Return to the Olive Farm (The Olive Series Book 4)

by Carol Drinkwater

  I felt obliged also to offer a bottle of red wine, a rather good Bordeaux because there was little else, as compensation.

  Our wine, consumed along with the other bottles they had brought with them that morning, was probably not the best idea. After lunch, the men were visibly inebriated. The smallest of the four tripped over a bucket of water and landed on his backside.

  May had opened with a burst of searing temperatures. After months of intermittent rains, heavy, louring skies and downpours that had drenched the earth for weeks on end, summer, it seemed, was here. The following day, Thursday, I set off early, keen to spend a little time strolling about Correns village and its surrounding countryside before my noon appointment, relishing the peace away from the farm. I was really looking forward to meeting this man. In my eyes what he had achieved was a remarkable feat, and worth the outing just to hear his story, even if eventually he could not guide me because his expertise was in wine and not olives. I had looked him up on the internet the night before and as I drove the shortish distance along the A8, I considered what I had learned of this German who had captured the imagination and hearts of so many Provençal people, a race who, by nature, I had found, leaned towards xenophobia.

  Michael Latz was born of German parents in the small landlocked African state of Burundi. Burundi, one of the ten poorest countries on earth, was annexed to Germany in 1899. During the First World War, the area was conquered by forces from the Belgian Congo. At the end of the war, after the defeat of Germany, the Treaty of Versailles divided up German East Africa. The British were handed the greater part but control of Burundi, along with Rwanda, was given to the Belgians. A Belgian suzerainty until 1924, the League of Nations then issued a formal mandate granting Belgium full control of these black nations, from thereon to be known as Ruanda-Urundi. Burundi’s independence, along with that of Rwanda, was granted in 1962. A century of fighting, internal tensions, ethnic persecutions, its fight for independence both from Rwanda and Belgium, tribal differences, coups, a National Liberation Army provoking wars, followed by genocide, abuse of women, fleeing refugees – in short, the history of many post-colonial African countries – had brought Burundi to its present state of collapse resulting in a shattered economy.

  By what route had a child of such a history ended up as mayor of Correns, I asked myself.

  My journey was taking me seventy and some kilometres west of our farm. Once off the autoroute, direction Brignoles, the countryside I entered was nothing exceptional. I passed by the usual offerings of pink and beige modern villas, estates constructed swiftly to take advantage of the property boom in Provence. Eventually, I followed a sign to Le Val and began to climb a back road winding through natural oak woods. The heat was kicking in as I approached the Hôtel des vins, on the rue République, which displayed, as promised, a lovely exterior of pastel-shaded frescoes: bunches of grapes, pillars. There was a steady stream of customers, many of whom paused outside to shop at a stall selling locally produced fruit and vegetables. I might have been tempted myself had we not been growing almost the same selection at home. Within the caveau, there was a wide choice of wines, most of them reasonably priced. All were organic and all from Correns. There were also three different olive oils for sale. I was getting excited and went a little mad, filling up the entire boot of my car with rosé to take home to Michel. I tried to peer in through the barred windows of the adjacent mill – it looked derelict rather than closed for the season. It was impossible to see anything so I set off again. Now the route, still climbing, was lined with elegantly pruned olive trees. Their lightweight silvery boughs were dancing in the breeze, moving like busy fingers. I had reached a small plateau. Flat land now, save a distant valley or two populated with endemic cork and green oaks. The scenery was not remarkable, but it was wide open and had a calming effect. Its serenity seemed to take the edge off the blanket of heat. The dashboard clock in the car was registering thirty-four Celsius. It was early in the year for such temperatures.

  I turned left at the sign and began my final slow crawl into the village. Correns had been settled within a fertile plain, today a basin of vineyards. In the distance, a semi-circle of bilberry-blue mountains, a range known as the Massif du Bessillon, and it sat within La Provence verte. There were signs at the roadside telling me so.

  The greater extent of the village had grown up on the right shores of the River Argens, just as in the legend of the moonstruck fisherman. I passed by its calm waters after acres of vineyards, saw lovely curved stone bridges, old stone buildings and brightly painted houses. The long road in was promising. I turned left at a T-junction where a grocer’s store on the right was decorated with a trompe l’œil that amused me. I drew up and stepped out to photograph it. An elderly woman in Provençal costume was sitting selling baskets of garlic and tomatoes while a younger man in a green apron stood in front of a green door smiling out on to a make-believe world that was benign, good-humoured. In reality, there was no grocer about to ask directions of. An arrow pointed me left to the town hall. I carried on past it, turned left again and drew into the free car park. From there, I returned to the mairie, a three-storey, bright yellow building. Here, in this narrow main street, the tall stone buildings kept the harsh heat at bay. They would also protect against the mistral winds that blew ferociously, slicing mercilessly through the veins of this part of central southern France. Walking or talking were young men, bare torsos, in shorts. Every one of them looked as though he was an organic gardener. Everywhere I walked there were flowers. This had also been one of Latz’s initiatives: the seeding of medicinal and aromatic herbs and flower gardens. I strolled the length of the streets and discovered several fountains, alongside of which the aromatic plants were growing in recycled pieces of farming equipment. Favoured by landworkers, Renault 4s were parked outside the exteriors of houses with walls and shutters decorated in rich vibrant colours. A Provençal version of Painted Ladies! Fresh fish was being sold off the back of a large white van. A quartet of men were engrossed in conversation with the fish vendor. No women shopping; perhaps they were home preparing lunch? This was not a beautiful village – there are many down here that do answer to such a description – but there was an easygoing vibe about the place.

  My mobile began to ring. It was the mayor.

  ‘Where are you? I am running late. Go to the bar a few doors up from the town hall. I’ll be there as soon as I can. It’ll be around twelve thirty. Sorry about this.’

  I assured him that it was not a problem.

  My day was his, it belonged to Correns. My concerns for the farm were, if not drifting away, then weighing more lightly. Perhaps we should move here, I thought, and become viticulturists. I strolled over to the bar and ordered a glass of the famous Correns white wine. ‘Is it organic?’ I asked the bartender. He burst out laughing. ‘Sure, it is. We don’t serve anything else.’

  His customers were men, all were farmers or land labourers, stopping by for a noontime glass of Ricard or wine, but, in spite of lives lived in the elements, they all had clear, smooth skin. They embraced one another as they arrived or left, called easily to others across the street, everyone spoke to everyone, which in a village of eight hundred was not impossible. A couple of women appeared and took their seats. They received the same hailing welcome. I sat listening to the voices, Provençal accents, some almost impossible to comprehend. There was little other sound. The sleeping cats were silent. Nothing, save for the wind whistling softly through the narrow streets and the rattle of leaves dropping – too early in the season – from the plane trees as they scuffed the ground.

  Am I imagining this, I asked myself. This palpable joie de vivre. My wine arrived. It cost me one euro twenty, and was delicious. It was not as exceptional as a fine white burgundy but it was très buvable all the same. I noticed carved stone reliefs in the buildings, hidden interesting details. I picked up a leaflet lying on the table in front of me. It was the bar menu. It gave me a few lines about Correns’ wine history.
The esteemed local whites first gained their reputation when they were chosen by the monks of Montmajour Abbey, and consecrated for the celebration of the mass. This commune today was producing 50 per cent white wine while everywhere else in Provence the fraction was somewhere in the region of 5 per cent. I pondered this information. The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Montmajour was some distance from here, closer to Arles. In 1840, the writer Prosper Mérimée, who was also an inspector of ancient monuments, put the Abbey on the very first list of historical monuments to be preserved by the state.

  My train of thought was broken by the arrival of a German car, an Audi. It pulled up in between the bar and town hall. I smiled silently. Surely this would be the mayor? Out stepped a tall, slender man, mid-to-late fifties, who glanced in my direction and strode purposefully towards me.

  ‘Madame Drinkwater?’

  I nodded. He veered off to shake hands with and embrace everyone. Every name was known. His presence brought smiles to faces.

  ‘Let me take you to lunch,’ he said, when all greetings were at an end. We set off in his car over one of the stone bridges and out of Correns, travelling a country lane for a couple of kilometres until we pulled into a pretty little restaurant on the left. Here, too, Monsieur le maire was well known. One couple on an otherwise empty patio were dining. They were strangers. Latz shook their hands, welcomed them to the neighbourhood and wished them bon appétit.

  Over generous plates of salad topped with local goats’ cheese toasted with honey – every morsel had been produced in the village and adhered to organic standards – I began to ask questions.

  ‘How does a man, a German, born within a dark African land of heartbreaking chaos, end up as mayor of a small village sitting on the banks of the River Argens in inland Provence? A village that promotes itself as the flagship community for organic living in France?’

  His answer was long, surprising, and might have been the outline for an epic film, a history of the twentieth century. His parents, both deceased, had been descendants of Polish Jews. Their lives had been that of survivors moving from one continent to the next. For a while the family had settled in Kenya, where Michael had his first experience of organic crops. The family had farmed coffee, quinine and the flower Pyrèthre de Dalmatie. He and his parents had lost everything, fled Africa, settled in Rome and then relocated again at the end of the Second World War to St Paul de Vence, down our way. Latz had been ten at the time. From there, they heard of an estate for sale in Correns. That domaine was where he spent his childhood. It remained to this day the family home. He had trained as an agricultural engineer in Paris and Belgium before returning home to run the family wineries after his father died from a stroke.

  ‘He was too young, had suffered for too many years. Building fortunes, losing them, dragging his family from pillar to post.’ I heard the loss, the regret in Latz’s voice.

  I returned us for a moment to the farm in Kenya. ‘Pyrèthre: that’s the chrysanthemum that acts as a natural insecticide?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Do you use it here?’

  Negative. The flowers were not selective. They destroyed all insects. In the Virunga National Park, where these chrysanthemums had spread like weeds, they were killing off plant life that sustained the natural habitat of the gorillas.

  ‘So, what do you use?’

  Vines, unlike olive trees, were not difficult to maintain as an organic crop.

  Did they use the American traps that the chemical specialist had tried to sell me for their olives?

  He shook his head. They were detrimental to bees and several apiarists were living close by. He was not against experimenting with new methods, he assured me, but what he was dead set against were the companies who were not only using our world crises for profit but stressing the calamities.

  ‘Monsanto, for example. Are you one of the many voices against Monsanto?’

  ‘Yes, but it is vital to remain open,’ he said to me. ‘If they came to me with an idea, I would listen, even today, even with their track record, but, alas, my experience is that such multi-nationals are only self-interested, and that is dangerous for our future.’

  ‘How did you persuade all these farmers to follow you?’

  ‘Well, I was their neighbour, remember. They knew and trusted me. It was remarkably simple, really.’

  Soon after he had been elected, Michael Latz summoned every denizen of the village and surrounding areas to a meeting to present his vision. The wine industry had been ailing here and he was offering them an opportunity to preserve their Provençal culture and reinvent their business. ‘One tight-knit community, small wineries and a traditional way of life.’

  Ninety-five per cent came on board directly and they have never looked back.

  I told him that I had sensed a quite remarkable atmosphere while I had been waiting for him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There is a quietude here and a profound sense of joy because people know they have chosen their own destiny. We are not in the hands of anyone.’ In the beginning, when he announced his plans publicly, he had received calls from adjacent villages, hamlets and estate farmers railing against him and the Chambre d’Agriculture had been vociferous in its objections. ‘You cannot do this,’ they said. ‘You must follow the established paths.’

  ‘ “But we are doing it,” I replied. They tried to stop us but we forged ahead and now they recognise and honour us.’

  ‘What were some of the earliest changes you noticed?’

  ‘No pesticides used in the fields brought us the return of plenty of insects, birds, small mammals and game. One of the first groups within the community who were happy with what we were doing was the hunting fraternity. Today, there is plenty of game in the vicinity and the fields are buzzing with flora and fauna.

  ‘You would have noticed the River Argens running through our village? It is crystal-clear and teeming with fish. One of the reasons there is such an abundance of aquatic life is because of the quality of the water. From our commune, no pesticides or fertilisers are sprayed so there is nothing to end up in the soil or run off into the water. Most insecticides are lethal for aquatic creatures. We test our water once a month and it is pristine.

  ‘We have a local chevrier. He arrived here to join our community in 2007. His herd of Rove goats pastures freely and controls the growth of the wild woodland areas that can be such a threat in the summer when the forest fires and the mistral winds cause conflagrations to spin out of control. They deliver us the finest of cheeses, which we have just tasted, and they help us temper the risks here in this harsh-weathered region.’

  ‘And the future?’

  ‘I, we, are committed to sustainable development in all areas. We’ve invested in a distillery and the commune is going to make and market its own organic essential oils.’

  ‘From the plants and herbs I saw growing everywhere in the streets of Correns?’

  He nodded, sipping his rosé while pouring us both another glass of Badoit. ‘We will also dedicate certain fields to this. There is an increasing demand for essential oils and organic is very expensive to produce. This revenue will allow us to improve our social infrastructure. The village school serves organic food in its canteen and the students are taught the principles of sustainable development, of care-management for their earth. Those youngsters are the future and I believe that tomorrow begins with today. We, all corrençois inhabitants, including our children, are jointly constructing a way of life that is harmonious, independent and carbon-footprint light.’

  I was not only impressed but humbled by this man’s energy and vision. What was I deliberating about?

  ‘Oh, but I am an impatient man. I had hoped the changes would come about more swiftly. As I said, I had no difficulty whatsoever in persuading my fellow corrençois to jump aboard the organic train, but I genuinely believed that once we were up and running other neighbouring villages would follow us. That was fourteen years ago. I see signs of small shifts further afiel
d but it has certainly not been as dramatic or as swift as I had hoped.

  ‘In the Old Testament it says you save one man, you save the world. My experience of life has led me to believe that this is not true. I am not sure man wants to be saved, wants a durable future that will halt the destruction of this planet. I am not sure that the majority of men give a damn. As I get older I realise that I am disappointed. But it does not stop me fighting on.’

  ‘Any thoughts to leave me with?’

  ‘Best not to interfere with plants and the cycles connected with them … We are interfering with complex infrastructures that we have yet to fully comprehend and appreciate.’

  ‘And for our olive farm?’

  ‘Olive farming is certainly trickier than wine but my advice would be, begin, get on with it. Go organic and let the problems iron themselves out as you come up against them. I strongly believe that if you make a decision, a wise decision, life falls into step with you. The most pressing challenge is to make the jump. The rest will take care of itself.’

  After we parted, I paid a visit to the Latz domaine, which he had suggested I take the time to do. It was beautiful. I crossed the river by one of the stone bridges and walked for a kilometre or a little more and there it was, nestling within crisply green acres and acres of vineyards, encircled by mountains. Nothing else in sight. I purchased a wine cooler at the little estate shop, walked about the small but elegant gardens and coveted the house. I had no phone signal to enable me to call Michel, to shout loudly, ‘We are not going to spray. We are going BIO!’ I had yet to convince him. We had jumped passionately into the purchase of the farm; it was time to make another uncushioned leap.

  When I returned to the car and telephoned, I did not mention Correns, not yet. ‘It’s your birthday soon and we’re going away for a few days, just you and me’ was all I said, but I felt lighter of spirit and more clear-minded than I had in a while.