Le pays de Forcalquier

On a weekend in early September, we drove into the town of Forcalquier on a Saturday morning. We were down for the weekend in order to put an offer on a house in the area. (Regular readers already know the happy ending to that story.) To our surprise and delight, we saw a market setting up, with banners announcing that this was part of a week-long festival in the Alpes of Haute Provence celebrating Senteurs et Saveurs--fragrances and flavors of the region. Another sign announced that this was going to be an organic market. I felt an added shiver of excitement rattle through my synapses, already short-circuiting in a nervous cocktail of anticipation and dread of disappointment over the house we wanted so badly. But Denis steered me firmly by the elbow toward the real estate office, admonishing me wisely enough that we'd have time to see the market afterward.



When we emerged from the office about an hour later, it was to see a herd of sheep moving up the street toward us, headed up by a shepherd, two dogs, and two assistant shepherdesses who looked about ten years old. A part of the celebration of Senteurs et Saveurs, a mini-reenactment of the transhumance--the great seasonal migration of flocks up into alpine pastures in spring and back down to sheltering barns in the fall--was meant to pay homage to the legendary lamb of the region.



In fact, I had already learned that our future neighbors in Revest-des-Brousses were shepherds who still practiced the transhumance. I watched the two young shepherdesses, proud and competent, and felt happy that there still exist children who do not spend their lives with X-Boxes grafted to their fingers. And was it my imagination, or were the venerable rams leading the flock at the shepherd's heels actually looking up at their human leader with affection?



The very word transhumance conjures for me this primordial event of mythical proportions, when flocks of tens of thousands of beasts, with their accompanying shepherds, flowed like tributaries of an animal river toward the mountains and back. I try to imagine the deep harmony and understanding of man and beast needed to accomplish this journey, and the solitary culture of the shepherds, who spent half of each year far from civilization, in the company of only their flocks, nature, and, occasionally, each other. Seeing this scene before my eyes set the tone for the day.



Forcalquier is the closest town of any size to our house in Revest-des-Brousses. It's where, once the restoration work is finished and we can actually inhabit the place, I will go to buy laundry detergent or anything else I can't buy in the open-air markets of villages closer by. But Forcalquier is also one of the oldest cities in Provence, it has been inhabited since prehistory. Its Roman name was Forum Calcarium. Its core was an oppidum (butte fortified during Celtic times), which was still inhabited throughout the fifth and sixth centuries, a period rife with wars and invasions. Near the end of the eleventh century, Count Guillaume de Forcalquier, just back from the Crusades, married the daughter of a neighboring principality, thus consolidating a large territory and making Forcalquier the ruling city of a small state or count-y.



Five generations later, a marriage between Garsende de Forcalquier and Alphonse II of Provence (a neighboring state) further expanded the pays(country) de Forcalquier. The territory grew enormously in economic importance in the region under the rule of their son Raymond Bérenger V. But even more important, Raymond's four daughters all became queens , by marrying respectively Louis IX of France, Henry III of England, Richard of Cornwall, and Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily and Naples. These famous "Four Queens" have most recently been the subject of a best-selling historical French novel, Les Desmoiselles de Provence.



Today's festival, with its antique tractors, hay balers, basket weavers, perfume distilleries, and transhumance, was in fact only celebrating the very most recent microlayer of the history of Forcalquier. Nevertheless, I was ecstatic to encounter a sampling of the cultural riches of the region--more specifically the gastronomic riches in which I'm always intensely interested!



Mouthwatering rainbows of organic vegetables assured me that I would never lack for fuel for culinary adventures in the new house--even if I never planted a potager. I met a grower of mushrooms, who also sold wild-collected varieties, including baskets of fragrant fresh and dried cèpes. To my delight (as I do humanitarian work in Senegal) there was even a young Frenchman selling Senegalese musical instruments to raise money for the community in the Casamance (Senegal) where he lived with his family.



I even saw practically all the heirloom pumpkin and squash varieties whose seeds I offer on this site, including 'Galeuse d'Eysines,' 'Rouge Vif d'Etampes,' and 'Sucrine de Berry', populating the displays like a gallery of old friends. Of course, the huge, deeply ribbed, glaucously gray-green and orange 'Muscade de Provence' were everywhere, as this is one of the major crops in the pays de Forcalquier and indeed, France's favorite eating pumpkin.



Artisan cheesemakers from the region around Banon were offering their famous local delicacy, the aged goat cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves, each round tied with raffia--certainly the best-dressed cheese in France and also one of the most exquisitely perfumed. (Our new but old house is actually on the vertex of a triange between Forcalquier and Banon, and I will write about the exquisite Banon in a future postcard.)



A vendor of honey and pain d'épices. a wonderful, medieval-tasting honey and spice cake, advertised his wares with a beautiful hand-painted sign highlighting the wild herbs of the region which his bees forage to produce his superb honey. Sarriette, serpolet, farigoule...the music of their names almost as lovely as the pungent perfumes of the fragrant plants blanketing the rocky hills of Forcalquier. These plants, which are for me an intrinsic part of my intoxication with the region, are deeply entwined with the cultural and economic history of Forcalquier.



The surrounding hills are home to more than 1,700 species of medicinal and aromatic plants, a botanical mother lode which was mined and gently exploited by the droguistes de la montagne de Lure. These reknowned herbalists of the XVIIth century, centered around the neighboring towns of Ongles and Lardiers, not only collected this wealth of plants, but processed them into myriad liqueurs and medicines which they sold as far away as Lyon and Epinal. Today, this tradition is alive and well. Nearby is the major lavender distillery of Occitane de Provence. At nearby Simiane-la-Rotonde, a jewel of Roman architecture, the Laboratoire Sainte-Victoire continues the ancient tradition of herboristorie with state-of-the-art technology housed in an abbey dating from the eleventh century. And in Forcalquier itself, a reknowned distillery specializes in aperitifs based on aromatic plants such as the highly perfumed local thyme known as la farigoule, symbol of l'amour intense and for that reason, still hung over the door by young local girls during the month of May.

Planning to drive out to what we hoped would soon be our very own mas in Provence, we strolled toward our car. I looked over my shoulder for a last mental picture of this vibrant market, thinking how very at home I was already feeling in Forcalquier, Site Remarquable du Goût--Remarkable Site of Good Taste, as it immodestly bills itself. A juste titre. Forcalquier was a town that deserved the title, I thought.

And immediately my fantasies started running on overdrive...coming in to do my marketing early on a Monday morning, developing the friendly repartee with the vendors that forms such a delightful ritual in the markets of France, then dreaming up the evening's menu as a function of what was at its peak that particular day. In my mind's eye, I saw my new old Provençal kitchen as it would be about a year from now...with a potager (not a vegetable garden, but a sort of ceramic stove peculiar to Provence, heated with coals from a woodfire and used for slow-simmering), a small cooking fireplace, a big ceramic jug of local olive oil, a few Banon cheeses resting in a cool plaster niche, a barrel full of wine in the cellar below my feet...and the aromas of a daube, made with the herb-nourished lamb of nearby Sisteron, stealing through the house. This kitchen would be the living, beating heart of the home--my home.



For more information about le pays de Forcalquier, visit http://www.forcalquier.com.

To soak yourself in the atmosphere of this region, read the novels of Jean Giono, such as Le Regain, Jean le Bleu, and especially, for the transhumance, Le Serpent des Etoiles.

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