What do a third-century virgin martyr and 2,000 heritage fruit trees have in common? In the corner of Southwest France where I live, they are both celebrated on November 25 with a special gastronomic gardening fête created by Madame Evelyn Leterme.
"À la Sainte Catherine, tout bois prend racine." The French dicton, or proverb, declares that on Saint Catherine's feast day, November 25, all wood—trees, shrubs, and cuttings—take root. In gardener's terms, this means that this is the ideal time to plant bare-root fruit trees. And what perfect timing! Not only am I a "Catherinette," but my saint's name day falls just four days before my birthday: a double chance to plan a "green" birthday present for me. Every year for the last 30 or so, I have added a few more trees to the heirloom orchard that surrounds and threads through the kitchen garden of my canalside home, Camont. Along the way, I met an amazing mentor and teacher, and learned so much about the business of growing fruit in France.
On Apples
A few kilometers down the canal in the commune of Montesquieu is the Conservatoire Vegétal Regional d'Aquitaine (Regional Plant Conservatory of Aquitaine), locally called The Orchard Museum. Until recently, in honor of Saint Catherine's feast day, Evelyne Leterme, the director and passionate founder of the CVRA, hosted the annual Fête des Arbres, a tree festival that welcomed over 5,000 visitors each year who taste, buy, and plant the native and heirloom fruit and nut trees that are grown in the fertile Garonne River valley. Since the late 1990s, more than 150,000 heritage fruit trees have been sold. While the association that now manages the conservatoire has paused the festival and restructured itself as the “Domaine Agroécologique de Barolle - Conservatoire Végétal,” Madame Leterme continues to teach, lecture, write, and share her passions. She remains one of my greatest teachers as I sought to plant my own roots in the heavy Garonne River Valley soil.
One fall, Mme Leterme (who wrote the definitive book on heritage fruit trees, Les Fruits Retrouvés, available but unromantically titled in English as Growing Fruit Trees) walked me around her amazing orchard of nearly lost fruit. Ripe apples and pears dropped to the ground like so much confetti littering a summer-long party. Although apples are the undisputed king here with over 1000 varieties, other species crowded the 20-acre site—in total, over seventeen species and 2,000 different varieties of fig, peach, hazelnut, apricot, quince, pomegranate, and plum, including the famous prune d'ente for those delicious pruneaux d'agen that I used in my clafoutis last week…
What is a Lost Orchard?
At the Orchard Museum, tradition and aesthetics determine how various trees and vines are planted together. A series of alternating orchard rows with planted crops like wheat and corn is referred to as a joualle and jachère strips of land planted with riotous pink cosmos and orange zinnias to let the soil rest and attract the hardworking bee and butterfly population. Pruned hedgerows of hazelnuts, plums, and figs create an enclos, or enclosure, around a small pasture for crops or animals. Mme Leterme continues to lecture on the importance of planting a diverse hedge of fruit trees and buses to form a haie fruitière, a fruiting hedgerow planted to enclose and provide food.
Imagine 150 different cherry trees in bloom! Even if you don’t understand French, this video is worth watching. It shows the love and care she exudes in her beloved orchards during the harvest season.
Meet The Apple Saint
When I first met Mme. Leterme, I began planting my first fruit trees at Camont. Her conservatoire lay exactly 8 kilometers down the canal from Camont, and its soil, climate, and history as a working farm were identical to those of my newly purchased 300-year-old farmstead. Each year, over for many decades, I would buy fruit trees as my Catherine Day/birthday presents and plant them in the chilly November air; each year, I would learn about new varieties and taste different apples.
Mme. Leterme told me how she began her passion for collecting these lost fruit trees while working at the Écomusée de Marquèze in the Landes forest. This is a beautifully reconstructed 19th-century farm with many outbuildings—a mill and bakery, resin maker, beehives, forge, and multiple barns—practicing the crafts and agriculture that was needed to be self-sufficient. Imagine her bicycling through the French countryside collecting branch clippings that would then be grafted onto sturdy rootstock. I hold on to that image of her on an old French bicycle with a willow basket on the front, full of live clippings from trees found at old farmhouses and in abandoned orchards. She is a modern eco-crusader, like the old French warrior saints, wearing a straw hat for a helmet, a bicycle wheel for her symbol, and brandishing a pair of secateurs instead of a sword.
Here was, yet again, another living teacher who so influenced how I found France; I learned how severely we had reduced our fruit-eating experiences to a scant handful of varieties like Fuji, Delicious, and Granny Smiths. I learned that we, as cooks, had lost our way of telling the apple’s story by limiting our tartes and croustades to just a single variety. I learned that Finding France, meant finding as many different tastes of pears with a wealth of textures and juices; of chin dripping peaches, ranging from pale pink-skinned Pêche Blanche to the delicious late harvest Pêche de Vignes saturated with deep red raspberry flavor.
The accompanying recipes will include some of my favorite fruit dishes, savory and sweet. You must imagine the variety of different fruit flavors and textures and seek out your own resources for diversity in your fruit baskets. Find your own Lost Orchards where you live and save them from obscurity by cooking, eating, and sharing them. In these portraits of Finding France, I celebrate the passion and hard work maintained by my neighbors like Evelyne Leterme. She is indeed a Saint of Apples and Trees.
*Parts of “Apples and Saints” was originally published in Saveur Magazine in November 2007.
**Photo credit: https://www.gaiaformation.com/haie-fruitiere/
Finding France: A Culinary Memoir is an edible tale of a young traveling cook who gets stuck on a barge in France and stays to become a wise old woman with a head full of ideas on French food and cooking. Kate Hill—cook, teacher, mentor, and author—invites you into her world of French food as she learned over three dozen years of practice in the rural farmlands of Gascony. Read more here.
Kate Hill is the author of over a dozen cookbooks, including A Culinary Journey in Gascony, Cassoulet: A French Obsession, and A Gascon Year Series of 12 recipe and story volumes (available here). Published in America’s Best Food Writing 2019, curated by Samin Nosrat, Kate Hill has written for Saveur Magazine and The Los Angeles Times. Kate and her cooking, butchery, and charcuterie programs have been featured in Bon Appétit, Food and Wine, Condé Nast Traveler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Boston Globe, Faire magazine, My French Country Home, and countless websites.
I’m so glad to have happened upon your substack. It is with delight and longing that I read your wonderful entries! Thank you.
Fascinating read - thank you Kate.