Georgeanne Brennan's New Labor of Love

Georgeanne Brennan's passion for Provence is well documented, most notably in her books A Pig in Provence (Harcourt and Chronicle Books) and The Food and Flavors of Haute Provence (Chronicle Books), the latter of which won a James Beard Foundation award.  (To see all her books, click here.)

Since 1970, Georgeanne has had a home in the Upper Var region of Provence (a few kilometers from Quinson), where, over the years, she has raised goats, made cheese, run a seasonal cooking school and along the way, became something of an expert on sustainable living. When she's not in France, she lives on a small farm in Northern California.

Now Georgeanne is sharing her passion for food, gardening, history and Provence in an online store called La Vie Rustic.  It officially launched last month, selling a range of products “for the kitchen, barnyard, tool-shed, orchard and field."

La Vie Rustic, she says, is designed to appeal to  “the new wave of backyard and urban gardeners, animal husbandmen and women, home cooks, and anyone, anywhere who, like me, wishes to practice a sustainable lifestyle mindfully producing, cooking, and caring for their own food or even just a small part of it.”

The product line will grow as time goes on. So far, her seed collection includes French Heirloom Lettuce and Chicory Seeds in beautiful letterpress packages, a Chicken Scratch Patch and a field of Red Poppies. 

In the cuisine/kitchen section, she offers fresh and dried sweet bay cut from her own trees, Sel de Figues, Sel d'Abricot, a DIY Roulade (French Pancetta) kit and coming soon, a DIY for Jambon Cru.

In the verger/orchard department, you’ll find one-year-old Sultan de Marabout Fig Trees, grown from cuttings from a tree that was a gift to the United States from the Agricultural Commissioner of Algeria during the first decades of the 20th century.

Every product Georgeanne sells she created herself, often from homegrown fruits and herbs.  All of them, she says, were made “in the spirit of Provence.’’ Coming soon are a hand-crafted sickle with a black-walnut handle…and letter-press holiday cards crafted by a master printer on a Heidleberg press.

This type of business hardly new to Georgeanne.  In the 1980s, she founded the pioneering company Le Marche Seeds, which chef Joyce Goldstein wrote about in her book Inside the California Food Revolution.  She was also the designer and packager for Smith & Hawken's vegetable-and flower-seed packet and planter gift line...and she created private custom seed-and-garden products for Gardener's Eden, a now-closed division of Williams-Sonoma.

And now, Georgeanne is thrilled to be back in the world she loves so much: making and marketing high-quality products, in beautifully designed packages, for those who value the thoughtful,  loving-the-land lifestyle that she does.

"La Vie Rustic is heavily infused with my love for and knowledge of Provence and its way of life,” she says. "I want to share wonderful products for all the areas of our world that make for a sustainable life, in the French style.”

For more info about Georgeanne, you can check out her website, sign up for her newsletter, follow her on Twitter, find her on Facebook or send her an email: contact@lavierustic.com

Photos: (1)  Georgeanne's beloved Provence. (2) Apricot salt.  (3) Pretty plums, on the Vie Rustic site. (4) Goat Cheese with Olive Oil and  Georgeanne's Herbes de Provence. (5) The website is filled with photos and tales of life in Provence. "Taken just before we all sat down to eat dinner," she writes, "this photo (by Sara Remington, from the book Paris to Provence by Ethel Brennan), speaks of the essence of the French kitchen." (6)  A Pig in Provence: "In Provence, my neighbors kept rabbits, guinea hens, geese (which attacked me if I got near them), a few chickens and a pig," Georgeanne continues. "The animals were kept in the barnyard area, behind the stone houses, or adjacent to them. The animals’ shelters were built of stone and had red-tiled roofs, just like the homes..."(7) Lettuce Seed Packets: Scarole Cornet de Bordeaux, Scarole Pain de Sucre, Friée Très Fine Maraichère, Chicorée Sauvage de Verone and more. (8) A salad of frisée, haricot vert and toasted walnuts. (9) Poppies in Provence and (10) the seeds to grow your own patch. (11) French Cooking at Home is Georgeanne's video cooking class; for into on that click here.