My neighbor's lamb

Ferreting out the best places for food shopping has been a major ritual for me every time I've moved to a new house. This August, we didn't move to a new house. We still live in the same Paris apartment. But we did move into a very old house...that was new to us. Our mas in Haute Provence was finished enough for us to occupy it during our August vacation. As soon as we got the water running and a provisional electric service hooked up, I started looking around for where dinner was going to come from. That is, where was I going to buy food? Because with the exception of household products, I don't shop in supermarkets.

As a start, I went to local markets. All but the smallest villages have a market day, where local producers congregate to sell meat, poultry, dairy products (in our area of Provence, mostly goat cheese), fresh produce, olives and oil, and so forth. These traditional farmers' markets are a joy. But the best and biggest market near us--in Forcalquier on Mondays, is so thronged with tourists during the summer that the crowds are a turnoff. Not to mention the fact you have to park a kilometer away and haul--in my case--30 kilos back to the car. Of course, I continued to shop at markets, quickly getting a feel for the best producers and where they were.

But, within a couple of weeks, I had pushed my personal food chain back one link. I simply started buying directly at farms near our home. In fact, I knew where my lamb was going to come from even before we moved into the house. I'd already made friends with our neighbors up the road, Agnes and Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude is a compact man with sun-ruddied skin and a shock of chestnut hair and a ready smile. He never seems to stand still. Moving at the velocity of the Road Runner cartoon character, he farms his father's fields some 15 miles away, as well as the fields behind our house. He and Agnesare shepherds, raising sheep in the traditional way.  Agnes accompanies the flock as it moves from pasture to pasture.  Even Rémy, their 11-year-old son, knows his way around a flock of 500.  In early summer, Jean-Claude and Agnes practice transhumance, moving their flock literally to greener pastures high in the mountains near the Italian border.  This ancient practice (now accomplished with a truck rather than on foot) spares the arid pastures at lower altitude from overgrazing.  Agnes and the two children stay with flock in its alpine vacation home through the summer. Their lamb is certified organic, and what with browsing on the aromatic herbs of first the local garrigue and then alpine pastures, it is guaranteed delicious. Just how good it is, we found out when Jean-Claude dropped off a magnificent gigot, or leg of lamb, as a house-warming present. I swear I could taste the local wild thyme in the meltingly tender meat.

Not far from us is a farm dedicated to the preservation of the ancient Provençal goat breed, and to the production of Banon goat cheese. The Banon is an AOC (Appelation d'Origine Controlée) cheese, meaning that its producers must adhere to strict standards of traditional production. The owner of this farm is in fact the president of the Banon AOC organisation, and I have written about him in a previous postcard. He and his wife produce not only Banon, a small cheese that is soaked in marc (a local eau de vie), wrapped in dry chestnut leaves and then aged for 3-4 weeks, but also fresh poultry, petite épautre (an ancient wheat-like grain related to spelt), and a variety of other goat cheeses. But look out! During the busy summer season, you now have to reserve your cheeses a week in advance!

The road leading to Contadour, a remote village that has almost become a ghost town, is the farm of Gérard Burcheri, the place to shop for fresh rabbit, dried cèpes, fabulous honeys (chestnut, lavender, thyme, rosemary, or wildflower), chestnut flour, unctuous chestnut cream, and vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts. These are all items that I, for one, can't seem to live without ever since I've tasted them.

Denis discovered the farm bearing the lovely name of La Carline (a local wildflower). At this farm literally at the end of the road (beyond is only the GR hiking trail leading up into the mountains), you can order rabbit, pork, duck, and goose by calling early in the week. Your dinner will be dispatched on Friday and available for pickup the following day. Talk about fresh! No cellophane packages here.

Just a kilometer from our house is a foie gras and poultry producer. He prefers that you let him know at the beginning of the year how many chickens, ducks, or guinea hens you will be needing so he can plan ahead. Nonetheless, he'll accept orders a few days in advance. And even without prior notice, you can stop by anytime and buy his homemade confit of duck and foie gras terrines.

Two local organic growers supply me with some of the most bursting-with-flavor vegetables and fruits I've ever tasted. They'll tide me over until my future vegetable garden takes over. And tucked into a hill at the foot of the nearby village of Ongles, a woman grows fresh herbs and ruby red raspberries for sale.

I share orders for fresh pigeon and freshly milled organic flours with my friends Robert LeBozec and his wife Géraldine, who run the chambres d'hôte in their 17th-century bastide that served as our base camp while our own house was being restored.

Getting to know my local farms and their farmers has taught me a great deal about local agriculture in my corner of Haute Provence. Although these farmers now use tractors in place of teams of horses, their traditions have remained relatively unchanged over the centuries. The exception is that sheep are less numerous now than they once were, as not many young people today are attracted by the solitary and contemplative life of the shepherd.

This way of farming has evolved within the boundaries of both the advantages and limitations of the region. Four of the most important crops are evolved from--or remain--indigenous wild plants of the region. Chestnuts are primarily harvested from beneath wild trees. Cèpes (porcini mushrooms) are of course foraged, with each farmer zealously guarding his woods against mushroom poachers from Marseilles who deluge the region every autumn. Petite épautre, the lesser spelt, is a high-altitude, drought-resistant grain that retains most of its inherent genetic diversity. When growing it resembles a field of wild grass, with graceful stalks of variable height waving in the wind.. And lavender, perhaps the oldest cash crop in the region, is found wild on almost every hillside. Sheep and goats, meanwhile, are adapted to browsing the scrubby vegetation of the garrigue, where cattle could never survive.

Diversity is the rule on these small farms of Haute Provence. Not a single one of the farms I know produces only one thing. Rather, each farmer has worked out a balance among several crops and livestock production. And when it comes to animals, every farm usually produces several types. This makes for a type of farming that is far more ecologically balanced than the gigantic monocultures of megafarms. And its methods allow the farmer to stay in tune with the rhythms of his immediate environment, and thus to respect it more.

The relationship between the farmer and his customers (season-long planning; calling ahead) means that there is less waste and less uncertainty, both for the producer and the consumer. And once you've ordered that chicken and chatted with is producer, you'd better believe you're going to eat it right down to the last wingtip! Of course, all this and I haven't yet mentioned the humanizing aspects of really knowing your farmer and often, even sitting down at the table with him or her.

Last weekend I placed my first official order for a half lamb with Jean-Claude. When I reached him on his cell phone, he was up in the mountains with Agnes and the children preparing to bring the flock back down for the winter. "Sure!" he yelled over the feeble connection. "Just go over to the house. There's a half lamb in a box in the refrigerator. And, oh! You'll see a crate of muscat grapes on the kitchen table. Take some of those too; we'll never eat them all!

The grapes went into a batch of fig and muscat grape preserves with walnuts, a big jar of which I set aside for the next time I see Jean-Claude. Such are the pleasures of shopping close to home.

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