Week Two

This past week we went on an overnight trip where we went to Roquefort and visited multiple different farms and met different officials.  Agriculture is connected to everything in some sort of fashion and farming is a way of life and sometimes people forget that. Farmers work hard to produce the best quality product they can then turn around and sell it to the public. This produce then goes straight to the consumers or goes to restaurants where it is prepared for them. At the restaurant we went to Thursday night, they were using all local products to prepare dinner; and this place is not the only place I have seen this. Every where we go people use local products and simply look at you with blank stares if you ask them where it is from. They seem to be very prideful that their products are all local and I personally like that everything is local. With everything being local fruits and vegetables have seasons, like they are supposed to, and are not available all year round. This allows farmers to let the produce ripen on the vine and not in cold storage, so needless to say the produce here actually has very good flavor. Another thing that is really neat to me is that farmers know how to use the land to their advantage. In one place we went the owner had natural spring water that you could drink from straight from the creek that flowed through his land that he used for his garden and to water his flock of sheep. At Roquefort where they produced the cheese they made it in a cave on planks of salted wood. It really amazes me to see people being resourceful and not very wasteful like some people I know in the U.S. This is definitely something I will be taking home by working with the land, while producing the best possible product for people to enjoy.