Life at Camont

June days on the Gascon ranch are full of comings and goings. Workshops and students, workers and friends; the newly hatched and the unruly woolly critters. Best of all Camont loves it when the table is full of old friends… and new.

This month Camont’s table has been full of good friends- fabulous food photographer Tim Clinch, witty & sweet  David Lebowitz, the Bleu Queen of Lectoure Denise Lambert, the flowering pouce verte of Lisa Maiklem, Camont’s own eagle eye on the world Erika J., and my own sister tita-dear, Steph Hill.

We’ve all been glued to the basse-cour (barnyard) as our Gascon Noir rooster Henri IV has held court while a late spring clutch of his offspring arrived including a snow white chick and seven little fluffy black siblings. Next we assisted our new Rouen Clair duck and drake into  parenthood- momduck left the nest after the first two hatched, leaving us to rescue four remaining eggs in various stages of breaking free. Happy to say all survived our impromptu oven incubator and were out swimming in the pond within 24 hours of fluffying out.

Our two lambs Margot and Marie are turning into sheep. I get lots of comments about how I couldn’t possibly eat them if I have named them. Hmm… sorry folks. that’s 4 gigots d’agneau you’re looking at as well as a few racks of chops, ribs and collar meat. We’ll be including lamb butchery as well as pork in our new Artisan Butchery & Charcuterie course this fall. The French are famous for great lamb dishes, navarin d’agneau is a spring favorite so let me know if you have questions regarding cuts of lamb.

The potager is finally getting under control thanks to Helpxer’s Max, Katie, Larissa and Andrew. Lisa M is overseeing the planting in an expanded land share program to produce enough organic flowers and produce to create some Gascon Kitchen conserves to sell at the Nerac market. Wait til you see the colors that will pop next month! Later this August and September, we’ll be creating my favorite figgy BBQ sauce as well reaping the harvest of a hundred heritage tomato plants.

With all the comings there are goings as well. The everyday life force that scratches, pecks and munches this fertile Garonne River valley field also has a built in end in sight. What we celebrate in growing, hatching and raising we do with the food at the table as its goal. When you look at our pictures and read our poetic thoughts, remember that we, too, are cultivating  a full circle approach to living- where “Life at Camont” is not a sentence for the wicked but a creative way of  passing through and touching this French dirt. We teach the artisan way of life. Come join us.