By chance, he said, he had made some calculations. Our field would accommodate 1,300 new vines in place of the tiresome melons. My wife and I looked at each other. We were equally fond of wine and Faustin, and he obviously had his heart set on progress and expansion. We agreed that the extra vines sounded like a good idea, but thought no more about it after he had left. Faustin is a ruminant among men, not given to hasty action, and in any case, nothing happens quickly in Provence. Perhaps next spring he would get around to it.
At seven o’clock the following morning, a tractor was plowing up the melon field, and two days later the planting team arrived—five men, two women, and four dogs, under the direction of the chef des vignes Monsieur Beauchier, a man with forty years’ experience of planting vines in the Lubéron. He personally pushed the small plow behind the tractor, making sure that lines were straight and correctly spaced, trudging up and down in his canvas boots, his leathery face rapt in concentration. The lines were staked at each end by bamboo rods and marked by lengths of twine. The field was now stripped and ready to be turned into a vineyard.
The new vines, about the size of my thumb and tipped with red wax, were unloaded from the vans while Monsieur Beauchier inspected his planting equipment. I had assumed that the planting would be done mechanically, but all I could see were a few hollow steel rods and a large triangle made of wood. The planting team gathered around and were assigned their duties, then jostled untidily into formation.
Beauchier led the way with the wooden triangle, which he used like a three-sided wheel, the points making equidistant marks in the earth. Two men followed him with steel rods, plunging them into the marks to make holes for the vines, which were planted and firmed in by the rear guard. The two women, Faustin’s wife and daughter, dispensed vines, advice, and fashion comments on the assortment of hats worn by the men, particularly Faustin’s new and slightly rakish yachting cap. The dogs enjoyed themselves by getting in everyone’s way, dodging kicks and tangling themselves in the twine.
As the day wore on, the planters became more widely spaced, with Beauchier often two hundred yards in front of the stragglers at the back, but distance was no barrier to conversation. It appears to be part of the ritual that lengthy discussions are always conducted between the two people farthest away from each other, while the intervening members of the team curse the dogs and argue about the straightness of the lines. And so the raucous procession moved up and down the field until mid-afternoon, when Henriette produced two large baskets and work stopped for the Provençal version of a coffee break.
The team sat on a grassy bank above the vines, looking like a scene from Cartier-Bresson’s scrapbook, and attacked the contents of the baskets. There were four liters of wine and an enormous pile of the sugared slices of fried bread called tranches dorées, dark gold in color and crisp and delicious to taste. Grandfather André arrived to inspect what had been done, and we saw him poking the earth critically with his stick and then nodding his head. He came over for a glass of wine and sat in the sun, a benign old lizard, scratching a dog’s stomach with the end of his muddy stick and asking Henriette what was for dinner. He wanted to eat early so that he could watch Santa Barbara, his favorite television soap opera.
The wine had all gone. The men stretched and brushed the crumbs from their mouths and went back to work. By late evening it was finished, and the ragged old melon field was now impeccable, the tiny dots of new vines just visible against the setting sun. The team gathered in our courtyard to unkink their backs and make inroads on the pastis, and I took Faustin to one side to ask him about payment. We’d had the tractor for three days, and dozens of hours of labor. What did we owe them? Faustin was so anxious to explain that he put down his glass. We would pay for the vines, he said, but the rest was taken care of by the system which operated in the valley, with everyone contributing their time free when major replanting had to be done. It all evened out in the end, he said, and it avoided paperwork and tedious dealings with les fiscs about taxes. He smiled and tapped the side of his nose with a finger and then, as though it was a small matter hardly worth mentioning, he asked if we would like 250 asparagus plants put in while we still had the use of the tractor and the men. It was done the next day. So much for our theory that nothing happens fast in Provence.
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THE LUBÉRON sounded different in spring. Birds who had been ducking all winter came out of hiding now that the hunters were gone, and their song replaced gunfire. The only jarring noise I could hear as I walked along the path toward the Massot residence was a furious hammering, and I wondered if he had decided to put up a For Sale notice in preparation for the beginning of the tourist season.