Saverdun

Sunrise at Saverdun

Having a bit of land to look after is not really a part time hobby. Acreage needs lots of time, lots of energy and a fair bit of know-how. Many people get inspired by the romantic notion of living life on a farm and dabbling in a few crops and a bit of livestock, whilst still keeping their paid employment…

What they soon find is that they now have two full time jobs.

Saverdun is a small town near Toulouse in the South of France, and we were staying a couple of kilometers out of town on an organic farm with several hectares of eucalyptus plantation, a few hectares of apple orchard and a few more hectares of wild forest.

Start of the apple harvest

The homestead was a lovely old rambling house and barn which had been renovated to become one huge dwelling with creaking floorboards and room to spare. The countryside was lovely, the soil fertile and the weather sunny and mild.

Our hosts, Lynda and Alain, were both busy with their own careers and their farm needed some love. The apple orchard was neck deep in blackberries and the apples needed harvesting, piles of fallen timber needed chopping into firewood for winter and a host of other jobs needed attending to.

Needless to say their was work aplenty for us to do. As usual in the WWOOFing world, it was interspersed with amazing fresh fruit from the property – figs, grapes, aubergines, tomatoes different types of juicy apples, plums and a fantastic kind of peach with ruby red flesh. Lynda is a wonderful cook and she teamed up with Sarah to make wonderful meals as well as preserves, jellies, dried fruits and juices – yum yum.

What the orchard looked like before...

We left with a new appreciation of how much work a property requires, and how quickly that work can pile up and swamp you.

Farming is not for the faint hearted or the time poor.

...and after