Volvent is a tiny village in the Diois (pop 44). It lies on a meandering mountain road under the shadow of the Col d’Angèle, a massive limestone cliff which rears above the row of hills and, according to popular opinion, is home to the packs of wolves which have attacked many of the livestock in the farms of the area. There is a very clear divide between those who think wolves are an excellent thing, providing, with the winds, the howling soundtrack to the empty landscape, and those who wish them gone, which is generally those whose animals have been killed. I heard an interview recently with a brave zoologist who suggested that shepherds have lost their skills and, 150 years ago, no berger in his right mind would leave his flock on the hillside overnight. This is a view best not aired in Volvent.
Today is the village’s annual fête de lavande. Highlight is the display of old distilling machines. M Rialhe still uses one which his grandfather bought in 1910, and rented out to other farmers (it was a substantial investment). It must weigh several tonnes, it has the wonderful solidity of that era. Lesser fabrics come and go but you feel that, when the rest of us are dust, this machine will be grinding on. Rialhe fils clambers on a ladder to fill it up, his father lights the wood for the boiler, and we’re off.
In the temporary bar created in the lavoir, the less active members of the population watch the boules, and the stage is erected for the dance tonight.
I grew up with the idea that lavender was very polite and old ladyish – my grandmother always had a bottle of Yardley’s lavender on the dressing table, I fought against it because of its connotations, childhood headaches, crocodile skin handbags with monogrammed linen hankies, none of the perceived edginess of Charlie, a particularly toxic 1980s perfume, which was much favoured in my peer group. I think it was a sub-conscious boy-repellent – after only a few minutes the effects on the respiratory system were not dissimilar to tear-gas. They stoutly retaliated with Brut, thus both genders were reduced to peering myopically at each other across a fume-filled dance floor, while a multi-facetted sphere revolved jerkily overhead.
However, as is often the case, grandmother was right – quick relief from lavender oil, rubbed on your temples if you have a headache, sprinkled on the pillow to help you relax and a most effective mozzie repellent. It is also a natural antiseptic. Many other properties of less general usefulness are attributed such as the development of breasts in pubescent boys, but at core it is a pillar of Mediterranean civilisation, along with the olive and the fig, as eternal as the sun.
It has become one of the clichés of Provence, this spiky little purple flower. Tourists jostle to buy fluorescent bars of purple soap, often made in foreign sweatshops and containing no lavender at all. Although it has no place in the cuisine of Provence, with reason I think as it is slightly emetic, restaurants offer lavender-flavoured desserts, it’s image is almost effete. It seems to have joined the ranks of neutered icons, the acrylic kilts which adorn the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, the dreamcatchers which hang dismally in the doorways of shops on Native American reservations, sloppy shorthand for something much more profound and interesting than a bit of tourist tat, bought and instantly forgotten, asking nothing of us, and, in turn giving us nothing.
Away from the over-restored villages of the Luberon, in this high harsh landscape lavender is a serious crop, requiring hard physical labour, and, as any living thing, subject to the vagaries of climate. The Provençal industry produces around 60% of the world’s lavender, and to see it covering far inaccessible hills, and to be bathed in the perfumed smoke from the village distillery is one of the joys of living here, but, as with most crops all over the world, lavender has been damaged by climate change. Even by the standards of Provence, recent summers have been very very hot, there is an almost permanent drought. Some of the Côtes du Rhone reds are now approaching 15% abv, we currently have no eggs as chickens will not lay in this heat, we will have very little cheese after October. The beavers which have lived in our river for decades are now facing obliteration. So with the lavender – insufficiently hydrated in spring, the plants do not thrive as they should, and, in summer, are easy prey for marauding cicadas. The industry, can withstand a few years of spotty harvests, but eventually, like so much else which is taken for granted, we will wake and find it is gone.