gardening come and join us. The next meeting is on the 30th of January in the afternoon and the contact for more information is
mail du secretariat:
lafon-boyer.karine@midipyrenees-nord.msa.fr
tel 0563216106
Or contact me at TAGlines
