 The family was so poor "that the young were sometimes dispatched to beg on the street".At a very young age, Calvat was hired out to tend the neighbors' cows, where she met Maximin Giraud on the eve of their apparition.From the spring to the fall of 1846 she worked for Jean-Baptiste Pra at "Les Ablandins", one of the hamlets of the village of La Salette.