Striking a Chord

In early December we went to the Chateau of Candé to attend an event where the massive Skinner organ that resides there would be played. This is something that only happens a couple of times a year. The organ, along with modern plumbing, is one of the few major alterations undertaken by French American entrepreneur and music lover Charles Bedaux when he acquired the property in 1927 (he had shares in the Skinner organ company) .

The house manager introduces the chateau and the afternoon's activities.

It wasn't really a recital, but more an information session about the organ. We were very impressed with how much the house manager knew, as she freely admitted she was no musician. We got to peer at the organ close up, squish into the control room and listen to various effects it can do. The organist was the musician who normally plays the organ in Tours Cathedral. At half time we were offered afternoon tea, and at the end we got to look around the chateau's other rooms.

The library set up for afternoon tea.

The organ, commissioned from Skinner and installed in 1928, has three keyboards, with the bottom one being capable of playing all of the 'instruments'. This is to simplify the playing so the organist does not necessarily have to know which keys play which instruments. The organ can also be programmed so certain combinations can be played simultaneously and has a selection of 27 instruments and three percussion instruments. The organist needs to play three separate pieces simultaneously ie two hands and feet. Curiously, the organ is positioned so that the organist faces the audience, unlike the usual arrangement, where they would sit with their back to the audience.

The organist from Tours cathedral playing.

It took three men three months to assemble the organ, which is powered by electricity. Like everything in the house it is 'disguised' with carved oak panelling. As organs go, it is medium sized (the one in Notre-Dame de Paris has five keyboards and the biggest ever organ had seven).

The control room.

In theory the Skinner organ company could produce an organ a week, but this is an average based on the total number of Skinner workers and the number of organs produced annually. When the City of Tours took over the chateau it took ten years (2005 to 2015) for the organ restoration to be completed, what with there being long periods when the American specialist they needed to contribute to the project was unavailable. It has now been restored to fully working order, by a Breton organ making firm. It is the only working organ of its kind in Europe and one of only three working Skinner house organs in the world. It was classed as an historic monument in its own right in 1993.

The pipes.

In the days of the Bedaux's occupancy they would invite the organist from Saint Sulpice in Paris down for the weekend to play. If he wasn't available the organ had the additional feature of being able to play automatically, using rolls.

Interval.

Setting the organ up to play was likened to a chef's mise en prep in the kitchen. All the 'ingredients' are laid out and the organist combines them. The organist has to remember he is not in a cathedral. Playing in a private home he is the accompanist for a singer performing chanson, folk songs or jazz. The technical term for this type of organ is house organ (Fr. orgue de salon). Organs are wind instruments, unlike pianos, which are string instruments.

The organist demonstrates a part of the organ pipes 

(with a piece he has borrowed from the cathedral organ).

The organ was played during the marriage ceremony of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson) in 1937. Later, it was damaged when the explosives factory across the road blew up in 1943. Although repaired, after 1959 it was no longer used.

A sculpture in the grounds of the chateau, which clearly references the organ. According to a friend, you can speak in some pipes and have the sound appear from others -- hours of fun for small boys.

Galette des Rois

Galette des Rois, made from flaky pastry and almond frangipane, is traditionally eaten in France at Epiphany, on 6 January. It is the last of the festive seasonal foods before we all get back to work or school again. Hidden inside is a ceramic token known as a fève ('bean'). The person who gets the fève in their slice gets to be king for a day.

Ingredients:

Pastry
250 g butter
320 g flour
A pinch of salt

Frangipane
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup almond meal
100 g butter
A pinch of salt
2 eggs (+ one for the eggwash)

Method:

1. Put the 250 g block of butter in the freezer for an hour.
2. Combine the flour and a pinch of salt.
3. Coarsely grate the butter into the flour.
4. Mix with a knife and / or your hands until it forms a dough, adding water as needed.
5. Put the dough in the fridge for half an hour.
6. Combine the sugar, almond meal and a pinch of salt in a stand mixer bowl.
7. Add 100 g butter and mix well.
8. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well each time.
9. Divide the pastry in half and roll each half out into a circle of 28 cm diameter (use a large dinner plate as a template).
10. Line a baking tray with a silicone mat.
11. Place one of the pastry circles on the mat.
12. Spread the almond paste (frangipane) on to the pastry, leaving a 5 cm margin all the way around.
13. Put a fève in the frangipane.
14. Beat an egg and brush the pastry margin.
15. Place the other pastry circle carefully on top, matching the edges and pressing gently around the edge of the circle.
16. Chill the cake for 45 minutes.
17. Heat the oven to 200C.
18. Incise a decorative pattern in the pastry with a sharp knife. Be careful not to cut through to the filling.
19. Pinch the edges together to ensure a seal and add to the decorative look.
20. Snip a nick in the top to allow steam to vent. If you don't it is certain to leak at the edges.
21. Brush the top with eggwash.
22. Bake for 30 minutes.
23. Cool on a rack. Serves 8.

At Step 16 you can use the leftover pastry to make mini galettes. Roll out the pastry and using a small scone cutter cut out as many fluted circles as you can. Cut small pieces of almond paste (available in the baking section of any French supermarket, sometimes plain, sometimes green or pink) and place on half of the little circles. Eggwash the edges and top with the remaining circles. Press to seal. Chill along with the big cake. When the big cake is ready to bake, eggwash the minis and put them on a separate tray. Put them in the oven at the same time as the big cake, but take out at 20 minutes and cool on a rack.

Locally made butter from the Laiterie Cooperative de Verneuil can be purchased from their factory shop, the Maison des Producteurs in Loches, the EpiService corner stores in Preuilly sur Claise and Le Grand Pressigny and the Intermarché supermarket in Yzeures sur Creuse. 

There are several local flour millers, milling either their own wheat or working with local farmers. I used flour from Farine du Berry, available in the Intermarché supermarket in Yzeures sur Creuse.

The eggs came from Lait Grand Cru, a local dairy farm who make home deliveries of dairy products, as well as poultry if you order it.

The almond meal and sugar were purchased from the SuperU supermarket at La Roche Posay.

Yum

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

Two Years Ago, Before the Bushfires

Much of the country that is burning so ferociously in Australia is places we are quite familiar with. On our 2017-18 trip we travelled through Gippsland and stayed on the New South Wales south coast. Both these areas are experiencing unprecedented bushfires.

My sister travelled from Canberra to south-east Queensland for Christmas and New Year and said she'd never seen so much smoke. She is delaying her return because of the poor air quality in Canberra.

All tourists, thousands of people, mostly staying in caravan parks, have been ordered to leave the south coast and go home, via the few roads that the fire brigade have deemed safe to travel on Thursday. The most dangerous day at the time I am writing (Thursday) is expected to be Saturday. We have friends who live in the 'leave zone', and all residents have been told to be prepared to leave. I worried that they may not get very far -- reports at the time of writing were of traffic jams near Cooma of 30 kilometres and Koscuiszko National Park evacuated. Later on Thursday I heard from Facebook contacts that people were making it through, just taking twice as long to make the journey as normal. People were apparently calm and coping. The air quality remains terrible.

The fire brigade is saying that the fires can only be extinguished if it rains. The weather bureau is predicting that the earliest rain will be at the end of January, and may not arrive until April.

Here are photos from exactly two years ago, to show you what these places should look like.

The Genoa River, which joins the Wallagaraugh River and empties into Mallacoota Inlet, where 4000 people spent a night on the beach while the town of Mallacoota burned.

As of Thursday, the tiny township of Genoa itself was inaccessible -- nobody could get in or out. The historic bridge we were standing on to take this photo was destroyed by fire on New Years Eve. It was a real landmark in this area and many people have fond memories of it. I don't know if the nearby pub survived.

 Lakes Entrance, a small seaside town which was cut off by a bushfire (and where my parents spent their honeymoon 60 years ago).

 A view of Merimbula from the veranda of some friends. 

Standing here today you would probably be able to see a burning bushfire.

 The road between Canberra and the coast. Many places along this axis have burned, but this is also the route taken by many of the evacuees. Lines of backed up traffic reached 30 kilometres long.

I'm pleased to see that the small town of Nowa Nowa, and especially The Big Root, who do great breakfasts, survived. It was a close call though.

Before and after shots.

France 24 report from Thursday 2 January.

One thing that is worth noting about these fires though. Although far more people have been directly affected, and the fires have burned for longer and over a bigger area than ever before, and have been very hot burning fires of the sort that cause the most environmental damage, fewer people have died than in past fire seasons. In 1969, the year my family lost several homes, 23 people died, mostly trapped on the highway between Geelong and Melbourne in their cars. In the 1984 fires which for years held the record as the worst ever for every marker, 75 people died. So far, 18 people are confirmed dead since July 2019. I believe this is all due to concerted efforts by the fire brigade to educate people on how to behave and survive. What will be one of the legacies of these fires is lung conditions I suspect. Anyway, always listen to your fire officers!

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

White-throated Dipper

While we were in the Pyrenées in September we had the privilege of watching a White-throated Dipper Cinclus cinclus hunting for food in a shallow fast flowing stream. We have seen a dipper before, in Yorkshire, but they are not a species we see a lot.  They are fast moving and wary, so not easy to photograph.

Dippers are small birds that hunt in streams for invertebrates. Their name comes because of their habit of bobbing and 'dipping'. They hunt by diving into the stream from rocks in the middle of the stream then walking along the bottom poking around under rocks for shrimps and caddis larvae.

They are an upland species, sometimes descending to the lowlands in winter if the rivers are frozen.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

The Dig is Done, Now for the Analyses

Saint Ours, Loches (right, middle distance).

The dig season conducted at the Church of Saint Ours in Loches for the Indre et Loire county archaeological service finished at the end of May 2019. During five weeks of research, the former floor levels and flagstones of the 11th and 12th centuries were identified, along with traces of changes to liturgical practice. Most exciting of all, five tombs were found and remnants of the original 11th century front of the church can be recognised.

The fortress in Loches where Ludovico Sforza was held.

Several structural elements relating to alterations in 1771 were exposed, such as a much bigger choir than is extant today. The position of the old choir screen was determined and the position of one of the altars which butted up to the choir screen.

Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan's prison cell in the Martelet Tower on the citadel of Loches.

The church, originally dedicated to Notre-Dame, was founded by the Count of Anjou, Geoffroy Greymantle about 980. This predates the reconstruction under Fulke Nerra at the beginning of the 11th century. The current research confirms all the known documentary evidence of the chronology of the church. There doesn't seem to be any evidence of a church any earlier than this.

 Graves in Saint Ours being excavated.

Several graves, dating from the 12th to the 18th centuries, and in front of the choir screen, have all been carefully excavated. One of these, quite well preserved, and situated in the position described by several historical sources as that of the tomb of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. However, it's still too early to confirm the identity of the deceased interred here. The group of graves discovered will now be the subject of analyses to determine the sex, the age at death and the date of burial as precisely as possible for each individual. If the tests prove that there is a man of about 60 years old who died at the beginning of the 16th century, further analyses of isotopes will be done, to determine the geographic area the individual lived. Finally, DNA analysis is envisaged and the research responsibility will be handed to the county anthropologist. The results will be released in the next report.

The front half of the church is blocked off while work is undertaken.

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We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Loches Flood Meadows

The flood meadows along the Indre River at Loches do their thing almost every winter (this photo was taken 19 December 2019). The river is divided into multiple channels just here and the low lying grassland in between, known as the Prairies du Roy and run as a nature reserve, is allowed to flood and dry out naturally with the seasons.

Abandoned as pasture in the mid-20th century these sorts of naturally cycling meadows are no longer widespread. Nowadays they are often turned into poplar plantations supplying local paper manufacturing. But where they still exist they perform an important ecological role. They serve to purify the fresh water that washes through them, regulate floods and protect surrounding urban areas from inundation, and they are a hotspot for biodiversity, being an interface between the aquatic and the terrestrial environments. 

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Happy New Year 2020 From the Loire Valley

Thanks to all our readers and friends for their support during 2019.

I hope 2020 turns out to be better than expected for everyone.

 

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Repairs to a Leaky Church

The current church of Saint Ours, founded originally as the collegiate of Notre-Dame, is the property of the town of Loches and was classed as a historic monument in its entirety on the first listing of 1840.

Concerned by the poor state of the former collegiate the town of Loches did a study prior to its restoration by the heritage architects of Atelier 27 in November 2015.

Their report recommended a programme of work to be delivered in three phases.  The current second phase is to repair the dubes (the unique pyramidal roof structures).

This second phase involves:

• restoration of the facing for the dubes
• removal and reinstatement of degraded structural elements of the dubes
• sealing of the dubes gutters with a lead lining
• treatment to consolidate the interior and exterior roof flashing
• restoration to the interior surfaces of the dubes

I've written to the Loches town council and every one of the contractors involved in this project to remind them that the church is home to a colony of swifts. They nest in the roof, belltower and walls every summer and it is illegal to destroy their nests and disturb the birds. I pointed out that the swifts are a delight that are just as much an attraction as the church itself. I've also sent them a link to an excellent booklet written for architects and builders by a Swiss swift conservation organisation.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Magrets et Mogettes

One of the by-products of raising ducks for foie gras is the delicious morcel known as magret de canard (fat duck breast).  They are widely available in the late autumn and winter, as the foie gras ducks are slaughtered for their livers to be prepared for Christmas.

Duck meat is traditionally often paired with white beans in France, with the southern dish cassoulet being the most well known recipe. White beans go under a variety of names in French. They might be mogettes, lingots, cocos or haricots blancs. 

 

Here I am combining a simple way of cooking duck breast with a simple winter side dish of white beans and vegetables.

Ingredients:
2 fat duck breasts (magrets de canard)
Salt
Duck fat
Half a celeriac, peeled and thinly sliced
6 chard leaves, coarsely shredded
A large can of white beans
Pepper

Method:

1. Place a cast iron pan in the oven and turn the temperature up to its maximum.
2. Pat the duck breasts dry with paper towel.
3. Score the skin of the duck in a diaper pattern then rub a pinch of coarse salt into the cuts. Put aside at room temperature to cure a bit.
4. Heat some duck fat in a large frying pan.
5. Saute the celeriac for a few minutes until just cooked and starting to brown.
6. Add the chard, cover with a lid and wait for it to wilt and cook.
7. Add the can of beans with their liquid, mix well and cook for a few minutes until the beans are heated through.
8. Once the cast iron pan is smoking hot, place the duck in the pan, skin side down.
9.  Cook for 10 minutes in the oven then remove, cover and let sit for 10 minutes.
10. Season the beans and vegetables with pepper.
11. Slice the duck breast and serve with the beans. Serves 4.

Excellent local duck breast can be purchased from the farm shop at Maison Perrin. The vegetables for this recipe came from my local market garden Les Jardins Vergers de la Ferme de la Petite Rabaudière, who sell from the farm every Tuesday evening or from a stall on Preuilly market every Thursday. The SuperU supermarket at La Roche Posay stocks locally grown and processed white beans sold in glass jars.

Yum

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

Bushfires

This year the bushfires in Australia have been horrendous. The worst anyone can remember, in terms of amount of area burnt, the length of time fires have burnt, the pall of smoke overhanging seemingly everywhere, the unusually early start to the fire season and the extreme dryness of the country.

Bushfires have been a part of Australian country life since white colonial settlement began. Now it's a part of urban life too, and that's a whole lot more people to point the finger at the current climate change denying government.

The National Museum of Australia has a small section dedicated to bushfires and I've included some photos from their display in this blog post. 

We've written about bushfires before:

Bushfires

Canberra Recovers

The Tathra Pub

Going  Bush

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

No to the Fast Train

High up on the mountainside above Ascain in the Basque country we noticed a giant message in forty metre high letters had been cut into the vegetation. We quickly deciphered it as saying 'LGV NON'. In other words, 'no to the Ligne Grande Vitesse'. Also cut into the bushes is the Basque word for 'no', 'EZ'.

This message has been up there for ten years, and there now seems little likelihood of the plan for the fast train line from Bordeaux to extend down into Spain, first proposed more than twenty-five years ago, to actually go ahead. The Basque community does not want it, arguing that it will do irreparable damage to a Natura 2000 listed site, and the 300 million euros required for a five kilometre tunnel and several viaducts is not justified. The current plan seems to be to improve the existing lowland and coast hugging train line between Bayonne and Hendaye rather than blast a new one through the mountains. Since last year permission has been granted for new houses on plots that would previously been too close to the proposed new line. This seems to indicate that the project has been quietly canned.

Whatever improvements to the railway go ahead, the aim is to get goods onto trains and reduce the endless stream of big trucks thundering up and down the autoroutes.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Coeur de Francais

Our neighbour Gilles inherited his father's little plot of vines on the edge of town. I regularly see Gilles walking up our street towards them to do some maintenance, or freewheeling his bicycle down the hill towards home for lunch. When we first moved here, Gilles father was still alive, always up for a chat, but suffering from some dementia. He'd had a hard life, having endured the forced labour camps in Germany in the Second World War. He still spoke a little German, and would rather proudly demonstrate by counting to ten, or tell a story about living on nothing but potatoes in the camps. Finally he had to move to the Aged Care Facility due to his frailty and Gilles being at work all day. I remember Gilles was deeply upset to have to take this step, and his father only lasted a few months in the nursing home before he died.

Gilles makes wine from the grapes, which he tells me are Coeur de Français, grafted on to Riparia rootstock. I was rather flattered that Gilles didn't explain further than that, assuming I would know what the information meant. Rootstocks from a selection of the American grape vine species Vitis riparia are very commonly used here. They make vines resistant to phylloxera, reduce vigour in the grafted variety and tolerate saturated clay soils well.

Whilst I was reasonably familiar with the rootstock, I'd never heard of Coeur de Français grape variety and can't find out anything about it. It's quite likely I have misremembered the name slightly, or misheard it. I suspect that if it is a commercial variety it is called something else in the wine industry and Coeur de Français is a local name for it. Or perhaps it is not used commercially at all, and only people making their own wine for personal consumption grow it. It must be a black skinned grape, as Gilles' wine is a rosé.

Next time I have time for a chat with Gilles I'll have to quiz him about the grapes. That will be interesting, since he speaks very rapidly and even other French people have difficulty understanding him. 

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Mushrooms and Health

The legendary toxicity of certain mushrooms is well known. The Death Cap, a deadly species, is still too often confused with other species and eaten. It is one of three deadly Amanita species which are responsible for more than 90% of deaths linked to the consumption of mushrooms.

Death Cap Amanita phalloides (Fr. Amanite phalloïdes).

From a medical point of view, mushrooms don't only have beneficial effects. They are implicated in numerous dermatological conditions and infections (eg thrush, athletes foot).

Due to their metabolic richness they have great pharmacological potential. The historic (and accidental) discovery of antibiotics by Alexander Fleming from strains of Penicillium is famous.

The large 'bruise coloured' mushroom second right is a 

Lingzhi Ganoderma lucidum (Fr. Ganoderme luisant).

What we no longer know is the centuries old use of certain species in the Chinese pharmacopia, such as Lingzhi Mushroom, which has demonstrated results recently.

Effectively, lentinane and other polysaccharides found in abundance in mushrooms directly stimulate the immune system.

French based Chinese microbiologist Guanglai Zhang works with White Ferula Mushroom Pleurotus eryngii var nebrodensis (Fr. Pleurote du panicaut).

Photo courtesy of Louisette Chaslon.

Oyster mushrooms have effects even more impressive on the regression of cancerous cells (at least in the lab).

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Merry Christmas 2019

Christmas tree decorated with Twisties, an iconic Australian snack.

Merry Christmas to all our readers.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Last year's Christmas Eve dinner for two:

Flashed beef flank steak from our local butcher topped with homemade foie gras, served with roasted cherry tomatoes, peas and pommes boulangère.

Christmas cake with winter spiced custard.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

Tarte Normande

Our neighbours across the road live in the mountains in the north-east of France. Their house in our street is their holiday home. They bought it cheaply from an old woman who went into the retirement home and they are doing it up in their vacations. Long ago, it used to be a mattress factory as well as a family home.

Anyway, we've always been on friendly terms with them and on their last visit we were invited to dinner. I was already planning to make the French classic apple tart called Tarte Normande so offered to contribute this to the meal. Laurent didn't tell me exactly what he and Claire were going to serve, but he checked several times with me that we liked cheese. I thought we were going to get raclette, but I was wrong.

 Tarte Normande (recipe here).

We turned up at the specified time of 6.30 pm, for drinks, only to find that no one answered the door. Eventually Laurent appeared at an upstairs window and lent out. 'What's the time?' he asked. 'Six-thirty', we replied. 'Oh, we aren't ready -- come back at seven-thirty!'. 

So we did, to find one of our other neighbours, Gilles, already installed at the table, and a delicious looking frying pan full of diced potatoes and chopped onions sizzling away in bacon fat on the stove. Nibbles were put out and drinks were served -- pineau de Charentes for me, Gilles' homemade rosé for Claire and Simon, and a brand of pastis from the north-east for Laurent and Gilles. After we'd consumed our fair share of toasts and crisps, Guillaume turned up. Gilles departed because he wasn't staying to dinner.

Finally, the potatoes were ready. They had been gently sizzling for well over an hour. Served with them were two Mont d'Or cheeses that had been melted in the oven in their boxes and some grilled Montbeliard sausages. Potatoes were served, sausages on the side, and liquid cheese spooned over the top. Simon was in absolute heaven. Claire kept apologising that it wasn't really cuisine de chez nous but a dish that had become popular in the 1970s or 80s at the earliest. Her native cuisine, as someone from Belfort, is sauerkraut. Laurent was tickled by my story of how we came to know Mont d'Or cheese.

Over the course of the evening we discussed various television programmes and movies, especially 'Six Feet Under', which came in for a lot of attention because Claire works for a funeral directors. We talked about Guillaume's work (he's a landscaper and gardener who has worked for France's richest man, who he clearly despised, and now works for an old school hardman builder, who he clearly respects). And kimchi, Korean cuisine and language was the surprise subject of the evening. Turns out Claire reads and writes Korean, although does not speak it well as she's never been able to find a suitable language partner.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Sunshine Harvester

The Sunshine Harvester was invented in Australia in the 1880s by Hugh McKay and was the first commercially viable combine harvester in the world. By the early 20th century it was manufactured in the largest factory in Australia. Within a couple of years McKay's workers were on strike for better pay. They won the right to a living wage and the case forms the basis for minimum wage legislation.

Sunshine harvester in the National Museum of Australia, Canberra.

Combine harvesters are designed not only to bring in a number of different crops, but to combine the three tasks of reaping, threshing and winnowing in one machine which can perform the operations simultaneously. 

The McKay family sold the business to Massey Ferguson in the 1950s and in the 1970s production ceased in Australia and moved to the Northern Hemisphere.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos.