On A Farm in France - Coffee (Series 001, Episode 011)

'Hear English' is a blog that provides podcasts and transcripts to help people learn English, find us at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/. 

Coffee

Click above to listen.  You can get the .mp4 here, and the .mp3 here (opens in new window).

Whilst my girlfriend and I were on our working holiday on a farm in France, one of our jobs was to turn fruit into jam.  On our first day of jam making, we were told that we would start work at nine o’ clock in the morning, but when we arrived at the workshop on the dot of nine, it was closed.

We waited for half an hour, then went into town to see if we could find Colette, who was the mother of our host-family, and therefore our boss.  We found her in town doing the grocery shopping.  We asked if we could help but she said she was ok, and that we could go back and wait for her at the workshop.  She said she would be down shortly to show us what work we had to do.  She gave us a key and told us to let ourselves into the kitchen above the workshop and have a coffee while we waited.

We were back at the workshop at about ten o’ clock.  We made coffee and sat down to drink it but Colette still hadn’t returned by the time we’d finished, so we went into the workshop to see if we could work out what we had to do.  There were no fruits to do anything with, and there was nothing else obvious to do, so we had another cup of coffee.  We don’t drink much coffee (we much prefer tea), and the caffeine was already making us feel very alert.  At eleven, our boss finally arrived.  We asked what she wanted us to do.  “First things first,” she said, “I need a coffee.” 

After coffee, we went into the workshop but before we could start work there was a knock at the door.  It was one of our hosts’ English neighbours.  She was eager to meet other English people and although we said we were happy to work now and chat later, Colette wouldn’t hear of it, and so we went back upstairs for a coffee and a chat with the neighbour.

The neighbour left after a while and we went back downstairs to the workshop, eager to get to work because we were buzzing from all the coffee, but our boss was on her way back up, and she told us not to start work as it was half past twelve and time for lunch.

After lunch, and yet another coffee, we went back to the workshop but when we got there we realised that the fruit hadn’t been delivered, so we couldn’t start doing our work and so Colette asked us to drive to the farm that they were buying the fruit from, and pick it up for her.  We arrived at about two thirty but there was no-one there so we waited for a while and then decided to go back.  As we were leaving we met the farmer, who told us he’d just delivered the fruit and was sorry for the delay.  He also told us that one of our boss’ children had banged his head at school, and so our boss had taken him to see a doctor.  There wasn’t much point in going back as we didn’t know what to do with the fruits, so when the farmer suggested we have a cup of coffee with him, we said yes.

Feeling quite jittery and hyperactive after all the caffeine, we made our way back to the workshop and got in just as Colette was returning from the doctor’s with her child.  Before we started work, she insisted that we have a quick coffee to calm her nerves as she was understandably worried about her child, even though he was fine.  At about half past three, I went into the workshop, found the fruits and started washing them ready for peeling them.  My girlfriend was looking after Colette’s son whilst Colette went to pick her other kids up from school.  As she was leaving she had a phone-call from her husband, Vincent, who had run out of petrol on the way back from a farmers’ market, and needed her to bring him some fuel.  She couldn’t do this and get the children from school, so she asked me to pick them up for her. 

I collected the kids from school, and when I got back their mum still hadn’t returned, so we gave the kids something to eat and kept them busy.  When Colette arrived, she insisted that we have another coffee and when we went back downstairs to wash and peel the fruit, the caffeine was making us feel very nauseous. Just as we were starting work, Vincent came in and seeing us working looked at his watch and said that it was five o’ clock, and that we should stop work.  When we protested he said that we weren’t legally allowed to work more than a 9 to 5 and that he didn’t want us working anyway because we were both sick, pale and shaky and looked like we were about to faint.  “You’ve worked way too hard today,” he said, “tell you what, come upstairs and I’ll make you a nice cup of coffee.”

On A Farm in France - Raspberries (Series 001, Episode 010)

'Hear English' is a blog that provides podcasts and transcripts to help people learn English, find us at http://hearenglishhere.blogspot.com/. 


Raspberries



Click above to listen.  You can get the .mp4 here, and the .mp3 here (opens in new window).

“Raspberries are our most important fruit.  Without a good raspberry harvest, we could go bankrupt.” I remember our boss, Vincent, telling us this as we were about to start our first day of work on our working holiday on a farm in France.


“Your first job,” he told us, pointing to one of the two fields full of raspberry plants, “is to cut all the raspberry canes in this field down to ground level, new canes will grow from the plant, and they produce more fruit than if I just left the old canes to fruit again.”

We did as we were told, and at the end of the day, as we were finishing cutting the raspberries canes in the field, Vincent came over to see how we had done.  Whilst we were chatting he suddenly slapped his hand against his forehead.  “I don’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head, “I’ve made a mistake, I made you cut all the raspberry canes down, but these raspberries only produce fruit when the canes have been growing for a year, I should have made you leave the older canes, because we won’t get any fruit from the new canes this year.”

“There are loads of plants that have grown wild next to the field, we’ve not cut them down at all, could you just transplant those?”  I asked.

“Yes, we could transplant them into this field,” said Vincent, looked relieved, “I think there are enough, it’s just a shame you’ve wasted all your time.  We’ll start work on that tomorrow morning.  Lets go in for dinner now, and a well earned glass of cider.” 

The next day we transplanted the raspberries that had grown wild into his field.  We had finished by lunchtime and Vincent was pleased with our work.  The day after that we were working on the second raspberry field.  Our job was to transplant raspberry plants from where they were too close together to places where there were large gaps in the rows.  At lunchtime, Vincent came down to see us.

He told us that all the plants that we replanted yesterday had died.  “I meant to water them yesterday,” he explained, “but I completely forgot about them after all those ciders.  I went to water them just now but they’d all wilted, I don’t think any will survive.  Unless some more magically appear from somewhere, it doesn’t look like we’ll have many raspberries this year.”

Vincent did seem to be learning from his mistakes though.  “This time,” he told us, “I’ll set up a sprinkler system for the rows that you’ve been doing this morning so they’ll definitely have enough water.”

We weren’t working that afternoon, or the next morning, so we spent the night camping in the mountains, and we didn’t get back to the farm until the afternoon on the next day.  The first thing we did was go to see how the raspberries we’d replanted had done.

As we half expected, they were all dead.  We went to tell Vincent, who was fixing the gate at the entrance to the farm.  “Oh no, not again.” he cried.  “Yesterday I disconnected the hose for the sprinkler system so that I could water the plants in the greenhouse.  I must have forgotten to reconnect it.  What am I going to do?  Unless some more magically appear from somewhere, we’re hardly going to have any raspberries this year, or next year.  We’re going to be ruined.  My wife’s going to kill me.”

“Hello,”  someone shouted.  We all looked round to see that Vincent’s neighbour, who was also a farmer, was calling him from the drive.  “I’ve finally got around to neatening up my fields, I’ve spent all day pulling up plants.  I started a fire and was just going to burn them when I thought that you might want them.”

“What plants do you have?” asked Vincent.

“There are apple trees, rhubarb plants, and blackberry bushes if you want them,” Vincent's neighbour replied.

“I’ll come and have a look, we can probably use some of them.” Vincent didn’t seem too interested.  He was obviously more worried about his failed raspberry crop.

“Help me take those bags down to the fire, and then I’ll show you what plants I have.” said Vincent’s neighbour pointing to a dozen large white sacks sitting at the end of Vincent’s drive.  We all went over to help him with the sacks.  “It’s a shame that we have to burn these, but I just don’t have room for them and I know you have hundreds already. 

“What are they?” I asked.

“Raspberries of course, the fields were a mess, I had to pull up hundreds of them, all varieties and all ages, I just don’t have room to keep them.”

Vincent spoke slowly.  He looked like he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or not.  “It is a shame to waste them,” he said “maybe you could leave them with me.  I can probably think of one or two places where I could grow them.” 

Click above to listen.  You can get the .mp4 here, and the .mp3 here (opens in new window).