Summary
Chickens and rabbits and kids! Oh my! Drove to the town of Brignoles for their Wine Fair. Turns out it was also an “everything you can think of fair” from farm animals to food to tractors to swimming pools to a mayonnaise-making demonstration and much more. Great fun! Back at the villa we celebrated Ron’s birthday with baked Mont d’Or cheese (“the only French cheese eaten with a spoon”) – ooey gooey deliciousness. And, of course, plenty of wine!
Details
Happy Birthday to our travel companion Ron. Today he finally turns [redacted] years old.
The big activity, for Ron’s birthday, is a wine (and other stuff) fair way over in the town of Brignoles. It’s not going to be a sunny day, but it also won’t be rainy. It’ll be about 12° F above normal, so 69° for the high. The cloud cover will keep us from getting sunburned or too hot at the fair, so we’re OK with that.
It’ll take over an hour’s drive to get there. We’ll be more than half the way to Marseille. Thankfully almost all of the drive will be on the A8 (autoroute/tollroad) so it’ll be pretty easy, quiet driving, and not the usual endless string of roundabouts. Once we get to Brignoles we continue to follow our GPS towards where it says the fair is and then duck into a parking lot with lots of open spots. It’s Sunday so parking’s free, yay!
We walk in the direction of the fair (we think) but what we find is a bit scary. Not just because it’s not what we’re expecting, but because it’s scary carnival rides, mostly geared toward youngsters and teenagers. Hopefully we weren’t wrong on what this fair entails!
We’re relieved to then see signs for the fair and people continuing on in the direction in which we’d been traveling. We also see people walking from that direction carrying bags of this and that which they apparently bought at the fair. Finally we see the fair entrance. Once our four QR codes are scanned, we’re in
Immediately to our left is cheese and wine tasting. Big pours. We dive in. Beyond that we see lots of pre-assembled bamboo backyard tiki canañas and slide open/slide closed pool covers. All are for sale This isn’t what we’re looking for. We get directions and soon we’re seeing the food hall with lots of vendors hawking their wares and giving out samples. There are meats (dried and made into sausage), wines, beer, teas, flavored sesame seeds, rums, candies, breads, whiskeys, maple syrup, and on.
We start with more wine, pink this time. Divine but we don’t want to be lugging it around all day. We say thanks. We sample and complement a lot of things but buy almost nothing. The whiskey booth was very popular. Almost all their products were from Canada, including maple syrup, maple candy, and most importantly maple flavored whiskey. They’re giving out lots of small samples and were getting lots of takers. Once you try one, they move you on to the next and on and on. It keeps getting stronger. We like the whiskey but don’t like where this is leading. But, man is it tasty.
We head back outside to look around. Here’s where there’s grills and hot plates are set up, in the open air, for cooking and frying food to try and buy. We get lentil beignets and socca (chickpea flour crepes). So good. Red beer to wash it down, and then duck and goose liver and rillette (shredded conserved meat). This fair has everything and it’s somewhat organized. There’s a “healthier lifestyle” tent which we don’t go into. We don’t spend much time with the new cars on display. We do check out the old cars that have been refurbished (including an old Mustang convertible. You can buy one, sell them an old car of yours that needs fixing up, or rent one for the getaway from your upcoming wedding.
There is lots of big machinery and farm equipment, much of it with the front loaders way up in the air. Parents sit their little kids on the high tractor seats for a picture, as does Nancy with her crocheted dragon. There are sections for food from different parts of the world: Italy, France and Brazil stand out. There are stand alone food vendors, including a family doing barbecue beef and ribs and appropriate accompaniment. It smells like home. They’re all gussied up in cowboy wear.
There are candy vendors with tons of candy. There’s a riding ring for demonstrations and horses in their stables relaxing between events. Many of the “kids” (12 year olds) were walking around with a hobby horse between their legs (a stuffed horse head on a short broomstick). We guess there was a “race” earlier and they got to keep their “horse”. Sprinkled around are different organizations recruiting. If you want to be in the military, foreign legion, fire fighters, police, etc. they’re happy to discuss career options with you.
We see lots of animals. There are adorable ponies wandering around (in their big pen) eating hay from the ground. There’s a steer (with its horn tips capped with blunt metal caps for safety). There are adorable goats and their parents, eating or sleeping.
And then we see it, the building labeled Grand Animaux (big animals) or something like that. Inside are lots of not-very-big animals for viewing and for sale. Most are birds, like chickens and ducks, but there were also pheasants and peacocks. There are quail and bunnies. Chicks are available for sale for 3.5 euros (or 7 euros for two, if you want a deal). You might think a chicken is a chicken, but here there are all different kinds, including some with puffy black and white heads, some with feathery bell-bottom feet, some super soft (like merino wool), some are different colors and some are only all one single golden color. It just goes on and on.
The different chicken/bird pens each has a net (like an oversized butterfly net) there for the owner to catch a bird when a sale has been made. They have boxes and we see birds being caught and stuffed, purposefully, into the box, sometimes two or three to a box.
There was a price on the little baby goats and baby sheep. The goats had bales of hay to eat from which they also used to play “king of the hill”. Next door is just a momma sheep and her little lamb. The little lamb is using mom to play king of the hill, which mom doesn’t seem to mind.
The last “hall” we go into is to promote local cuisine and culture and saving the planet. There is a fancy chef in a chef’s hat giving a demonstration, talking into her head-mounted mic, filling the space with her booming voice. There’s a competition going on, like master chef, but just a single event and not televised. All of the kids (each with a parent to help) are making mayonnaise. All good French kids should know this important skill, non?. It’s a hoot.
Exhausted and full of food, wine and memories, we make our way to the exit. We again give a long side glance to the carnival rides and the teens/pre-teens taking advantage thereof. The drive home is uneventful, other than finalizing plans for dinner (Ron’s birthday dinner). We end up having a big mixed salad with oodles of vegetables, and cheese (“Mont d’Or”) baked in the oven with garlic and wine. It becomes a soup and you ladle it onto delicious country French bread. Of course we have lots of wine and finally birthday dessert: packaged French cookies (LU), which is more than we need. Fun day and more fun tomorrow.
Photos
[Note: to view the photos in chronological order, start at the bottom :-/ ]
