L’épierrage



The rock pile as of June 20th.



The rock pile on May 10th; notice the large vertical stone is longer visible.



L’épierrage (French, noun): To remove stones or rock from the soil.

That is what we are doing: l’épierrage.  We are transforming a field that hasn’t been cultivated in over a generation.  The parcel is hot, very dry, and the dirt is compacted down from years of neglect.  The field had to be cleared, fenced, tilled, and then tended to; we’ve been working every spare moment on it for over a month.  Up until now, we were in a fight against time as rising temperatures would soon make the land too hard to till.  We made it, but we are still in the “tending stage” before anything else can be done.

Part of the “tending stage” is removing the rocks, more specifically, slate rock.  Our garden was once filled with them and Christophe meticulously removed and built a terrace wall 6 feet high and 30 feet long.  Now, it’s my turn.  So far, we’ve removed over 3 ½ tons of rocks, one bucket at a time.  Christophe thinks this is one of the hardest, most tedious jobs in agriculture, that is, expect le déssouchage.  That means to dig up tree trunks once they’ve been cut down.  But I knew that already, I did that before I started on the rocks.

Rocks are removed one bucket at a time.