Introducing Ecotherapy (...the Brandeau connection)

Ecopsychology starts from the premise that the more natural an environment we are able to live in, the better our physical and mental health ought to be. It has an inescapable logic to it - the problem of course is that almost all of the environment that is habitable, is now man-made! There has been very little academic research on the idea of an ecotherapy, rather those who believe in it have simply got on with it in an intuitive and practically way. I’d like to introduce what will be one of the ongoing themes of the blog with an autobiographical extract describing my experience of it. Those providing it didn’t call it 'therapy' and neither did I. But it occurred during what turned out to be the happiest period of my adult life - that is until very recently.

…What followed was six months of unemployment. I managed to get four interviews; one of which was for a clerical post at one of the local mental hospitals, none led to a job offer. I wrote at the time: ‘It took me several days before I could bring myself to sign-on the dole, it seemed to me to be a gesture of defeat. I felt guilty and ashamed at being out of work; perhaps the legacy of a middle class upbringing… I felt all I had to do was keep filling in application forms and a job would turn-up… The handful of interviews I did have all seemed to go well, l felt they liked me, then came the letter of rejection… After a time you find yourself writing less and less applications and you lower your expectations of employment; you take positive steps to avoid further rejection and alienation from employed society… After several months I could see in the faces of friends that they did not believe I could not get a job’. After Christmas 1982 I packed-up my flat, accepted the offer from the university of my choice for the following October, and left for Paris to stay with my sister. After a few weeks sleeping on her floor, I wrote out an advertising card to place on the notice board of the British Council, it began; ‘I’ll do anything!’ Amazingly I got a response - it turned out to be the greatest stroke of luck I’d ever had.

The deal didn’t sound great, but it paid of in spades - literally. The man at the end of the phone offered me work at a small Chateau vineyard/farm in South-west France. It was bed and board only, but if I stayed more than a month there was some pocket money thrown-in. I accepted after his wife sent me a description of the small community they were running. The farm had nine hectares of vines, some grassland and woods; enough for thirty or so sheep, a kitchen garden, two pigs, half a dozen ducks, about eight chickens and four geese - plus two cats and a collie sheep dog. The human occupants were the couple who owned it and anyone prepared to work for bed and board - but they had a lot of ‘connections’. Students came from Denmark, Holland and the UK, but most of all from Southern California where the couple had previously lived, and worked at various universities. The only other habitation that could be observed from the farm was a neighbour’s barn, the nearest telephone was a fifteen minute walk away, there was no television or radio (just a music centre in the main kitchen/living room) no flushing lavatories, a cold shower, and one hot bath per week. There was a wood fire and wood fuelled range in the main room. There was one Renault Four van, one decrepit 2CV which drifted across the road when cornering, two vineyard tractors (one pre-war), which given the steep slopes would be regularly ‘tipped’ by over confident drivers. The sheep dog only recognised three calls but had the right instincts and was loved by all. In the spring and summer we got up at six, worked till breakfast at seven, worked till twelve or one, took a leisurely lunch, siesta’d till four, then worked till nine, had dinner and went to bed. Sunday was a day-off. Cooking was Mediterranean and sometimes Mexican - meat a luxury, vegetables the staples. But of course there was as much wine as you wanted.

Their philosophy was to be as ‘self-sufficient’ as possible, and wherever practicable to use traditional methods of farming and viticulture. And it worked. The owners had been young enough in the late 1960’s to recognise some of the virtues of the ‘counterculture’ but had tempered it with economic realism. They had a historical perspective on peasant culture, its strengths and weaknesses. However, some of the ‘natives’ in the surrounding countryside were convinced it was a ‘free-love’ colony! On my first visit I stayed four months. It was my first experience of living in a remote rural area - of being outside all day, of doing manual labour, of communal living. The number of workers varied from two or three, to seven or eight. I’ve never felt so hungry or eaten better. My brain was fed by people better educated than myself. I came to feel physically fit and free of mental distress. I was to return another four times during university vacations.

Some farm jobs are highly skilled and interesting to learn, but once learnt become monotonous to do because of their repetitive nature. Others require flexibility and a high level of concentration. Some jobs require little skill and are just drudgery. Spring pruning of vines using traditional methods is a skilled job. First you have to bend horizontal and tie the two remaining branches of last year’s growth to the wire frame using twigs of willow, carried in bundle around your waste. Two knots are required for each branch and the surplus willow cut with a knife. If the job is done on time, you won’t come back to the same vine for maybe another six weeks. Then the new growth from the tied branches can be pruned, a judgement must be made about which two new branches will grow the strongest so as to become next year’s horizontals - but they also have to be the most likely to bare grapes. They are then woven vertically between the higher wires of the frame. Then the rest of the new growth has to be either removed or woven vertically depending on the likelihood of them bearing grapes. (Sometimes, if the schedule is lost, you have to do some pruning before tying). Then you move on to the next vine. There may be forty or fifty vines in a row, a row may be as narrow as six feet. Nine hectares is a lot of vines for half a dozen people to complete in the six weeks or so before they become overgrown. You’ve just got to be quick, you need a certain rhythm and choreography. (Traditional methods did of course vary according to the variety of vine, the type of wire frame etc. - even within the Bordeaux region where I was).

Happiness in work is more strongly associated with the use of a person’s skills than with the material reward received. In psychology there is a concept known as ‘flow’; it comes to those who can lose themselves in their work, it comes to children playing games, it comes (if you’re lucky) when making love. It is the sense of happiness that comes from the loss of self-consciousness. To be happy in your work, you need a job which uses all your skills and then asks for just a little bit more.

Some jobs however are communal and require a lot of team work, like the killing and butchering of an animal. During my Business Studies course we visited an abattoir. (The slaughterhouses of Chicago were the inspiration for Henry Ford’s moving assembly line - though they of course disassembled). We watched each part of the process broken down into the detailed division of labour, each man is given a few simple tasks that he could repeat at speed. Pigs were corralled six at a time, then electrodes applied simultaneously to the temples of the first animal. The stunned animal was then hoisted by a leg and it’s throat cut, the blood draining away as it moved slowly along the gantry to where it would be immersed in the machine containing boiling water and which would scrap of the hair. The remaining pigs became increasingly more agitated and vocal as their turn approached. The circumstances surrounding the killing of an animal on a small farm are very different. (A description of the killing of a pig in a traditional way on a French peasant’s farm is given by John Berger in Pig Earth). It is those who have bred, feed and nurtured the animal who will kill it, butcher it and eventually eat it. They have valued the animal and in turn know it will sustain them. The killing of a pig or sheep my involve everyone for a whole day - killing, slaughtering, butchering, and preserving. As much of the animal as possible will be used, such as the blood and brains. I remember the killing of a pregnant ewe who had broken a leg. People worked together quietly, smoothly; without the noise and violence of the factory. Those involved gave reverence and respect both to the animal and themselves. The carcass and unborn lamb were buried on the farm.

Meat is for feasting and flavouring. There is a festival or feast day somewhere in the world, for every day of the year. Obviously the fourth and fourteenth of July were an excuse for a party - but so was Swiss Dependence Day! We’d have a fire outside, partially melt a whole Swiss cheese and grill sausages, practice yodelling and drink Swiss beer. At some point during my first visit I acquired my nickname ‘Danger’ or ‘Nick Danger’; as in some fearless comic strip hero - it was meant to be ironic since I never volunteered for any of the dodgier jobs, like repairing the tiles on the roof of the barn, or taking a tractor on the steepest slopes. Alas the name stuck since my then girlfriend found it hilarious and used it all the time!

One evening I got into conversation with a guy (whose name and background I have totally forgotten) about left-handedness and how I’d always suffered academically as a result - like not being able to spell! He suggested we do an exercise their and then. He got me to read aloud a paragraph from a magazine. I was a bit slow and haltering. He then told me to read it backwards, this time I was faster and more rhythmic - amazing! He then got me to march-on-the-spot, telling me to swing my left arm with the right leg and vice versa. After a second or two he stopped me, pointing out that I’d done the opposite, raising the left arm with the left leg and vice versa. Once I’d done it the ‘right’ way for about thirty times he stopped me and swiftly ran the knuckle of one finger up the full length of my spine. He then gave me a different paragraph to read aloud - this time it was much easier, faster and more fluent. It forced me to think about brain and body, hand/eye co-ordination, and the psychological distress that might follow from the lack of it; of being left handed in a right-handed world, and of course asymmetry itself.

When I had done my Business Studies course the subject that interested me most was Industrial Relations. But there was no first degree course in the subject, so it had to be done as a specialisation within another subject, I chose Sociology. But I’d never studied any Sociology before! During evenings on the farm I sat by the fire and read an introduction to the subject. It seemed to be about every imaginable relationships between people; from simple conversations to the political and economic structures of whole nations. It also ranged from management and worker relations in factories and offices (supposedly my subject) to developing societies (the Third World and peasant societies of the past) seemingly connected to the kind of community I found myself in. Finally there were the studies of institutions like prisons, the military and mental hospitals - what was I letting myself in for?

When I came to leave the farm and stepped of the train in Paris I experienced what has been described as ‘culture shock’! The noise, the speed at which people moved and things happened, the artificial light. What an alien world, surely it was the environment that drove people crazy…

Chateau Brandeau is now owned and run as an organic vineyard by the son and daughter-in-law of the couple who owned it in my time - see links.