Marilyne has fallen into French rural life like she’s worked the straw since birth. Me, not so much. Most days I wing it, adding needless complication to otherwise basic farm tasks, all while navigating a language I barely understand and often butcher. The French aren’t big fans of having their language butchered.
This isn’t a cry for help. It was my choice. I like a challenge. In a past life, I once got into a fight with a girlfriend that culminated with her shouting, “Everything has to be an adventure with you, doesn’t it?”
The comment completely derailed my side of whatever we were debating—it might have had something to do with pending mountaineering lessons or a recent skydiving trip—because, well, yes. Her statement was correct. I prefer adventure over complacency. She won.
That said, adventure brings adversity and adversity brings dark moments. In those moments, I do the one thing I can do right: I write. I’m not a grand auteur, but when I put three or four English words together, they tend to make sense. So, when feeling out of my depth here at La Villatte, I tell stories.
Yesterday, I sat at my ergonomic standing desk that we paid too much money to have shipped from California, but no stories came. I then raised the desk and stood at my ergonomic standing desk that we paid too much money to have shipped from California—which I rarely do. Still, no stories.
I looked out the window at the garden where Marilyne was toiling. I watched her plant Brussels sprouts, wrangle cats, and trim grape vines, all in the pouring rain while nursing a head cold. I wondered if I’d found a life partner more adventurous than me. (Although she sticks me with the chainsawing and disposing of random dead animal duties, so probably not. For what it’s worth, these two duties are mutually exclusive—at least so far.)
I pushed away from the desk and decided to do some farm work.
There’s a list in my notebook, “La Villatte To Do.” It’s sprawling and Sisyphean and every time I look at it, I think, “My God. What have I done?” However, it also assures that I’m never, ever bored.
High on the list is “Separate Compost.” I decided to tackle that.
This farm generates yard waste the likes of which no suburban homeowner has ever seen. We’re still wrestling with how to handle it all. We have a deal with a local farmer who harvests our hay. He keeps most of it, but he shares several bales with Marilyne’s sister, who uses it to feed her horses and ponies. At least, I think that’s the deal. I wasn’t privy to the negotiation. I just know that he drives his tractor with the really cool hay bale-making attachment around our field while I watch him work, brimming with joy like a six-year-old idiot, rapt by the sight of functioning farm machinery.
Most of our waste involves trees, shrubs, and vines. The larger branches, we stack in the barn and cut into logs for firewood. We’ve also gotten pretty good at weaving thinner hazelnut branches around posts to make fences, or plessage, as it’s called in France.
(The English call this “wattling.” I mention this because I made the mistake of assigning our fences the French name on Instagram. A massive wave of British outrage in the comments damn near broke the Internet because I did not credit them properly.)
But you can only weave so many fences. Hazelnut trees grow fast, so if we keep building fences at this rate, the entire property will be a labyrinth by 2026. Although that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. We could charge admission and I would attempt to make nice with my British detractors by folding in a “Harry Potter goes to France” theme.
The rest of the yard waste—smaller branches, grass, vines, and unidentifiable rot—goes into two massive piles. One is located in the upper field and the other is located behind the barbeque, next to the pig house.
At least, we think it was a pig house. It’s not smelly or muddy. It just seems like a nice place for pigs to live. But we don’t have pigs, so we use the building for storing firewood because it’s close to the house.
This proximity also makes the neighboring pile the default for kitchen waste. The only problem with doing this is that all the coffee grinds, apple cores, and egg shells would just fall into a tangle of hard branches that couldn’t be turned, making it impossible to create nutrient-rich humus for use in the garden.
My task was to break off a section of the pile exclusively for soft, functional compost we could turn and mix. This pile would consist mostly of kitchen waste, garden waste, as well as some grass and ash. We’re big coffee consumers, so the alkaline ash is important to offset the acidity of the grinds.
I prepared myself for a day of the filthy frustration I typically experience when attempting manual labor. To my surprise, things went smoothly. Yes, filthy, but smoothly. The branches under the part of the pile I wanted to convert had started to decompose, so I could break through them easily by jumping on my shovel. I dug a trench separating the new, smaller pile from the larger one, then I fished out all the larger branches, rocks, and other solid debris buried underneath, including a slab of rusted iron from an old piece of farm equipment, a bunch of green wire, and a sardine can.
Once that was done, I divided the two piles with a fence improvised using a couple wooden pallets we found in the stables, using the green wire to tie them together. The pallets will probably decompose eventually, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. When farmers build fences around here, “It’ll work today, tomorrow, and maybe until next Tuesday” seems to be a guiding principle.
Marilyne asked that I put up a second divider on the other side of the kitchen waste pile because it’s plainly visible when you walk down the path to our house. I was going to use another pallet, but she suggested building yet another hazelnut fence instead.
Her choice took more work and increased my chances of biffing this otherwise smooth operation, but it was the better one.
We built the new fence together without a hitch. It looked pretty good. I placed a little orange shovel next to the pile so that we always had a tool on hand for turning the compost. Marilyne said that a pitchfork would be a much better tool.
I knew she was right, but I also knew we had several shovels, so we could easily spare one to leave by the pile. On the other hand, we only had one functioning pitchfork that we keep in the barn, several hundred meters away. It’s not realistic to shuttle this one tool back and forth.
I could have driven into Giat and bought a new pitchfork, but where’s the fun in that? The previous owners rarely threw anything away, so we had half-a-dozen rusty-yet-functional pitchfork heads stacked in the fourniol. Surely, one would work. They just lacked handles.
Again, a trip to the hardware store in Giat would have remedied that, but instead, I dove into the branch side of the compost pile and found a sturdy hazelnut branch. It was too thick for fence weaving, making it a fine farm tool handle.
I whittled the tip of the branch down with my little nano chainsaw so it would wedge into the loop at the top of the fork. There was a little hole in the middle of the loop that you’re supposed to hammer a nail into, as to secure the handle. I used a screw instead. This probably wasn’t logical, but it felt satisfying, so I went with it.
It felt so satisfying, in fact, that I assembled another pitchfork and a rake for Marilyne to use in the garden. The fresh hazelnut wood is pretty heavy, so I’m not sure of the ergonomics of these new tools. Hopefully, they’ll lighten as the wood dries out. If not, I’ll hang them on the wall in the pig house and tell Le Labyrinthe de Harry Potter customers that French farm wizards fly around on pitchforks and rakes instead of brooms.
All and all, my uninspired day turned worthy. Today, I sit at my desk with sore shoulders, an item scratched off my list, and a happy heart.
And I have something to write about.
Well, this is something for the Problems I Didn't Know Existed file: too much yard waste. I don't have a yard, you see. Still, I'm riveted!