Week 12: Short Escapes and Other Adventures

 Le Luart, a beautiful estate entrance we pass on our way to Le Mans. It has always intrigued me.

Even if Montmirail is surrounded by countryside and taking a vacation from being on permanent vacation could be seen as redundant, from time to time I get the urge to hop in the car and discover a new corner of our world. Such was the case at the beginning of this week. We took only a few hours out to discover some wonderful new places. We had an idea to ride the tourist steam train which we've heard about for several years, but have never taken. Unfortunately our adventure started late in the day and by the time we got to the station, we'd missed the last train. No problem, we simply continued on to the charming Village of Montfort-le-Gesnois with it's picturesque Roman bridge.

We walked along the river Huisne, and enjoyed others enjoying the afternoon. A fisherman, kids swimming near the waterfall, people sunbathing, biking, strolling.

Part of the path we took went through a beautiful forest which is habitat to flocks of nuthatches, a blue-gray bird with black eye patches and apricot colored bellies. They forage for insects along the trucks of trees or find nuts and berries. They receive their English name from their habit of wedging their food into nooks and crannies and hacking at their catch with strong bills to break it into manageable sized morsels. In French they are called sittelles, a name given to them by the ancient Greeks.

On our way back we stopped at the Château de Pescheray for a peek around the grounds (185 acres) of this public estate. Rick had attended a meeting here last year and wanted to show me what I had missed. There is a cafe in the castle park where we sipped a Perrier before having a walk around. The chateau is known for it's ancient boxwood trees, prized by cabinet makers for it's hardness and close grain. The castle sits at the top of a little hill with a commanding view of the surrounding countryside.

Pigeonniers (dovecots) were introduced into France by the Romans and were built to house hundreds of birds at a time. Pigeons were an important form of protein in the Middle Ages and their droppings also provided a sure source of fertilizer for crops. After the fourteenth century it was illegal for anyone who was not of the noble classes to build a dovecot and the size was restricted according to the rank of the owner. This estate was obviously owned by someone of  high class as their pigeonnier is quite large. Each niche would house a bird. The wooden arm swings around so that the ladder can be positioned to reach any hole.

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Leyla returned this week to do a bit more etching. She's become enamored of the process and is starting to be quite confident. Her father tells me she doesn't want to leave for her vacation by the sea but would rather stay and do etching at Atelier Conti! On Tuesday she came on her own, and I worked with her to produce another etching and to introduce her to lino.

She had chosen an image by Matisse of a simple line drawing of a swan which she used as a model but didn't trace. She then used a soft ground varnish to embed mint and bamboo leaves to create a beautiful texture. She printed it in blue. It turned out beautifully, I think.

She made a charming lino image as well which she experimented printing in several colors. I liked it in black.

While I was working with Leyla, we had a large group from the nearby area arrive in the studio for a brief tour and explanation of our etching process. Rick was thankfully available to do the presentation.

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Emily and family are off for an extended vacation next week so we took one other short break to visit them in Paris before they left. We wanted to see Quinn. We took a train ride outside of Paris and had a picnic on the more bucolic part of the River Seine. Quinn couldn't quite wait until we got there so his lunch was on the train.

Less than an hour away from central Paris you can find sleepy villages just beside the river surrounded by forest. While Quinn slept in the stroller the rest of us spread out a meal on an old port on the banks of the river in a pretty little town named Thomery. We walked to and from the train station to the river though the forest.

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I more or less finished another two plate experiment, this one a Parisian street scene. Color applied a la poupée is printed first and the line drawing is over printed.

 

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We had another marriage in the village this week at our local church. Both the groom's parents and the couple themselves stayed at Maison Conti.  When the young man called to make a reservation some months ago he requested that his room and his parents' be as far away from one another as possible!

After the ceremony the newlyweds were carried to their reception, just outside of town on a caleche, a horse drawn carriage. The horses were, of course, Percherons, for which this area is famous.

 Tomatoes found at our door when we came home from Paris. Another garden gift from Martine.

The Harvest Festival

Montmirail, the village where we live, is generally very calm and quiet. At night, when the sky is clear, the stars are as visible as in the middle of the countryside. There is no light pollution or noise. Even in the middle of the village square, nothing stirs. Every so often, however, Montmirail comes alive. On a normal Sunday morning the Place de l'Eglise is full of cars. There are two Catholic services every week; one in French at 9:30, and Latin mass at 11. When there is a special event or holiday, the normally busy activity becomes exciting indeed. Last Sunday we celebrated the Fall Harvest Festival and no ceremony was spared. A band dressed in the traditional red hunting coats and playing their French horns appeared in front of the church just as we were serving breakfast to our clients. They played a short concert and then hopped into their carrage and were whisked away to the Hippodrome, where the main Harvest Festival events took place. Quite a lot of preparation went into the festival. It's a time-honored tradition to celebrate the bringing in of the summer's bounty and the end of another growing season. For the farmers in our region it also is a time to show off their animals. The fattest and most attractive animals are awarded prizes. Percheron horses are named for our region of France, le Perche. The breed was developed here in the middle ages. These large and strong animals were breed to carry knights dressed in heavy metal armor. Before farming was mechanized, the Percheron was indispensable for carrying out heavy lifting and pulling tasks. Every farm had their horses. There are still many horse farms in the region and the Percheron is much admired all over the world. Percheron horses generally have docile and sweet natures, so despite their tremendous size and strength, they make great companions. Farmers now, of course, have replaced their horses with horse-power. On display were some bright and shinny tractors. Not many mules were in attendance, but this little guy made his presence known. He was not a small mule, but next to his Percheron neighbor, he seemed diminutive. Little pigges are awful cute, even if they grow up to be much less attractive. John Berger, the British author who won the Booker Prize in 1972 with his novel, G, also wrote a trilogy of French country-life. The first book is entitled Pig Earth and traces the importance of pork in traditional French peasant life. Not one morsel of the animal is wasted when it is time to slaughter it. In our area the cow is undoubtedly the most important animal. There were some large and handsome examples at the festival. The calves are raised by the farmer's children, and they were on display as well. Both the priest and mayor talked to us at some length about the crisis for milk producers in France. It has made international news as French and Belgian farmers are protesting the low EU price of milk. The price of production for French and Belgian dairy farmers, who pay higher taxes than the rest of Europe, is no longer being met by the EU price structure. Dairy farmers are dumping their milk and refusing to bring it to market. Belgian farmers created a milk lake in front of the EU headquarters in Brussels last week and in Paris, farmers handed out thousands of liters of free milk to the public.