Kate Hill . Camont . Gascony

Welcome. I am Kate Hill, a published author and professional cook and teacher, mentor, coach, a modern elder, and Gascon fairy godmother. Thirty years ago I found an old farm called Camont laying in ruin alongside the Canal de Garonne. I had sailed into this fruitful spot in France on my Dutch canal barge, the Julia Hoyt, beginning the first gastronomic charters in Gascony. Camont soon became a lively homeport and its 300-year-old kitchen became the focus for hundreds of hungry friends and guests over the years. Home, gite, and gardens—it wasn't long before I started teaching cooking classes in that French Kitchen at Camont.

The rural diversity of Gascony continues to inspire me and the food that I cook and write about every day at Camont. As one of Gascony's most passionate ambassadors, let me introduce you to my neighborhood. I write a Substack publication called The Camont Journals and extend a professional courtesy discount to fellow writers to come and discover working here at Camont.

Teacher & Mentor: From crafting globe-trotting Cassoulets to rolling out buttery Croustade aux Pommes, I have taught professionals and amateurs how to master the Cooking of Southwest France and French Farmstead Charcuterie.

Television: Find my Cooking with Wine series and The Whole Animal Movie at SommTV.

Writer: I write about my neighbors, the larger-than-life characters of Gascony, the beautiful villages, and rolling landscapes for international magazines and sites like Saveur, and at The Camont Journals Newsletter on Substack. My print-on-demand and ebooks are available here and online at Amazon. As a writer, I created this small and intimate Writer’s Retreat and Creative Residency— the Relais de Camont just for you.

The Relais de Camont is an 18th-century French farmhouse and creative retreat.

French farmhouse, kitchen, pigeonnier, piggery, and barn— Camont, built in 1724, has been my home and creative retreat since 1989.  Now the Relais de Camont serves as writers retreat and artist residency.

Camont as a Creative House and Residency is an intimate space open to artists as a working studio colored with jars of herb-scented fruit, herbal aperitifs steeping, and salted hams hanging from the beams. The green garden offers quiet inspiration under the shady canal towpath and into the hammock-strewn park. Camont welcomes old friends and new to discover a gentle rural life, forged by the seasons, gathered within old stone walls, and decorated with the fruits of French culinary labors. More info: residency information.

At Camont, writers, photographers, artists, and cooks thrive side by side within the fertile nooks and crannies of a historical home. Anna Bond recently created a new wallpaper and fabric design collection for her company, Rifle Paper Company inspired by Camont; Read Camas Davis' new book 'Killing It'—she wrote about studying butchery and charcuterie at Camont before returning as a writer to finish writing her life journey in meat. Here’s what Provence-based photographer Jamie Beck of Ann Street Studios saw and shared on one of her visits to Camont. Ruth Ribeaucourt has gathered some of her Faire Magazine creatives together to celebrate at Camont and will be sponsoring a juried fellowship in late 2022. Artists, gardeners, cooks and photographers have made Relais de Camont a gastronomic gathering spot in Gascony since 1724. See what Sallie Ann Lewis photographed while writing for the Washington Post The Lily.

All writers, photographers, digital nomads, and other creatives are welcome to apply for Creative Residencies at Camont here.

Life is short. Do something you love. Now. 

"A few steps outside of her always-buzzing kitchen are big bunches of herbs growing in verdant, leafy profusion. Thyme, variegated two-color sage, lovage, and savory are well-represented, but I was especially pleased to find fresh oregano, which for some reason is elusive in Paris. " — David Lebovitz

" It was the epitome of what Kate had been talking about, a recipe so simple you can hardly call it a recipe, so tied to this place and the time of year that you can't imagine it anywhere else, so delicious that your hand keeps reaching for just one more, just one more." — Nancy Harmon Jenkins  Food and Wine Magazine

"On our final night in Gascony, we had an aperitif at Kate's farmhouse, which had filled to bursting with culinary gypsies, and headed to a marché nocturne, a night market, perhaps the truest expression of the terroir we'd experienced." — Michael Ruhlman Conde Nast Traveler

Books and other writing by Kate Hill

Kate Hill has re-published her first book, a Culinary Journey in Gascony, as a digital ebook here. During the Covid pandemic lockdown, while working on a 12-month series of seasonal recipes called A Gascon Year (available here), Kate decided to dedicate her own creative time to writing and stop in-person teaching. That pause became the nexus for opening her pigeonnier farmhouse as the Relais de Camont, a new way of encouraging creative work while pursuing her own writing. Sign up for the Camont Journals here to experience the seasonal kitchen shifts and delicious influences of Southwest France as Kate chronicles a slow approach to living.