Sunday, November 24, 2024

Dear Valued Customer,

Last beams of golden light reflect off the rows of windows at the Chateau. A water hen glides to the safety of overhanging grass along the banks of the moat. And from the far pastures, across the stream and through an opening in the hedgerow, the cattle have begun their majestic march to evening quarters under the trees behind the Chateau. They march in single file, russet coats aglow in the slanted light. It won’t be long now before the farmer brings them into their stabulation for the winter.

At the early close of an autumn afternoon, we leave the green and golden day behind. There is a bright fire in the library. Monsieur will play the piano, a short piece of his own composition that he has been tinkering with for decades. The chords and notes are familiar, a background to our lives.

Away in his Paris apartment, our son Henry is perhaps also at the piano. During the pandémie four years ago, locked down at Courtomer, he took up the piano again. Now, when Henry comes to visit again, the old Pleyel resounds with Chopin, Brahms, Mozart, Schumann…and Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack for “Le Château ambulant.” He and I went to see that movie together many years ago in Paris.

The weekend, like Courtomer itself, is a happy parenthèse before we re-enter the world of work and of current events.

Like everyone, we’ve been scotché to the radio and the television. On November 7, Donald Trump’s “sacré uppercut” astounded us all. The French press was giddy. No native vocabulary seemed adequate to describe what happened on Election Day. It was “le come back.”

“C’est Walking Dead!” reported a French journalist based on Capitol Hill. There was not a chat on the streets following the long vigil of Tuesday.

“La zombication!”

American reporters and commentators feverishly pitched in, their words simultaneously translated into French in an confusing medley of tongues.

Then it was the turn of politicians and public intellectuals.

“Damn, he’s back!” the French president is said to have exclaimed incredulously. “Merde, le revoila”

Emmanuel Macron surprised everyone by comparing Europeans to “herbivores” about to be devoured by “carnivores” outre Atlantique. He was referring to trade policy. But he was surely shuddering at the popularity of anti-establishment politics, too.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement nationale, France’s most powerful right-wing party, must think her grand day is coming. She is ghting in court to stay out of jail. She is routinely accused of fascisme. Her party swept many elections this spring. And she won 41.5% of the vote in the last presidential race.

Just last week, judges declared Le Pen ineligible for the coming présidentielles in 2027. Predictably, Le Pen’s punishment smacks of politics, especially to the vocal Madame Le Pen. But even her opponents are using the occasion to denounce the current government and the élites de la Macronie.

"Combattre Madame Le Pen se fait dans les urnes, pas ailleurs!" Beat her at the polling booth, not with legal entanglements!

The American election has put France’s classe politique on edge.

Closer to home, French farmers staged protests all over the country last weekend. Our little commune of Courtomer limited itself to turning the town’s sign upside down.

"Agriculteurs en colère" last winter outside Alençon, the capital of the Département de l'Orne, half an hour from Courtomer. The sign reads: "Agriculture: as a child, we dream of it. As an adult, it kills us”

It’s been a bad year for agriculture, with too much rain in Normandy and too little elsewhere. Here on the plains of of Alençon, the wheat harvest has been décévante. That of barley is positively catastrophique. There’s also le Green Deal.

These are new restrictions on pesticides, herbicides and water use. In damp regions, farmers aren’t allowed to dig drainage ditches and in dry regions, reservoirs may soon be banished. Decisions a farmer used to make himself – such as when to spread cow manure on fields or what ground cover to plant – are made by the Ministère d’Agriculture in Paris. This is the nouvelle transition to a low-carbon footprint world.

French farmers are starting to feel the old footprint was a better fit.

Meanwhile, the European Union is negotiating a trade pact to allow South American meat and cereals unrestricted access to European markets. "Concurrence déloyale !" exclaimed our farmer. “They use all the pesticides they want in their countries!”

Michel Barnier, France’s new Prémier Ministre, was interviewed last Friday. An agricultrice in tears recounted that drought and insects had destroyed her hazelnut crop. She couldn’t irrigate, she couldn’t spray. She would have to re her employees, her children wanted nothing to do with the farming life, and the land must be sold. She was “désesperée,” she said, breaking down in tears.

Treating the mental health of farmers was a priority, the Prime Minister reassured her. His voice sounded tired and little sad.

"Mission impossible!" resumed an editorial in the next day’s Le Figaro.

Monsieur Barnier was born in 1951, as France entered the golden age of les Trentes Glorieuses. He entered politics in the 1970s, when those 30 years of rapid post-WWII growth were coming to an end. Now, French economic decline seems to be accelerating.

The French farmer is just one case in a generally bad situation. The Etat needs money, the economy is weaker than ever, and the Peuple are fed up.

“They broke it, they own it,” commented Monsieur heartlessly. State interventionism, in his view, inevitably collides with a reality far beyond the control of mere mortal technocrats.

The farmers are supposed to transition toward a new way of farming by 2030, a mere 5 years away. The goal is zero carbon emissions. To achieve this, says the Macron government in a plan published last year, French farmers must produce less meat. They must grow more peas and beans. Tractors must be fewer and they must use less gas. Carbon must locked up in the land. How to do this?

Our son Henry attended a study day at the local chamber of agriculture.

"The best way to reduce your carbon footprint," the speaker told the assembled farmers, "is to increase it to the maximum now by plowing everything -- elds, pastures, prairies. That releases carbon. Then, when you have to reduce carbon emissions, just go back to plowing only the elds."

"He might have been joking," said Henry.

It's taken agriculture 10,000 years to develop from stone hoes to Monsieur Jean-Yves' fabulous new harvester, where he sits in air-conditioned comfort while a logiciel calculates the percentage of moisture in every harvested kernel. Agriculture is hunger's response to the irrepressible forces of nature. And nature is a formidable opponent. Where wheat thrives, so do the insects, bacteria, viruses and champignons that live on it.

“Not to mention mice and rats,” said our farmer, gloomily. Stopping off at the Chateau as he finishes his rounds, he hands me bons de livraison from the cooperative. As expected, the final receipts from the harvest are un désappointement. We’ll just have to hope the trade deal is scuttled!

The sun is going down. We stand on the perron as our farmer gets into his pick-up for the drive home. The lanterns on either side of the front doors shine into the deepening dusk. A few tiny flecks of snow begin to dance on the beams of light.

Strife and upset, hard decisions, bad harvests and too much rain…snow muffles it all in its mantle of pure white.

At least for the weekend.

Amicalement,

Looking out the kitchen window at Courtomer.