The Olive Harvest (The Olive Series Book 3) by Drinkwater Carol

Author:Drinkwater, Carol [Drinkwater, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 0752865447
Publisher: CB Creative Books
Published: 2013-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

Counting Sheep

The weather is gloriously warm; burnished and autumnal. The leaves on the deciduous trees are variations of oxblood, citrus and flecked apricot. Day after gloriously beneficent day, the temperatures average 25 degrees with sunsets synchronising the season’s colours. Unfortunately this delivers us no rain, which for the farmers is worrisome. The ground soil has turned to powder and without irrigation nothing is surviving. It is the first time that we have been obliged to water so late into September.

Michaelmas has passed. Now begins October and Michel has flown south for the autumn television festival, Mipcom. It is a joy, a relief to have him home, though I barely see him during the five-day market. He is up and out by seven in the morning and does not return until after midnight. He has agreed to stay on for the weekend after the event but intends to spend those free days writing his ‘follow-up’ e-mails. He talks of transforming his favourite spot beneath the magnolia tree into an exterior weekend office, if the weather stays fine. I entreat him to donate Sunday to us, in the hope that we can dedicate it to more relaxing activities and spend precious time together. ‘Let’s play hookey and take off on an unlikely escapade,’ is my plea.

While Michel is running to and fro, attempting to open new business deals, meeting with executives, lunching network personnel at one or other of the beachside restaurants, Quashia renews his attack on his never-ending shed in the light of structural comments from Michel and the garage delivers my restored car, spick and span and good as new. It must require a gentle spin, surely? The perfect excuse, I claim, for our outing. Well, an excuse. The question is to what destination? The Camargue is marginally too far for a day out.

Jacques has been recounting stories to me of the transhumance, the shepherds’ custom of transporting their flocks to winter grasslands. Not dissimilar to bees, the sheep must be installed in pastures closer to sea-level where there is little likelihood of snow and where there will be plenty of grazing. Already, over the past three weeks shepherds everywhere have been on the move. If we took a helicopter up into the Alps, he says, we would look down upon dozens and dozens of flocks, each five or six hundred strong, descending the mountainsides, intent on the lowlands. It must be quite a sight.

On Sunday, two shepherds with their flocks are expected to converge upon the village of Roubion, where the public have been invited, for a couple of hours only, to participate in this fabled tradition, to accompany the beasts as they are steered from one village to the next, a distance of no more than four or five kilometres.

‘Why don’t we join them?’ I suggest to Michel, though I am not altogether convinced that spending the better part of a day walking with sheep will appeal to him. Surprisingly, he seems enthused by the plan. He will take his movie camera along, he says.

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