Oakland Organic Farm, Louisiana
Nouvel Album ICI
Beaucoup de choses à dire à propos d’Oakland …
A quoi s’attendre :
Wonderful, Welcoming People.
De Prentiss à Hutch, aux 4 enfants, à qui je pense souvent et qui me manquent énormement, des employés permanents aux nombreux copains et connections de la famille. Je me suis fait aussi de très bons amis parmi les wwoofers , meme avec ceux qui ne sont resté qu’une semaine. On s’est tous promis de se revoir un jour.
Hard but rewarding work.
Tous les jours, il y a quelque chose à faire ! C’est une « nouvelle » ferme, avec beaucoup de potentiel ; le travail quotidien inclus la récolte des légumes (okras, tomates, courges, basilic, aubergines, haricots verts/beurres, feuilles de moutarde, salade, piments, radis, …), plantation, labours, arrachage de mauvaises herbes, construction du nouveau poulailler (et des nombreux autres projets en cours), débroussaillage, ramassage des noix de pécan, préparation des marchés (Bâton Rouge et St Francisville) et vente, et même du babysitting (si on peut vraiment appeler ça comme ça ; je dirais plutôt gavage aux céréales, construction de châteaux forts en boîtes en carton et échapper à 3 garçons complétement dingues, déguisés en spider-man, buzz l’éclair et transformeur, qui, si tu n’as pas fait gaffe, t’auront déjà plaqué au sol, baïllonné et attaché les mains derrière le dos).
Shewen, William et Paxton
Hospitable Accomodations.
Je dormais dans un magnifique grenier aménagé, avec les 10 autres wwoofers. Colonie de vacances … Prentiss et Hutch ouvrent vraiment leurs cœurs et leur maison à tous ceux qu’ils connaissent, la nourriture est splendide (légumes bio tout frais du jardin !), que l’on se prépare un bon sandwich pour le déjeuner ou que l’on cuisine un p’tit dîner sympathique pour toute la famille avec Hutch.
Heat.
Y fait chô en Louisiane ! Même Ron et Sims (les « paysagistes ») font attention que tu prennes assez de pauses dans la journée ou que tu boives assez d’eau. C’est un bon sentiment que de se sentir, à la fin de la journée, sale et fière du travail accompli.
FUN.
Il y a aussi beaucoup de choses à faire quand on a du temps libre. Les week-ends, on se rend à La Nouvelle-Orléans pour PARTY, il y a également le Mag – c’est un p’tit restau sympa où la famille vient souvent manger des pizzas et danser avec les enfants sur de la musique Live. Et si il y a un endroit où tu veux aller, quelque chose que tu veux faire, Prentiss et Hutch sont très flexibles et prêts à tout faire pour que tu passes du bon temps ; après tout, on est ici pour aider ! Ils réalisent et apprécient ça, et veulent que tu repartes avec une bonne expérience.
Je pourrais continuer un bon bout de temps comme ça … J’ai vraiment été chanceuse d’atterir ici, et je peux vous dire qu’ils ont placé la barre ridiculement-méga haut pour les autres fermes à suivre ! En Louisiane : Laissez les bon temps roulés !
Prentiss & Sam
(Pour les anglophiles, voici un p'tit article sur la ferme, sortie l'été dernier)
Organic Farming with WWOOF
Published July 2010.
There comes a point after, oh, fifteen years of editing a monthly magazine, when it’s easy to convince yourself that you’ve developed at least a passing acquaintance with most of the words in the English language. Once you’ve found excuses to work words like ‘obeophone,’ ‘cacodemomania,’ and ‘prestidigitation’ into the things that you publish, you develop a conceit that you’re not leaving many linguistic stones unturned. So it was with interest that I learned a new word last week. It’s an acronym, can be used as a noun and a verb and, although a relatively new addition to our landscape of language, it relates to an activity as old as human civilization itself.
It’s WWOOF.
‘Wwoof’ stands for “Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms,” a name that pretty much says it all. It is an organization begun in Britain in 1971, that has since developed into an international exchange program for people interested in sharing sustainable ways of living. Basically, the network connects organic farmers—who are perennially in need of extra pairs of hands—with folks willing to volunteer their time in return for food, accommodation, and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles. Therefore, to volunteer on an organic farm is described as “Wwoofing,” while the act of being engaged as a volunteer on said farm makes one a “Wwoof-er.”
Sounds like something that might be going on in Vermont or Oregon, doesn’t it? But how about Gurley, Louisiana? Yes folks, WWOOF has tentacles everywhere, one of which reaches all the way to Oakland Plantation near Jackson, Louisiana, on the grounds of which our friends Hutch and Prentiss McClendon have established an organic garden, and are quickly become hard to find behind the mounds of plump, beautiful, organic produce they’re raising. Did you ever read The Day of the Triffids, the 1950s sci-fi novel in which a species of bio-engineered, semi-intelligent plants takes over the world? That’s the image that rose in my mind as Hutch led us on a tour of the barely restrained, four-acre garden that, in only its second season, is producing hundreds of pounds of tomatoes, eggplants, lettuces, zucchini, cucumbers, okra, squash, beans, peas, corn and figs a week. As we roamed, Hutch’s explanations about soil amendment practices, composting and vermiculture were variously interspersed with pauses, during which he would either lovingly pluck a sublimely hued roma tomato or emerald green bean for us to sample; or groan with frustration at having spotted a pattypan squash the size of a frisbee, and therefore grown past its prime. Given that Hutch actually has a day job, and that the couple have four children under the age of six, an organic garden on such as scale might look like a case of having bitten off more than one can chew. And despite the fact that this family of six and their freeloading friends are doing all the chewing they can, there’s plenty of produce left over to supply a growing number of Baton Rouge-area restaurants that recognize the value of making high quality, organically grown, locally raised fruits and vegetables available to their loyal customers. But as you might imagine, this kind of farming is a labor-intensive undertaking, that demands constant vigilance and input—to maintain correct soil chemistry, spot and deter pests and diseases, weed and thin; and above all in the peak of growing season, to harvest.
Enter the Wwoofers. The day we dropped by was the last of a two-week stay at Oakland for David and Cybelle—two twenty-ish, recent graduates of Vassar College in upstate New York, who were headed into the world exuding the sort of boundless enthusiasm that makes you just pine to be twenty-ish again. David—A Wisconsin kid whose social activist parents had raised him mostly in Egypt and the West Bank; and Cybelle—American born to a Brazilian family, had spent two weeks at Oakland weeding, pruning, planting and harvesting, and were thanking their hosts by spending their last evening baking a homemade steak and ale pie with blue cheese filling. Served with an okra and tomato stew and plenty of ale, of course. If there’s anything that gives you hope for the future of American cuisine, it’s meeting a couple of twenty-one-year-old college graduates interested enough in food to spend two weeks volunteering in an organic vegetable patch, then spending their time off fanatically trying to perfect a good short crust pastry. The pie, it has to be said, was sensational. The next morning the Wwoofers were on their way: to Wisconsin, I think, to spend time caring for organic goats or alpaca, or something. And Hutch, facing with the prospect of harvesting several hundred pounds of green beans, was sad to see them go.
But never fear: Now that Oakland Organic Farm has come to the attention of the Wwoofer network, more help is at hand, and a young woman named Mia has materialized from New York to pitch in. In the meantime, Hutch and Prentiss are developing their network of restaurant customers for locally grown organic produce, and selling each Thursday at the St. Francisville Farmer’s Market. Or you can buy from them direct. To learn more about their efforts, look them up on Facebook at Oakland Organic Farm. For more about the Wwoof organization, visit www.wwoof.org.