La boutique optique et l'examen de la vue

I drove over to Noyers-sur-Cher yesterday for my examen de la vue — my eye exam. The optical shop is called Optique Noyers and I'd recommend it. The young woman who runs the place was on time (I was early for the appointment). Only one other customer was in the shop, and just for a few minutes, while I was sat there and waited. We all wore face coverings.

When it was my turn, I was shown into a well fitted-out room behind the opticians desk. There I saw all the familiar equipment from eye exams I've had in the U.S. — the test was not unfamiliar or surprising. One thing that did surprise me was that the optician asked me to give her my glasses so that she could see what the current level of correction I was using. Vous pouvez faire ça ?, I asked her. Oui, j'ai une machine pour le faire, she told me.

She could have just ordered lenses with the same correction factor as my old lenses, but she didn't. She did a full exam, and told me that both my eyes had changed since my glasses were made several years ago — I can't remember exactly when I had them made, but it was on one of my trips to North Carolina. The last prescription I have in my medical files is dated February 2009, but I think I had another exam after that. I showed that prescription to the optician and she said it didn't match the glasses I was wearing.

When the optician did a mock-up of the glasses she said she'd make for me, I could clearly (as it were) see the difference. Everything was sharper through her lenses that with my current glasses. Since both eyes had changed, I needed to order two new lenses to replace the lenses in the glasses that I had damaged, which is how this whole thing started. I suddenly realized that I would need to have two new pairs of glasses made, because I wanted two pairs that used the new correction level, one as my lunettes de secours — my spare pair, for emergencies — and one as my everyday glasses.

I asked the optician if I would be getting plastic lenses or glass lenses in the new glasses (a lens is called un verre in French, the same word you use for a drinking glass). I asked her if verres en verre are lot more expensive than verres en plastique. No, she said, but they are beaucoup plus dangereux.

Imagine if your glasses had had glass lenses in them when you fell a few months ago. The glass lens could have shattered and you could have seriously injured your left eye. Actually, that's my strong eye. In the right one I've always had blurry vision — the optician described it as un œil malade. If your good eye had been injured, instead of just having your plastic lens scratched, what would you have done then? Bonne question, I said.

The optician went on to explain that there were four types of lenses I could choose from, with prices going from 200 to 350 euros apiece. I don't know how that compares to American prices. She said the main difference in the lenses is how much peripheral vision they give you and how clear it is. I chose lenses in the middle range.

And I needed four of them, for two pairs of glasses. I didn't need new frames. I asked her if she could use her machine to see if my two pairs of glasses had identical lenses in them. Of course, she said. Then she told me that the glasses with the scratched lens seemed to be an older prescription than the ones I've been wearing recently. That surprised me. I thought they were the same. My memory is not what it used to be.

The optician printed out a devis [duh-VEE] — a price quote — showing what I would have to pay for the lenses. There was no separate charge for the examen de la vue. I looked over the quote and it was confusing. It looked like it listed one charge of about 420 euros, another for about 80 euros, and then another charge for 500 euros. I looked at her and said I had figured out in my head that it was going to cost me about a thousand euros for the four lenses.

Then she looked confused. No, she said. It will cost 500 euros. How can that be, I asked. Well, she said, when you buy a new pair of lenses, we give you a second pair at no cost! Wow, I thought. I had no idea. I had told myself before the eye exam not to be surprised if two new lenses would set me back between 600 and 800 euros. I don't know if all French optical shops offer deals like that, but Optique Noyers does. By the way, the 416.67 on the quote is the cost of the lenses HT (hors taxe) and 83.33 is the amount of TVA (VAT, a national sales tax). Those add up to the 500 euro total (TTC — toutes taxes comprises).

I left the shop a happy man. The lenses should come in next week, the optician said. I left the damaged glasses with her. When they have the new lenses in them, she'll call me and I'll go pick them up. I'll give her the glasses I'm wearing now and she'll put the new lenses in them while I wait, if I want to wait.

Une tarte aux courgettes...

...avec rondelles de saucisson et oignons confits

If it's summer, you can be sure there's a race to keep up with the courgettes. Our two plants are already producing more than we can easily incorporate into our menus and diet. One way to cook them is to bake them in a pie shell. By the way, courgettes is both French and British for what we Americans call summer squash or zucchini.

The first step in making this tart is to cut up and slow-cook a big onion or two in vegetable oil or butter with bay leaves, thyme, a splash of white wine, and a tablespoon of honey. When the onions are tender — that takes 30 or 40 minutes — blind bake (pre-cook) a pie shell that you've bought at the supermarket or made yourself. spread the onions over the bottom of the pie shell. Save as much of liquid and oil that the onions cook in to drizzle over the top of the tart before you bake it.

The sausage I use to make this tart is called saucisson à l'ail in France — garlic sausage. It's a large pork sausage that is sold already cooked. You can see that's it's fairly lean. All you have to do is cut it into rounds. Optionally, you can brown the rounds lightly in a frying pan before you put them in the tart over the slow-cooked onions.

Slice a zucchini or two, depending on their size, into thin rondelles as well. Blanch (par-boil) the slices for three or four minutes in boiling water or in a steamer pot (my preference). They will cook better in the oven, without drying out, if they're blanched first.

The other main flavor ingredient in this tart is cheese. It's really good with grated Parmesan — about three-quarters of a cup of it. Sprinkle some over the slices of sausage before you lay the zucchini rounds over the top. Sprinkle more cheese over the top of the zucchini rounds. Drizzle on the cooking juices from the slow-cooked onions that you saved earlier. Bake the tart in a hot oven for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Everything you put in it is already cooked, so it doesn't take long.

A better light in Saint-Chamant

Here's a slideshow of photos of and from the Château de Saint-Chamant when we spent a few days in the village a decade ago. They show it is a more flattering light than did the photo I posted yesterday. By the way, my reading has confirmed that the tall, rectangular tower on the front of the château houses the château's main staircase.

The banner photo is an aerial view I grabbed off an Auvergne tourist site (link). My thanks for this non-commercial use of the image.

Outage

We just had a 45-minute power outage, for unknown reasons. No internet, of course, during that time. It wasn't our breakers that tripped. Now I don't really have time to blog. I need to take Tasha out for her walk.

I'll just post this image of the slightly forbidding Château de Saint-Chamant, in the Cantal (Auvergne). More tomorrow.

Optométrie ? Optométriste ? Non, merci...

About four months ago, at the very beginning of the Grand Confinement  — the lockdown — in France, I had an accident. I was out walking in the vineyard with Tasha. She walks without a leash, and sometimes she stops to sniff something and falls behind. On the walk in question, I lost sight of her. I called her, to no avail. I kept walking slowly but then I turned my head to see if I could see her behind me. That was a mistake. I tripped on something and down I went, face first.

Luckily, I wasn't injured at all. However, my glasses were. My face actually hit the ground, and my glasses scraped across a stray rock that was just lying there. If I hadn't had glasses on, I might have seriously injured my eye. As it was, I badly damaged my glasses. The rock made a deep scratch in the plastic lens. You can see it in the photo above. And here's a close-up.

It's always good to have a spare pair of glasses, and I did have one. Highlight "did" — the ones with the scratched lens were made basically unusable. Here are the spares, and I've been wearing them all the time for four months now. When France was locked down and we were confinés, all the optical shops were closed (as far as I know). I really didn't know what to do.

France and a lot of other countries don't recognize optometry as a legitimate healthcare specialty. In the U.S., when you need to have your eyes examined, you go to see an optometrist. It's the same in England and the rest of the U.K, as far as I know. We have an English friend who is a retired optometrist. In France, when you need your vision tested, you have to go see an ophthalmologist. And guess what? The waiting time for getting an appointment with an opthalmo [uhf-tahl-MOH] is six or even nine months in much of the country. There's severe shortage of them in France.

Finally, a week or so ago, I went to an optical shop to find out what my options were. I was motivated to do something about the spare pair of glasses when, a few days earlier, I had put on my mask to go into our village bakery to buy some bread. When I walked out of the shop and back toward my car, I pulled the mask off because my glasses were fogging up. When I pulled the mask off, it caught on my glasses and they flew off my face, langing landed on the rough pavement of the parking lot. I nearly panicked, thinking I had damaged my only usable pair of glasses. Luckily again, I hadn't.

The big problem is that I've never been examined by an ophthalmo in France. Since my sister in North Carolina is (or was — she's retired now) a professional optician and was employed by an eye care center in our home town, I had my vision tested there by the on-staff optometrist and my sister made my glasses for me on my annual visits to see her, our mother, and other family and friends. I don't have any prescription for corrective lenses that is newer than 2009. Even if I had a newer American prescription, I'm not sure it would be valid in France. I can't even go to N.C. to get new one right now, because of the crise sanitaire.

The first optician I talked to said she couldn't do anything for me until I got a prescription from a French ophthalmo. She said the lead time to get a rendez-vous might not be as long as I'd heard, but that I'd probably have to go to Tours or even Orléans to find one who could see me sooner. Blois was a possibility. It's more complicated than that, because insurance is involved, but I won't go into all the details.

So last Wednesday I went to see another optician, this one just across the river in Noyers-sur-Cher, three miles from our house by car. She was very helpful. She said that if I wanted to be reimbursed a portion of the cost of one or maybe two new lenses, according to whether my vision has changed since my last exam, I had two options. I could try to schedule an appointment with an ophthalmo, but that would probably take many months. Or I could go see my médecin traitant — my primary care physician — and he could write me a prescription for replacement lenses. I had never known that was an option. The optician told me that she could do the eye exam and order the appropriate lenses for me, cut them, and put them into a frame.

I'm trying to decide whether to have the new lens or lenses put into my old black metal frame, above, or this frame

which has old lenses in it that I've "outgrown." I'm open to opinions and suggestions...

Then the optician asked me at what percentage of the cost my top-up, supplementary health insurance policy would cover. I told her I didn't have such coverage — I just have the basic French health insurance through the Sécurité Sociale system. My health has been good enough all these years for me not to feel the need for the supplementary insurance, which is called une mutuelle in France. It seems the basic SS insurance, while it covers dental fees, dermatology, and preventive care like cardiology exams and colonoscopies, doesn't include vision care.

I thanked her and said I'd make an appointment with my généraliste, as the doctor is called, and then I'd come back to see her with his prescription. Well, she said, if you don't have a mutuelle, then you don't even need a prescription. She said she could go ahead and do the eye exam and get me new lenses if I planned to pay the full price. So that's what I'm doing. I have an appointment this coming Wednesday for the exam. I have no idea what it will cost, but at this point it really doesn't matter.

Imagine turkey legs slow-cooked in red wine broth...

One standard item in supermarkets and on the outdoor markets all year long in France is the turkey leg. And when I say "leg" I mean the thigh + the drunstick. These are inexpensive and delicious. I'm not sure how widely available they are in the U.S. as a fresh product. I think you can get frozen turkey breasts, smoked turkey wings, and things like that, but are the legs and thighs widely available? Maybe you can ask the supermarket butcher for the legs.

I like to cook them in the slow cooker on low for as long as 12 hours. The one pictured above and below was one of three that I put into our six-liter mijoteuse ("simmerer") and cooked overnight. I season the turkey lightly with bay leaves, an onion, paprika, black pepper, a pinch of cloves, and of course some white wine.

These would be good cooked in red wine too, I find myself thinking all of a sudden. Whatever you do, don't add too much liquid to the pot. Use half water and half wine. The turkey will make its own broth as it cooks slowly at low temperature. The leg & thigh section here was the one on top in the pot, so it wasn't completely covered by the broth even after the cooking was finished. The skin looks lacquered, and the meat isn't boiled but steamed.

When the turkey legs are well-cooked, take them out of the broth, let them cool until you can comfortably handle them, and pull the meat off the bones with your fingers. Dispose of the cartilage, veins, and lumps of fat, as well the tiny, thin bones you'll find in the drumstick meat. Surtout, save the broth. Imagine what a good dinde au vin rouge — a version of the classic French coq au vin — you could make quickly with the rich red-wine broth, these nuggets of tender turkey meat, smoked pork-belly lardons, and sautéed mushrooms. Serve with pasta, steamed or mashed potatoes, or a green vegetable like petits pois or haricots verts.

Un gratin de chou vert aux pommes de terre et lardons

As I was saying yesterday, we haven't yet had enough hot weather to discourage us from baking things like bread and gratins in a hot oven. It was hot but not unbearably so yesterday. Today is supposed to be much cooler.

Meanwhile, I had ordered and picked up some groceries that included a Savoy cabbage, called either chou pommé frisé or chou de Milan in French. It was beautiful. Pommé (from the word pomme, apple) means that it's a cabbage that forms a head, not cabbage like kale or collards, which produce loose leaves.

The gratin had been in the refrigerator overnight before I cut it so I could take this photo.

I used most of the tender white center of the cabbage to make coleslaw. Then I took the green outer leaves and the rest of the white center and cooked them in a steamer pot until they were tender. I also peeled and steamed some little waxy potatoes. And I cooked some smoked pork lardons ("bacon bits" or chunks of pork belly — they are optional) and a chopped onion in a frying pan. Here's a short slideshow made up of 10 images showing the process in chronological order.

Put a layer of the cooked potato slices in the bottom of a buttered or oiled baking dish. Chop up the cooked cabbage leaves, and mix the cooked bacon and onion with the bacon in the frying pan. Spread that mixture over the potatoes. Beat two eggs in a bowl and pour in two cups (16 fl. oz.) of milk or cream along with about half a cup (4 fl. oz) grated Parmesan cheese (or as much as you want). Season the liquid with salt, black pepper, and a small amount of grated nutmeg.

Pour the liquid mixture over the layered potato and cabbage in the baking dish. Optionally (and why not?) spread some grated Swiss or Cheddar cheese (Comté or Cantal in France) over the top before baking the gratin in a hot oven until it is heated through and browned. The result is a full meal, especially if you accompany it with a tomato or cucumber salad in vinaigrette.

Our “summer” so far

We had a fairly hot day yesterday, and we had some back in May too. But here's the reality about our weather here in Saint-Aignan. We seem to be having one of those co-called "Loire Valley summers."

• The average daily high temperature in the first part of June is 68ºF. By the end of June and in early July, the average high is up to 75.

• This year, we had 20 days in June when the high temperature didn't break 75, and on 12 of those days the high was 70 or lower.

• The average morning low temperature in early June is 50ºF. By late June and early July, the morning low averages out to 55.

• This year, we had 18 mornings in June when the low temperature was below 50. There were two mornings when the temperature was in the mid-30sF.

• We had only 3 mornings in June when the low temperature was above 60. There were very few mornings when we could go out without putting on long pants and a jacket.

We also had about four inches of rain in June, according to Accuweather's statistics. To be balanced, I should point out that we did have 6 days in June when the high was above 80, and on 2 of those it was above 90. All this is according to Accuweather data.

Temperatures on French maps are in centigrade. See the chart on the sidebar for F equivalents.

Predictions for Saint-Aignan today are temperatures in in the upper 80s. But tomorrow's high is predicted to be around 75º, with showers. We've had very few days so far when the weather has discouraged us from baking things like bread or gratins (casseroles) in a hot oven.

Cantal — le fromage

This is what a wedge of Cantal cheese looks like. Cantal is one of two AOC cheeses made in the Cantal département, which is the southern part of the historical Auvergne province in France. This is a photo I took in 2008, so it's Cantal cheese that I bought in Saint-Aignan, not in Auvergne. The other cheese made in the Cantal is called Salers, after the name of the town of Salers and the breed of cattle raised in the area for both meat and milk. Cantal and Salers are basically the same cheese, but with a couple of important differences. Cantal can be made year-round, including in winter when the cows are kept in barns and fed hay.

Salers can only be made in summer, when the cows are grazing out in the pastures on fresh grasses and other plants. Also, Cantal cheese can be made in commercial dairies (which use milk collected from different farms in the region) as well as on dairy farms, but Salers cheese is made only on farms, with the milk of the cows that are raised on a single farm and that have grazed there on pastureland.

Thanks to my friend Evelyn for this photo, which she took when we visited the open-air market in the town of Salers in September 2009.

It would be interesting to do a side-by-side tasting of Cantal and Salers cheeses made on the same dairy farm and similarly aged, to see if the differences are obvious. Actually, there are three "grades" or qualities of Cantal cheese: jeune (young), entre-deux (meaning "between the two" others — aged but only until semi-ripe), and vieux (ripe, mature cheese). (These terms are similar to American terms for Cheddar cheeses, which can be sold as mild, semi-sharp, or sharp, depending on how long they've been aged.)

I'm not sure if cheeses that qualify for the Salers label are sold at different levels of maturation the way Cantal cheeses are. However, there are at least two grades of Salers cheese. The Salers area is known for its particular breed of cattle, also called Salers, but not all the cheese made in the area is made from Salers cows' milk. The milk of other breeds of cows can go into the cheese, and the cheese can still be called either Cantal or Salers — depending on the season and whether the cows have grazed outdoors or have been fed only hay (dried grasses and plants) before being milked.

However, cheese made exclusively from the milk of cows of the Salers breed and no others can be labeled as Salers-Salers. I think the name might be sort of like the name given to the sparkling wine from Champagne that is made exclusively from Chardonnay grapes and called blanc de blancs — white wine made from the juice of white grapes.

This is what the Salers cows look like. They are prized not only for their milk, but also for their meat. As for the cheese, when we went to a dairy farm near Saint-Chamant, south of Salers, to see the cheese being made, I asked at what point the cheese cultures were added to the milk. The answer was that no cultures need to be added — the cultures occur naturally in the area and are in the air and in the chestnut-wood vats in which the cheese is left to curdle.

There is historical evidence that the Romans, when they invaded Gaul 2,000 years ago, found people in the Auvergne region making cheese like modern-day Cantal — it might be France's oldest cheese. It could well be that the Romans took knowledge of those cheese-making methods to the British Isles, shared them with the local people, and that that's how our not-so-different Cheddar cheeses came to be made in England

In September 2009, I wrote and published a series of five posts, with photos, about our visit to a dairy farm near Salers and Saint-Chamant (Cantal) and about the cheeses called Salers and Cantal. Here's a link to the first post in that series. Each post contains links at the top and bottom to all the other posts in the series so you can navigate to them easily.

Towers, and regrets

A building in Salers, with a restaurant operating out of the ground floor... I assume that tower houses a staircase. I wish I had gone inside to verify that.

The church in Salers, dedicated to saint Mathieu (St. Matthew). I wish I had gone inside.

The church in the town of Mauriac, just north of Salers. The church is called the Basilique de Notre-Dame-des-Miracles and was built in the 12th century on the site of an older chapel. I wish I had seen it from closer up than this.

The towers of the Château de Val, north of Mauriac and near the town called Bort-les-Orgues. I wish I had gone inside the château when we were there.

The Château de Saint-Chamant. We walked around the grounds, but the building itself was closed up tight. I wish I had been able to go inside. It's only open from July 1 to August 31. Is this another staircase tower?

The towers of the Château d'Anjony in Tournemire, south of Saint-Chamant. I repeat: I wish I had gone inside. It was closed the day we went there, because it was lunchtime. So we went and had lunch in a restaurant.

Dans le Cantal, la lauze règne sur les toits

Le dictionnaire que j'utilise donne les orthographes «lause» ou «lauze», dans cet ordre. Les deux mots riment avec «pause» ou «cause» en français — et plus ou moins avec les mots anglais «those» ou «doze».

Voici une maison que j'ai vue à Salers et qui a un toit (roof) de lauzes.

This is a different view of the same roof. From what I've read, it seems that lauzes are flat pieces of either sandstone (grès) or limestone (calcaire) in this region (le Cantal en Auvergne). They can be granite or other rock in other regions (Bourgogne, Franche-Comté).

And here's a close-up shot of the lauzes. They are the most common roofing material used in Cantal and other parts of the Auvergne region. Farther south in France, most of the roofs are red terra cotta tiles. In Brittany, the most common roofing material is slate. In between, as in Saint-Aignan, some are roofs are slate and others are terra cotta (terre cuite in French). You can see that these lauzes are pretty thick. They must be heavy.

Here's a typical house in Salers that built of the local black volcanic rock and has lauzes as its roofing material.

At the Château de Val, a few miles north of Salers, some of the "pepper-pot" towers are have lauze roofs and others are made of tiles.

Here's another typical cottage, this one in Tournemire, a few miles south of Saint-Chamant.

These lauzes are thinner than some I saw. I don't know what stone they made of. They almost look like they've been painted gray...

Finally, there's something pleasing about the plain and simple look of this old barn in Saint-Chamant, just south of Salers.

I found this YouTube video in French that shows how the lauze roofs in the Cantal are constructed, maintained, and repaired. The town featured is about 10 miles east of Aurillac.

Look what happens when a lauze roof is not well maintained.

Paysages d'Auvergne

Yesterday I posted photos of a few stone houses in the Cantal "province" of France's mountainous central region, called the Auvergne. Today I'm posting Auvergne landscape photos. The Auvergne is cow and dairy country, so you'll notice some cattle in these.
The slideshow runs for two minutes.

I took these photos in early September of 2009 in the area surrounding the beautiful little town of Salers — it's one of the plus beaux villages de France, as is neighboring Tournemire.

In my mind, I'm still in the Auvergne

And I want to go back there. Today I'll post just a few photos of houses in the Cantal département in the Auvergne, which is in the mountainous center of France, three or four hours south of Saint-Aignan.

In fact, my big news today is that I went to the super-market yesterday, and I went inside. It was the first time I'd done that since last March 14 — almost 16 weeks go.

I drove into the Super U at about 8:40 a.m. The store opens at 8:30. Sometimes there are people waiting to get in at that hour, and I wanted to give them 10 minutes to get inside before I followed them, rather than mixing with the crowd.

Actually, if the parking lot had been crowded with cars or people, I wouldn't have entered the store. But it wasn't, so in I went. I was wearing my "face covering" of course. I had my hand disinfectant liquid in the car.

My plan was to go in, go directly to pick up the things I wanted, and then to get out of the store as quickly as possible. But once I was inside, and I saw there was no crowd, I actually picked up a few things that I hadn't really thought about buying. There were no long lines at the caisses, so that went smoothly.

Some of the houses in today's photos are in Saint-Chamant and some of them are in Tournemire. I took the photos on a cloudy day in September 2009 with a Panasonic Lumix TZ-3 digital camera.

Des vaches, mais pas les mêmes

After going out into the pastures to see the milking of herd of Saler cows, with their calves, we headed back to Saint-Chamant (Cantal) to go to a dairy farm and watch the afternoon cheese-making session there. Here's the sign that pointed the way.

Not all the cows in the Salers region are of the Salers breed. These are not. A lot of the cows in the area are Montbéliardes. That's a breed from eastern France, near the Swiss border.

The Montbéliardes give good milk that resembles Salter cows' milk. Montbéliardes don't need their calves to be present to get the milk to start flowing, so they are easier to work with.

As we drove toward the farm from Saint-Chamant on this narrow country lane, we came nose-to-nose with a small herd of cows that were headed, I think, back to the pasture after being milked.

The cows surrounded the car. They were curious but not aggressive. Thanks to my friend Evelyn for this photo from that evening in September 2009.

An hour in a cow pasture in Auvergne

September 2009. After walking around in Tournemire and having lunch there, we drove up to the top of the Puy Mary, an ancient extinct volcano that tops out at about six thousand feet (1800+ meters). The weather was iffy — we'd had showers earlier in the day but not in Tournemire. On top of the volcano it was windy, foggy, and raining. We couldn't see anything.

We really wanted to see more sites and activities that had to do with dairy farming and cheese-making in the region around Salers. We read somewhere about two farms where we could see the milking process. The first one was a bust — nobody was there. The second, a farm run by the Rodde family an hour east of Salers, near the village called Cheylade, was the jackpot. We were able to walk out into a cow pasture and watch Jean-Pierre Rodde and his crew milking his Salers cows.



Salers cows won't give milk unless their calves are present. So the cows and calves are in the pasture together. A calf is let out of a pen they're kept in, finds his mother, and starts suckling. That starts the milk-giving. The calf is tied to one of its mother's front legs and the milking machine, powered by a tractor, is strapped on and takes over. The milking takes a while, because there are a lot of cows (see the slideshow above) and they aren't all milked simultaneously. This was the afternoon milking. There's also one early in the morning. Cheese is therefore made twice a day, morning and evening. It was raining and we had to step carefully to avoid cow patties, which were slippery and mucky.

In a document in French that I found here there's a passage (on page 6) that describes the Roddes' family business, which does both meat and milk/cheese production. The article is about a group's visit to the farm one afternoon in 2012. Here's my translation:

In the afternoon, [our] group visited Mr. Rodde's farm in Cheylade (15). Rodde uses a very traditional system (called “Salers Milking”) and processes the milk into Cantal-type cheese. His is one of the last farms to use this method —in fact, fewer than 10 farms continue the practice — which involves milking by machine out in the pasture with “priming” done by the suckling calf. The calf is then tied to one of its mothers’ front legs so that the cowherd can attach the milking machine and continue the process.

Mr. Rodde's farm has 130 hectares [320 acres] of pastureland, [with] 115 Salers cows milked in winter and 85 during the summer season. The whole herd is made up of purebred Salers stock. The heifers calve in December; the cows calve in January or February. Grass-fed calves are held aside in order to be marketed in mid-winter. The cows’ feed is based on fresh grass in summer and dry hay in winter. Four people work on the farm, Mr. and Mrs. Rodde, their son, and one employee.

The milk is processed on the farm, as is the aging of the young cheeses [called tommes]. Production reaches 250 wheels of [Cantal] cheese per year, each weighing around 40 kilograms [nearly 90 lbs.] when ripe and requiring 450 liters [about 120 U.S. gallons) of milk for their production. The cheese is sold at the farm but also in the Paris area.

The sustainability of this method of milking is greatly endangered because of the costs and working conditions it requires. Those disadvantages explain the steep decline of this traditional system designed for use with the Salers breed of cattle. A similar method used to be practiced in the Aubrac [...region to the south] but it has now been abandoned.

Le gîte rural à Saint-Chamant

Here's a short slideshow with photos I took mostly inside the house we rented in Saint-Chamant (Cantal, Auvergne, central France). The Plus Beaux Villages called Salers and Tournemire are both within 10 miles, and there's a château in Saint-Chamant too. We were five people, and we rented this house for 300 euros (about $340 U.S. at today's exchange rate).

The house is old-fashioned-looking inside but it's very spacious. It has all the conveniences: a good kitchen, a huge living room and equally huge dining room downstairs, as well as three bedrooms, two bathrooms (one downstairs and one upstairs). I didn't take pictures of the bedrooms or bathrooms, but you can see them on this web site. Yes, the house is still for rent at prices comparable to what we paid in 2009. It costs more in high season, but not much more — about $400. Have a look.

Bob R., I'm curious to know if you recognize the place from your stay in Saint-Chamant years ago.

Saint-Chamant du Cantal in pictures

Here are a few fairly random photos I took in Saint-Chamant in the Cantal (Auvergne) nearly 11 years ago. This is Walt looking out a window at the house we rented for that trip.

Here's a house in the village. The date over the door says 1851. I wonder if it's occupied. Maybe just the ground floor is lived in. Those shutters on the upstairs windows have seen better days, and the ones on the downstairs windows are just gone.

I liked these carved plaques on the village school building. Schools in France used to be segregated by gender.

That was the case when I was a teaching assistant in Rouen in 1972-73. I worked in the boys' high school, the Lycée Corneille. The girls' high school was the Lycée Jeanne-d'Arc. I think both are what they call mixte nowadays.

These are cows that I photographed pretty much in the center of the village, near the Château de Saint-Chamant. Photos of that monument TK, as we used to say (to come).

This beast and the ones above are not even cows of the Salers breed. This one looks like a charolaise to me.