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A woman sitting on a bench with a bowl of fresh vegetables

Elise Navarre

Market gardener, Provence — “I stopped counting the hours. I count the seasons now.”

Photo by Amie Roussel / Unsplash

Elise Navarre grows forty kinds of vegetables on a single hectare below a hill village, and sells them every Saturday at a market stall that has been in her family for three generations.

She left an office job in her thirties. She does not romanticise what came after: the work is hard, the summers are getting hotter, and a hailstorm can take a month of income in ten minutes. But she has never wanted to go back.

Ochre houses of a hill village behind wild flowers
The village above the gardens, at the end of a long summer. Photo by Auriane Clément / Unsplash
People ask what I grow. I tell them: whatever the year allows.
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Claire Moreau

Mornings, markets, small shops and the people who keep them. Lives in a village with one bakery and two opinions about it.

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