The peasant writer is not just angry, far from it. He is on all fours in his field by the light of his flashlight, crushing Colorado potato beetles, those “potato bugs”, cursing the snails that “get fucked doggy style in the moonlight” while he is being devoured by the insects, in his pajamas, after 11 p.m.
Neither radical, nor survivalist, nor reclusive, Dominic Lamontagne emphasizes in an interview, he loves good food (hello 37 pages of recipes!), friends, good wine. But his “obsession” remains the “desire to equip people”, to pass on information, to “give the fishing rod” to teach how to fish.
And what could be better than seeing him live day by day, between the sweaty work in the fields, the oozing of writing, the media interviews and the great pleasure he takes in cooking the food that he and his partner, Amélie Dion, have grown on their farm in Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides.
He is publishing his new essay these days, Perennial. The subtitle, Basic autonomy notebook, already announces the punctuated form of the daily between a personal diary (but not too much), an omnicultural treatise and an agricultural manual.
He writes a story day after day, inspired by the ideas he has defended since the book that made him famous, The impossible farm (2015). The proposal continues to be the following: to grow some of our food by devoting a few hours a day to it, without abandoning all our other projects. And perhaps, if, as he calls it, “the UPA-MAPAQ stranglehold” finally loosens on small family farming, to sell some of the product of our labor.
However, it is more in the realm of feeling that he brings us this time, a real ” show don’t tell » which shows that « it is accessible and possible » to make the choice of the earth. « We are not different from other people. We watch Netflix, sometimes, I buy a jar of Nutella », says Dominic Lamontagne with a laugh, seated at a table in front of a Tonkinese soup in a restaurant in Montreal.
After his last book The goat and the cabbagea dialogue between him and the convinced vegan activist Jean-François Dubé, the artisan farmer wanted to get out of his head and “take the reader behind the scenes”. “I came from a disembodied debate, taken from above. I needed to “reconnect” with everyday life precisely.” Anger in the belly, it wears down even the most determined.
Far from the fundamentalists
The two accomplices explain that, during the workshops they now give at the farm, people come mainly to “see what this life is like”, rather than going into practical details.
“We are far from being survivalists or even completely self-sufficient. We buy coffee, oil, etc. I repeat, for us, the important thing is to tend towards self-sufficiency,” describes Dominic Lamontagne this time. Their “impossible farm” was not created in seven days, and it is still under construction.
We therefore find these “peasants sensitive to intellectual fact”, as he writes, among their canned tomatoes, last year’s freeze-dried garlic, Flemish carbonnade, their chicken coop, the prolific goat farm, the promising asparagus claws, the delight of the wild mushroom beds, and many other things.
The pages are almost stained with duck fat or that of his gizzard salad. The smell of earth or goat manure, of turned compost, of rain sometimes saving, sometimes threatening. The leaven that must be awakened. The goats’ hooves to be cut.
A book that takes hold of the senses in any case, an antidote to the sensory deprivation of teleworkers and other office beasts.
“We need to deradicalize the choice to grow the things we eat, we need to get our feet back on the ground, ‘dare the land’, as Marc would say,” continues Dominic Lamontagne. Marc is Marc Séguin, who also directs the Territoires collection for the Leméac publishing house, where the new essay is published.
The desire for solutions
Contrary to the extreme, he neither suggests jumping head first into a market garden to earn an unrealistic income nor eating only root vegetables and leading an ascetic life. “We’re not saying to give up everything!” he reminds us.
A logical project, therefore, rather than a radical one, despite all the objections that are raised against them again and again. Why are all these people who are alarmed every day by climate change, the exploitation of others, the loss of meaning so disturbed by this proposal?
A form of “resistance” to the idea of taking action, a confirmation that, ultimately, “people are very good at being pessimistic,” says Dominic Lamontagne. “The desire for solutions is not commensurate with the challenges. Everyone freaks out, but our reaction stops there,” he notes.
His vision is firmly anchored in our century, and not a step backwards, as some want to label it. They will be very surprised to see him using a 3D printer to repair objects or create a chick feeder.
A certain provocation perhaps, which stirs up a little the gilded cages and all those which lead the planet into a dead end? The farmer describes a way of life which leaves time for other things, while being more consistent with the fine words, but, all in all, still a “punk reaction to the empire of the metro-work-sleep” which wants to convince that it is possible.
A successful bet. We find ourselves falling in love with life in their own way. We wonder how many chicks will hatch or if the young eggplant shoots will survive the predators. We tell ourselves that we should have brought a jar of our balcony basil pesto to the interview to enter this great network of exchanges and bartering.
Because it is also from the bonds between friends and enthusiasts that their lives are woven.
Rigidity
But even these great friendships do not make the stupidity of civil servants bearable, continues Dominic Lamontagne.
One of his favorite themes, which he would more than anything drop “if only!”, but which pursues him, even in the promising pilot projects of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of Quebec (MAPAQ).
They can’t help it: these “ordinary civil servants, invested with extraordinary powers”, choose “nine times out of ten to apply the regulation in the most restrictive way possible”.
Thus, by a bureaucratic feat, omelettes, crepes or cannelés made with goat’s milk are classified under the term “dairy products” for the MAPAQ. The problem, therefore, is still not being able to sell these few farm products made with raw milk without a sophisticated and expensive “dairy factory”, explains the farmer.
Some issues have nevertheless progressed in recent years, including that of on-farm slaughtering.
But once again, 48 hours before the first “impossible meal” at the farm, which included Amélie and Dominic’s poultry, the MAPAQ inspector told them that, even if they could sell reheated prepared meals, they could not serve them at the table.
This is how the author returns, especially in the last third of the book, to his more combative tone. A Fitzcarraldo, a man “in a hostile environment, tempted to give up, but determined to succeed.”
“It’s political,” Dominic and Amélie repeat in unison, finally satisfied with their phở soup and almost already on their way to their next meeting in Montreal.
Perennialwithout “romance” or lies, for those who are interested in growing something. Or anyone who eats.
As simple as that.