Advent postcards, La Faye, Charente

 

Advent postcard, La Faye, Charente

Advent day 15

We are not travelling too far from home for today’s cycling advent-ures postcard, but it’s still a village with a story to tell.

 

La Faye, situated just under five kilometres from Ruffec is somewhere that holds special memories for us as it has become our tradition to spend Christmas Day lunch there. We wrap up warmly, pack our posh picnic and cycle to La Faye, where there is the most perfect of picnic spots. The sturdy table is not just under cover but is also protected on two sides by the renovated village bread oven. The spire of the church surveys the scene and there is even a toilet in the car park and a baguette vending machine for our fresh bread. We couldn’t really ask for more, but this year the commune have dug a pond next to the bread oven, so we might even get ducks to feed this Christmas.

 

This September we made another visit to La Faye, in the footsteps once again of my favourite French industrialist Jean-François Cail. It seemed rather bizarre that we had travelled hundreds of kilometres to visit his iron railway bridge in Moulins, but we’d never seen the agricultural domaine he set up near Ruffec in 1853. Despite having left the area as a teenager and made his fortune in Paris and the north of France, he retired to La Faye and its impressive manor house, situated only twenty kilometres from where he was born in Chef-Boutonne (in 1804).

 

He chose the land as he could easily make the journey by train from Paris to Ruffec and although the soil and the buildings were in a poor state when he bought them, he expanded the farm from 160 ha to 308 ha. He radically moved away from traditional cereals and the crops to feed cattle, planting beets and installing a distillery to turn them into alcohol, something that would have been a risky decision in an area so close to Cognac. He died at La Faye in 1871. 

The farm might have changed radically in the last hundred and fifty-two years, but some of the farm buildings and the manor house are still there. It seemed fitting to pause for a moment before continuing on 112km birthday bike ride.

Lockdown diaries, day eleven, buying local

Local free-range organic eggs

Day eleven, Monday 9^th November

I’ve had better starts to a Monday morning. There is nothing quite like the words “Mum, Mini (the dog) has been sick on my bed” to put me off my bowl of apple, walnut and cinnamon oats in the morning. On a positive note however, the dog had looked quite off-colour yesterday, but is much more herself today and the weather this morning was good enough to get the washing dry outside.

 

Buying local

It has now been a week since we used a car and although one of us will need to do a supermarket shop for things like dishwasher tablets, washing liquid and dog food, that aren’t the easiest of items to buy by bike, I’m determined to try and do as much fresh produce shopping from local producers as I can. As well as helping the local economy and reducing the carbon footprint of our food, it gives us a valid reason to get out on the bikes which is a bonus for our mental health. I’ve already identified two vegetable growers and a farm selling meat and homemade sausages, all within ten kilometres from home. 

Buying local

Today’s local shop was a bike ride to get eggs from the organic, free-range egg farm three kilometres from the village. A weekly visit here has become routine for us this year since our three old birds are no longer laying. Last week’s dozen contained a double-yolk egg and going by the size of one of them, this week we might be lucky again, although I can’t help feeling for the chicken that laid it. As well as eggs at 2.50€ a dozen, you can now also buy local honey, which I will be doing once we’ve finished the current pot. We all take a teaspoon of honey every day, so having access to a locally produced one is great news. Honey has many benefits to the immune system including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties and I want our bodies to be as ready as they can be to fight off any virus or bacterial infections this winter. 

 

Local honey

Sadly, our area of France is one of forty-six French departments that has been put on raised alert for avian flu. It is migration season and in order to reduce the risk of the wild birds infecting poultry, all birds that are normally allowed access to the outdoors must be shut inside or be protected by netting. This not only affects the larger producers like the one in our village, but individuals with a few backyard birds like us too. Chatting to the farmer this morning, she assured me she would be bringing in as many ‘toys’ as she could, including straw bales for her girls to climb on, so they don’t get bored.

 

The French Village Diaries 2020 new header

Blog updates

With no course to run this week and only the decorating to carry on with, I thought Adrian needed a new project to keep him from getting bored too. It has been over two years since I changed the blog header, so I felt the time was right to update the pictures and make a few changes to the layout. I love the new design he has created for me and hope you do too.

Book review of A Long Way from Paris by EC Murray

Welcome to day eight of my #FrenchVillageBookworm Advent Calendar, where every day between now and Christmas I will be sharing a different book with you. 

#FrenchVillageBookworm Advent calendar day 8

Today it is a review for A Long Way from Paris by EC Murray, a memoir about Elizabeth’s six months spent working as a goat herd in the Languedoc region of France in the early 1980’s.

This is a well-written memoir that conveys the physical and emotional journey for twenty six year old Elizabeth who had not really planned on moving to France, but following a break up set off alone with little idea where she would end up. From the beginning it certainly became a life changing adventure for her and I have to admit my heart was in my mouth when reading about parts of her journey to the South of France. An introduction from a distant cousin led her to a family living on a remote goat farm who were looking for help with their herd.

Living the simple life of the farmers, she conveys the hardships of a bitter winter spent on the high ground of an isolated farm, looking after the animals and a family. There is sadness and loss and emotions that are not easy to hide, but she also describes the peace that can be found in carrying out the simple things in life and in filling your days with hard work and fresh air. She describes the countryside and the members of her French family very well and she really put her finger on the fuzzy bubble of incomprehension you feel when you don’t understand the conversations that are going on around you.

This is different from many memoirs as it isn’t a light-hearted look at time spent in France, but it is an enjoyable and intense emotional read.

A Long Way from Paris is available in ebook and paperback format and links to Amazon can be found below.

When Farming is in your Blood

There has been the unmistakable smell of the countryside oozing around the village today, so it was no surprise to see that the fields were alive and buzzing with tractors when Mini and I were out on our walk. Some were busy to-ing and fro-ing between their well rotted heaps of farmyard gold, filling their spreading trailers and setting off for the next field to be fed. Others were busy turning the soil, leaving behind a rich, dark, velvety soil that looked almost good enough to sleep in. 

The narrow tracks we often have to ourselves were busy, almost congested, and we often had to tuck ourselves into the hedge to allow a tractor to pass. On one occasion I was surprised to see the driver was the young son from one of the farming families, being put to work during his school holidays.  He is not much older than Ed and was out alone in the fields, driving a huge tractor and looking to be enjoying every minute of it. A little different to Ed’s holiday, where lie-ins, music, bike riding, and a friend over are what he has been enjoying so far this week and even if I asked him to mow the lawn I doubt he’d know where to start. I guess this is the difference between the families who have worked the soil for generations and the newcomers like us. I love to feel the soil under my fingernails, something I am sure I inherited from my Granddad and eating from our land is an important part of our lifestyle, but it isn’t in Ed’s blood just yet. I doubt we will ever be a part of the land like these families who I’m sure have the soil of the village running through their veins but maybe I’ll suggest Ed and I do some soil bonding and weed the potager tomorrow.

Freshly turned soil