Les Cloutets
“If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food either”
Joseph Wood
Imagine this. For every meal you ate, you had the privilege, the joy, of popping out for a basketful of ingredients from the garden. Crisp snow peas, fat, juicy broad beans, bitter leaves, sweet lettuces, baby potatoes, fragrant mint, pungent garlic all beckoning for you to “pick me, pick me” and as you wander through the garden selecting your dinner, snacking on fruits and berries ripening before your eyes. This is real food, food so fresh, so alive, bursting with nutrition. This is how we ate each day at Les Cloutets.
All this beauty and abundance didn’t just happen overnight. This is the hard work over 30 years of two amazingly dedicated people, their family and various forms of help along the way. Andy and Jessie Darlington who have lovingly nurtured 20 hectares tucked into the side of a mountain in Sougraigne, southern France into a living, breathing paradise.
When they first came to this beautiful land it had been primarily used as permanent grazing pasture, so no trees or hedges to speak of. Some surrounding forest was regenerating naturally as it had been left undisturbed for many years.
In that 30 years 220 trees, either seeded or grafted, now stand, lovingly providing an abundance of fruits, nuts, berries or livestock forage. Also providing a wonderful haven for the local wildlife. A garden grows here. Worked using primarily biodynamic techniques and provides food year round for the whole family and the Wwoofers. 
The farm itself comprises of 20 hectares, but Andy And jessie farm a total of 98 hectares…some communal, some rented, some short term grazing. Two herds of Giurra sheep graze the surrounding hillsides, their food is 100 % organic and consists mainly of grasses from natural pastures that have not been plowed for over 50 years. The flora is very diverse with a mix of about 20 graminae and legumes sprinkled with multicolored orchids.
The biodiversity is on unimaginable scale, soil more valuable than gold, compost moist, black and rich and pasture so diverse, so abundant, so fragrant, so indescribably beautiful you’d think you’d reached Nirvana. All this and surrounded by the most breathtaking mountain scenery. 
Each day for me began rising before the others, I’m an early to bed early to rise person and I love being out and about first thing. Morning chores were simple, fresh water to collect from the spring, cats to be fed, ewes and rams checked and given fresh greens and hay, and the task to delight in each morning, walking Harpo and Jimmy, the sheepdogs …Father and son Border Collies. I am in heaven.
Breakfast tended to be a long and somewhat relaxing affair, with discussion of what needed attention first. One thing I have learned about farming is that lists, agendas or anything pertaining to organisation (including my own propensity to OCD and joy of operations and procedures manuals) tends to get thrown into the compost pile. The most important task literally changes moment to moment, weather dependent of course. And it’s done when it’s done.
Time has no real place or meaning on a farm. Seasons do though and the focus for this time of year is haymaking and gardening. But we do it as we can, each day cobbled together as time, machinery, the moon, planets and weather allows.
Most days we spent some time in the garden, weeding, planting, composting, mulching, hoeing, watering….The hay we helped with in between gardening chores, lunch and supper…often baling into the late evening hours as daylight at this time of year permitted us extra time to get the job done. The sheep we moved from pasture to pasture somewhere in amongst all that.
I arrived early June to Les Cloutets, everything in it’s best summer bloom, and just in time for haymaking. The most laborious time of the year and usually fraught with the most equipment malfunctions, generally right at the time the hay is dried and ready to bale. Of course, right on cue the baler decided not to bale that year. Just didn’t feel like it. So in a moment of desperation Andy and Jessie called for the help of a neighbour who dropped everything, drove his tractor and baler down the hill and completed the task at hand. No charge, nothing owed…”we stand in solidarity.” This is community. This is humanity. This is farming. These are the folk I want to surround myself with.
Days at Les Cloutets blended beautifully into each other. it could have been Sunday, or Monday or Friday…half the time I had no idea. It didn’t matter. This is presence and being present is a wonderful place to hang out in. I like it there.
Patience, presence, observation, intuition, trust and bloody hard work.
I lack the words necessary to describe something so pure of spirit. Andy and Jessie have such a love of the land base and such a passion to nurture and tend that land. They know when it’s right to intervene, to apply just the right amount of disturbance, at precisely the right time. They know instinctively when to let go and let the land do it’s work, undisturbed. They’ve learnt the hard way I’m sure, but when you choose to live a life off the land, you definitely choose the hard road. But it’s worth it. There is no better reward then knowing you can nourish yourself, from your own garden. Year round. With few inputs, minimal outputs, no outside intervention, no chemicals, just clever and purposed placement of plants, animals and people.
a lone wwoof 