Un gîte rural en France

A few years ago — before covid — we rented a gîte (a vacation house) in the village you can see on the left above. On the right above is what the three-bedroom house looked like.

We were just three miles from the city you see on the right and only a mile from a big shopping center.

Below left is village meeting hall, close to the gîte. There we no events there during our stay. And below right is a view of the fortified barn (the old tower) that the gîte was attached to.

Farmers closing in on Paris and Rungis

I'm probably overdoing it with the wintertime sunrise and sunset pictures. That said, here are a few more. These are the kind of outdoor pictures I can take in the winter months because usually it's either too gray and gloomy or too frigid outdoors for photography. I often take sunrise photos out of our kitchen window.

As for the farmers, the news this morning is declaring the standoff with government authorities une impasse — a stalemate. The farmers and their tractors are moving toward Paris, which the government has asked them not to do. They are also making noise about blockading the gigantic food market at Rungis, just south of the city. Rungis is the largest fresh foods market in the world, says French Wikipédia. Almost all the food we consume comes from there. It's still dark here. We'll see what daylight brings. This is all great theater...

Farmers on the move... slowly

I don't know if these links will work in the U.S., but I'll post them anyway. Everything in France right now is about the country's farmers protesting government agricultural policies by driving their tractors and harvesters on the main roads (autoroutes) around Paris and other major cities to tie up traffic. Here's a link to an article and video in English on the France 24 news channel.

I went to the supermarket yesterday morning and got caught up in a demonstration by farmers driving their tractors across the bridge from Saint-Aignan over to Noyers-sur-Cher, where there's a big traffic circle and an Intermarché store. There were a dozen or more gendarmes around the traffic circle and there 20 to 30 farmers driving their tractors across the bridge to slow down car traffic and express their anger about reforms and new laws the government has imposed on them. Here's a link to a report and video in French on France 24.

You'd probably prefer not to be behind one of these slow-moving engins (a generic term for farm equipment in France) on a main highway, or have one coming at you on a narrow bridge or country lane.

Here's an excerpt from an article published this morning in our regional newspaper:

...des centaines d’agriculteurs barrent depuis lundi huit grands axes autoroutiers desservant Paris, pour continuer à mettre la pression sur le gouvernement de Gabriel Attal. Sur certains points de blocage, les agriculteurs se sont organisés pour tenir jusqu’à jeudi, avec tours de garde et renforts prévus mardi.

Tout autour de Paris, la circulation est fortement perturbée avec des portions fermées à quelques dizaines de kilomètres de la capitale, selon le site Sytadin. Paris elle-même n’est pas bloquée, ni le marché vital de Rungis (Val-de-Marne) et les aéroports parisiens.

Le gouvernement laisse faire et encadre les manifestants, mais veut empêcher que les tracteurs n’entrent dans «Paris et les grandes villes», le ministre de l'Intérieur Gérald Darmanin demandant de la «modération» à ses troupes.

Le reste de la France, lui aussi, connaît des barrages et manifestations, comme à Lyon. Une source policière a compté plus de 3.000 agriculteurs mobilisés lundi dans tout le pays, avec près de 2.000 engins. Un tiers est dans le Sud-Ouest.

In and around the Rénaudière "hamlet"

Have there been reports of the current French farmers' strikes and protests in the U.S.? The protesters' plan for today is to block all the major roads (autoroutes) that lead into Paris and to the gigantic wholesale food market south of the city, called Rungis. I think I'll have to go to the supermarket this morning to see if fruit, vegetables, and meat products are still for sale. The farmers are trying to force the government to lower taxes on diesel fuel used in farm equipment. They say they can't make a decent living under the the current regulations. Out here in the country everything is calm, but around Paris and other big cities things are pretty messy.

Above are some more pictures I have taken in Januaries past.The first picture shows our house as it looked in 2008. The second shows our Blois neighbors' country house. It's been empty for a month or so now. The pheasant in the third photo turned up in our back yard one day. We've had another one in the yard several times this winter. Finally, there's the dirt road through the vineyard with our house in the distance, and of a couple of sunrises.