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.

Scottish Roots

Firstly let me just say: I have already written most of this while sitting waiting in Edinburgh Airport for a fight delayed about 2 hours... but my technology has let me down this time. Ah well. Let's see how the words flow second time round!
I've discovered a few things here in the UK... One is that the pasture-based farmers are a pretty tight knit bunch - where ever they are in the UK they all seem to know one another, and may have even been to each other's farms. This network meshes with the Nuffield one very nicely too I've found - or maybe it is just the people that Tom Phillips suggested I connect with (thanks Tom).

I've discovered that many of the soils here are comparable to some of the wettest ones we have in NZ - rushes growing thickly on sloped ground and the earth kind of spongy underfoot, though the farmers are saying it is relatively dry at the moment!
Working the various subsidies and grants available is seen by some as one of the farm's 'enterprises' (while they remain available), and by some as a means to be an 'existence farmer' (not my words!).
And I've discovered that a phone call from the right person does what google and third party emails couldn't achieve (not really a 'discovery', more something I've been grateful for)!
Finally I discovered a landscape that was home to some of my forebears, albeit only for a couple of generations.
Let me expand on a couple of these discoveries.

Piltanton Burn, Galloway Coast

I was very keen to speak with people involved with a voluntary farmer initiative to improve water quality in a catchment in Galloway, southwest Scotland. As I said, my emails and those of some handy third parties, even by the day I had planned to drive to that region, had yielded no response. I thought of not going - it is quite a loop if there was to be noone there to talk to! A farmer I had visited the day before had given a contact of his near the area, but I hadn't got hold of him yet. I calmly set off from my last England stop, hoping for phone reception (not that great in the UK after all) and replies.

Bonus hospitaity - with a view

I called the unknown contact and was richly rewarded by both the offer of a place to stay and an assurance he could talk to the farmer I was after from the catchment programme! I had also just got from another third party (a contact of an earlier host) the phone number of the the consultant. I was away! I drove north happily knowing I would at least get to do some of what I had wanted!
I experienced the full 'dead stopped' on the M6 - after about 20 min we slowly started moving - only to be directed to the off-ramp and sent off onto the wondrous country roads of England. Following my nose (and quite a ot of other traffic, I admit!) I made it safely back to the next on-ramp and carried on my way! Tick that experience off!
Dumfies and Galloway was drizzling with a typical scotch mist hugging the slopes and rolling into the bay. I was reminded of the nick name I had at high school. The ones that thought they knew such things labelled me either scotch mist or haggis on the strength of the surname McCabe. Little did they know that McCabe is really an Irish name - I never told, in case the joking would be worse!
This reminded me further of the family research I had done a couple years earlier on the Ancestry website - Peter and Mary McCabe had left Ireland for Scotland during the potato famine... hadn't they lived somewhere in Ayrshire, the next county, and where I was to stay after Galway?
I was to stay in New Cumnock... the family tree said the McCabes were in Strathave, not too far away. But lo and behold, my great great grandmother, who married Peter and Mary's son had been born in, you guessed it, New Cumnock!

The River Nith, that 'the Irish dug'

Robert Burns lived and wrote at New Cumnock

It was quite surreal driving into the area. a place of big, but not sharp hills, forestry, farming, wind energy and mining. I know my forebears here would have been very poor - what would their lives have been like?
My hosts in New Cumnock described it (before hearing my great great gramndma was born there) as 'not very salubrious'. They also talked of the Irish labourers that had helped dig the river channel below the farm out of what was a swamp - and built the railway, on wool bales they say to help keep it from sinking.
I indulged in a detour through Strathaven on my way to Edinburgh on Saturday. A pretty wee town, compete with castle ruins - again a place of industrial revolution action - mining and milling. Though no McCabes would have had cash for a headstone, or perhaps even a proper grave site, it was interesting to roam through the graveyard.

The oldest headstones went back into the 1700's and the site includes 'martyr's graves' - the 'Covenanters' who had resisted the government's interference with their reformed religion. This would be an interesting place to know more of the history! Maybe another time...
To complete my stay in Edinburgh I had a double treat - staying with my lovely cousin and her equally lovely family for two nights near the city's heart, and having Mo, lately of DairyNZ, come all the way up from Worcester for breakfast and a roam around Edinburgh Castle.

Actually the other treat, Fiona assured me, was the glorious day in which to enjoy it all (it isn't always like that they say!).
Onto the land of tulips and windmills next...