Celebrate the Little French Wins
Chez Nous: Sharing the Creative Spirit of the Relais de Camont
Don’t Pivot, Pirouette!
Here is my first big November pirouette. For years, I've kept home and business in my apron pocket, inexplicably entwined with my own desires for a creative life. Then this summer, I tried to divest myself from some of it; could I sell the five bedrooms of Camont, move to a smaller house, dwindle my life to a shadow of itself? It didn’t take long for me to succumb to the obvious—I am what I do, and what I do makes me who I am. I take my inspiration from these old stone walls and tile floors. I write and cook; I weed and plot; I shop, choose, and celebrate the small everyday milestones like stopping for cake and a cup of coffee. But I also make big plans and put them into action, knowing it will be a couple of years before they bear fruit like the three dozen trees I’ve planted. I don't seek perfection; instead, I instigate action. And just in time for a 73rd birthday, it’s time to do it again. I consider these annual November urgings to be my self-birthday presents. So, welcome to my November 10K celebration and an invitation to spread some of your energy around Camont.
Celebrate with me! All 9,918 of you!
And help support a new Club Camont Residency in 2025.
By the end of this month, I will have reached a quiet personal goal I set earlier this year—10,000 subscribers here on Substack before the end of the year. If I wanted to make The Camont Journals and my Champêtre field guides viable, I knew I would need to share more work with more people. And so, each week for the last year, I have sat at my desk in my library/living room and written to you, telling you my French dreams and sharing my favorite bites from my Gascon kitchen. Now we are strong! Each of you reading this, who has subscribed since April 2021 has made that possible. Thank you!
How does this (Substack) even work? In a nutshell, any way that we want it to be! Newsletters, essays, recipes, art portfolios, fiction, politics, travel and nature writing, gardening advice, horror, and more are published daily on Substack! (You can read about it in the NYT article here.) But writers are just a part of this; the key is your participation. Open all the emails or read them on the Substack app. If you need a little tech coaching, just ask me! Then, when you click on the little heart, share it with your friends and family, and, best of all, pay for a subscription to the Camont Journals, you secure the future work of my own words and what I am proposing next, here at the Relais de Camont—more writers, more beautiful things to read, art to enrich our lives, and more creativity in our own days.
When I started The Camont Journals, I created a Founder’s Level on the subscription page, inviting those with the means and desire to help kickstart and support my publishing the newsletters and books. I called it “Club Camont”. Last year, 18 Club Camont members helped support the publishing of my serialized memoir (Finding France: a Memoir in Small Bites) and the continued stories that keep us all grounded in the French countryside. But the everyday business of writing, editing, photographing, and recipe development is also a shared effort. Paid subscribers—just 328 of you out of nearly 10,000—pay for your subscription to the Camont Journals and, in exchange, receive full access to all the archives online—256 posts to date, including stories, recipes, special video cooking classes, and weekly encouragement to find your own French life wherever you live. I ask that you help me double that number by the end of the year. That’s what it will take to keep this show on the road—300 more paid subscribers. If you can, now is the time to give yourself the gift of being a fully supporting and paying community member of the Relais de Camont. Find out why below!
It really does take a village…
So, are you ready to dive deeper into what it means to lead a creative life together? I invite you to join me in the day-to-day running of the Relais de Camont by helping to support a growing community of writers and artists as we welcome the 2025 residents to a year of sharing what it means to live a creative life. Along the way, I’ll share what I have learned these last three years and where I see this creative home going. Paid subscribers will be privy to these behind-the-scenes posts and events,, plus a new and exciting project—a paid Club Camont Residency fund for 2025.
I ask my paid subscribers to consider upgrading to the Founders level and all possible free subscribers to upgrade to paid status for a very special project for 2025— establishing a paid ‘Club Camont Residency’ for one writer, artist, photographer, producer, or other creative. Only 35 paid subscribers will be required to offer one two-week residency during the 2025 year. Let’s make this happen! (If the response is more substantial, we can continue offering additional free spaces throughout the residency season.) One-time contributions are also welcome and can be paid into the Relais de Camont Residency Fund. Just ask me for a link. Once enough funds have been acquired, I will announce the residency application here and on the Relais de Camont website. This is open to all artists at any time of their career, at any age, and indeed any discipline.
Continuing November’s Pirouette toward Paradis
November is an excellent month for transition. Between the frenetic squirreling of harvestable ideas and the actionable efforts of an incoming new year, I am also taking a few weeks to sort out and finish some projects that have lingered too long on the to-do list at Camont—a bit of painting and wallpapering*, organizing a new office area, and building some bookshelves** (or at least directing the building of them). But most importantly, November is a good month for a severe reckoning before the winter dark days clamp down too hard before the festivities of light and frivolity next month intrude to rescue us from too-sad, too-short days. Get on your toes and turn around!
It’s been a bit of a struggle to adjust to the shorter days. It's still dark when I wake up, make my coffee, and perch next to the kitchen window, waiting for the first light to define the filigree oak trees in the park. I’m awake when the garbagemen pull up, quieter in their electric vehicle, spinning yellow light disturbing the predawn peace. Like the year-round birds flitting between the crabapple branches, I resist the winter changes, waking too soon in response to my earlier-than-usual bedtime. Giving in to the dark hours before sunrise, I read my favorite food culture Substacks ( Nancy Harmon Jenkins—for her clear overview of food writing and Emily Nunn—who keeps me focused on fresh vegetables and sneeky salads as breakfast food); I browse the headlines, drink one good cup of coffee, and finally settle in to write some words of my to you, dear readers.
Camont Winter To-Do
Adjusting to my French winter quietening here at Camont is a slow process; it’s taken more than the first 2 weeks of November to acknowledge that no one is sleeping next door in the Relais. This is a perfect time to sort and clear, a job that never gets finished when guests and residents are in the house. So, I have taken November off this year to sort out a few projects.
Too Much Food and Clean Linens
Over the last couple of months, the second refrigerator in the resident’s kitchen exploded with overbuying and recipe development. I shot a French Television program about making a stuffed cabbage (see Poule Verte here) so the overshopping of three huge Savoy cabbages crowded the fennel, celery, and apples I bought for the stuffing.
A basket of onions, two fennel bulbs, celery leaves, and cabbage. All these fresh but slightly tired-looking vegetables can meet up in a big soup pot and simmered into a rich vegetable bouillon, which I will use next week in my Thanksgiving/Birthday lunch sausage gravy. And the cute pumpkins we bought for the table? That’s coming, too, in a Vintage Kate recipe (see below).
Next, consolidate the condiments! Just like in the old days of working in a 24-hour restaurant, I’ll end my shift by marrying the half jars of mustard, sorting out the cornichons and olives, and mixing the tablespoons of homemade confitures together into a fruity/tangy pork roast glaze.
The rest of the pantry can also be organized. Two cups of lentils, a half bag of rice, and some butterfly pasta (not my favorite) are consigned to “school lunches”—that “quick, make something to eat so I can keep working” mid-day meal.
By now, all the bed linens have been freshly washed, folded, and stored until January’s first residents in a clean closet. I must clip some bay leaf branches and lavender sprigs to repel moths, mites, and mold. Maybe there’ll be an ironing day (or week) next month, but if not, I can pick and choose what I need for unexpected visitors.
Vintage Kate- Free from the Archives
Up Next:
— A RoadTrip through Gasconia! a long-promised drive around the Armagnac country
—Memories of Gascony by Pierre Koffmann is another foundation book from my Kitchen Stairs Library
—French Vintage Treasures- Meet Maiden France, a prop stylist’s dream resource!
Join Kate Hill weekly for Champêtre, a jaunt through the French countryside, in and out of the markets and garden, and into the warming kitchen of her Relais de Camont, a writers’ and creative residency at her 18th-century French farmhouse.
The Camont Journals chronicle her country life in Southwest France; Champêtre: a Field Guide is the next adventure full of good food and slow living in France.
Finding France: A Memoir in Small Bites is also archived here at The Camont Journals. You can read about this year-long adventure from the moment she arrived in France on her canal barge, the Julia Hoyt, to the gathering table here at the Relais de Camont. It’s all archived here: https://katehillfrance.substack.com/t/finding-france
I think you are wonderful. You inspire me! Thank you.
Happy birthday month to you, happy planning, happy winter months - once you've acclimatised to longer days of course!
Oh Kate, of course you can't leave Camont - its part of who you are!
My husband and I had the 'do we need to downsize, can we (me) seriously keep all this land maintained, haul in logs, fix roofs etc.. conversation on his birthday at the beginning of the month, he is convinced we do, I know we do not! I would rather drop down trying than leave this old rambling house, this hill because it is all of me! Thankfully Seth who knows no other home, now nearly 16 and strong agrees so we stay... thank goodness! X