This is not what memories should be made of

I found the idea of a workaway holiday when I was exploring ways to spend more time in France without paying exorbitant amounts of money. The principle of workaway seemed simple enough; host families post on the site looking for people to come help out at their farm/buisness/house project etc. and in return for five hours of work a day they offer to feed/house the  visiting person.  As I was scrolling through the hosts I found a horse rescue centre in France and all my childhood dreams of working with horses came crashing back. I decided it was the perfect place to spend a month or more during my trip. A place where I could continue practicing my French and get to learn more about horses while I was at it. 

Unfortunately my workaway experience started off on the wrong foot and just never really got back on the rails for me. When I arrived at the train station, I was met not by the person I was expecting but by a friend of theirs. She explained that the owner of the horse rescue had had a horse die and couldn’t meet me until later. My actual host arrived several hours later seemingly on the edge of a breakdown. She took one look at me and said... You won't stay here. You won't last long... Talk about a warm welcome. She then proceeded to give a run down of all the things that had gone wrong at the rescue... 1 horse dead, 3 more dying, chickens murdered by a fox, no money to pay to have the dead horse to be removed etc. etc. Uh ....Oh....

We went to her car, I went around to get in the passenger side only to find that the steering wheel was in the way. Huh? She said that they had brought the car over from England and something that I had been missing so far clicked into place and became glaringly obvious - I had been here 4 hours and not heard or spoken a word of French.  It turns out they were English expats who had moved to France. She spoke about the same level or less french than I did.  So much for the french element of the stay. 

Hard to use my french textbook either ;)

We started driving towards the farm on some dark, narrow, small town French roads and I hung on for dear life. I will give her the benefit of the doubt and say that my unease with her driving was due to the perspective change of being a passenger on the wrong side and not anything else.  She warned me that the place had not been cleaned in 3 weeks as she just hadn't had the time. I said that it wasn't a big deal,  that I was used to a messy room anyways, but the foreboding pit in my stomach seemed to get a little heavier with each minute that passed. When we arrived at the farm I realized we had very different ideas of what a little dirty meant. 

Fast forward a few hours and I was huddled in my bed battling with a cat for my pillow space and surrounded by my suitcases which I had purposefully not unpacked. I was in a slight panic thinking there was no way in hell I could make it a day here never mind a month. Could I get back on a train the next morning? How could I get there? What would I say? Where would I go?  I eventually calmed myself down and decided to give it a few days.  I made it two weeks. I am not really sure if it got better or it just proves that you really can adapt to pretty much anything.  

Time spent outside the house was intriguing, enjoyable and also a little overwhelming. The moment you stepped outside the house there was fresh air, large green fields and animals a plenty. You could easily run into anything from chickens to goats to sheep to horses. The farm was home to 

3 goats (one of which was evil)

plotting his next way to terrorize me

 one sheep (that thought it was a goat)


 7 or so chickens

in the house

wanting to be in the house

 and 40+ horses and ponies  (and one mule) of various sizes. 

 After being animal-less for the last 3 or so months I was in heaven. Everywhere I turned there was something to interact with and every five seconds an animal was bumping into you or following you around trying to get food. 

I quickly realized just how little I knew about horses. Reading books and doing a few occasional trail rides does not an expert make. These horses were also light years away from the horses I was used to seeing in Vancouver neatly tucked away in stables and well used to being pet and pampered. The majority of the horses and ponies ran free in the pastures and were quite happy in their pack of around 30 or so horses. My sole interest to them was that I opened the gate to the food in the morning and at night. They were not even remotely interested in my pats or my desire to play with them unless I had a carrot in hand. 

This mother and daughter duo had a sixth sense for when I had carrots in my pocket

Feeding time with them was quite an experience as I can only compare it to a schoolyard crossed with a bull running. The horses had their cliques and their pecking order and the kicks would fly and horses would charge each other to get to the "best" food. I learned quickly how to spot an impending fight over a bale I had just placed and to skiddadle out of the way. It was frightening when one horse would charge another and a chain reaction would start and soon you are standing in the midst of 20 or so 1000+ pound animals stampeding around in a not very big barnyard. 

Speedy

This poor fellow broke my heart. Most of the horses on the farm were abandoned or given up because of age and so most of the horses in this free running pack were on the geriatric side. Speedy in contrast was a young (big) boy with wobbler syndrome which is pretty much what it sounds like. Due to some sort of nervous system defect he wobbles when he walks making him non-rideable. He didn’t fit in with the pack and was bullied. We had to pay attention to make sure he was getting enough to eat as the horses would push him away and despite being the biggest guy there he was a big softie.  

There was also a barn full of "poorlies" or horses that needed special care. There were many different reasons, anything from foot problems, to heart problems to needing a special diet. A large portion of the day was consumed with taking care of these guys. We had two that would go down every night and being both very large and very weak, they were unable to get up. It would take over 2 hours per horse but with a winch and a lot of manual effort she could get them up. Unfortunately, on my second day there we couldn't get the fellow with heart failure up anymore as he was just too weak and he had to be put down. This lady though, with an infected foot was doing a little better when I left, fingers crossed. 

Several of the horses and ponies had free run of the yard and they often got into mischief or tried to come visit in the house. 

Self Service at the carrot patch

 I greatly enjoyed helping out with the horses although the owner was a one women machine and did mostly everything herself. Many times she would forget I was there and apart from throwing some hay in stalls or filling water troughs I was not really doing a whole lot. I thought for sure that I would spend my days mucking out stalls but I never even mucked out a single one. Unfortunately, I don't think she had the time or inclination to teach me the basics of horsemanship.

I did have to figure it out by myself one day when she went out for lunch with friends and a bunch of the horses sensed an opportunity for a prison break. They trampled through a fence and off they went down the road to a neighboring farm. I got them back inside the fences easily enough and was congratulating myself while fixing the patch of fence they had escaped through. With my back turned I swear I heard the ring leader laugh and boom, they had bowled through a different patch of fence and lead an additional 3 more horses back down the road.  Four hours later I had managed to drag all 6 of them back to the farm one at a time using some carrots and a rope and had imprisoned them all in the barn. This was my… I hate horses right now face.

Some of escape artists back behind bars. The brown one is the ring leader

It was when I headed inside the house that things got decidedly less enjoyable. Now I don't proclaim to be the neatest person in the world. Just ask my parents or anyone who has seen the inside of my room on any given occasion. However, apparently I do have limits on messiness and hygiene and this household was beyond them.  9 cats and 3 dogs, a spider colony, and more mold than I have ever seen in my life is apparently where I draw the line. While a couple of the cats were enjoyable lap warmers most of them ran loose in the house and particularly in the kitchen eating and peeing at will.

How many cats can you spot...? 1...2..3...4..5..6

...7...8....

 
 and last but not least #9


and they are very helpful in the kitchen....

heating up our baguettes, Fresh from the oven cat

Helping us cook the eggs

The house quite often reeked as there was underground heating that made the floor nice and warm…and vaporized the cat urine. Under floor heating is nice in theory but kind of useless when the floor is so dirty you don't take off your shoes. If you walked around in socks they turned black within about 5 seconds and they stuck to random mysterious stains constantly.  This was my solution - as stylish as it was. 

The first day I was there I naively thought I could help out and clean up a bit. But there was nothing to clean up with. No paper towels, no clean rags, sponges looked like this... On more than one occasion I washed glasses with my fingers because that was the cleanest thing around. Cleaning was also a losing battle because if you washed the floor two seconds later a cat had peed on it or a dog had come running in from frolicking in the manure and tracked mud and horse shit everywhere. Suffice to say there were a lot of pleasant odors. 

Many of the scary smells originated from the kitchen which is in itself a scary concept.  Perhaps the worst came from the fridge. I don't even want to know what was growing in there but anytime the fridge door opened you could smell it from anywhere in the entire house.  The cabinets were the same, packages and jars of food in various states of decomposition.  I often would open a drawer and not be able to tell what used to be inside the jars. There were also some questionable cooking/food storage practices in my mind. They either didn't have or didn’t believe in Tupperware/plastic wrap so everything - no matter what kind of leftover was stored in or on the oven and/or microwave in the pot or dish it was cooked in.  So whenever you opened the oven or microwave there was food from last night, the night before... a week ago. etc. 

The thing that really turned my stomach was one night when cooking my host dropped a peeled onion. It rolled all the way across the not even remotely clean floor and right into the big dog's mouth. He got a couple chews in before she pried it from his mouth, walked right over to the garbage can... and then walked right past it and continued cutting up that onion to put in our dinner. Bon Apetit. 

 The one that put my mom over the edge was when I sent her pictures of how our kitchen sink was regularly used .... to soak the pus out of horse bandages. This was the picture I sent her that had her gagging and sending me frantic messages.... ABORT THE MISSION. This is NOT what memories should be made of.  

I hinted earlier at a spider colony and yes there was indeed one in the bathroom. 52 spiders (Yes, I counted) had made their residence in the bathroom along with their dark, layered, been there for years webbing. It was quite unnerving going into the bathroom at first. Don't look up... Don't look up... Don't look up... I always looked up. But soon enough I just made sure they were all in their places and ignored them. Until shower time that is. Showering angered them. The usually docile spiders started crawling around and descending towards you from the ceiling. It was like something out of a horror movie. I learned how to take a really quick shower. 

My other coping method was just to drink a lot of wine. A lot. Luckily I was in France so no one judges you or sends you AA pamplets. I would stare at the not so clean wine glass and ponder just how much of a disinfectant alcohol actually is. Could it counteract all the germs I was sure were thriving in my glass. I would try and decide if it was worth it to take the first sip and if so where was the cleanest spot to do so. After much rotating and debating I would usually shut my eyes and just giver.  

All that aside, I think I could have toughed it out better if I had gotten along well with the people there.  I found it thoroughly exhausting to try and get along with my host and her father as we just did not see eye to eye on a lot of things. They loved to discuss world events and their opinions on things (aka rant) on a nightly basis. You may think I would have enjoyed that as I do like to argue. But there really is just no point in arguing with intolerance and prejudice. I spent most nights biting my tongue and trying not get involved in their discussions of how to solve the world's problems. They had a redneck mentality coupled with the conviction that they were smarter than the rest of the world who just hadn't figured it out yet. Some of their favorite things to educate me about were:

- small town living verses city living. Apparently anyone who lives in a city is stupid and wasting their money. Never mind that some people might have different preferences/lifestyles/ requirements for work... nope those are not valid reasons.   

- French. - despite having chosen to make their home in France (because it is cheaper than the UK) they enjoyed complaining about the French on any possible occasion. French electricity, French workers, French farmers, pretty much anything and everything French was terrible in their opinion. As such, they mostly only associated with other English people who had moved over to the area as well.

- Tea drinking - apparently I am absurd for not drinking 5 or 6 cups of tea a day. My refusal to drink it on most occasions was met with general incomprehension and dissatisfaction 

- Criminals - should all be castrated and not allowed to breed. And yet apparently it was fine for a teacher to sleep with an 18 year old student. They could not wrap their head around why he had been suspended pending investigation... Ummm???

- BLOODY MUSLIMS. A lot of France is a bit on edge after the recent shootings and attacks, but I got the impression that this most recent event was only a tiny blip in their general hatred of religion, Islam in particular. If I had a dollar for the amount of times I heard "bloody muslims" or other derogatory terms I won't bother repeating, I could afford to keep travelling for another month or two. The religion topic was the one topic I just couldn't keep my mouth shut on when they would start. There was one time our "discussion" elevated to full on yelling and we ended up in brooding silence before I finally just went to bed.  Despite the fact that they had asked me if I was religious and I had responded affirmatively they still enjoyed educating me on the fact that Religion was just brainwashing and anyone who believed it was being duped. I can appreciate that there are many people in the world who probably share their views but most people also would have the tact not to repeatedly share that view when it was clearly not being received well.   

Despite my mom's assertion that this is not what memories should be made of, there were some good things and good memories that came out of my two weeks there. 

I gained an appreciation for small town life. There are some things that are just unfathomable to a North American person from a city. Like going into the bank with no identification and no bank card and coming out with money because they "know you" and will access your account just like that.  Or just dropping in for drinks unannounced and borrowing items of food from neighbors. Or my personal favorite when we needed to find a field to house some horses we literally just picked up the white pages and picked random English sounding names to phone. We just kept doing it and asking people if they might know anyone who could help. Finally one person put us in touch with another person who knew a different person and we found what we were looking for. 

I helped car wash a dog... visualize that lol!  Long story shortly summarized. Dog had appointment to get the big snip. Dog escaped and went to visit female dog friends nearby (yet again). Farmer nearby got angry and threw dog in pit full of cattle crap. Vet refused to take smelly dirty dog (shocking) and thus we used a car wash to wash the dog next door to the vet. Only in the country.

I learned why farmers and other country living people always wear jeans - lululemons and straw are not a good mix. Jeans on the other hand were amazingly impervious to the daily hay/straw/manure/mud/horse snot/cat hair etc. They stopped just short of being flea proof unfortunately.

I gained a bit of an appreciation for cats. I really enjoyed reading my book at night with a purring cat (or two) in my lap. I am still definitely a dog person but I could enjoy a cat with the right personality to go with my dog. Certainly not 9 though. THE FLEAS!!!! my leg looked like I had chicken pocks by the end of the two weeks. This fellow was not a fan of sharing his bed with me but he did like to share his fleas. 

I realized just how impressionable I am to picking up the mannerisms of people around me.  When talking with a rare French person I was told I have a southern France accent and mannerisms from my 3 months spent down there. And within two weeks I had started to say thoroughly British things like bloody and bugger (which is probably actually an improvement on the swear words I would usually use in their place). But there were also some other habits I did not want to pick up from them.

Oh and perhaps most importantly... I booked a last minute trip to Japan!!! Totally was not part of the original travel plans but I am absolutely thrilled with the way it has turned out.  I was scrolling through Facebook on my phone (or the thing with which "THEY" are watching me - as I was repeatedly told by my hosts) and I saw an old high school friend had posted that he was going to Japan and inviting others to join him. I have always wanted to go to Japan and was quite keen to get out of where I was so...WIN - WIN. It was an easy spur of the moment decision and now I am finishing off this post at the hostel in Tokyo :)