Cherries and wine before noon.

There is a calm that I feel when I smell dry hot earth, animal shit and chlorophyll.
This morning I went to visit an organic farm that provides a selection of produce for the château. It is about 20 kl from the château and is run by a large local family their extended family and neighbors. The drive way was rocky and worn and on a slight angle giving you a good perspective of the wide terraced fields that make up the farm farther up the hill. The road is flanked with fields of Cote de Rhone grapes and half a dozen or so olive trees short and windswept with their beautiful two-toned leaves. This is so typical of what I have constantly fantasized I would see in France that I feel transported thought a dream.
As we arrive at the barn there is a wide rectangular pen right in the middle of the driveway. It is divided into smaller squares that house various types of poultry; they all have small hand built houses and shallow murky watering holes that are so picturesque I feel like I am looking at a Painting. Nestled in the bushes on the side of the driveway are several rabbit hutches housing 5 to 10 rabbits each. Closest to the barn is an open roost for pigeons. As I step out of the car I can here their loud cooing emanating from the cage. To top the menagerie there are two peacocks patrolling the perimeter of the poultry cages stopping every so often to turn their small bald-heads to the sky when a hawk or large bird flies over.
Chef Barnard and I are greeted by one of the sons who helps run the farm, who instructs us to head across the farm down a dirt and grass road to the cherry trees where the families matriarch was picking. We walk down the long rows of shiny dark leaved trees with branches so heavy with fruit they almost appear to be groaning. We meet her with a basket hanging half full of cherries from her waste. She is high on a ladder with her head in the leaves.
I am inspired by the universal pride of ones crop that bypasses language. Held in her worn knobby hand she offers me a perfect cherry so shinny and red it almost looks fake. I thank her the best I can in my broken French and pop it into my mouth, it is still warm from the sun. There is so much juice in it that when I bite it the juice runes out the corners of my mouth. I have been lucky enough in my life and travels to be around fresh fruit and vegetables straight off the vine, plant or tree. Summers on the farm in Maine meant plump raspberries shoveled by the handful in to ones mouth and yellow plums so juicy you had to extend your butt out and your arm far away from your body so as not to be drenched completely in their warm sticky nectar. And now I am here experiencing it again in a field in France, it never gets old.
As we moved on in our tour of the farm we hopped into a banged up Toyota Helix with no seatbelts and a passenger seat with no locking mechanism. We drive up the windy bumpy road the seat rocking back and forth on its rails, turning me into a bobble head. We arrive at the strawberries; four long rows flanked with straw. The plants are a foot tall with huge leaves creating perfect shade for the ruby red berries below. We grab some small wooden crates and join one of the sons in picking. The berries are for the most part are small but the flavor is concentrated they are sweet and juicy and smell wonderful. I help pick a few crates and after a few minutes the patriarch tells me its time to stop and have a drink and to rest. We wind our way back down the hill to the barn.
Inside amongst the farm equipment is a small dusty table and chairs. On the table is a silver tray of misses matched jars and glasses, a bottle of wine, a bottle of Pastis and a jug of ice water. The wine is opened the Pastis is poured, everyone sits back in there chairs gossiping about the topics and news of the day. Although the conversations are in a language I barely understand and I am thousands of miles away from home. I feel such comfort and happiness in the dust the smell of farm animals and the slight buzz I am catching from the wine and the handful of cherries all before twelve o’clock.