Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

11:21 GMT, Saturday, 9 May 2009 12:21 UK
Neighbourly help in high Pyrenees

As the global economic downturn continues, Kathy Flower discovers the
secret to survival in an unexpected place - the crumbling, half-empty
villages of the French Pyrenees.

Madame Genis grows all her own vegetables - and forages for fruit

Madame Genis shouts a greeting in her strong Catalan accent as she strides
past my house.

A sunburned 75-year-old, she is clad, as always, in her working gear of an
ancient blue and white checked pinafore and an old pair of men's leather
boots.

She carries a sharp knife - not for repelling attackers, or even the wild
boar which roam these hills - but for cutting reeds to support the runner
beans she will plant now spring has come at last.

She never buys anything if she can grow it herself or forage for it, and
she knows where to find wild asparagus and strawberries.

She chats to her hens in a mix of Catalan and French. They reward her with
plenty of eggs.

Madame Genis' immaculately neat patch of land produces enough vegetables
for her and her son.

Any surplus is swapped for a pot of honey with a beekeeping neighbour, or
sold off from a box outside her front gate.

Land which is not planted with vegetables is piled high with what looks to
me like junk, but which she insists might come in handy - rusty oil drums,
old metal bed frames and ancient gateposts.

Nothing is wasted. Everything is recycled, and always has been, long before
it became fashionable.

Self-sufficiency

Remoteness, natural beauty and climate add to the lure of the Pyrenees

Seventy years ago, in the harsh winter of 1939, her family were among half
a million Spanish refugees who poured across the French border.

They were fleeing the firing squads after Franco's victory in the Spanish
Civil War.

Initially interned in camps, the refugees eventually settled, finding jobs
in farming or the vineyards. Their Catalan work ethic blended in with
French rural traditions of self-sufficiency.

The remoteness of the Pyrenees has attracted other settlers too.

After the social upheavals of 1968, many hippies abandoned the big cities
and came here, bucking the trend for people to leave the land.

They scratch a living from their scruffy farmsteads, and keep up the
tradition of neighbour helping neighbour.

Last autumn, on the day that Lehmann Brothers collapsed, my neighbours
Henrique and Gianno appeared on the doorstep, armed with chainsaw and rope.

They offered to cut down some dead trees in the garden if they could keep
the wood in exchange.

The reality of this simple transaction was in sharp contrast to the
unreality of the virtual fortunes, vanishing like smoke across the world's
capital cities.

No fear of redundancy

This spring, Henrique, who has worked with animals all his life, bought
five sheep and two goats.

He has no fields of his own, but the village is full of overgrown plots of
land where people are happy to let his flock graze.

Henrique grazes his flock of sheep on overgrown plots of land in the
village

The gentle clanging of the bell worn by the bellwether sheep echoes round
the valley, as they move from abandoned cherry orchard to overgrown
vineyard.

He plans to keep the lambs for the pot, and make cheese from the milk.

But, he told me stoically, the wool is not worth collecting any more as
Chinese wool is now so cheap.

An old back injury means Henrique gets a small disability allowance.

With unemployment in the Pyrenees almost double the national average, many
depend on social security benefits, topped up with pocket money from odd
jobs.

The recession does not trouble them - with no jobs to lose, they have no
fear of redundancy.

Like most villagers, Henrique has no mobile phone or internet, never goes
on holiday, wears hand-me-down clothes and has neither credit card nor
mortgage.

The old car he shares with his extended family is held together by duct
tape and optimism.

Not for sale
        
Untended parcels of land and empty semi-derelict buildings dot the village,
to the despair of town planners

All this thriftiness has its drawbacks though. When I first arrived here, I
needed some second hand furniture, so off I went, hunting for charity shops
like the ones back home.

But there are none. People do not throw things away, partly because they
hardly ever move house.

Property mania barely touched this area.

Untended parcels of land and empty semi-derelict buildings dot the village,
to the despair of town planners who would like to buy them all up and do
something sensible with them.

But they are not for sale. They have been in the family for generations,
and the owners want it to stay that way.

Even if they were for sale, the many French people who dream of a
retirement in the sun-kissed south regard the old village houses as
tumbledown old wrecks.

They prefer the clusters of brightly-painted new villas on land just
outside the old towns.

Building these upmarket housing estates has been one of the few sources of
work here.

The buyers have, for the moment at least, guaranteed pensions, so the local
construction industry has not been too badly hit.

The newly retired bring in wealth, and also jobs as they get older and need
help at home.

Perhaps they will inculcate the locals into the joys of property
speculation and the throwaway society.

Or maybe they too will learn to barter vegetables for honey, re-use old
gate posts, and hunt for wild asparagus.