Breton Farmers in Touch with the Land

I am very lucky to live within a close farming community in Brittany, taking me back to my family roots and the many happy years I spent balanced on the edge of my father’s tractor in the Surrey countryside. I suppose it was this yearning for the days of my youth that in part led us to buy a farmhouse in a rural community.

 

Shortly after our move to Brittany in 2002 we decide the best way to meet our neighbours was to hold a small evening soiree and set about sending out invitations to everyone living in our hamlet, a high percentage of which are farmers. Not surprisingly they were all inquisitive to meet the strange English people who had bought the old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere! We sent out 12 invitations and within no time the prospective attendees had grown to 23 due mainly to the various ‘accidental’ meetings with tractor roadblocks and casual enquiries about the forthcoming soiree.

 

The evening duly arrived and at the allotted time everyone arrived carrying their gifts for the hosts, bottles of milk, vegetables, home made cider and of course a dead rabbit! Of course everyone new everyone else so the conversation flowed freely and we circulated as best we could amongst the throng of smarty dressed neighbours who clearly had a liking for the sangria, which had to be replenished at regular intervals. I can honestly say it was a fascinating evening and in no time at all we felt like we had known the guests all our life. The conversation ranged from local politics to the state of farming in France and they were genuinely interested in our family and their aspirations.

 

Seven years have passed since that evening and our friendships with the group have developed and extended well beyond the local area. However it is with the farming neighbours that we feel the strongest bond as we rely on in each other for matters involving much of our day to day life.

 

Despite the view of the English press that French farmers receive large subsidies and are heavily supported by the government, the reality we have observed is quite different. The small farmers in Brittany manage their farms in much the same way as there fathers and grandfathers before and many have inherited farms that are of insufficient size to claim subsidies or benefit from increased scale.

 

The majority of our neighbours survive by dabbling in milk production with a small herd of cows, cereal, rape seed and the inevitable Maize for winter cattle feed. For the majority income is low and can be severely affected by bad weather such as we experienced this winter. To help make ends meet most farmers have some winter activities such as log distribution and sales, linked to the odd bit of tree trimming and hedging for locals.

 

Despite all the hardships they are some of the cheeriest people we know and will always spare time to give a helping hand when needed. They are a very fit group of people who disregard age in a way that we can only envy. Our closest farming neighbour and his wife are in their late 80’s but are happily out in all weathers with the chain saw cutting down trees and hurling the logs into the trailer. We often meet them on a cold winter’s day and launch into a two hour discussion about world and local news, we in our double jumpers and anoraks and they in their singlet and loose jacket, “Il ne fait pas froid”

 

One cannot talk about the farmers of Brittany without mentioning the ‘La femme’ the real backbone of the farm. These rugged females who undertake all the farming tasks in the spirit of true equality deserve the legion of honour for their service to France. They fall into two clear groups the younger wives in their matching dungarees with multiple zips and the more mature wife’s in the battle pinnies held together with bailing twine. These bastions of the Breton farms perform multiple duties, everything from butchery to preparing a feast for 20 hungry farm labourers at harvest time.

 

The Breton farmers know all about self sufficiency and rarely have to venture far from their homes for food supplies, cultivating a ready supply of vegetables within close proximity. A ready egg supply is on hand and perhaps somewhat shocking to our sensibilities there are always cages of rabbits, bred purely for the pot. Add to this an annual production of Cider and you have all the ingredients for the good life.

 

In common with the UK farmers here are finding it increasingly difficult to retain farms in the family as their children do not want to continue in the family business and prefer to go to one of the larger towns to find work. The 24hr nature of the work makes it very unappealing to youngsters who value their social life.

 

It is a sad fact that over the coming years more and more small farms will be abandoned to become holiday homes for Parisians or Gîte complexes. From our experience it is the small rural farmers who are the backbone of the Breton culture and it will be a sad day if they start to vanish, to be replaced by large scale industrial farming with little or no soul.