Category: farming

Just a Few Steps from Home …

This week, for Monochrome Madness, Leanne asks us to stay in our home patch and show us what we can find within 10 km of our home. Well. I’m sorry Leanne, but frankly, one kilometre is as far as I can stretch today, and I may not even go that far. Let’s see. Have you met our next door neighbours? They’re in the featured photo.

We’re a bit light on neighbours generally. You might find these characters:

They’re from the local ponds – quite honestly the heron and egret come from just a little further up the road- but not much more distant.

Even nearer than the ponds is the River Ure.

Go the other way from the house, and it’s fields and crops…

Winter
Spring
Summer

… and more sheep …

But please don’t think our life lacks drama. On Monday evening we were unexpectedly treated to a starling murmuration at the bottom of the garden. At dusk, starlings in their hundreds – perhaps thousands – swirled above us, eddying back and forth, cacophanously landing as one on the trees, which bowed under their weight, before they took off again to wheel and turn above us. Then some signal, known only to them, indicated that they should disappear and roost in the nearby reed beds. They never seem to come to the same place twice, so they weren’t here on Tuesday, and they won’t come tonight.

This is just as the shot emerged from the camera – a natural monochrome.

So that was our drama for the week. Just an everyday story of country folk.

Farmer Fisher’s Farmyard Friends

One of the first picture books to come into the house – oh gosh – more than 45 years ago, delighted all three of my children, and the adults who read it with them. It’s still sought after, this early edition, but you’ll have to shell out about £25 to get a copy. The book was Farmer Fisher.

Farmer Fisher had a fine fat truck.
You couldn't see the colour for the farmyard muck.
In the front was a rabbit and a chicken and a duck -
On the way to market.

Well. I won’t be showing you a rabbit. I haven’t got a shot of one. Or a chicken. Or a duck. Elke, for this week’s Monochrome Madness would like us to show farmyard animals, so I’m sticking to four legged examples.

Like cows …

… and sheep …

… and pigs …

… and a goat …

… and not forgetting donkeys. Not useful, but easy to love.

And here’s a little library of livestock to finish with.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

Monday Portrait: a Vosgienne

In my head, I’m still on holiday. In my head, I’m processing all the new sights and experiences of the last few weeks. Among those sights was the Vosgienne. A smallish cow, black and white with a pronounced white stripe along its backbone, it has short delicate horns. And you’ll find it – of course – in the Vosges mountains. Locals value its creamy milk in cheese production, particularly of bold-flavoured Munster cheese.

My header image is of one we saw on our trip to the Transhumance celebrations. I bet she was glad to get rid of that weighty cowbell. She’d have had one on her mountain pastures too, but it would have looked more like this one here:

Postcard from Alsace: Fête de la Transhumance

We know that over in the UK you are battling with Storm Amy, so I’ll keep quiet about the fact that though it is raining here, it’s the only expected poor-weather-episode in our holiday. So we’ve decided to have an afternoon off, allowing me to send lots of postcards from the Fête de la Transhumance in nearby Muhlbach which we visited this morning, ahead of the deluge we’re currently experiencing.

Transhumance is the practice of taking cattle to spend the summer grazing in the lush upland pasture, before bringing them back down to spend the winter in their home community, Both ends of the season are times of celebration, and here’s transhumance in Seix, from our days in the Pyrenees.

The first people we met after we’d arrived were a group of three people in kilts tuning up their bagpipes. We greeted them in French, then reverted to English, assuming they were Scottish. But no! They come from Strasbourg, speak not a word of English, but are Passionate about Bagpipes, and here they were, ready to play their cornemuses for everyone’s bemusement and delight.

The Alphorn was originally used to call cattle. These days it’s the province of musical folklore enthusiasts and there were several bands of them playing today.

Then it was off to visit the donkeys who would be part of the procession of cattle (Don’t ask. No idea why).

On our way up to view the procession we found the tractor that carried so many of the cowbells the animals wear when in their summer pasture, to keep tabs on them.

Then finally, we could hear all those cowbells clanging away, announcing that the cows were on their way. In truth the cows weren’t happy, and many of them skittered nervously about. I don’t know how much the leading cows enjoyed their fancy headdresses either: but they didn’t complain. By now it’ll be over, and they can forget all about it till next spring, when they’ll be off up the mountain again.

We didn’t stay for the highpoint of the event for many of the locals, the large communal meal, thankfully under canvas. But before we went, we looked round the market: local cheeses, sausage, sweetmeats – cowbells too.

And as we were leaving, something else extraordinary. A procession of people, each holding a large cowbell, which they knocked on each knee alternately as they walked forward, producing a rhythmical cow-bell-dirge. Ouch! Poor knees!

After yesterday’s experience at Colmar, which was Tourist Central, jammed with visitors (like us …) it was good to be at a local celebration: crowded to be sure, but almost exclusively with locals, many of them chatting away in Alsatian, which is widely spoken here, particularly among the older generation.

We feel as if we’ve properly arrived here now.

P.S. WP’s AI suggests the following tags: technology; art; cats.

A Serene Stroll

I have thought hard about how to respond to Egidio’s Lens-Artists Challenge: Serenity. This word always calls to mind an early evening I spent, content and alone, in l’Albufera lagoon, near Valencia. The utter peace and serenity it delivered has provided me with material for several posts, including this one.

So my serenity this time will be more humdrum, more local, but restorative too. It’s a local walk I take at any time of day. The other day it was an evening walk, not long before sunset. I had only sheep for company.

It’s a very domestic sort of walk, and under three miles long. Along a quiet lane; across sheep pasture; the grounds of a spacious country estate; fields of crops; and then, turning homewards along a different path, the River Ure; and finally a stretch of woodland .. and home. Varied enough to be quietly interesting as I enjoy the changing seasons, but with positively no drama.

Indian Friday: BASIL

I rather enjoyed re-visiting India via my blog the other week. So I went and dug out the diary I faithfully kept. The events it describes have never yet seen the light of day. For the first ten days I was with the group of people my ex-brother-in-law had put together, to explore aspects of rural Indian life, focussing on small producers working in traditional and organic ways. We had no internet access during that period.

I’ve decided to share my diary with you. This will take several Fridays. I’m pleased that I kept such a detailed record of a piece of personal history, and of a country I’d never visited. I wonder how dated this account would seem to the current traveller?

BASIL

Not a particularly early start, so time to try to book journeys onwards, exchange travellers’ cheques etc. Then the bus. The outskirts of Mysore soon became dusty towns, and in the countryside beyond, stalky straw-like crops were laid down in thick piles for us to drive over and thereby help in the winnowing process.

BASIL exists to promote biodynamic farming, investing heavily in teaching small farmers.  They were very convincing about their techniques of using cowhorn etc and certainly have fine results.  They showed us a film which went on far too long, and then, as we’ve come to expect, offered us a wonderful lunch.  Discussion afterwards, then a tour of the farm and the vanilla packaging works.  A whole shed full of vanilla pods, many being quality and size-graded by a band of women.

A lazy late afternoon, then an auto-rickshaw to Simon’s choice of restaurant, Park Lane Hotel, which I found noisy and not much fun.  Until sundry Indian families all took a shine to this strange group of English and tried to make friends, asking our names and pinching our cheeks.  M took photos of the event.  Oh, on the way there, Simon and C’s rickshaw got seriously lost, and had to be guided home via Simon’s mobile and the man at the gate.