A passion for farigoule

Our farm in Haute Provence was an exciting place last week. After nearly a year and a half, the phase I (!) restoration of the house is entering its last couple of months. And, the wild thyme is bloom.

First, the house. Why has the restoration taken so long? Because the process has been one of true architectural restoration, requiring endless hours of painstaking handwork. Where newly cut stone was necessary to frame a doorway, for instance, the smooth cut surface of the stone was chipped away by hand to match the handhewn and natural stone of the rest of the house photo below left). The rough surface was then ready to receive a staining compound which would imitate the effect of 400 years of weather.

Because their ground floors typically housed livestock, houses in our neck of Haute Provence traditionally have an "upstairs" main entry door off a porch. On our house, this porch was tiny and unenclosed, giving the unpleasant impression that you could fall off with one false step. We enlarged this porch quite a lot, so that we could use it for outdoor dining, enclosed it with a half-wall containing a well for plants, and put a roof over it. This also gave us a generously proportioned additional room beneath the porch with a view of the village through a floor-to-ceiling arched window. Rather than just inserting simple iron pipes through the porch wall for drainage, our masons hand-sculpted stone gutters which allow rainwater to drain off the porch (photo below left).


Restoring this mas has been a process of discovery, not too different from that of an architectural dig. As we peeled away the more recent layers on and around the house, we uncovered features which had been covered up with the years. We found an original doorway between the kitchen and dining room which aligned with the dining room window framing the view of the village to the south. This discovery redirected our renovation of the kitchen, from where I will now be able to enjoy this splendid view. And as the builders scraped away the soil around the house to its original level, they discovered a stone-lined well against the house wall. It had been covered with a huge flat stone, which in turn had become buried in the soil. We built up a circular stone wall around this ancient well, for both safety and aesthetics. It still holds water, and is in fact how I irrigated my newly planted fruit trees!

Another porched entry, leading into the kitchen, is my favorite corner of the house. From this generous porch, I can see the entire interior courtyard between the house, its appendages such as the former (and future) community bread oven, root cellar, wine cellar, and sheep barn. The cozy nooks and crannies created by this assemblage make this for me the most charming part of the house. When I stand on that kitchen porch, I feel protected and enveloped in the warm embrace of the house.
And soon, I'll be soothed by the sound of a small fountain which will flow in that peaceful courtyard, and bathed in the fragrance of flowering vines and pots of herbs on the walls of the porch. I'll survey my kingdom, cup of morning coffee in hand.

In fact, I can't yet imagine the joy of inhabiting this place. It still seems dream-like, too good to be true. And then, I have a feeling of reverence, of living up to the history of this house. I have such deep respect for its past, for the lives of the people who labored here to earn their frugal living. While I, as hard as I may work here, my work will always been an indulgence in my passions rather than driven by the necessity for survival.

But speaking of my passions, early May in Haute Provence is exciting for another reason: the flowering of la farigoule--the local strain of wild thyme. Thyme has always been my most indispensable herb, but I had never known a thyme like our farigoule (Provençal for the wild thyme of the region). While farigoule botanically is just Thymus vulgaris, in flavor and fragrance it is extremely distinct from garden-variety thyme.


While it retains a base note of common thyme, its fragrance is amplified by two distinct notes: lemon and lavender. The lavender note is uncanny; it's as if the farigoule has absorbed the flavor the the wild lavender all around. Its leaves are distinctly gray green, and the plant from afar looks bluish just before it bursts into bloom. This is how afficionados of farigoule can tell how its almost time to hike the distant thyme-covered hills for the annual harvest of farigoule: the hills become bluish.

Farigoule flowers are a delicate pale pink, rather than the white of garden-variety thyme. And at the moment of flowering, its flavor attains an incredible delicacy and complexity, rich with floral and honeyed notes. No wonder that Provençal cuisine abounds with dishes à la fleur du thym. Farigoule harvested and dried during flowering is far superior in flavor to purchased fresh thyme from the supermarket. Which is why, being the thyme fanatic that I am, I simply must be in Provence in May for this precious harvest.



Our parcel of land up the hill behind the house, where the spring flows, includes a butte of calcareous white rock that the locals call la montagne blanche (the white mountain). In the rocky meadow at its feet, and among the sun-baked rocks of its slopes, grows some of the most pungent farigoule I've smelled and tasted. So the moment formalities were taken care of at the house, I headed up the hill with my pruning shears and basket. Even when the farigoule isn't flowering, I love to escape up the hill to la montagne blanche. I'm obsessed with the spring (see my previous postcard, La Source), and look forward to the future when our family coffers will have recovered enough from the restoration to be able to relay the pipeline which once funneled its waters down to the lavoir by the house. La source is French for a spring, and se ressourcer means to reconnect, to recharge one's batteries.


Well, me ressourcer is exactly what I do when I come here. I taste the spring water, rejoice in the wildflowers (like the orchid at right) and meditate among the ancient ruins (more than 500 years old, I'm sure), for the most part just heaps of stone, that belie the former existence of a hamlet around the spring. This spring, this source of life that has flowed continuously for millennia and is flowing still, seems to connect me to these shadowy lives, to the people who lived a practically stone-age existence here. Apart from the discreet gurgle of water, the soughing of the wind in the nearby pines, and the occasional scream of a hawk, it is very quiet here. Just as quiet as it was 500 or a thousand years ago.


Part of recharging my batteries consists of botanizing. To my delight, I discover a rare wildflower, Tetragonolobus maritimus (yellow blossoms left), which only grows over subterranean flowing water. And indeed, it is in the path of the spring as it disappears underground. The path up to la montagne blanche, as well as our rocky meadow, are blessed with dense populations of Aphylanthes monspeliensis, a lovely plant resembling our American blue-eyed grass, but growing in denser, more substantial mounds of extremely narrow, bluegreen, grass-like foliage topped with starry sky-blue flowers through spring and early summer. This species is protected.


Yellow tufts of a plant I've tentatively identified as yellow flax (Linum flavum) light up the hillside like pools of sunlight. And everywhere, the incredible sapphire blue (occasionally pink) blossoms of polygala (I haven't yet been able to identify the species, as there are several which are highly similar).







And there are commoner wildflowers a bit lower down, where the environment is less alpine and more prairie-like. Clouds of honey-scented Galium verum are no less delightful for being common-place. And of course, as always, the vibrant red flames of common poppies light up my heart with joy. (Psst! Seeds of both these plants available on this site!)





















While the meadow is full of many earthly treasures during the month of May, none excites me quite as much as the fragrant farigoule, whose blossoming branches I snip here and there. I flit like a butterfly from plant to plant, as I don't want to snip more than one branch from each one. Each farigoule plant is like a bonsai--a miniature shrublet with gnarled branches. Plants grow slowly in this dry climate, and although no plant is more widespread, I like to use a gentle hand in harvesting my farigoule.

Thyme has been used as a culinary and medicinal herb in the Mediterranean basin since the dawn of time. In this part of Haute Provence, it is not only ubiqitous in local dishes, but is used to distill a delicious liqueur of the same name, at the ancient Distilleries et Domaines de Provence, in nearby Forcalquier. This distillery is in direct continuity with a community of plant gatherers who have foraged and distilled wild herbs in the region for hundreds of years, and sold their wares from house to house, often travelling on foot. And legend has it that if a young man hangs a bouquet of farigoule on the door of the girl he fancies, she is sure to fall in love with him. How's that for a veritable rite of May?

As for me, I imagine the ghostly inhabitants of the stone dwellings that now lie in ruins at my feet, gathering exactly the same farigoule that fills my basket on this sunlit spring afternoon. In a world spinning changes out of control, this thought both comforts and calms me, weaving a slender thread of continuity between the inhabitants of la montagne blanche of a distant yesterday, and one of today.

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