Confessions of a Faux French Farmer
We all want to "just do it." Sometimes "just try it" can work too.
Note: Today’s newsletter drifts from NPB’s standard nutrition intel. I figured that I’d try something new. That said, you’ll still receive a little inspirational fitness-applicable moral upon completion. Please let me know what you think!
If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I spend as much time as possible in France. My wife and I bought an old farmhouse in the department of Creuse at the height of the Pandemic without actually seeing it firsthand. (As you do.) It’s called La Villatte. We haven’t looked back since.
I could rhapsodize all day about La Villatte, but a more salient point is that I have no idea what I’m doing there. Pre-farm, the closest I’d come to rural living was the South Dakota dude ranch my family frequented when I was a kid. I know not to stand behind a horse and the smell of cow poop doesn’t bother me. That’s about it.
Just me and my tractor.
I spend my days mending fences, clearing blackberry brambles, chainsawing wayward branches, cleaning out stables, and tractoring—so much tractoring. Mind you, this isn’t a little putt-putt Hank Hill sit-down mower. It’s an honest-to-god tractor—an eighties-era, diesel Deutz Fahr D4507, to be exact.
So far, the tractor primary gig is clearing waist-to-shoulder-high brush. It does this with a giant rotary cutter attachment that’s basically two huge slabs of steel fastened to two other huge slabs of steel that swing around mercilessly, destroying most things in their five-foot diameter path.
I say “most” because there are a few things they cannot destroy, like large stones and stumps. This is why it’s important to thoroughly inspect fields that you’re not familiar with, then drive over them without lowering the cutter, then cut them down in two or three stages. Otherwise, you might find yourself enthusiastically destroying overgrowth when your cutter hits a giant, hidden ash stump with a bone-quaking CRACK, causing one of the slabs of steel to ricochet back into the other slabs and jam them together, throwing off the balance of the rotation so that your forty-year-old German tractor suddenly starts to pitch and vibrate wildly—while at the same time giving you a moment of sheer terror that allows you to empathize with exactly how the captain of the Titanic must have felt the moment he hit the iceberg.
Which is what happened to me. Not the iceberg, but the ash stump.
There are few things I know less about than tractoring. One of those things is fixing tractors. No matter how hard I pulled, the slabs wouldn’t budge. They were bolted together, so it seemed logical that by loosening the bolt, I might be able to unwedge them, but I didn’t have a wrench big enough. Also, the torque on the screw and bolt would probably have made it humanly impossible.
While stupid mistakes are a common theme in my life, I don’t especially enjoy them. I felt alone at my little French farm. A total failure. This wasn’t imposter syndrome; I was actually an imposter, a faux farmer whose bluff had been called.
It was Sunday, so the hardware store was closed. I couldn’t get the wrench I needed for the repair I knew wouldn’t work. I parked the tractor in the garage and spent the rest of the day clearing brush in front of the barn with a scythe—that scary tool the Grim Reaper carries.
La Villatte’s previous owners had left a rusted out, old tractor tiller in that brush, so I worked at extracting it from the blackberry brambles. Marilyne mentioned that a guy had come by the other day asking if we were interested in selling it. At this point, my farming mojo was gone. I didn’t see much tilling in my future, so if he wanted it, he could have it for free.
Marilyne called him—his name was Dominique. He was thrilled. Within the hour, he showed up with a bright orange, vintage tractor. I’m not sure of the model, but it was cherry. Immaculate. And it purred like a Lamborghini. I didn’t know that farm equipment could purr.
As Dominique expertly hooked the tiller to his tractor, he thanked us profusely, offering his services whenever we needed them. I figured that if he could tune a diesel engine to sound like it was ready for Le Mans, he might know his way around a jammed-up rotary cutter, so I asked him to check out my little dilemma.
I was expecting a dismissive French shrug (“Le Meh”). Instead, he nodded enthusiastically and promised to return with a wrench in 30 minutes. Indeed, he returned as promised, this time in a beat-up, old Peugeot hatchback that wasn’t receiving half the love he gave his sports-tractor.
He opened the back and produced not a wrench, but a sledgehammer and a huge crowbar. He asked me to raise the cutter. Together, we crawled underneath where I pried apart the metal slabs with the crowbar as Dominique bashed them with the hammer. After 20 minutes, he stopped, assessed the situation, smiled proudly, and handed me the hammer. “Allez,” he said.
I took a hard swing. The stuck slab jerked free and swung across its full range, nearly braining both of us.
I thanked Dominique even more profusely than he had thanks me for the rusty tiller. After he left, I returned to my tractoring, much the wiser when it came to stumps.
Regarding the virtues of brute force.
As a 21st century urban male, I’ve been taught that force is no bueno. When the internet isn’t working, I don’t smack the side of the router. If my bike isn’t shifting properly, I don’t force the shifters with a screwdriver. I live in a world of delicate machinery that requires a deft touch. Farming, apparently, operates by different standards.
The next day, I bought the biggest crowbar I could find and spent the afternoon crowbarring the crap out of everything that I came within three feet of, from old two-by-fours nailed together for no apparent reason to tree stumps that might cause future tractor drama. (I failed at crowbarring the cutter-crippling ash. That’s going to take some next-level bashing. I’m thinking explosives.)
Another grand romance I’m having at La Villatte is with my new chainsaw. I love it more than the crowbar, but slightly less than the tractor. It’s the closest I’ll ever come to a light saber.
That evening, I was chainsawing firewood in the barn when the chain hooked on a knot mid-log and stalled. The blade was really stuck into the log. Chainsaws strike me as delicate machines, so I gingerly pulled at the log, trying to remove it. It wasn’t going anywhere.
Another defeat. 24 hours later, again relegated to imposter status.
I looked at the saw-hugging log and muttered, “Not today.” That’s what farmers do, I guess, talk to the inanimate objects they’re struggling with.
I walked over a large stump we use as a wood chopping surface, lifted the saw up and brought it down hard, aiming so that just the log hit the edge of the stump. It broke free and tumbled across the barn floor. Not a mark on the chainsaw.
I let out a victory howl.
The barn’s walls are made of three-foot-thick stone. The main house is several hundred yards away, also built with three-foot-thick stone walls. Neither the distance nor the masonry prevented Marilyne from hearing my primal outburst from the kitchen.
Some people pick up everything they do quickly. Yay, them. I’m not one of those people. Whether it was writing, riding, running, understanding nutrition, or farming, mastery has always been an ordeal. But the only thing worse than sucking at doing something is never having done it at all, so I keep plodding along.
You might not be able to “just do it,” but you can always, “just try it.” If it works great. If it doesn’t, try it another way—you’ll get it eventually.
If all else fails, you can always take a crowbar to it.