One Year in Le Vignaud

Intimacy with another country is ripened by pleasures but also by loneliness and error. It is nurtured through long wet winters as well as radiant days.

–Shirley Hazzard, Italian Hours
Le Vignaud, 2 November 2008

It’s been quite a while since I have had the time to write or share any photos on the website- things have been busy over the past few months. Needless to say, I have plenty of stories and photos to share! I should have regular internet access coming soon, so expect to have some new updates on the way…

. . . . .

One year has passed since I drove from Germany in a rickety old Renault truck, bound for my tiny village in France. It has been a wonderful ride- I have made life-long friends, followed a longstanding dream, overcome many obstacles, and fallen to others. But through all the cold, the rain, the sunshine, the good food, the up and the downs, I wouldn’t trade a day of the last year for anything else.

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Le Vignaud on Fire

Last September Jason got an email from an old friend about a little stone house in France. Wearing his blue suit and with two suitcases he set off on an adventure. A year later, none of us really know what’s going to happen to that house. We usually don’t even know what’s happening with Jason…

Jason’s decision set off a series of events and adventures in my own life, which most recently took to me to the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada. Burning Man was my own experience, but I still paid homage to its origin in my life.

On the base of the Man

On the base of the Man

One of the first things I did after arriving to Burning Man was walk over to the giant wooden effigy and leave my mark in Le Vignaud Blue. Nearly a week later, after the Man was just a pile of burning and smoldering ashes I threw in a 200 year old piece of oak, taken from an old roof beam in Le Vignaud.

At first I wasn’t sure why I put this memorial at the Man instead of the Temple. I think it’s because although Jason’s role in Le Vignaud may soon be at an end, the village itself and the few people living there will keep on truckin’. And who knows, maybe being burned with the Man as a symbol of rebirth will prove to be a bit of good luck for the little commune.

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Izzy’s Le Vignaud

Izzy and Friend

Yet another crazy collaborative effort that took a few months to complete! It’s worth the wait though… This is Izzy’s view of Le Vignaud from her visit back in June. I think it may be the most complete view of Le Vignaud yet available on the WWW. Of course nothing beats a visit in the real world, but this is about as close as it comes. She’s captured some great moments, and lots of nifty details about the place that have never been documented. This is one for the LV Historical Society Archives.

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Haricots Rouges

We're having a party tonight

This doesn’t have so much specifically to do with Le Vignaud, but somehow I feel it’s appropriate. There have been so many struggles in the past year–the difficulty of Jason and I separating, his move to France and ongoing complications with the house, and my six month odyssey that, at first, orbited around him. It’s been a year now since that fateful trip to the desert. Jason is in Europe with a car and possibly a house. I’m back on Wilson Drive and preparing for my own Burning Man adventure. But through it all we’ve had redbeans.

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August Update

Le Vignaud in August
August

August has finally arrived here in La Creuse. Surprisingly though the weather has so far remained mild, and we haven’t gotten the typically hot summer of past years. The lake is warm though, and every other day another fruit tree is ready to be harvested is some forgotten corner of the village. I’ve done my share of collecting, harvesting, digging, and eating all of the bounty that surrounds us in this time of year…

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Dandewine

Dandelion Fields at Malval
Dandelion Fields at Malval

This post has been in the works since way back in April… Countless hours of editing and collaboration have been wasted bringing this to you now, four months later. So, please enjoy… more photos and stories hopefully to come soon.

Love, Jason

. . . . .

By Julianne Dodds

One day late in April we decided to drive up to Malval, where there is an old mill as well as ruins of a millennium-old castle. The fields on either side of the rural road were bright yellow, completely filled with dandelions. It was a beautiful sight: the sunny flowers are not really considered much of a weed in France and are allowed to grow sans herbicide. Penelope made a casual comment about making dandelion wine, but it really fired up Jason’s imagination. He’d never even heard of it before, but suddenly he had a new project.

Neither of us had ever tasted dandelion wine or made any wine before, but luckily Google had us taken care of. We found a few intriguing recipes which we then synthesized into one master recipe.

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Digging Potatoes with Jeanine

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Potatoes in the Cave

Jeanine is an incredible lady- She’s 74 and has lived in Le Vignaud her entire life. When she asked me to help her dig her potatoes, I was more than happy to help. She is always giving me something, whether it’s fresh eggs from the chickens, or a nice warm meal in the evening on my way back from the garden and I’m always looking for an opportunity to reciprocate the generosity. She had about 200 or so ‘pieds’ of potatoes- some fifteen or so rows about three meters long each- all ready to be dug. She also has bad knees. The fact that she even planted them on her own is already amazing. Then, she surprised me once again when she held her own in the digging and dug row after row with no complaint.

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Garden Harvest

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Dirty Darren came by one Sunday afternoon to help with the garden. All the hard work was finally paying off, the garden was full, and it was time to begin the harvest. In late July, it’s time to pull and dry the onions, garlic, and shallots, as well as dig the potatoes. It was a great help to have an extra hand to harvest and pack kilo after kilo of these, which will hopefully last through the winter. There were also tomatoes, plenty of GIANT courgettes, beets, cucumbers, peppers, beans, and salad. I can’t help but to say again how incredible I find it that this much food can come from such a small piece of dirt, with truly minimal effort.

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Stone and Glass (New Stairs)

The New Stairs

Finally Finished!

Those things are better which are perfected by nature than those which are finished by art.
-Ciccero

Back in February when we cleared out the yard, we built some steps up the front path near the mailbox. Still, on the opposite side of the yard near the house, there was another drop-off with no proper way down. I always felt bad when Jeneane would come over and she couldn’t come down into the lower yard. If she wanted to come into the house she had to go the long way around through the driveway. I had been promising her I’d build some stairs to get down to the house since probably November or December. This is the story of Jeneane’s stairs.

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July Gardening Update

Holy Courgettes

Holy Courgettes!

In July, the big words on the tongue of every gardener were Tomatoes and Courgettes. In fact, after a few weeks of all you can eat style stuffing our faces, it was a challenge to get rid of them faster than they were coming out of the garden. It was a wonderful problem to have. We all had to get creative thinking up new dishes and finding new friends to share all the wonderful things coming from the garden.

Once again the garden was amazing me with the incredible amount of food that it produced. In the case of courgettes, from one plant you should get a fully gown squash every other day or two. I had planted eight plants in Jeanine’s garden and by now they were full-sized and producing like mad. That meant plenty of Pain aux Courgettes, Soupe aux Courgettes, Omelettes, Farcie, and more. The tomatoes began to turn red across the village somewhere around July 14. Might have been a coincidence, but it really felt like summer and the tomatoes knew it too.

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