Work for Idle Hands: La Fermette - un siècle de la vie rurale

Sunday September 2, 2007

La Fermette - un siècle de la vie rurale

We saw a fête at Bellefontaine advertised on a poster, so, having missed the (similar) annual festivities at St Martin le Bouillant this year, we decided to give it a go. The poster said "rôtisserie à midi" but we failed to appreciate that the meal was the start of it all, and thus we arrived a bit early. However, we bought our tickets (repas compris), and headed off to kill some time, deciding to take a stroll around the now familiar Cascades at nearby Mortain.

We parked in the town this time and took a different walk altogether to get to the Petite Cascade. We walked through Place des Aiguilles - which I can easily translate due to my excellent knitting vocabulary, if not due to the obviously eponymous rocks.

We reached the Cascade from exactly the opposite direction from last time. This enabled me to actually see and experience the tranquility, take the picture, get the T-shirt etc.

La Fermette

We arrived back at the fête promptly at midday, briefly toured the fields - and then went to eat:

After this we had a great afternoon: there was a parade of rural workers in costume, and various demonstrations of old farming methods, including different techniques for harvesting, threshing, bailing, and also pressing apples for cider.

There were a number of stalls with people selling their craft wares. I fell in love with this lady's stall. She obviously takes old objects, and then paints them. I could not resist purchasing the colander.

Another rural craft item that interested me a lot was the making of rope using a slightly Heath-Robinson like machine. This is exactly the process used to prepare your threads for ply-split braiding - but on a much grander scale. [The contruction of the machine is like the advice given for making your own automatic winder using some cup hooks and an electric drill]. Note also the eccentric well in the background... seems to have gladioli growing out of the ridge....

The final item was very interesting for us to see: the cider pressing - especially since we have all this equipment rotting away in one of the out buildings at La Gonfrairie. (The building is a little odd since the boundary between our land and our neighbours cuts right through this building - it is half on our side and half on his!).
Back to the cider.
The apples are first minced in a machine....