From Saillans it was not far to La-Voulte-Sur-Rhône, where we went to visit the next project, actually kind of two projects. One was a farm collective where people grow vegetables and sell them to fund themselves and a place next to the river where people can live in vans and tents, and they invited us to stay there for some nights. The other one, run by the same people, is the Recyclerie, a huge warehouse in an industrial area of the city where the people are collecting all kinds of material, sort it, and try to redistribute it. They have something like a permanent flea market where you can buy furniture, clothes, and all kinds of imaginable other things, and a huge storage of stuff that still needs to be used somehow.
We were originally planning to stay for three nights, but there was a miscommunication, and a big party was organised on the evening of the day where we were planning to leave, so we decided to extend our stay by one day.
During the days we helped a bit with the farming work, helped clear out spaces at the Recyclerie for the party, and spent a lot of time on the sunny beach of the river. The group started to be more and more comfortable about nudity, and in one discussion about the ethics of shoplifting almost everyone was naked.
On the last day, there was the big party in the Recyclerie. The party was a way to get the (quite new) place known in the city, but also to raise some money to cover the expenses of the summer hole. While the mairie is not particularly happy about alternative projects like this, they are happy that anything is happening in the town at all, so the party was even officially announced in the tourist information office, and the city hall supplied some benches.
On the party there was a people’s kitchen, a bar, workshops and music performances. A bike fixing corner was set up where many of us helped or fixed their bikes. We also built another set of dynamo chargers.
