How Are Farmers are Coping in the Drought in the Loire Valley?

Local goats cheese producers are struggling to feed their herds. In order to retain their AOC certification for specific cheeses produced in specific locations they need to feed the goats with locally produced hay. 

Dairy goats.

A herd of five hundred goats will eat 900 kilograms of hay per day plus a bit of silage. This year farmers have only been able to cut half the quantity of hay that they would normally be able to produce. They are using stocks from last year, but if 2023 isn't a normal year they will not be able to replenish their stocks.

Dairy goats.

In the heat the goats suffer from a lack of appetite so they eat less and produce less milk. Normally each goat gives 3.5 litres of milk per day. At the moment the average is barely 3 litres per goat per day. 

Canola crop in the Claise Valley in April.

Farmers report that their winter cereal harvest (that's wheat, barley, and canola) was 30 percent down. The spring sunflower yield will be 50 percent of normal and they are expecting maize to be 70 percent of normal. Many farmers do not irrigate as they have calcareous clay soils that don't require it (they may look dry on the surface, but retain a lot of water in the soil). Last year there was a bumper crop, this year over all will be just over half of last year. Rainfall has been half that required. Many farmers have come to the conclusion that maize is too water greedy to continue with in the Loire Valley.

Sunflowers in the Claise Valley.

Some farmers are struggling to work out from the officially issued regulations if they are still allowed to irrigate. Those farmers who have their own dams can still irrigate, which the general public doesn't always realise. 

Barley crop in the Vienne Valley.

 

Four hundred of the 1500 cereal growers in Indre et Loire irrigate as normal practice. There are 240 other farms which irrigate, mainly for growing forage (for example, dairy farmers, but market gardens and nurseries are also included in this category of farms not primarily growing cereals). 

Dry dam (étang).

 

Only seed maize needs to be irrigated now, this late in the season. That's a hundred farms in a total of 3000 farms of all categories in the Touraine. Farmers take the view that it is not the current irrigation that is causing a lack of water, it is the lack of rain in September 2021.

Wheat being irrigated in late March in the Creuse Valley, where the soil is sandy.

 

Moving a Wardrobe

For the whole of September our street has been blocked. Our neighbours across the road, Laurent and his family, have had their roof completely redone by local Preuilly firm Couverture Veron. The house is a holiday home and Laurent et al live in Alsace, coming down a few times a year for short breaks and a whirlwind of renovations. The truck and lifting machine used by the roofers, not to mention their scaffolding, has meant that the street has been blocked from 8am to 5pm every week day at the level of our courtyard. At night and over the weekends they have been parking their lifting machine in our courtyard, and that led us to have an idea.

 The wardrobe is loaded into the scoop.

In return for the use of our courtyard, which didn't really inconvenience us because we have space out the back as an alternative to park the car, we asked the roofers if they would help us get a wardrobe upstairs. They benefitted by being able to leave the big machine on site for the whole of the job, rather than having to drive it back to the depot every evening. The wardrobe we wanted moved has lived in our sitting room and stored things like guitars ever since we moved here and discovered it was too big by just a few centimetres, to go up our stairs and into our bedroom. What we wanted was for them to lift it up to the first floor bedroom window, which it would easily fit through.

 The apprentice rides up with the wardrobe. 

(I suspect he is taking the opportunity here to perve into Anne and John's workshop across the road.)

I explained our problem and we set a date for just after lunch the day before they finished Laurent's roof. We shuffled furniture as necessary and cleaned behind things that hadn't seen a vaccuum cleaner or a duster for quite a long time. I was rather shocked to see just how dirty one corner of our bedroom really was. 

 I couldn't get a photo of him doing his tightrope act, but here is the roofer, 

one foot on the windowsill, one on the scoop.

We lined the lifting machine's scoop with cardboard and lifted the wardrobe out of the sitting room window on its side. It isn't heavy or very large and fitted quite neatly. Just to be sure it wouldn't move though the apprentice roofer travelled up in the bucket with the wardrobe. On reaching the right height and distance from the upstairs window the roofer driving the machine stopped, hopped out of the cabin, tightrope walked up the hydraulic arm and jumped in through the window. Then he, the apprentice and Simon lifted the wardrobe in and set it down. Unbelievably easily done, taking no more than 10 minutes (probably less).

 Simon and the roofer lift the wardrobe in through the first floor window.

The wardrobe matches the other one in our bedroom, and the bedside tables. It is part of a suite of furniture that Simon acquired when he bought a house in Australia and the furniture was left in the house. There is also a bed and a dressing table, which we have in the guest bedroom. It is well made of some Australian hardwood (no doubt a eucalypt of some sort). It will be nice for Simon to have something a bit classier than a blue teflon zip up wardrobe for his shirts. But the guitars will have to find a new home.

A big thank you to the Veron roofing guys, who were friendly and careful throughout.

Varnishing the Staircase

While I was away Simon took the opportunity to embark on a major renovation project -- varnishing our staircase.

 Before (with one step half sanded so you can see the difference).

After it was installed I did the steps and risers of the bottom flight, and that is how the whole thing has  stayed for nearly 5 years. It was just too big, inconvenient and messy to contemplate finishing.

During (steps sanded and washed).

Simon's programme of work was as follows:

Day 1 sanding the top flight including banister with 80 grit sandpaper followed by 120 grit. For this a combination of orbital sander, 1/3 sheet sander and corner sander were used.

Day 2 sanding the top flight banister (all those angles and awkward unreachable bits!).

Day 3 more sanding.

Day 4 more sanding.

Day 5 more sanding then varnishing the whole of the top flight.

Day 6 knocked back the varnish on the top flight and gave it a second coat, followed by a first coat on the lower flight steps.

Day 7 knocked back the varnish on all the steps by hand with 400 grit, gave all of it another coat of varnish. After waiting 4 hours for the varnish to dry, everything was gone over with 400 grit again, dusted with a soft paintbrush and another coat of varnish applied, three steps at a time.

Day 8 all of the banister knocked back with 400 grit sandpaper (once again all done by hand), dusted with a microfibre cloth and given a very thin final coat of varnish.

Most of the days involved 8 -12 hours on him being on his knees, up to his neck in dust. He claims 7 vacuum cleaner loads of dust were generated, but most of it had been removed by the time I was home. The steps are silky smooth - using 400grit sandpaper means a finish like high quality furniture.

 After (ta dah!)

He's done a great job and it was a fabulous surprise. All of the smears the steps were left with from Stéphane's work rendering the walls are gone, they are a rich reddish mid brown colour and the handrails are smooth to the touch.

Winter Laundry Solutions

The view from the office.

We've never owned a tumble dryer and one of the things we really enjoy about living in France is that for much of the year we can dry the laundry outside on a line. In London we lived in a National Trust house, so we were not allowed to hang washing outside in case the sight of our smalls flapping in the breeze caused a visitor's experience to be ruined. With no room for a dryer inside washing used to hang around for days in my sewing room. And even in France there is that period from November to March where it mostly has to dry inside, because it is either too wet (not just rain, but damp misty days) or too cold to dry outside.

At the top of the stairs.

Until recently we had one of those stupid multi tiered laundry racks, which unless you are the size of a small infant, means that you have to thread your clothes through at least one of the wire grills to hang them full length. Trying to squeeze a pair of jeans through all those wires drives me crazy. Fortunately it started to fall apart, so I felt buying a replacement was fully justified.

Kitchen cloths on the rack in the bathroom.

It proved surprisingly difficult to find a laundry rack in a different, more user friendly style. Finally we managed it, at Babou, a household goods store, in Chateauroux. We've purchased a rack that hangs off the handrail at the top of the stairs and a long rack that stands at the back of the bathroom. Hanging stuff off the staircase rack is still somewhat challenging, but at least I don't have the palaver of threading the clothes through all the wires below.

Washing hung up here at the top of the house benefits from wafts of warm air rising and it mostly dries overnight. This isn't too bad a turn around, but still much slower than the mere couple of hours it needs outdoors in the summer time.

Susan

500 Year Old Floorboards Reused

These blocks of oak are 500 years old according to Stéphane, and were reclaimed from a floor in a grand old house in Loches that he worked on. They are quarter sawn and show a lovely grain known in French as maille ('chain stitch'). At 40mm, they are twice as thick as modern floorboards. Now, with their age, they are also extraordinarily hard. Stéphane broke several good tools working with this wood.

These particular pieces are two mounts that he fashioned for our staircase lights.

Susan

Tomorrow my mother is back into hospital to have an electronic ignition (known in non-motoring households as a pacemaker) fitted - Simon.

The Niche

I wrote about a month ago that we were making a niche in the wall of the staircase. This is to allow us to display some of the stuff we have accumulated over the years.

Now that the walls of the staircase are finished we have installed the lighting, which makes the stairs a bright and attractive place (and safe!), and put the first item in the niche.

This is a late 19th century plough plane - a router for cutting grooves. It was Susan's great-grandfather's and arrived here a week ago.

I am really pleased with the whole thing: walls, niche and lighting. All we need do now is sand and varnish the stairs and that part of the job is finished.

Simon