Page 61 - EarthHeroes

Perrine ladled bowls of steaming pumpkin soup while her husband, Charles, sliced bread still warm from the oven. The wooden table was covered in dishes of fresh salad leaves, crisp radishes and golden cobs of corn. Their youngest daughters, Fenoua and Shanti, had gathered apples to make a tart for dessert, which sat on the dresser with a jug of cream. A fire crackled in the corner and the kitchen was full of laughter.
It was autumn 2019 and Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer were sharing
a family dinner on their small organic farm in Normandy, France. For the
couple, working on the land had been a big change from their earlier lives. As
a teenager in Paris, Charles had considered becoming a farmer after doing work experience on a Normandy farm, but was told this was not for a city boy. Instead, he followed another dream and for 22 years worked as a sailor, teacher and film-maker on a school sailing boat, taking teenagers and scientists on voyages around the world. On these journeys, he shared the lives of Indigenous peoples, including Native Americans, African tribes and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Charles saw their close relationship with nature and how their environment provided everything they needed. While travelling, he also witnessed the human damage to ecosystems, from the growth of deserts and the destruction of rainforests to the loss of coral reefs.
After leaving his sailing career, he returned to Paris and in 2003 bought a small farm in a village called Bec Hellouin. He met Perrine when they were both training to become psychotherapists, and within a year they were married. Perrine had spent the previous decade working as a lawyer in China and Japan. She had always loved animals and the outdoors, and her time living in cities there had made her realise how important nature was to her, and how much she disliked consumerism – the modern habit of buying so many things we
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