Fresh off the farm

One of our new favorite Friday night TV programs here in Switzerland is called Passe-Moi les Jumelles (Pass me the Binoculars), which highlights interesting people and organizations throughout Switzerland.  One recent episode featured Caritas Mongnards, a charitable organization in Switzerland that places volunteers (bénévoles) for a week with rural farm families in need of extra help. By the end of the next morning, I had signed up and already been placed with a French-speaking farm family in a small rural village at the foot of the Jura Mountains, about 40 minutes from Lausanne.

I made a mid-week trip to Landi (a hardware/agricultural supply store) to buy muck boots and work gloves. The next Monday I stepped off the bus at 7:50 am for my first day of work on the farm.

The farm

View of Mt. Blanc from the farm

The farm and countryside were stunning, and it was such fun to meet Swiss farmers and experience life on a working farm. The farm had cattle, sheep, horses, chickens, two dogs, cats and kittens and a big vegetable garden.  My first job every morning was in the “chamber-à-lait” (milking room) where I washed 3-foot milk containers and the buckets used to feed the calves.  

My new friend "Chaka" and my cool farm boots

Tools of the trade

After the “lavage” (milk pail cleaning) my chores depended on the weather and what needed to be done that day - from stopping traffic as they moved the sheep from one pasture to another across the road, to removing temporary electric fencing, stacking wood, cleaning out cow, chicken and horse “fumier” (manure), repairing “sanglier” (wild boar) damage to the pasture, making quince jam, and finally, ironing and cleaning (welcome indoor chores on some rainy, cold days).

 "Nez Noir" (Black nose) baby lamb born my last day on the farm

Supervising me as I cleaned her pen

Sanglier damage

The woods where the sanglier live

The back pasture

Pen cleaned by yours truly

After my walk to and from the train, a 20-minute train, then a 20-minute bus ride, I would drag home to dinner prepared by Doug, and then crash into bed.  On Friday night, the end of my week on the farm, I actually fell asleep at the table after dinner. Those farmers work hard.  All in all, it was a wonderful experience to meet a lovely and welcoming Swiss family, and I hope I can work with them again in the spring.

Here are some new French vocabulary words and phrases I learned:

balai bambou = looks like a witch’s broomstick -  turns out they are not just for Halloween decorations - they are very handy for cleaning stables

brouette = wheelbarrow

pelle = shovel

fumier = manure

crottin = dung

purin = liquid manure

Nous sommes tous dans la même (tas de) merde* - We’re all in the same pile of shit (made in reference to the global Covid pandemic)

*Seems to be a theme here!

Working for the Swiss Board of Tourism

After Doug posted some photos of our recent bike rides and hikes on Strava (an app where you post bike rides, hikes, runs, etc), someone left a comment asking if we were secretly working for the Swiss Tourism board.

It definitely feels like we are living in a glossy SBB (the Swiss train) brochure this year. The remarkably efficient train system can take us, along with our bikes, to any Swiss destination that we want, crossing canton and language lines. We seem to go to more and more beautiful places every time.

Several weeks back we stayed in Munster in the Vallée de Conches, cycling the epic Neufenen, Gotthard and Furka mountain passes (two climbs for me, three for Doug). The Gotthard pass connects the Italian speaking canton of Ticino to the German-speaking Valais canton, and was a major trade route dating back to the middle ages. The distinguishing feature of the road is that it is mostly made of cobblestone, and has at least 20 switchbacks. It’s definitely a bucket list kind of ride.

Nufenen Pass

Top of Nufenen Pass

Backside of Nufenen Pass - more terrifying than the ascent

Gotthard pass from a distance

Some of the 20 switchbacks on Gotthard pass

Summit of Gotthard pass

Doug's solo ascent on Furka pass

We came back to Lausanne, rested a day, and then were lucky to be able to help with the vendange (wine harvest) at Alain Chollet’s vineyard in Lavaux.  His sustainably farmed vineyard is on the steep vineyards of Lavaux, where grapes are grown on the terraced vineyards constructed by monks dating back to the middle ages.  

View from Alain Chollet's vineyard

Doug chatting with Alain Chollet

Alain invites less than 100 volunteers to come and participate in the harvest, and we were lucky enough to be picked out of the 600 or so people who applied.  Our team of about 15 people were like the United Nations of vineyard workers - originating from all over the world but now living in Switzerland - volunteers from Germany, Hungary, France, Italy, Japan, and the U.S.  The languages went back and forth, but no one seemed to notice. We worked in the morning, came in for a fantastic lunch prepared by Alain’s wife Corrine and daughters, and then went back out for some afternoon picking. We were rewarded with a bottle of wine for each hour worked - a nice bonus for a day’s work in a stunning setting!

Our international team

My long gap in posting on this blog was precipitated by the sudden drop in temperatures accompanied by two weeks of rain just after the vendange.  Between the grey skies, the constant rain, and the new fires in California, I just couldn’t bring myself to post.  We’re getting used to the cold weather here, and now just bundle up and embrace the cold and rain.  If only we could export some of this rain back to California!

Woke up the day after the vendange to snow on the Alpes

View of the Alpes from the Lavaux vineyards

Quelques soucis…et le Grand Paradis*

It’s been awhile since I posted on this blog – frankly we’ve had a few soucis (worries) with all that has been happening with the fires in California.  The Sonoma county Walbridge fire came within 15 miles our house in Sebastopol, so we were anxiously watching the fire, wind and evacuation maps from here in Switzerland.  Luckily, the fire is now mostly contained, but many people lost their homes and it’s really devastating watching what is happening with fires and air quality in the Bay area and the western U.S. right now.

 

We’ve also been preoccupied with getting through the myriad of paperwork required from to be able to live this year in Canton Vaud in Switzerland.  It was just as hard to get our residence card here as it was to get our Swiss visa (which came 4 days before we left the U.S.), and it turns out that you can’t get a cell phone or bank account without a residence card.  Friday’s trip to the bank to open our bank account with our new cartes d’identité was just one of many hoops that we will need to go through to open an account.  Someday we will have one, but first they have to make sure that we can’t stash any ill-gotten gains into our new Swiss bank account.

Another souci - we had a quick brush with the law on one of our bike rides when I didn’t see a red light while making a right turn, and Doug was waiting on the sidewalk for me to come up the hill.  We are now law-abiding Swiss citizens, and have stopped our bad habit of ignoring red lights before we turn and riding on the sidewalks.  We are still enjoying our breath-taking bike rides along the lake and on the plateau above Lausanne, this one to the town of Vevey along the lake.

Stopping mid-bike ride in Vevey for coffee

I was trapped in this WC (bathroom) in Vevey for 20 minutes

due to a lock mal-function (another souci)

Last weekend we had an amazing two days of hiking in the Alps bordering France, staying in Champéry, one of Switzerland’s oldest ski resort areas.  The ski area is part of a group of French and Swiss ski stations called Porte de Soleil.  The town is at the base of a mountain range called the Dents du Midi, seven jagged tooth-like peaks that you can see from miles away, even on the plateau above Lausanne where we ride.  We had two days of incredible hiking with spectacular views.

 

View of the Dents du Midi 

from the train

View of Dents du Midi from Champéry

Downtown Champéry

View from our balcony

Lunch stop at Refuge de Bonveau

The second day we took a gondola up to start the hike, walked high in the mountains and then climbed up to Col de Cou, where we briefly stepped into France, and then hiked with the cows along a ridge walk back to the valley floor through Grand Paradis back to Champéry.  And grand paradis it is…we are so grateful to be here.

Doug with Dent du Midi in the background

Col de Cou

Ridge walk back from Col de Cou - 360 views

* This pithy title (Quelques soucis... et le Grand Paridis) rhymes in French

On ne vous raconte pas de salades*

We spend so much time thinking about, shopping for and preparing our food here that I thought I’d dedicate a blog to food.  Anyone that knows me well knows that I eat a ridiculous amount of vegetables, so trying to keep our little refrigerator full of veggies is almost a full time job. Luckily we have two market days per week in Lausanne, and the Lausanne market is AMAZING!   The marché starts at Place St. François, and the vendors are lined up and down the steep, narrow, cobblestone pedestrian only streets all the way up to Place Rippone. 

While Wednesday’s market is serious business, the Saturday market is like a fête!**  Even more vendors and people, musicians on the street corners, tourists stopping at the Place Palud to see the animated clock tell the history of Canton Vaud.  We stopped for coffee in the square today, and saw a little boy running past us toward the clock - ah, yes, it must be the top of the hour!

The Palud clock is on the building behind Doug

Giant Swiss flag covering the Place Palud

The apples are starting to arrive in the market, and we were surprised to see Gravensteins.  We have 7 Gravenstein apple trees at our house in Sebastopol so we're extra fond of that variety.  It turns out that Gravensteins have been around since the 17th century, most likely coming from Germany or Italy.  Our Sebastopol apple crop was early and light this year, so after picking three bushels of our apples, our son Scott and his friend Cody found a local farmer who sold them 200 pounds of drops for $60. They're making hard cider which is now bubbling away in Cody's garage in San Francisco. 

 

Some of our bounty!

When we ride out of town on our bike rides, we see so many well tended and fertilized fields around Canton Vaud (with lots of cows around for that ‘a la nature’ fertilizer).  We regularly pass by a farm that has a self-service stand, and this week we stopped to see one with beautifully arranged fruits and veggies. We were excited to see that same vender, “la famille Hess,” at the Wed/Sat marché at La Place Palud!  So we stopped by at today’s market and had a nice chat with them, after buying some of their veggies, of course.

Another food local food novelty we’ve found (again at a self-service stand) is pataclettes (https://www.pataclette.ch/), a cross between potato skins and raclette, advertised as the first fondue or raclette you can eat with 2 fingers.  For those of you who might not know,  raclette is  is a semi-soft cow’s milk cheese but is also a Swiss dish (also popular in the French Alpes) that involves a machine with individual paddles that are put under a heating element to melt the slices of cheese.  You scrape off the cheese over new potatoes, pickled onions or cornichons.  As soon as the weather turns cold, the Swiss start craving this delicious dish, and so will we!

• * On ne vous raconte pas de salades = We’re not making this up

• **Fête = party