Down to work....

Monday, February 16th, 2009

Another beautiful sunny day, cool but not too cold. Although the night was cold and I resolved to get myself a couple of duvets for the two covers I had brought over. Today was a perfect day for working around the farm. I first painted the shutters that I had prepared yesterday. We’ve chosen the colour “Provence Bleu”, evocative of Mediterranean climates and Latin cultures. Although not uncommon here in the south of France it is less common here in Languedoc. The Languedociennes seem to prefer more muted earth tones, and indeed if one can find any shred of paint on the farmhouse windows and doors it seems to have been something approaching olive. I tried that when I first started painting but it seemed so drab…perhaps why it is associated with “olive” in the first place.

Having successfully completed the one set of shutters I looked at the next four I wanted to get done. They were by far the largest of what I had completed so far but being on the approach to the farmhouse would make the most difference in visitors coming to see the place. They were each about 2 meters tall and about 1.5 meters wide. For the most part the hardware was in place but a couple of pieces would need to be replaced.

In replicating these shutters, which were made when nails were hand fashioned on a forge perhaps two hundred years ago, it is important to retain the character of the old while capturing the functionality of the new. Normally I do this by removing all the metal hardware and painting it for reuse. Sometimes this is best accomplished by burning the old shutters and sifting through the ashes for the metal bits and pieces. It can be laborious but the effect is well worth it when you see the new window shutter dressed up in its refurbished hardware. Something about the new hardware available in the stores that is just grating on the eye.

I quickly decided I needed to make another excursion to Leroy Merlin for materials, requiring longer boards and several other pieces that I had not previously provisioned. I also had a list of other materials I wanted; wire to rewire an old bronze light I had purchased at the flea market, light bulbs, plugs, fuses, kerosene and of course the wood for the next shutters. I tend to wander through the stores here because there are so many things that we don’t have. For example, they have an extensive collection of decorative stickers for walls from outright photographic murals to psychedelic accents to Zen-like silhouettes of trees, flowering branches etc.

And that’s just the beginning. In every department, whether it’s the Walmart like “selling everything” style grocery/department store (LeClerc, SuperU, or Auchan) or the Home Depot “selling everything” style store for do-it-yourselfer’s (Leroy Merlin, Brico Depot, or Castorama…which means something like “beaver market”) there is something new to see. And products which cost huge amounts at home cost next to nothing here. One example; I priced a stainless steel and glass exhaust hood in the US for a new kitchen at approximately $1800. I bought something very similar at Brico Depot for $140 US or about 100 Euro. Italian made, excellent quality, easy installation and I just checked the box it came in at the airport when I made my return trip…shipped it home for free!

Anyway, having procured my materials (and two new queen sized duvets which cost about 80 Euro total) I made my way home and found that Christian had dropped me off the little kerosene heater he had promised to lend me. Tonight was going to be warmer!

Late in the afternoon Dr. Iris Berdrow arrived. She is a professor of International Management at Bentley College outside of Boston and had completed her MBA and Phd at Western, where I had completed my own although we were some years apart in attending. She had seen the profile of my business in Western’s “In Touch” alumni magazine and while on sabbatical at a college in Clermont Ferrand was doing research in the field of cross cultural constraints on innovation. It seemed I might be a good prototypical study for her research.

Christian and Corinne had arranged for her to stay at a local gites and once she got settled I gave her a tour of the farm and the Chateau ruins. To do this, even in a cursory way, takes a couple of hours by the end of which it was time to crack a bottle of wine. I had explained the vision I had for the business at some length and it seemed the more we talked about it the more Dr. Berdrow thought it might be a good multi-faceted case study to write up. With this thought in mind we went to Sommieres for dinner at my favourite little pizza place there.

The day had begun brightly and opened up some new possibilities for the business. Too tired to walk for a while with Captain Vancouver I went to sleep remembering my case studies at Western…I wondered who in the future would skip reading the case and charm their way through as I had done for so many cases in the past. And speaking of cases, there were many cases of wine waiting for me at the Cooperative, but that is Thursday’s story. But it does give the “case-study” method a different twist.