Visit to la Ferme des Effes

On a very cold Wednesday evening I joined a visit to la Ferme des Effes, just outside of Preuilly sur Claise. It was part of a programme including a farm visit, a shared meal and a film. I attended the farm visit and the film. The theme was farm successions. This is a hot topic in the Sud Touraine, as a third of farmers here are ready to retire.

 Charlotte's Dad, holding his grandson, talks about the farm. Charlotte is on the right.

La Ferme des Effes is in the process of being handed over from one generation to the next. Since 2016 Charlotte Mallet Bottemine has been taking over the management and day to day running of the farm. Her parents had come from farming families in Brittany but when it came time for them to start out on their own in the 1980s land was too expensive in Brittany, so they came to the Sud Touraine and bought les Effes.

 

The young goats noisily feeding on hay and straw.

The farm is now 90 hectares and the primary activity is dairy goats. The milk is sold to the Eurial co-operative at Tournon Saint Martin, where they make Sainte Maure de Touraine and Pouligny Saint Pierre AOC cheeses as well as their own brand Soignon. Charlotte also runs a herd of Charmoise ewes and sells fat lambs (to me, and to one of the local Michelin star restaurants, amongst others).

 

Inquisitive young dairy goats.

When she decided to take on the family farm in 2016 Charlotte spent the first couple of years getting a qualification in agriculture. Her parents are still involved with the work of the farm and the transition has been gradual, in slow, affordable steps. The land and material have been divided up so that ownership has transferred in batches to ensure the financial burden is not too great. Charlotte is very careful not to get carried away and investment in new equipment or buildings has been kept as low as possible. But a big new hangar with a solar panel roof went up last year.

 

The adult dairy goats, which are all the Alpine breed.

We were shown the young goats who will go on to join the herd. They were born in the autumn and are kept in cohorts of animals that are about the same weight. I'd met them already, when they were really little and still living in the pen with access to milk. Now they were munching extremely audibly on hay produced on the farm. Then we went to see the milking goats, which seemed to me to be quite big animals compared to other herds I've seen. The goats are all born and bred on the farm and new stock is not bought in. The births are about 50/50 males and females. All the females are kept and go into the dairy, all the males go to a specialist fattener over at Maillé who will sell them as meat (but not locally as curiously there is no market for it).

 

Inquisitive dairy goats chewing on a visitor's clothing.

After the farm visit some people regrouped at Lieutopie for a potluck meal, and quite a few more turned up later to view the film at the Salles des fetes. 

 

Gathered around a hay bale to talk about the dairy.

The documentary film was called la Ferme des Bertrand ('the Bertrand's Farm'), filmed by Gilles Perret over 50 years and three generations of the Bertrand family on a farm in Haute-Savoie. It jumped around chronologically and the relationship between family members was quite difficult to follow. Disappointingly it didn't really go into detail about how they managed the successions. It was an insight into how the work on the farm has changed, but not how it was financed.

 

The goat dairy at la Ferme des Effes.

Afterwards there was the opportunity to discuss farm successions with representatives of ADEAR37, an association which provides support, advice and their own personal experiences. I thought the most interesting point to emerge from this was that these days the farms that become available are often too big for what new young farmers want to do (eg smaller herds or market gardens, rather than arable crops or ever bigger dairies). A way of dividing farms up must be found, either selling them in 'morcels' or forming poly-disciplinary co-operatives where a property is shared by different farmers producing different  things. Current average farm size in Indre et Loire is 91 hectares (which doesn't sound much to an Australian, but is bigger than a young French market gardener or even orchardist needs); average dairy goat herd is 209 milkers (much higher than the national average herd size). 

 

The baby kids' pen, with milk literally on tap.

Further reading:

Eurial (in French) https://www.berryprovince.com/degustation/eurial-tournon-saint-martin/ (you can visit the factory).

La Ferme des Bertrand https://lesarcs-filmfest.com/en/program-guide/film/la-ferme-des-bertrand 

Farm Successions  https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/2023/01/farm-successions.html (where I talk about last year's ADEAR37 event and the issues which must be covered by anyone planning a farm succession).

ADEAR37 (in French) https://www.agriculturepaysanne.org/adear37 

La Ferme des Effes (in French) https://www.facebook.com/lafermedesEffes/

 

The plant room in the goat dairy at la Ferme des Effes. I really took this photo because of the abandoned doll, which tells you this is a family farm.

The Millstones at the Museum

It had never occurred to me, in all the 15 years we have lived in Preuilly, that the millstones on the lawn outside the Poterne Museum in town were not for grinding wheat into flour. But that mine of local historical information, Fabrice Doucet, pointed out a couple of months ago on Facebook that they are for grinding walnuts into oil. Of course they are! One of them is dishshaped!! Doh! And I never noticed!!

 

The walnut crushing millstones in front of the Poterne Museum in Preuilly sur Claise.

Unlike the millstones for grinding wheat, nut millstones are not used face to face. Instead, the lower stone is concave, and the upper stone runs around inside it standing on its edge, a bit like a roadroller.

But where was the mill these stones came from? 

 

Walnuts being crushed in a local artisanal nut oil producer's mill.

According to Fabrice it belonged to Francois Dugué, who was born in Preuilly in 1866. In 1892 he married Marie Louise Dubois, who ran a grocery store at 1 rue du Cygne, on the corner at the top of our street. Her husband's mill was at the bottom of rue du Cygne. They also sold mercerie (haberdashery and sewing supplies) and wine. The power source for the mill would originally have been a horse or a donkey, but probably later a motor. Francois and Marie Louise died at their home (2 rue du Cygne) in the 1930s.

 

The former Dubois Dugué grocery store (Fr. épicerie) on the left and their home across the street on the right.

The millstones were a gift to the museum by their son-in-law Maurice Percevault, from Boussay, who had married their daughter Jeanne in 1919 and continued the business of walnut oil pressing. Fabrice can remember the stones being transported to the museum in the bucket of a local mason's backhoe.

 

Some blokes pressing walnut oil at a gourmet on farm market. The nuts must already have been crushed using a mill like the one above and brought to the market as a paste.

 

Many thanks to Fabrice for the information in this FB post: https://www.facebook.com/fabrice.doucet.3154/posts/pfbid02xcUJCNN8pzPfuCKBmzeVJoiKQMV1CN7AMHDujAvsVgBaXaKZd8e6HWPzXmFLP4fnl

Check it out because it includes a photo of a working walnut mill (not in Preuilly, but with identical stones).

Further reading: my blog post on a visit to a local walnut oil producer, where you can take your own walnut harvest for transformation into oil. If you have less than 40 kilos of nuts they are combined with other people's and everyone gets their share. [Link.]

The former Dugué walnut crushing mill in rue du Cygne, Preuilly sur Claise.

The Maison Cauchie

A few photos from Brussels. The Maison Cauchie was built by artist couple Paul and Lina Cauchie in 1905 as their personal home, studio and calling card for their work. To my eyes it's a strange melange of Glasgow (Charles Rennie Mackintosh) architecture and art nouveau decoration.

If you have to advertise, make it stylish

We tried to visit, but although the sign on the door said they were open, they weren't.

Still, it added a bit of brightness to what (weatherwise) was a pretty dull day.

Millet

In September we had occasion to drive to Tours. We have a couple of options of route, either to Saint Maure then the autoroute, or along the Departmental via Ligeuil.

On this trip we went via Paulmy and Ligeuil. On the way I noticed a crop I couldn't quite recognize. We returned the same way and took photos of what we assumed to be sorghum, but not a variety we're used to.

It turns out to have been millet of some variety.

I don't recall seeing millet before, but we assume it's another avenue being explored for crops to deal with the change in climate.

The Town Hall in Leuven

On our way up to Amsterdam last year we spent a couple of days with Lisa and Simon in Tervuren, near Brussels. The nearest town to them (that isn't Brussels) is Leuven, and Lisa offered to show us around.

The Town Hall of Leuven in Belgium is on the city's Grote Markt. Built in a Brabantine late-Gothic style between 1439 and 1469, it is famous for its ornate architecture, which from a distance looks like lace. The building known as the Leuven Town Hall was the Voirste Huys (front house) of a larger complex of municipal buildings. Construction of the complex started in 1439 on the site of the existing Town Hall. 

The first stone of the Voirste Huys was laid in 1448. The initial plans, influenced by Brussels' Town Hall included a belfry tower at one of the corners. This design was modified to a symmetrical arrangement of turrets. The exterior masonry and roof were finished in 1460. In the 19th century the Town Hall was renovated. It survived the devastation of Leuven during World War I, escaping with only minor damage. In World War II, a bomb strike in front of the building added to the damage. It wasn't until 1983 that repairs were completed.

Statues in canopied niches are distributed all over the building. The corbels supporting the statues are carved with Biblical scenes in high relief. The niches and corbels are part of the original plan, but the 236 statues are relatively recent, dating from after 1850. The statues on the first floor represent people of importance in the city's history, those of the second arepatron saints and symbolic figures, and those of the third are the Counts of Leuven and Dukes of Brabant from various ages.

Even on a cold March afternoon it's an impressive sight. A little sunshine would have been welcome.

Another Ukrainian Christmas in Exile

On Saturday we celebrated our second Ukrainian Christmas in Preuilly. It was a roaring success, mainly due to Bertrand having discovered a clown who turned out to be a Ukrainian, and living in Argenton sur Creuse. There were 84 people attending, of which 35 were Ukrainian.

In the morning we decorated the Salle des fêtes, directed by Olena. She and Vita had made beautiful natural centre pieces for the tables and last year's carefully stored decorations were hung from the lights.

The proceedings started with Christiane welcoming everyone ('our' Ukrainians, the Ukrainians living in Ligeuil, AARST members and benefactors, and the odd dignatory). Then Danielle, who teaches the younger kids French, got them up to do their hitherto top secret surprise performance. This began one of Jean de la Fontaine's most famous fables with Arsen playing a crow with a cheese in his mouth and the girls playing the flattering foxes. Then they took it in turns to tell the Jean de la Fontaine fable of the grasshopper and the ant. They had memorised their parts, in French, over just a couple of days. Several kids had gone sick with a virus and had to pull out and be replaced, hence the short preparation time. It was very moving watching how far they've come. I shed a little tear and I think they can all be very proud of themselves and Danielle should be proud too.

Then Valezic the Clown came on and the kids loved him. He has lived in France for many years with his French wife, but this was the first time he had done a gig for fellow Ukrainians, so he pulled out all the stops. Of course he got half the audience up one way and another over the course of his performance. There was magic with eggs, balloons and string, there was music, acrobatics and snake charming. Finally Valezic led the audience in a rendition of Petit Papa Noel and who should come shuffling in but the man himself! Presents were distributed (many thanks to La Graine Créative, L'Oréal and an anonymous donor) and at last it was time to descend on the buffet. Everyone had contributed a plate, so we had everything from ANZAC biscuits (you'll never guess who made them...) to pyrizhky, apple tarts to mandarins.

But very soon the chairs were pushed back and small children were engaging in that time honoured small child in a ballroom practice of taking a run up and flinging themselves on the floor and attempting to slide as far as possible. Valezic had turned his sound system back on, taken up his trumpet, and the grownups were dancing. I was very amused at how a 17 year old Goth Ukrainian boy was perfectly charming and obliging when approached by an 'old' French woman intent on waltzing even though they had not met before. Turns out Ukrainian boys can waltz gracefully and graciously. It also turns out that their family has some awful tragedies in their not too distant past.

 

One of 'our' Ukrainians is pregnant, with the baby due before the end of the month. Her husband is on the frontline and she has come to Preuilly to be with her mother. She said Saturday's Christmas party is the first time she has forgotten to be afraid for two years.

I am on the committee of the Association d'Acceuil et d'Accompagnement des Refugiés en Sud Touraine. We are a volunteer organisation which has been helping displaced Ukrainians in our area since the beginning of the fullscale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. If you would like to join us or make a donation please message me.

 

Unblogged 2023 - Vermeer

This falls into the category of "I can't believe we didn't write about it".

In March we drove to Amsterdam to see the Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, which gathered together from around the world 27 of the 34 paintings positively attributed to him. On the blog we skirted around the trip, writing about meals we ate, sights we saw, and we mentioned the route we took too and from Amsterdam. We even posted a picture of a Vermeer painting. What we didn't talk about was the exhibition itself.

We arrived slightly early at the gate for the special exhibition, but were allowed straight in. Showing our tickets earned us a paper wristlet each. This was because even though we had a special entrance we still had to pass security and the cloakrooms with everybody else.

The exhibition itself wasn't overcrowded, timed entry working really well. Which is a good thing, because one thing that being overly familiar with the paintings via TV and reproductions doesn't prepare you for is how small the paintings are. The first painting where this became obvious was the very first painting in the exhibition: View of Delft. I was expecting an almost massive masterwork, but the painting is 96.5 cm × 115.7 cm (38" × 45½"). Not exactly small, but when viewed from across the room it's less than imposing. That doesn't detract once you get up close - it was one of those " I can't breathe properly" moments.

In the same room was The Little Street, which is once again extremely familiar, but full of detail I've never really seen.

The next room held a couple of religious paintings (which didn't overly excite me): Saint Praxedis and a biblical scene of Christ in the House of Mary and Martha. There was also a mythological Diana and her Nymphs, and The Procuress, a painting in a style much more in keeping with what I'd expect is most people's idea of a Vermeer. One thing about these four paintings is that they are quite large (about the size I was expecting all the paintings to be).

After that it all becomes a bit of a blur - so much goodness, but once again so much familiarity. There was a lot of mental "oh! it's that one" going on, and this may mean I ended up paying less attention than I should have. I know I saw the paintings I know and was wowed by the experience, and I would do it again. It just didn't have the impact I was expecting it to have because the images are so familiar and exist everywhere as copies in everyday life.

The layout of the exhibition was interesting - being thematically arranged, rather than in date order, and there was plenty of space between the paintings. Necessary in some places.

One thing Susan and I both noticed is how many of the paintings contained the same clothing. We assume they came out of the box marked "posh clothes" in Vermeer's studio, and are actually no indication of the social standing of the models.

 

A list of all Vermeer's paintings is here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paintings_by_Johannes_Vermeer, and we couldn't better the resource from the Rijksmuseum, so here it is: all the paintings (listed), with all the exhibition notes https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/whats-on/exhibitions/vermeer/vermeer-exhibition-text

French School Menu December 2023

Periodically we like to post a school menu so that you all know what you are missing. Here is the one on the Catholic school gatepost in Preuilly sur Claise for the last week of school in December 2023.

Here is the translation and explanations where necessary:

Monday

Soup or Lentils in vinaigrette salad

Vegetable tajine with couscous

Yoghurt

Fruit

Tuesday

Rice salad

Chicken escalope in cream

Buttered carrots

Cheese

Doughnuts (beignets is usually translated as doughnuts, but what was probably served would not have been deepfried rings of batter, but something more freeform like fritters) 

Thursday

Pumpkin soup or mushrooms with fresh herbs

Spaghetti bolognese (or as listed, more like spag bog/bol)

Cheese

Peaches in syrup

So now you are no doubt wondering what the significance of EGALIM, VBF and FRANCE alongside some menu items are. 

EGALIM stands for Etats Généraux de l'alimentation, which is the French National Food Conference. It means that this menu item or its ingredients have been purchased according to a law which ensures that producers get a fair price when they contract to directly supply a kitchen or retailer. Wholesalers must not be involved and the producer must be delivering a healthy sustainable foodstuff. 

VBF stands for Viande Boeuf Francaise (French Beef Meat).

FRANCE means that the main ingredient has been produced in France.

Parents want to know this stuff and expect to see it on the school menu. The school also has a legal obligation to source a certain amount of its ingredients locally, or from organic producers, and it is also not allowed to waste any food. School meals are simple but prepared fresh on a daily basis. Parents pay a few euros per school meal unless they are a very low income household, in which case school meals are free.

Unblogged 2023 - Fish and Chips

This one is a hidden highlight, not totally unexpected, but a most welcome surprise.

On our way back from The Netherlands last year I decided I wanted to drive along the sea wall that prevents Zeeland becoming a vast inland sea at every high tide. Having left Huub and Ingrid at 09:00h we took an annoying unscenic diversion due to roadworks, before hitting the road to Rotterdam. This put us about 30 minutes behind schedule, and I was soon thinking about lunch. There were a couple of stops I wanted to make along the dyke, but it was excessively windy (force 8) to all but Dutch people, so excursions away from the car were very brief.

Luckily it was a bright and sunny day, and my pre-trip planning paid off with an unexpected bonus: the best fish and chips I have had for many years.

Proef Zeeland is a fish shop with a difference. You buy your fish at the counter, and they will (if asked) cook it and serve it with chips and salad. Truly fresh (I suspect they buy directly off the boats). It's right by the marina on Neeltje Jans, an artificial island built in the process of building the sea defences. You can find it here.

Walking Around Town

The other day I had some errands to run, including calling in on our friend Albert, who has just lost his wife. She was 99 years old and I wanted to offer my condolences. I decided to walk, so it ended up a stop start 3 kilometres taking an hour.

 

The side of a house near the abbey.

This copper monkey was made in the mid-20th century by the sculptor Paule Richon to decorate the exterior of her house. She died in 1987 but her family still own the house.

Guillaume and Patricia's gloriously vegetation covered home.

I have no doubt the owners of this house, and their mason, are very proud of how smart it looks now. But I can see that they have destroyed at least half a dozen swift nests. Technically that's illegal, and it would have been so easy to have incorporated the nests into the work. But they have chosen not to listen to the conservation advice that was offered them, and clearly don't care about the swifts. Such a shame.

A cactus and succulents still outside in the street in front of a house, and thriving.

The chateau (private) and Poterne Museum.

A garden gate.

Doorknocker.

Crash, Bang, Wallop!

On Wednesday 27 December the approximately 160 year old wall between rue Faubourg Saint Nicolas and the route du Grand Pressigny was hit by the Tours - Preuilly bus and collapsed dramatically into the street. The Saint Nicolas corner is one Preuilly's notorious traffic bottlenecks and vehicles frequently don't keep to their side of the road, despite the warning signs. The damage is considerable.

Photo courtesy of London Bruno.

The bus of course takes this route on a daily basis, but on this particular day the driver was someone unfamiliar with the route. Fortunately the bus was heading from the depot to its first stop at the market place in Preuilly, so didn't have any passengers yet. The bus driver was unhurt in the incident.

Our friend London Bruno was on the scene fairly quickly. He saw big blocks of stone that had been flung several metres and the damaged bus perched up on the stones that had ended up on the bus's side of the carriageway.

I assume the bus encountered another vehicle coming down the hill too fast, and even if the bus had been doing 30 kilometres an hour it is a tricky corner. It would have been all too easy to over compensate and pull too far to the right to avoid a head on collision.

I drove past the scene the next day, by which time the bus had been removed, barriers put up and all the stones corralled. The wall will no doubt be repaired using the old stones so that it looks identical.

Thanks to London Bruno, Fabrice Doucet and other Preuilly residents for their posts and comments on Facebook.

Preuilly Becomes a Medical Desert

Or at least, Preuilly is perilously close to being one of the medical deserts much talked about in the French media. Sadly the GP based in town died suddenly when on his rounds. It will prove extremely difficult to attract a new doctor to the town. France has a grave shortage of doctors, partly due to decades of not training sufficient medical students.

GPs are aging and now retiring. We were lucky a couple of years ago when our GP retired. A new GP was found and moved in to a newly refurbished surgery provided by the municipality. But he was already in his 60s, and one day recently a passerby found him dead in his car parked in the next village. He'd just been to see a patient at home. 

 

Preuilly now has a banner at the entrance to town announcing that we are seeking a doctor.

The reason there aren't enough young general practitioners is a system called the numerus clausus used throughout the 1990s. The numerus clausus was a quota, limiting the number of medical students that got through to the second year and therefore had a chance of qualifying after another couple more years of study. It didn't matter whether you passed your first year exams or not, if you fell below the numerus clausus you were not permitted to continue, and it turns out that the numbers allowed through were not sufficient for the current needs of the population. Now, of course, there are all sorts of frantic programmes to encourage students into medicine, in the form of grants and the establishment of multidisciplinary medical centres. Teleconsultations, getting hospitals, nurses and pharmacists to do more and encouraging retirement age doctors to stay on are also being used to maintain the level of service, particularly in rural areas.

Some areas in France have fewer than 5 doctors per 10 000 of population. Others have more than 30 doctors per 10 000 people. Here in the Sud Touraine we have about 10 - 12 doctors per 10 000 people, but to our immediate east and west they are at about 5 - 7 doctors per 10 000. Happily, immediately to our north there is about 15 doctors per 10 000 people. Half of all doctors in France are over 60 years of age.

If you want an appointment with a specialist the average wait is 20 days for a radiologist, 28 days for a dentist, 40 days for a gynecologist, 50 days for a cardiologist, 61 days for dermatologist and 80 days for an ophthalmologist. And that's assuming you are already a patient, or they are accepting new patients. Here in the Sud Touraine dentists, ophthalmologists and dermatologists seem to be the most difficult to get an appointment with.

Luckily for us we had already transferred to the new, youngish, English speaking GP in the next village when our old GP in Preuilly retired, so we have not been unfortunate enough to be left suddenly seeking a new GP.

Happy New Year

Here's to a new start, joy, happiness and love in 2024