First quarter reflections

We've been here three whole months!  That's enough for even me to start feeling confident about where the ground is and how to walk around on it.  I now know not to eat from the cheese wheel that appears in the community fridge on Sundays - it's for Monday's pizza dinner.  (Oops!)  Prunes are very expensive; they are to be baked into cakes, and not for snacks.  Yogurt is dessert.  I can sing along with a handful of the regular songs we sing at the 9:30am prayers.  I remember to take my egg cartons with me to the refrigerator in the laundry room, so I can restock on local, organic, free-range, scrap-fed, zero VOC eggs when I throw in or pick up a laundry load.  I know just how to thump open the washing machine when the Tür button doesn't work - that's "door" in German.  Apparently they make higher quality machinery across France's eastern border, as long as you don't need to get your freshly cleaned clothes back out.  I know the weekly communal meal cooking schedule and on whose delicious food I will prefer an extra pinch of salt.  And I can wield a sharp knife with my bare hands.

Heika (a visitor) and Christiane prepare leeks for market.

That's right folks, classic "millennial" situation here: my fingers can type as fast as my thoughts, but I have a pretty serious gap in my pre-digital-age hard-skills-muscle-memory.  I have always needed a cutting board to slice and dice, until age 30!  My school is garden work on Wednesdays, helping prep veggies for Thursday's market.  Everyone sits in a circle chatting, and in mid-air, they brandish their freshly-honed carbon steel knives to trim leeks, spruce up Brussels sprouts, and prune old dead leaves from turnips, rutabegas, and beets.  I watched their techniques from the corner of my eye the first couple weeks as I fumbled around with these tasks, and now I'm proud to say that I can hover over the table to peel, core, and slice up apples for Moisés' and Yanni's snack!  It's all in a knuckle pivot, really.  And I haven't even cut myself... yet! :)

One of our first surprises here blew in mid-December.  Out of nowhere, the day turned from glorious (as had been just about every day since we had arrived) to slightly unnerving.  The sky darkened with solid clouds and gusts of wind blasted around. I could hear segments of the metal roof testing the anchor screws and trees creaking back and forth.

That evening, I had planned to check my email and do a handful of internet tasks.  The office trailer shook in the wind and at one point, the wind smacked the barn next to me so hard that I held my breath... it was caving in?  No, no, just dancing.

Elisabeth popped in to ask that I would turn off the power strip when I finished so no damage would incur if the power lines went down.  A little later, Elisabeth's daughter Katell, the equivalent of a high school senior, appeared at the door to complete a 10 minute internet task for school, and I asked if all this howling outdoors was to be feared.  She communicated in French, basically, that it was no big deal, this is just what all of winter is like (AKA, the entire next three months).  Her response was helpful in the sense that she was not worried, albeit disheartening that we'd have to adapt to such an unpredictable and hair-raising environment.  As Katell opened the door to leave, she stopped and said the French for, "Well, sometimes a tree..."  She made a crashing sound and moved her forearm and hand from vertical to horizontal.  Uh huh, yep, that's what I laid in bed that night and thought about with wide eyes at 2am, while the wind shrieked across the farm and banged around.

A post card you can find in Brittany's gift shops and
book stores. It reads: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring.
Image found in online search.

To be sure, after 24 hours of blustering the wind died down and we haven't really seen anything like that first night that announced winter.  Some days can be pretty windy, but not such that it's unnerving.  Mostly, we've just had an incredibly long stretch of clouds and rain... as in Christmas until now, mid-February, warranting jokes in the community about the sun as a UFO.  The locals say that winter is usually the rainiest season, but this constant precipitation is more than they've ever seen.

So far, I've hardly ventured out to shop in Pont l'Abbé, population 8,000, where there's a store for just about everything.  The community car usually stops at Plonéour-Lanvern, a small town much closer than Pont l'Abbé, with a population of only 5,500.  In addition to a tiny food market, Plonéour-Lanvern has three boulangerie/pâtisseries (bread and pastry shops) and three coiffeurs (hairdressers), but only one option for all other purchasing needs: Casino (cah-zeen-OH).  The chain store is basically a glorified Dollar General, but instead of only a measly handful of options of Barefoot Wine, Casino boasts floor to ceiling shelving of red wine, white wine, rosé wine, sparkling wine, and hard cider, where there are literally hundreds of options.  When we were still very new here, Yanni and I joined a shopping trip into Plonéour-Lanvern with Christiane and David.  I listed the handful of items I needed to buy and asked if they recommended I go to any particular store for each item.  Glancing at each other and heartily laughing at my request, they said almost in unision, "Let's see, should it be Casino... Casino... or perhaps Casino?"  There's literally nothing else.

On the other hand, right at the first round-a-bout at Pont l'Abbé, there's a E.Leclerc... pronounced without the first "E", luh-clairh.  I'm not sure if this gigantic, multi-story emporium is more like Costco or Walmart.

Image found in online search.

E.Leclerc sells electronics, which Casino does not.  Both my watch and our wind-up alarm clock were running slow, which I learned after several instances where I set both devices five minutes ahead and found myself 20 minutes late for morning prayers.  After we tried to fix the wind-up clock and made it worse, I decided that I needed to force myself out of my shell and make some purchases.

The mere idea of a shopping trip in France is a little bit stressful for me, because I want to purchase quality items while keeping to a pretty tight budget.  I assumed I wouldn't recognize a single brand and I probably wouldn't be able to read all of the promises made in the marketing.  Thankfully, I was with Christiane, my English-speaking German friend, who helped me navigate through the vastness and bustle of E.Leclerc to the electronics, and within the electronics, to the time-keeping devices.  I picked out a watch and alarm clock with only a few groans each, and after finding a couple things on her list, Christiane led us to the checkout.

Even in the US I don't do a lot of shopping, and when I have to, I don't usually find myself in a Costco or Walmart. On the occasions where I've needed to enter one of these one-stop-shoppers, I usually find it pretty overwhelming.  I can't stop my thoughts from wondering who made the clothes on the hangers, who filled the jars and put labels on them, who pieced the electronics together, who picked the tomatoes?  Are my fingerprints touching theirs?  Where are those people now?  Do they have a good life?  Can they support their families with the money they make?

I had assumed that just about everything was made by machines in the 21st century, until watching a particularly breathtaking film several years ago that gently and artistically opened my mind to some of the realities of the world.  The videographer traveled to 25 different countries to find images to wordlessly juxtapose wealth and poverty.  There aren't many movies I'd recommend, but Samsara is worth a peek (Thanks for bringing it to Peace House, Alex!).

Back in the aisles, if I can regain my thoughts and prayers for all the people represented around me as household products, I then get lost in wonder about all those generic brands.  There is a lot of coordination going on behind-the-scenes of any single aisle.  How do these big box stores have connections to make men's marino wool hiking socks and Himalayan pink salt and hair regrowth treatment?  And stock it at hundreds (Costco) or thousands (Walmart) of locations, with their cookie-cut buildings strewn all over the US and world?

The economy is truely global for the first time in history.  Around the clock, resources are pulled from one corner of the earth and labor from another, then the final product is sold somewhere else.  Because this process has been developed out of public view over several generations, and is obscured by bright, exciting marketing, it generally goes unnoticed and unquestioned.  But as any homeowner would know, it is the unseen places that threaten to decay.  We can't see how coltan is mined, or in what conditions clothing is sewn together, or if chocolate and coffee are truely being equally exchanged for monetary compensation. The opportunity for moral decay in these systems is huge and injustices are very difficult to catch or eradicate.

In addition, many of the products we consume don't actually require the distances they travel.  Why can I buy lettuce from California, furniture from Sweeden, and honey from Malaysia, in Virginia, where we grow lettuce, build furniture, and keep bees?  Lanza del Vasto, founder and visionary of this faithful community of the Ark, has penned around 60 books and other written works.  Eary on, in Nouvelles de l'Arche, he encouraged, "Find the shortest, simplest way between the earth, the hands, and the mouth."  The statement specifically refers to food, but the idea can be applied to any of the objects we use daily.  To me, his exhortation means making life "fathomable" to any average person.  As an average person myself, I cannot fathom the systems that brought me the sweater I'm wearing, much less the drywall or the electricity powering the water heater in my house in Harrisonburg.  (Not to mention all the systems that make a blog possible...!)

I can't help but speculate that an average peasant living several hundred years ago could at least imagine how to produce each of their their household items, if not have many of the skills to create the items as well.  Can an average person today even fathom 25% of their household items?  We would have to be experts in the industrial processes that allow us to transform petroleum into insect repellent and candles and artificial food dyes and many varieties of fabric and aspirin and house paint and lipstick and fertilizer and linoleum and soap and nail polish and vitamin capsules and car and bike tires and transparent tape and shoe polish and antihistamines and most plastics and...

The Ark advocates for an economic philosophy called subsidiarité (subsidiarity), based on the principle that the most just and viable economic system is found in the smallest scale possible.  Though it seems that general interest in small, local systems is growing, it is often very difficult to find or recreate local systems providing our basic needs and finer desires.  A myth of complete self-sufficiency has arisen as a reaction to the hidden decay of the global economy, which has driven scores of idealistic youth to burn out, trying to provide all their own needs and desires.  A single person cannot be a village!  Would I be too bold to claim that this type of self-sufficiency has never existed?  Picture it: between myself and a husband, equally committed to a life that would be possible in the Kingdom of God, thus seeking freedom from systems of oppression, we cannot cover the vast trades of clothing, food, shelter, medicine, transportation, and entertainment from beginning to end.  That is an unfathomable life!

Image found in online search.

So in considering subsidiarity, a single person or solitary family providing everything for themselves is the smallest scale, but is not possible.  The current global system has certainly proved itself possible, but it's certainly not small.  Somewhere between these two, we find a section of the spectrum where simple meets possible, where we find our finer needs and basic desires met easily.  At this point we have to say finer needs and basic desires, instead of the other way around, because some of our finer desires in the 21st century are likely impossible without the global economy.

The community here at the Ark is quite small.  Four families left the mother community together around 11 years ago to begin a new location with Lanza del Vasto's vision.  Two of the four families decided to withdraw early on.  The remaining four adults, with five children under the age of 10 between them, eventually found this land, Guenvez, and began building up the infrastructure in the shell of old chicken houses and ramshackle barns, for housing, bread baking, a chapel, and a market garden.  In the mother community, the families had grown accustomed to hand-washing their clothes (and cloth diapers!), plowing their fields with horses, and heating their own bath and dish water as needed, among many other low-technology or fossil-fuel-free ways of life.  This was easily possible with built-in systems and the support of so many other people.  Because they were basically beginning from scratch here, with only a small pool of human energy to draw from, they have made some temporary compromises on their prefered way of life.

Although they have had to implement some higher technologies than they would like here at Guenvez, they are always careful to consider the smallest scale possible for any given activity in order to live into their ideal economic vision.  For example, to fell and split firewood by hand from the woods surrounding us is the smallest system, but not practical at this stage of the community, with so few people.  They have a chainsaw as a compromise, which is a smaller system than either buying all their firewood or heating their homes with gas or electricity, and allows them to continue to practice living in a way that makes for a smoother transition back to harvesting wood with human energy.

In another compromise, the community owns a small tractor.  Benoit could easily let the scale of the market garden grow to what is capable with a tractor, but with strong intention of eventually using horses again, and all the necessary implements stored in one of the long barns, Benoit plans the market garden in a scale possible with horses.  Robert uses the tractor to plow the grain fields in the same manner.  He sees that buying all his grain to avoid using a tractor himself, would not stop the use of a tractor, since any farmer he bought from would use one.  And as with harvesting wood and the market garden, this gives Robert a chance to continue practicing all the systems and yearly rhythms having to do with growing grain while the community is not yet stable enough to support horses.  The community lives with great hope and anticipation to transition out of the technologies they have accepted as a compromise, back to ways they practiced living together for over a decade in southern France.

For seven billion people to obtain a lifestyle with all the 21st century's finer desires, using the earth's resources and producing waste like Americans, we would need the resources of 4.1 earths to sustain us.  Peering through a biblical lens, the American standard of living is inherently more akin to taking the place of honor at the banquet (Mark 12:38-40) than becoming the servant of all (Mark 9:35).  It's a standard of living that isn't attainable for everyone and requires whole classes of servants to maintain.

Jesus said that the poor will always be among us (John 12:8), but is it ok for us to benefit from the systems that create and maintain an ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor?  Yet every issue of injustice is so convoluted that any attempt to "fast" from even a single injustice (Isaiah 58:6) has to be equally nuanced and requires much creativity.  Moral decay generally goes unseen and the village-sized systems of support have all but disappeared.  In addition, pre-industrial-era living knowhow is slipping away or completely lost.  Forget making our own clothing fabrics or building materials, now we're so far removed that some people can't use a plain ol' knife until age 30!

But I want to live in a way that doesn't cause suffering!  That doesn't require pollution!  How can my daily choices and actions live into the Kingdom of God - that is, righteousness/justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17)?  The Kingdom of God is near... it's among us!  I can see what I want but I don't know how to get there.  Instead of answers, I just have a lot of thoughts dredged up when I walk through aisles taller than my house in Walmart and Costco.  And now, E.Leclerc.

_____________________________________________________________

I hope this post gives a window into why Nico and I are making certain lifestyle choices.  Please hear that my goal in letting these thoughts flow out of my mind and into written word is not to change your life, but to share why we're changing ours.  And we're not changing ours to point our fingers at people who aren't making the same choices.  We are so grateful for all our family and friends, whether you make the same choices or not!  We deeply appreciate you and need your support!  :)

SNL skit or my real life? Sketch 4: Pardon madame, my "b".

When we arrived in France in November and opened the suitcases we'd sent way back last August, it felt like Christmas morning for all but one thing.  Between the children's books and winter clothes, I found a single sheet of paper: the detailed directions for how to properly file our paperwork with the OFII - the French office of immigration and integration.  This was a heart-sinker because a fuzzy cloud of confusion surrounded the OFII form for us.

Image found in online search.

The French embassy website, and the OFII form itself, were both very clear that we'd run into serious problems for not turning it in, yet when I tried to include the form with our second visa application at the end of September, it was handed back to me by the angry man within the stack of papers he deemed superfluous.  Just outside the embassy immediately after the appointment, I realized I still had the OFII form, so I quickly returned to ask why it wasn't taken.  Without explaining, the angry man acted like it wasn't important, but took it anyway.  When we eventually received our visas in the mail, not only was the OFII form not returned to us in the envelope, as the website and form directions clearly state, but we were given no further information or direction replacing this very-necessary-sounding step, with very-undesirable-sounding consequences (you know, colossal fines and/or jail time) if we failed to follow through.

In our apartment here in France, I skimmed over the OFII form directions to find any insight into the situation.  Perhaps if the form isn't returned to you, you're off the hook?  Nothing mentioned such an easy out.  Instead, I learned that as soon as the form was received by the OFII office, we would begin a process that could take up to a couple months to finish, and the entire process must be completed within three months of arrival.

So what could I do?  Everything in me wanted to ignore the direction page, blaming the French embassy for not returning our form if we got into trouble.  But, being a mature adult now, that just didn't seem wise, so I gathered the best confidence and patience I could muster and emailed the good ol' French embassy in Washington DC.  Beginning the subject line with the word, "URGENT", I got the quickest response ever, an email appearing in my inbox only two hours and forty-eight minutes later (though since I wasn't expecting such a swift reply, I didn't check email again for a couple days).  Here is the actual response I received:

Dear Madam, 

A long stay visa "temporaire" 4 months has been given to you. For such visa, you don't have to go to the OFII. 

Best regards, 

Visa section
CGF Washington

4... what?  But the dates clearly printed on our visas were "du/from 27-10-17 au/to 27-10-18".  Did they mean four months within one year?  Why didn't they communicate this to us?  I just sat and stared at the screen, wracking my brain for any memory of interaction with the visa section that would help me understand this shocking information.  I re-read the short and sour message over and over to be sure what I was seeing.  I may have yelled, "NO!" a bunch of times.  My brain attempted to formulate possible options of how we could stay in France for the duration of the apprenticeship, but there was no obvious low-hanging fruit.  And above all, my heart sank to my feet because we were here, we made it across the ocean with all our stuff, and now with a new home all set up, we were settling in.  This was confusing and terrible news.

The above email response re-sparked our restless wonder: what was really going on behind the scenes of the French embassy?  A kind of anxious conspiracy had begun to grow in our minds after our two experiences applying for the visa.  What was the real reason we were denied the first time?  Did the angry man not take our OFII form with our second application on purpose?  Then did he shred it instead of add it to our file as soon as we left?  After all, we knew our case was a bit of a square peg in a round hole.  Maybe they just didn't want to deal with it.

A freighter is an affordable way
to travel, and uses less fossil fuels
than an airplane.
Image found in online search.

On the bright side of all this, we can't help but look forward to a one month boat ride home, west across the Atlantic on a freighter departing from Bremerhaven in mid-March, even if it's eight months sooner than we planned.  The stars will be amazing, and maybe we'll see whales and dolphins!

Just kidding, keep reading!  This story has a happy ending!

After getting advice from several folks in the community, weighing out our options, and making plans to go to the Mairie (town hall) to try to apply for some other sort of residency permit, Nico and I decided to email the embassy back for more information.  Namely, we asked how we were supposed to know we were only given a four month visa when we requested a year, and the dates on the visa itself were for one year.  This second query was again answered with a remarkably quick reply - five hours and six minutes later:

Madam,
the visa is indeed for one year (sorry there was a typo in our last answer). It remains however that a "visa de long séjour temporaire" do not need the OFII; you are allowed to stay in France for the duration of the visa and then need to leave the country.
Sincerely 

Embassy of France
Visa Section

Upon reading this news, I was again left staring at the screen in utter disbelief, but this time with the opposite internal emotions.  Wouldn't "typo" mean spelling "4 months" as "4 moonths"?  Can you claim "typo" when you get someone's majorly important life details completely wrong?!  Well, who cares after all, we're free as birds and butterflies!

It was a baking day, so I printed the email and ran to the boulangerie (bakery) to deliver the humerous news of great joy to Nicolas.  I wanted to call our parents right away, but some quick math told me that at 4am on the US east coast, this was not a good time, even for such a message of freedom.

So, we're here!  We're really here now!!  And to keep the embassy humor equal, how about a quick story of the US embassy in Paris?

Nico and I were approved to drive the community's car if we would do the research and action steps to legally sit behind the wheel.  This, as everything, turned out to be easier said than done.  I discovered online that we need an international driver's licence OR a certified French translation of our Virginia driver's licence.  Opting for the latter, Robert suggested we call the United States embassy, as surely they'd have connections to a certified translator or two.

The closest US embassy is in Paris.  I called them one Wednesday afternoon, just after 2:30pm in case they'd taken on the French custom of a two hour lunch break, sometime between the hours of 11:30am and 2:30pm.  I listened to all the menu items and found one called, "Driving in France".  Perfect!  But it was only a recording of the same information I had read on the internet, so I found my way to the operator.

I began, "Hello, I'm living in France for a year and need to get my driver's license translated..."

"Ok yes, sure, just a minute," the operator responded quickly.

"Thank you," I said to the transfer tones, logically imagining that I was being forwarded to a translator or perhaps someone whose job description includes helping US citizens drive in France.  I was surprised to find the phone answered by the same automated welcome message and menu options I first heard.  "Hmmm..." I groaned and listened to all the options again in case one was obviously useful.  Finding none, I pressed the buttons to go back to the operator.  She didn't answer and the call hung up.  Wondering if she had caller ID or had just stepped away, I decided to try again.  When she answered, I attempted a more straight-forward tack, "Hello, I need a certified English-French translator..."  But she broke in again, "Yes, just a minute," and transferred me again to the menu options!

"What? No." I told the friendly automation and called the operator a fourth time. Assuming caller ID, I dove in quickly when she answered, "Don't send me away! You've sent me to the menu twice and I don't know what to do with it.  What menu option do you recommend for a French translator?"

"Just send an email to the embassy," she answered, ready to move on.  Which begs the question, why didn't she tell me this in the first place?  I prefered to talk to a person to solve this problem rather than use the internet, in favor of human-to-human interactions and more concrete life experiences, the same reason that frequent computer use is discouraged here at the Ark.  In addition, reflecting on my recent attempts to email embassies about non-urgent topics, I was encouraged to pry a little harder.

"Internet is hard for me to get to," I replied, "are there any certified English/French translators at the embassy, or that the embassy recommends?"  This flustered the poor woman.  "Listen, I don't have that kind of information, I'm the operator. You have to send the embassy an email."  Since I had hoped she would have that kind of information because she was the operator, I was a bit disappointed, but decided to drop it and thanked her anyway, wishing her a good afternoon.

Before trying the operator's suggestion, assuming it wouldn't necessarily be as easy as simply sending the embassy an email, I tried a local route to find a certified French translator.  Marion agreed to help me call the Mairie (town hall) to find a local translator, and we compared our schedules to find a time between community rhythms, garden work, naps, and the large swath of time in which the folks at the Mairie would possibly be on lunch break.

We met at 10:40 on a weekday morning, and the Mairie sent us to the Préfecture, who in turn sent us to the Tribunal (court), who had just closed for (an early?) lunch by the time we got to them at 11am.  Marion rolled her eyes and said, "It's always like this. They don't make it easy."  We re-compared our schedules and made another date to call back after the long lunch break.  By then, an automated message answered to say that too many people were calling at this time and the call was dropped.  Marion generously offered to call back later without me and she'd let me know what they said.

US embassy in Paris.
Image found in online search.

Ultimately this route hit a dead end, so I emailed the US embassy after all, having at least tried to connect directly with a person.  And the US embassy answered the same day with a list of recommended translators!  Yay!

So at this point, the path seems clear: call several official translators to get quotes, and then pick one... but who can trust clear paths in the bureaucracy anymore?  We're still en route to figuring this out, hopefully without a 5th SNL sketch... :)

Out and about

Just about every Sunday, we join the community to a Catholic mass.  Each town in the area has a church, and they take turns each Sunday on a rotation.  When we went to the several-hundred-year-old church in Tréguennec for the mass, we had to stop by the beach on the way home, since it's so close!

The land surrounding the beach is federally protected, so the natural beauty is
preserved.  We saw some hunters and their dogs searching for rabbits as we
walked down a path between low shrubs towards the dunes in the distance.

The beach is mostly sand, but there's also a smattering of beautiful rocks!
We all went home with our pockets filled with striped
rocks and spotted rocks, large and tiny, smooth and rough.

We were there at low tide... the beach is huge!
Yanni finds shells and Nico and Moisés run around in the distance.

Everybody's happy!

Christiane took us to visit her friends, Helena and Vincent, about an hour and a half away.  Helena is American, so their children are fully bilingual, French/English.  It was fun for Moisés to have some buddies he could easily talk to!!!  We visited for the better part of a Sunday, and they took us to Pointe de Dinan, a beautiful area near their house.

We saw a lot of surfers here.

A view of the French Atlantic coast.

A natural bridge, beaten out by the ocean.  Instead of taking a left when
the path forked, to cross this bridge, we took a right to see...

...a gigantic stone turtle!

Moisés and Yanni play with a friend in English!

We worked Nico's schedule to have a Saturday off (the community works 9:30am to 1pm) and took a walk to see a dairy farm, whose owner had invited Nico to come visit.  We took three wrong turns, but it was never really a problem because we were walking through such beautiful countryside.

Beginning our journey: the road outside of our house.

A beautiful thatched roof nearby.

(Unedible) ripening berries... in winter!

We saw several different colors of blooming flowers...
I'm not used to seeing such variety in winter!

We found a beautiful old communal laundry station built into the side of a
bridge.  We imagined people gathering to wash their clothes and chat.
Here, Nico and Moisés pretend to wring out their laundry.

Joel took us to the port at Guilvinec, a 20 or 30 minute drive straight south.  This ancient port still has fisher boats coming in and out, and a large market where we bought some fresh huître (oysters) to eat raw with vinegar.

Climbing the stairs from the port to the market.

The coast is rough and rocky.  Joel told us that this type of rock is known
to be especially good for millstones.  People used to cut a circle in the rock
at low tide, jam chunks of wood in the crack, and when the tide came in,
the wood would swell up and pop the stone out...!  We found some
perfect circles where this probably happened.

More introduction, in photos!

Welcome to the Farm at Gwenves!

La Boulangerie

The Bakery

Here is the bakery from the outside.  The wood is piled high in the foreground
to be sorted and dried (under the overhang) to fire up the oven twice per week.
They are beautifully re-building this barn, section by section.

Here is the bakery, in wood and cob, and the oven in stone, just beyond.

Here's where the oven meets the bakery.

Above the oven it reads, "I am the bread of life," to remind the
bakers who they serve.  The words are written in Breton,
the native language of Bretagne, this formerly Celtic region.

Team Robert and Nico load the sourdough into the oven!  They dance through
this routine together over and over, placing upwards of 40 loaves in the oven:
Puff of flour, dump the dough, pass off the basket, score the dough, open the
oven, slide in the dough, close the oven, puff of flour...
This video is for Avery.  :)

On the other side of the barn, we see the mill peeking out.  Inside the small
room, there are two large electric mills, often running, to grind organic flour from
wheat, rye, spelt, corn, rice, and buckwheat, which is sold at the local food coop.

L'Atelier

The Workshop

Another barn, just across the street from the bakery and mill, is also being
rebuilt from within, piece by piece.  The first construction project was their
workshop.  On one end of a long room, we find large and small looms,
treadle-powered sewing machines, and tools to card and spin wool.

The center of the atelier is a shoe shop and leatherworking space.

Finally, next to the shoe shop is a woodworking area, complete with just
about any handtool you can think of.  In this photo, Robert teaches Nico and
Marion how to make wooden buttons, on Gandhi Day.

Le Jardin
The Garden

David harvests spinach, épinard, in a greenhouse.

In the next greenhouse over, Elisabeth and Marion harvest mâche.  Baby
potato plants, pommes de terre, are hiding under the white covering behind them.

Heika (a visitor from Germany) and Christiane
prepare leeks, poireaux, for market.

Benoit plants onion seeds, oignons.

Two non-gardeners make pancakes out of abundant batter.

Nos Amis Animaux!

Our Animal Friends!

We love to visit Dewal and Keeta, Joel's horses, and feed them grass or clover.

We had three days where temperatures were below freezing.  On the
second day, Joel found a frozen lizard and offered that we could revive it in
a box in our house... :)  We were delighted it thawed out alright and released
it back into the wild.

You can have up to 250 chickens without a permit in France.
Here are a handful of the Ark's 249 laying hens.

Here's the back end of the roost.  Yanni loves to come here in the
mornings to watch freshly laid eggs roll out from behind the wall.

Two of the six cows.  Currently, there is no milk production,
but soon enough a few new calves will be born...

D'autres Endroits Importants

Other Important Places

Here is one of my good friends.
We meet often throughout the week.

The temporary office space (phone and internet) is in the white trailer here.
In front, on the benches under the overhang, we meet for communal prayers.
In this winter photo, you can't tell that the foliage growing up the columns are
rose bushes.  We look forward to seeing the plants grow and bloom each day.  :)

Gandhi Day

Lanza del Vasto founded the Ark with a goal to live non-violently in every aspect of life.  This vision was hugely influenced by his faith in Jesus and his stay at an ashram with Gandhi in India.  Gandhi, who renamed Lanza "Shantidas" meaning "Servant of Peace", is considered the grandfather of the Ark.

Lanza did not go to India in search of "her famous spirituality"¹, rather he had, in his own words, "converted and not without difficulty to [his] own religion [Christianity], and [he] had enough with meditating the scriptures and applying the commandments."¹  He could tell World War II was on the horizon and desperately found himself searching for

[...]a doctrine of just peace, a peace without internal contridiction and that did not have the germ of it's own destruction, a peace that did not naturally engender war! [...]
     A method for defending without offending, to stop evil without adding a new evil that redoubles it, to prevent other's injustices by some way other than committing more... A new way, a human way of resolving human conflicts.
     Who practices and teaches that?  Only one, Gandhi.
     He, the Hindu, the pagan, the father of pariahs, the defendor of the oppressed, the liberator of his people and, in principle, of all people, is who contributes complement to the teaching of Christ on this point, because the gospel without non-violence is like salt that has lost it's flavor...²

Gandhi Day is on January 30, commemorating the day he was assassinated, and it's a reverent day of fasting here at the Ark.  We met together in our nicest, whitest clothes at 9:30am for a half hour group meditation in the communal kitchen.  Then in silence, we read books by or about Gandhi and mended clothes, to the clicking of two spinning wheels, transforming pillows of sheep's wool into skeins of yarn.  Yanni and Moisés joined us for as much as possible, but came and went with Nico as their needs required.

Benoit (left) and Robert (right) spin wool on spinning wheels.
Elisabeth (center) teaches Nico, Moi, and Yan how to card wool.

David reads a book about Gandhi.
Every now and then, someone would read a quote,
from or about Gandhi, outloud to the pensive room.

Christiane, a trained calligrapher (or Kalligraph in Germany,
where she studied), works on the community's newsletter.

In the foreground, Robert spins wool on a spinning wheel.
In the background, the skills are being transmitted to
Marion, who is practicing with a drop spindle.

Moisés learns to spin with Robert.

At one o'clock, we broke the silence and made our way to the atelier (workshop) in a barn across the street.  Two years ago, when we visited the Ark for a week, the long, beautiful room didn't yet exist.  Elisabeth had given us a tour, and coming to the barn, she showed us the dusty corner where one day a space would be built to house looms, large and small, and equipment to process wool from raw material to yarn to finished products.  The vision she shared is now a reality.  The room holds all the tools necessary for three different trades: woodworking on one end, a cobbler's workspace in the middle, and weaving in the back.  It's one of my favorite places to visit on the farm.  Sometimes I step in and let the heavy door click shut behind me, just to listen to the stillness and marvel at all the potential that surrounds me.  It's a peaceful and sacred-feeling space.

On Gandhi Day, we brought life to all the workspaces at once...

...Robert taught Nico and Marion how to make wooden buttons...

Robert marks where to drill the holes.

Marion sands a finished button.

...Benoit went back and forth between the woodworking and cobblering tools, fashioning poignées pour un tiroir (drawer handles)...

Benoit, surrounded by shoe molds of every size.

...Elisabeth taught a handful of us how to card wool with a large, swinging apparatus, punctured through with nails all bent in the same direction to pass the wool through as the fibers are aligned...

Heika pulls fluffs of wool from the black bag and
drops them into the space between the swing and base.

...then we learned how to replenish yarn on a shuttle for a loom, and finally, she taught us how to pass the shuttle back and forth across the loom, pushing the correct pedals with our feet to separate the rows of yarn in the proper order.

I got to try my hand at weaving!  I even ran into a couple
problems that I felt quite pround to troubleshoot and
solve myself while Elisabeth was teaching someone else. :)

A guiding principle at the Ark is transmission of skills, the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next.  At the Ark, Gandhi Day is celebrated by carving out one day in the busy schedule to take a break from regular work and share a taste of these traditional skills to those of us who have never experienced working with our hands in these ways.


_________________________________________________________


¹ del Vasto, L. (1982). El Arca tenia por Vela una Viña. (p. 13). Spain: Ediciones Sígueme, S.A.
² del Vasto, L. (1982). El Arca tenia por Vela una Viña. (p. 16). Spain: Ediciones Sígueme, S.A.

I translated these quotes myself, with some liberal help from Google Translate and Nicolás Melas.