NEEDLING

A COUPLE OF DAYS IN AUVERGNE

Packing. Packing. Taking it easy but going about it non-stop. I got back to Paris on the train 1h¼ behind schedule and two days early.

Had a great day yesterday with my friend Claire, we started our day after breakfast going to a small dairy farm a couple of kilometers from the village of Orcival in the Puy-de-Dôme where we bought half a St. Nectaire Fermier, and visited the cheese cellar of dairy-farmer and cheese-maker Mr. Gratadeix, where the cheese ferments for five to six weeks before it’s sold.

The cheese is produced twice a day right after the milking of the cows. It has to be made with whole fresh milk. The cheese is then pressed for several days before it is taken to the cheese cellar and aged for several weeks. No additives. All natural Non-Pasteurized cheese. Mr. Gratadeix started digging the cheese cellar in 1946 at twenty centimeter per day until he reached the total of 100 meters of narrow tunnels large enough for shelving on each side to place the cheese and one man to walk in between the two shelves. The rock deep into the hill keeps the same cool temperature year round, which is pertinent for the perfection of this uncooked, light nut colored and tasting cheese. (Did I forget to say the tunnel is dug into rock, nothing but rock, not a sprinkle clue of earth? All pure rock.)

When you walk in there you can see all the different levels of fermenting. From the pure beige white of the fresh cheese straight from the press, merely three days since the milk was gushing from the utters, to the final level of fermentation where the small wheels of cheese are fully covered with hair-like gray and green mushrooms. The smell is wonderful. The smell of life because fermentation is the proof of life.

We then walked on up the hill which seemed to me like the Himalayas, but which was really just a couple hundred meters of ascension until we made it to the lake at the top. Five kilometers and 1202 meters above the sea level (Orcival is at 878 meters) all equipped with our half a wheel of Saint-Nectaire, one bottle of red Saint-Pourçain wine, quarter wheel of fresh rye bread and some dry sausage, dressed in our city clothes and with only one water bottle to the two of us, we took two hours… but what a climb… once up there walking along the gravel path with fields on each side, the farmers hard at work making bails of hay, you can see the whole “chaînes des puys” in the distance.

Once we arrived at the lake de Servières, we took our shoes and sox off, unwrapped our much deserved picnic and breathed in the fresh air looking at this small lake 1200 meters up there surrounded by pine forests. Though we hardly crossed anybody on the hiking path, up at the lake there were a few families installed also picnicking, but they came by mostly by car and at least one donkey! A young couple in their thirties and their two preteens girl and boy, rented a donkey ten kilometers away in Aydat and were walking their first of six days of hiking with a donkey who carried a good part of the load.

After only three quarters of an hour, we started our way downwards, this time going by the gîte d’étape on the main road to fill our water bottle and have an espresso. The innkeeper, a woman in her fifties, and a German tourist couldn't understand each other. I asked the man if he spoke English. Yes, he said. I then tried to explain to this German man what a galette is, and how it is different from a crêpe . I couldn’t think of the right words, so I told him it was like a crêpe or a thin pancake made with buckwheat flour… I explained that it is a “salt” dish rather than a “sugar” dish, meaning you eat a galette with eggs, ham et cetera rather than with sugar, jam, chocolate or other sweets.

After our coffee, we took back to the hiking path to return to Orcival. It took half an hour less to go down, and so we arrived much before our taxi, and sat down at one of the local café / hotels for a couple of drinks, during which a hail storm came down and destroyed all the flower pots throughout the village.

The office de tourism said there were thunderstorms all day the next day – today – so I decided to take the train back to Paris instead of risking having to stay in a hotel the whole next day figuring three good days in Auvergne was already a damn good thing. During these few days I ate some great food, gained even more weight, had a couple of fun walks in the countryside with my friend, invented stories about the people we saw, had loads to drink, laughed a lot, and saw some good country.

What else could I want?