French Connection

This central area of France is confirmed Charolais country

Friday as I drove back to Baptiste's farm from the nearby city of Moulins, I felt a pang of sadness that this was my last day in France.

In the old centre of Moulins

View across the River Allier to Moulins

Chateau de Sagonne, one of the nice old buildings I saw along the road!

Between the conference & battlefield tour earlier in the year, my week in Brittany and these last few days in the centre of France, I feel that, incomplete as it must be, I have some insight into and empathy for the farmers in this place.
Brittany grows between half & three quarters the pasture we do, with zero for 2 months of winter & susceptibility to summer drought.

Heifer block with train bridge - also highway and village behind me!

Normande cows for organic milk/cheese production

Calves being reared to 9 months on nurse cows

Cross-bred cows on very low allowable nitrogen use farm

Non-farmers are both close at hand and en-masse. While this block of local consumers is an advantage to those adventurous farmers who choose to direct market or produce some form of higher value product (I had the opportunity to meet a few), those urban neighbours have preferences that are not always farmer-friendly. Other dairy farmers elect a low-cost system, emulating in part a NZ style, but these are few and certainly little understood by the farming peers that prefer to leave many questions unasked.
Society is far more socialist than ours & with a working week of 35 hours & annual leave of five weeks, farm work is not a preferred choice for most. Tax & social security payments are hefty for profitable businesses.

Farm shop direct marketing organic farm products

Hay drying, storing and feeding facility... makes the cheese from the Normande herd better!

One of Brittany's many tidal estuaries 

There are 3 farmers' unions here! One person explained there is a 'right-aligned' group, a 'left-aligned' and a 'generally-protesting-about-everything-group'. Simplistic as the explanation may be, it nonetheless describes a fractured farming politics landscape. I even got to experience the indirect impact of a farmer demonstration... leaving the Brittany equivalent of "National Fieldays meets the Royal Show" on Wednesday, having got to my car at around 5:15pm, I finally arrived at my host's place about 30km away some 3.5 hours later... It turns out the cars were unable to exit carpark B because of the tractors from farmers from the left aligned group blocking a major, key roundabout. Some creative folk had rolled a rock aside allowing some vehicles (mine included) slow egress via another, also full, carpark! Fortunately, my hosts for the evening had also been at the show... Alain accompanied me so we passed the time quite amiably!

Top of Trevarn's heifer block - lovely view, but very summer-dry

I had only 3 hosts for my 10 days in France, spending a whole week at Gaec Trevarn (meaning "Trevarn Farm") in the region of Finistère in Brittany. It was reviving to spend that long in one place, after a week away from Amsterdam that gave me just 4 nights at home with my family, the balance of the time spent in airports or aeroplanes!

Melting raclette cheese for our potatoes - yum!

My host Oivier had planned an interesting array of visits including a conservation association, two diverse pig farmers, several dairy farms (incuding an open day at the local research farm), local farm 'supermarket' and the locally originated corporate version and even a discussion group!

Discussion group lunch - pot-luck, BYO plates etc

The Celtic origins of Brittany are evident in the markings on the churches, headstones and many wayside crosses/shrines. Also the roadsigns have place names in both French and Breton.
Fitting that my next destination shares a similar heritage... Ireland!

Dutch Auction

With a plane delay out of Edinburgh, I was pleased I had decided to stop near Amsterdam my first night in order to go to FloraHolland, the famous flower auction, early the next morning. But first to get my wheels!

A Citroen SoChic D3 - automatic, to facilitate smoother driving on the wrong side of the road. Via messenger our family has had much debate about a suitable name - winning so far is Romain, said with a hearty French accent! My suitcase does fit in the boot, it is comfortable to drive, but not so good at 130kmph, the maximum on motorways here. I've leased it from new - with only 6km on the clock, so it will be interesting to see how high I can get it in a bit under a month!

The Flower Auction is quite something - with an emphasis on speed there is constant movement of buckets of flowers on 2-tiered trolleys from the moment of sale to the correct trucking firm for the buyer - some via tracks in the floor, some via long trains and some in wee batches. Covering 22 football fields this is no smll feat!

Those of you that know me well will be able to imagine my delight when I spotted a line of roses from Kisima, the diverse farm business on the slopes of Mt Kenya that I visited in March, on the auction screen... it had me smiling for days! Believe me, the auction happens so fast and I was only in the room displaying the 12 concurrent auctions for a few minutes, so I took it gladly as a divine gift.

I've visited a good range of Dutch dairy operations in my time here, including helping at both a 4 stall robot milking barn and a 6-aside double up herringbone.

It is interesting how different the rhythm is at these year round calving systems - in a day you may pick up a freshly calved cow, treat any sick, inseminate those on heat, all within the confines of the multipurpose barn. In New Zealand all the cows are largely doing the same things at the same time, so the rhythm has more intense (and longer lasting!) peaks. Robotic milking has had a large uptake here, accounting at one time for about 40% of new installations. However there is a bit of a dulling of enthusiam by some in the face of the maintenance required (the farm I was on had a repair person out that day!) and the implications of down time on milk production, some going so far as to replace the robots with a herringbone or rotary. Those still keen not to have do the physical act of milking choose to work with these drawbacks regardless - and of course the robots take up much less space in the barn.
With the huge population and the ever near presence of consumers, some are choosing to add value to their dairy production in a variety of ways - organics, cheese making and on-farm sales, farm tours, a maize maze, milk and yogurt sales, combining grants for nature areas with grazing incentives - and probably more I didn't come across!

My time in the province of Groningen was a highlight - I stayed with Annechien ten Have and her family, who run a pork breeding and finishing operation. They have responded to both price and animal welfare pressures by working with consumers, supermarkets and knowledge institutes to experiment with and establish 'friendlier' settings for both the farrowing sows and the weaners. We saw their free farrowing stalls and toys and hard floor space for the finishers.

Next is a drive to substitute imported soy (needed for protein in the feed) with lupins grown on a separate sandier block of land. Getting buy in from retailers and processors to market this well is an important part of the process. I was fortunate to experience delectably cooked lupine pig (I'd refer you to the Facebook page, but it is Dutch... check it out if you like!) with the ten Have's and a group of Aussies that I intersected with there! In fact this may be a theme - I ran into a fellow travelling Aussie Nuffielder at another host a few days later!

Also while in the northern province of Groningen Annechien took us to two outlet for the water system - one purely a sluice gate (but that only operates when the tide is low enough for the water to flow in the right direction!) and one a giant pumphouse. We also got to try the traditional raw herrings - I confess to only eating a piece, not the whole thing as the locals enjoy!

Nowadays you don't see too many of the traditional windmills that used to do this job, but when you do, in this extremely flat landscape, often with water in canals sitting much higher than the surrounding land, you know exactly where you are!

Speaking of hills, I don't believe I really saw any - apart from the overbridges within the excellent road system!

Having seen the water system in practice we were also given an hour with a gentleman from the water board, explaining how it all works and the significant measures they have put in place to avoid (or manage) major flooding events.

This was excellent as the water boards are among the oldest institutions in this country and their function is what allows this place to thrive. I didn't realise how recently or how extensively land has been reclaimed from the sea here, but this country is now much bigger than is once was - it won't grow any more however as the EU has put a stop to any further reclamation. The ultimate accountability of the governments of Europe to the EU drives a lot of discussion about structures, rules and activities here.
I just have to tell you about my 'spare day' - I spent it at the Open Air Museum at Arnhem - a huge park where buildings have been relocated and settings recreated. Despite a huge attendance (it was a lottery ticket bonus day I discovered!) I felt unharried roaming around the old farm houses, a church, a dairy factory etc etc. Wonderful insight to how people, especially farmers (or maybe that's just what I noticed most!), lived and worked in the past. A new view of working from home ensues when you see how seamlessly the animal stalls, weaving looms, mills etc merge with dining, cooking and sleeping spaces. I'm not too sure how the claustrophobic coped with the wee sleeping cupboards many had.

And now I'm unexpectedly heading home, typing this in Melbourne Airport... joining my family as they reflect on the life and passing of Ross's mum on Monday. A last minute booking with Etihad will have me home on Thursday, with the current plan to return for my car and proceed to Brittany early next week.