Free Ten Trees and a Truffle Dog by Jamie Ivey Page A

of wedding vow to their new house. Hold your hands up and repeat after me: 'A property transaction is not to be taken in hand lightly or thoughtlessly but reverently, soberly and in the fear of God.' Perhaps friends and relatives could be invited along to the signing of contracts and the notaire could ask them to show their support for the couple by chiming in 'we will' at the appropriate moment.
    Â Â Reverent and sober were certainly not words that could describe us in the weeks after seeing the plot. We were giddy with excitement, in lust with the idea of finally achieving our dream. At every opportunity we visited the terrain . We joked that it was like a courtship. Each day a new delight was unveiled to us, a hitherto undiscovered plum tree or a hidden corner filled with wild herbs. We were being teased and seduced by the thought of owning a tiny part of the countryside we loved so much. In the past we'd always laughed at wide-eyed tourists who could be duped by a whiff of wild thyme into a lifelong relationship with an old whore of a house. Now we were behaving exactly like them.
    Â Â Sensible thoughts like whether we could afford to take on such a project only fleetingly entered our heads. Instead, we sat down on a daily basis and drooled over pictures of cast-iron doors, distressed kitchens and antique baths. We annotated the plans – a larger opening here, a utility room there – and took them off to the mairie for approval. We visited ongoing chantiers (construction sites) and watched artisans create gleaming polished concrete floors, recessed alcoves and drystone walls. Somehow we convinced ourselves that we were special and that we'd manage to build the house within budget and on time.
    Â Â Our weekends were spent raking vide greniers for furniture for our new house. We fooled ourselves that the prices quoted were so cheap, it didn't matter if the purchase fell through. However, a quick inventory of several days' hard shopping showed that all the small items had added up. Our cellar was crammed with rash purchases such as: an old sewing table (in need of repair), an eel catching net (we thought we would convert this into a light), a wicker table and chairs (believed valuable, later identified in an IKEA catalogue), a set of large glass bowls with tapered necks (to decorate new kitchen), a fireguard (so cheap we had to purchase it even if it was the wrong size) and finally a set of truffle digging tools.
    Â Â Other than this final impulsive purchase, we'd given little thought to the truffles or the practicalities of finding them. A little further investigation had shown that the borie and the truffière formed part of the garrigue, or wild countryside, but as Eric had explained the current owner harvested the truffles, so why not us?
    Â Â As a result, given the price per kilo of the black diamonds, there was an unspoken assumption that we'd probably, rather reluctantly, get a dog, but no more than that. At least my grasp of truffle technicalities was helped by an article in La Provence about the Ménerbes mairie . Rather than devoting funds to such mundane things as rubbish collection, the mayor had decided to plant a communal truffière , gambling that the way to secure re-election was through his constituents' stomachs.
    Â Â The article went on to explain how truffles were a fungal disease carried by some oak trees, rather like you or I might have athlete's foot, but tastier. The truffles were attached by a gossamer-thin thread to the trees and grew by sucking nutrients from the oak. Take an acorn from a diseased oak, plant it, and the chances were that you would one day have a truffle tree. Plant lots of acorns and you'd end up with a truffière , just like the one we were going to purchase.
    Â Â Our buyers' ardour couldn't be dented. Local records showed the terrain had previously been used as landfill for the village clay works and Eric advised us to consult engineers