Kate Hill & Camont
Kate Hill discovered Camont in 1989
The history of Camont as a Gascon farm begins in 1724 but her current story began in 1989 when Kate Hill, chef and barge captain, was introduced to the quiet country property in ruin as a homeport for her antique 85-foot Dutch canal barge.
“The fairytale pigeonnier tower, the roofless kitchen with a huge fireplace, and the overgrown canal-side garden seduced me first with its extraordinary quiet.”
The first years were spent restoring the two-bedroom stone and brick pigeonnier with its adjacent kitchen so that Kate could teach cooking classes and receive visitors and friends—many of them journalists, photographers, and chefs.
For over thirty years, Kate and her family continued the restoration, including the attached piggery and long oxen barn, where she continued to host, teach, and write both cookbooks and articles for the growing food media. Soon writing became her overwhelming passion and she began to invite other writers, colleagues and friends, to come spend time under Camont’s quiet spell all the while eating the good local food of Gascony direct from its farms and village markets.
After an intensive online transition during the interruption of international travel during the Covid years, Kate retired her teaching apron in 2023 to focus on her own writing—The Camont Journals on Substack including a serialized memoir “Finding France” and a new culinary memoir and cookbook My Gascon Kitchen. It was a natural step to open the remaining four bedrooms and studios to other writers and creatives while continuing the hosting traditions of Camont.
Built around conversation, good food, gardens and quiet, not programming or deadlines, and rooted in a working French landscape rather than an arts campus, Camont is intentionally self-funded, which creates independence and flexibility for our residents. A welcoming home, a living rustic estate, and above all an open space, Camont has always gathered creative, curious people around a table. Kate Hill has now expanded that tradition to include writers, artists, photographers, chefs, and scholars.
Kate Hill lives, works, and writes at Camont in Gascony, France. She’s available to travel for speaking engagements throughout the United States and abroad. For more information go to her website: KateHillFrance.com