French Friday - Festival de la Moisson

St Ouen la Rouerie - Festival de la Moisson et des Vieux Metiers

Around this time of year, in many villages in France there will be a local fete celebrating la moisson, which is the harvest of the arable crops. We went along to a local-ish village last Sunday to have a have a look see. 'Vieux metiers' translates as old crafts/skills and as you'll see in the following photos the two go hand in hand really. It's all a bit of fun and about seeing how they did these things back in the good old days.

It started with a parade through the centre of the village of everything from a brass band, traditional dancers, Breton horses doing what they used to do in the past (i.e. be working heavy horses), then was followed by a display of ancient tractors and a few other things.

We then moved to the field where the events took place. These events are always held in a stubble field and it's quite fun watching the old threshing machines and having a look around at the displays. These are not huge events and really a couple of hours suffice for seeing all there is to see.

I took quite a few photos which I've tried to whittle down so will just post them here with captions.

The old boys with their old tools

Along came the dancers

The best bit for me - seeing the Breton horses scrubbed up and
actually doing some heavy horse work

I'm no expert but there may be some Cob Normand in this one.
It looks just a bit different around the neck and head, and is a bay rather than
chestnut or the lovely almost palamino colour of many Bretons
with their blonde manes and tails.

Now onto the old tractors

Some of which were lovingly restored and painted in bright colours

Some belched out clouds of smoke!

Some looked like they'd been rusting away in the corner of a barn for the last 50 years!

The Pompiers (Fire Brigade) from times gone by

A combine. I can't say as the ones I see in the small fields here look any more modern ;-)

Breton pulling a gypsy caravan

We looked inside later. It had a stove for heating/cooking on and a bed at the back.
It was really tiny inside.

Over in the field the old threshing machines (les batteuses) were going.

Perhaps there was a problem with this one!

Another batteuse

I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is how they did it before steam or diesel power.
Working horses going round and round. Must have been boring!

There was some local Breton dancing

And this exhibit which cracked me up!
A display of how they did the laundry in the good old days.
Those poor women must have had dreadful backache the next day!

Last but not least.
Me sporting my new basket which I bought
from the man selling hand made baskets.
I love it!

Horses and foals

I love horses. I've ridden on and off since I was a kid, but after having taken it up again in my 40s after having only ridden a handful of times in my 30s and not having fallen off during that time, I soon learned that meaning of the phrase "I don't bounce any more". Oh yes, even falling onto sand in a sand school hurts like hell and I managed three falls over the space of about a year: one which half crippled me for weeks and I even went to the doc who sent me for an X-ray of my coccyx; another which left me with a buttock that was black and blue and I could hardly sit down for about two weeks; the third was initially remarkable as I sat in the sand thinking "I don't hurt!!!". Until I got up that was, and realised something was rather wrong with my foot.

It was 'only' a broken metatarsal so I thought, no big deal, footballers have these injuries all the time and they're up and playing football again within a month. Oh how wrong I was, I was still hopping around on crutches 6 weeks later with a foot the size of a balloon. Complications set in and after 6 months I finally managed to persuade my doctor to send me for physiotherapy. A year of that and it was somewhat better but took about two years to heal totally, and I still get the odd twinge. Of course the fracture happened one August so you can imagine how awful it was for me to watch my veg patch and flower beds get weedier and weedier, fruit rotting on the trees and my poor OH struggling to get the basic chores done inside and out. I decided then and there that my garden was far more important to me than my love of horses and riding, in fact just my own two feet and mobility were more important than anything. So now I just admire horses from the ground!

We are in quite horsey country around here - OK by 'around here' I mean just the immediate vicinity between our little hamlet and the village 2 kms away. My English neighbours have a number of horses and there's a French lady who breeds Trotters who has them in several fields dotted about. Then there are the Breton heavy horses who come and go as they move around from field to field. When I noticed they were back in the hamlet a few days ago and there was a mare and foal in one field I just had to get out and have a close up look, especially as I knew there was a Trotter foal further up the road too.

The Breton mare and foal. Bretons are usually this beautiful colour with blonde manes and tails.

Shame about the fencing in the way! There's sheep wire, old and new
barbed wire and hurriedly put together electric fencing - which wasn't even on
as baby was touching it when I was stroking it!

All the excitement and baby had to have a little lie down

On the other side of the road there were some really chunky ones

I'm not sure about the ones in the background, they are rather slimline and
may be Breton crosses.

Then I walked on about 1km to see the Trotter mare and foal. At first I thought they'd disappeared but they were inside the field shelter. When they saw me they seemed to take an interest and got up and had a trot and canter around the field for my benefit. I am so stupid though as I thought I'd set my camera onto sports mode but had put it on the wrong setting, hence not very good photos when they were moving.

Strange woman alert!

Let's provide her with a photo opportunity, that she can stuff up!

Every now and again they'd stop and mum
would give me the evil eye :-)

I loved the way they did everything in unison with baby copying mum.

Meh. Bored with this now so I'll stick my tongue out at you.

I'll end with a funny. I can't even be bothered to crop off the strange black bits at the top and bottom but old photos and slides need (in most cases, in my opinion) to be left in their natural state as it adds to the charm. What on earth is in front of the camera, the strap?!! But I would like to say that I did learn to ride somewhat better than this! How d'ya like those lovely baggy jods? :-)