Mystery Crops

Provence is an agricultural area and we often pass by farms.  Most aren’t large so we go past one field after another.

Usually the crops are easy to identify – wheat, apples, tomatoes.  We can even identify some of the less-common crops, like rapeseed.  But once in a while we’ll pass a field growing something we’re not familiar with.

When this happens, Val seems to think I’ve suddenly become the Shell Answer Man and will ask me what we’re looking at.  Of course, I have no idea.  What to do?

When someone asks me a question, I usually find there are three ways to go.

1.     I know the answer and say so.  I’m proud of myself and am not shy about showing it.  This has caused Val to teach me a new French word, insupportable (insufferable), plus a few more I can’t print here.

2.     I don’t know the answer and say so.  But what’s the fun in that?

3.     I don’t know the answer so I make something up.  The trick is to come up with something plausible and to say it with great confidence, perhaps even be a bit insupportable.

So the answer I’ve come with for the mystery crops is…sorghum.  It’s a crop most people have heard of but who the heck knows what it really looks like? 

It’s worked so far but Val is starting to become suspicious of the wildly different kinds of sorghum that seem to be growing in Provence.

KVS