Due to the importance of agriculture and agricultural lobbies in France, French president Francois Hollande, following in the footsteps of his predecessors, made ample room in his schedule to visit the show, spending 10 hours there—impressive, though down from 12 hours when he was candidate for president a year ago.

After inaugurating the event, M. Hollande attended the milking of the cows, met with union leaders and producers, farmers, farmhands, and children, laid a presidential hand on one-ton beef cattle, futuristic cows and other precision animals, cute, wooly and otherwise remarkable, tasted enough cheese, beverages and other appellation delights to make a Francophile swoon, made a political declaration about the need for better labeling for beef in prepared dishes (response to horse meat scandal), and overall showed the manure-loving bonhomie that the exercise requires. So can you, minus the presidential hand.

I, meanwhile, at least in the morning, was over in a vast hall nearby tasting wine in my role as a judge for the Concours Général Agricole (annual agricultural competition) discerning, along with four cohorts, gold, silver and bronze medals to the best of the 15 Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2012 white and 2011 red wines.

For our joyful troubles we left with purple teeth, a medal of our own (see photo), an ice bag (not for our head but for chilling wine), and three invitations to attend the Agriculture Show during the week.

We’re giving those invitations to the first two people* to correctly answer the following question:

What appellation cheese is being made here?

Since no correct answers came from that clue, and since an image of this healthy meal enjoyed in that cheese town may not do the trick…

… then maybe it will help to know that the cheese bears the same as this church:

Send your response to moi, Gary Lee Kraut, at francerevisited@aol.com, with “Name that cheese” in the subject line.

If no correct answer is received by Tuesday evening Paris time, Feb. 26, then a final clue will be posted here as well as on my personal Facebook page and on the France Revisited Facebook page (new FB friends welcome).

Contest over, we have our winners. And the name of that cheese is….

… Saint-Nectaire.

Congratulations to our winners, Jennifer (2 tickets) and Lynn (1 ticket), and to the others who got the right name right if not fast enough.

*Name That Cheese Contest Rules:
– The first person to send the correct response will receive 2 invitations. The second person to send the second correct response will receive 1 invitation.
– One entry per person per clue. In other words, you can send your guess after the first clue and then a second guess after the second clue and a third after the third.
– Anyone can enter for the fun of it, however you must have a mailing address (it can be a hotel) within Paris or the Paris region in order to be declared a winner and receive the prize. The reason for this is that the show ends on Sunday and the invitations will be sent out on Tuesday or Wednesday, meaning they will normally be received by the winners with only two or three days to be used. You can wait until you have been declared winner in order to provide your address but please indicate your city of residence in your initial e-mail.
– No purchase required.
– Invitations cannot be sold.
– Prizes will be mailed out by regular J+1 priority mailing at La Poste.
– We/I cannot be responsible if the invitations fail to arrive on time and apologize in advance for postal delivery.

Attending the show with or without an invitation: The International Agriculture Show (Salon de l’Agriculture) at Porte de Versailles is open from 9am to 7pm until March 3 and also in the evening until 11pm on Friday March 1.

Tickets: €13; €6 for children from 6 to 12, students on presentation of ID, everyone on Friday March 1 after 7pm; €9 for disabled people (upon presentation of disability card) and the person accompanying them; free for children under 6.

The next Paris/France Revisited contest will take place during the week leading up to March 20.

The post France Revisited’s Agriculture Show – Name that Cheese Contest appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I sat next to the wood stove with a mug of coffee in my hands. Bless my hosts for having coffee! I thought, as I eased back against the bench and let my muscles unstiffen.

I had come to France from the winter-cold Midwestern U.S. a little over a week earlier, as a WWOOF volunteer. WWOOF (WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms) was something I’d long wanted to do. Organized on a country-by-country basis, with 40+ nations participating, WWOOF connects small organic farmers and homesteaders with “willing workers” (the WW of the original acronym) who are interested in sustainable farming and eager to travel.

For room and board a WWOOFer exchanges a certain amount of work each day, over a period of time that can range from a few days to a few months. I had recently finished graduate school, and after months of unemployment and restlessness, I decided I needed to go WWOOF somewhere. And somewhere became France.

I needed to go WWOOF somewhere

My hosts, Frederic and Dorine Berendsen-Schut, of La Ferme des Jolies Allures, were kind and hospitable from the outset. “Eat anything,” they said, opening their cupboards full of foods I liked: chocolate spread, cookies, butter and bread, pudding, and oh, wonderful coffee! During my stay we drank coffee together at least once a day, usually two to three times, and my hosts began to tease me for my penchant for sweets to go with it.

Dorine and Frederic hail from the Netherlands. “We came to Dordogne for a better life,” Frederic told me. Their lives in the Netherlands, he said, had gotten too crowded, too fast, and too stressed. As they started to think about a place in the country, France seemed the likely option, and so to France they moved. They are among the many Dutch and English who have chosen to settle in the Dordogne countryside.

Dorine took a course in agriculture and entrepreneurship, and despite doubtful laughs from some of her fellow classmates, she and Frederic set out to make their dreams happen. In 2007, they purchased their farm and got to work.

I was their first WWOOFer, and they had set up a separate room for me, with a layer of rocks on the floor to keep the dust down in the then-unfinished barn-house. It amused me to step out of bed and feel the floor crunch under my feet, but the bed was comfortable and the heat piping into the room was much appreciated.

Dordogne, more enchanting than I ever expected

Before coming to France I had paged through books and gotten a general idea of the country’s various regions and departments, but to read is one thing and to experience is another. I found Dordogne to be more enchanting than I could have expected or even hoped for. Oh, I thought, every time I would climb onto the tractor and off we’d go to the woods, I am living in the place where they make fairytales happen: the golden stone buildings, the red and blue shutters, the green hills folding into each other, and all those castles; small villages one after another; quiet roads yet nearby neighbors; paths winding down into valleys, coming out alongside streams, and streams running under bridges into old mill wheels.

I found this all so beautiful I could hardly find a way to speak of it. So I scribbled in my notebook, evenings by the wood stove, with smiles for such things, even if only for myself to understand.

I have a bit of an agricultural background, so I’ve spent many summers between jobs and school semesters crouched over rows of vegetables, planting and weeding and harvesting. The work on this farm, however, was not of the kind I had done most often before. When coming to volunteer on farms in France during February and March, that is to be expected. Unlike summer, the tail end of winter is less focused towards tending crops and more directed towards animal care and general farm maintenance.

At work and at play

When Dorine went into town to work with her real estate company (a place where she can use her knowledge of four languages, as others from the EU seek to relocate to the region), Frederic and I headed out to a stand of nearby trees to chop and gather firewood and stack it near the house. We would spend a few hours each morning working on the wood, come in for lunch, and maybe go back out again, depending on our plans for the day.

In mornings and evenings, we took turns making sure the horses were all well and had hay and water. My hosts raise Mangalarga Marchadors and Tennessee Walkers, both gaited horses for smooth riding, and they also nurture their shrubs and vines (blueberries, black currants, gooseberries and others), the fruit from which they will use for making natural and organic juices. I drank some of their juice from the previous year, made with fruit that had been given or purchased from neighbors and friends. Frederic and Dorine had wanted to begin juicing for practice in this early, just-starting-out phase of their farm. The flavors were full, and so sweet, with no sugar or sugar substitutes added! And the horses – well, the horses were gorgeous. At night I would slip out of my room and go lean on the fence and just look at them.

While the mares produce some of the first foals and the fruit starts to bear, these Frederic and Dorine are hard at work converting their barn into a house. When I was there, half of the barn had been bricked off and was where we humans stayed, while the other half was for the horses, all with a dirt floor but quite cozy, nonetheless. In addition to finishing the house and setting up a few campers for subsequent WWOOFers to stay in, the Berendsen-Schuts have plans for a new barn for the horses, and hope to construct several ecological gîtes, so tourists and visitors can stay and enjoy the fresh air, the rolling landscape, the picturesque villages, and certainly the good food.

I enjoyed all these things, and lots of laughing with fine company. At first I was shy and eager to please, but as the Berendsen-Schuts and I worked together we got to know each other and spent a lot of time joking and bantering – even when we got a bout of le gastro and spent several days running to the bathroom. (I think we may have laughed then more than ever!) And one of the very best things was getting to know the neighbors; something I so appreciated about my hosts was how, even as Dutch imports with still relatively new French speaking skills, they engaged with their community and invited me into their circles.

A sense of community

In the two-and-a-half weeks I spent with my hosts, I joined Dorine in watching Frederic perform with his choral group inside a small stone church; I dined at the home one of the fellow choral members and his large family (so much food and drink!); I went to a community memorial for boys who had died while organizing as part of the French Resistance; and I helped clear trees and branches from the yard of a perfectly jolly British couple, stopping to chat over steaming mugs of tea out in the misty gray. Once, while driving, we caught sight of a barn we admired, and when we stopped to look at it, we made new friends with the Yorkshire owners and their handsome Clydesdales.

A week or so into my stay, I hopped off the tractor for an impromptu meet-and-greet with the next-door neighbors on a rainy afternoon, and was left alone with the mother and grandmother while Frederic and the uncle went to look at some firewood. The women spoke almost no English, and my French was yet tentative and clumsy, but how gracious we all were to each other! I had heard so much, here and there, about the French disliking Americans. But here in Dordogne I felt warmly welcomed, as friends of friends – invited into a place of green and sunshine, of rain and golden-white castles, of horses and bright open doors.

For more on WWOOFing in France see www.wwoof.fr.
For more on WWOOF worldwide see www.wwoof.org.
For more on Frederic and Dorine Berendsen-Schut’s farm see La Ferme des Jolies Allures.

Author bio: Erica Romkema grew up on hobby farms in the heartland of the United States. She enjoys working in the dirt and writing about food, farms, and nature. She write a blog called Kinds of Honey.

The post On the Farm: WWOOFing in Dordogne, France appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.