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Monday, January 2, 2012

New Year in france

Hello and a very Happy New Year everyone.
New Year here in France is not terribly eventful. I'm not complaining about this, as it's one of the reasons we came to live here... for the peace & quiet.
At midnight on the 31st January, a local farmer let off his shotgun six times.
Yes, that was it! And I then went back to sleep.
I have never been a great lover of noise & fireworks and the local farm animals really hate it, so I can cope with one local farmer & his six shots once a year!
The chasse or local hunters have been out and about. When we first arrived here, I thought it terribly cruel to hunt down poor defenceless animals, then I realised that these men were feeding their families over the winter, just as their forefathers and their forefathers.
I have also come to realise, that if they didn't keep the wild deer and boar population down, our countryside and gardens would be decimated mud baths before we could say chasse.
So, I have grown to live cheek by jowl with the local hunting fraternity and also to appreciate that their traditions need to be respected and not frowned upon.
It's all done in a humane way, and they are bot allowed to hunt during the time when the animals are carrying their young or until the young have grown and left their mother, and if you ever experience seven wild boar tearing around your beautifully tended garden and vegetable plot and then seen the devastation that they can cause in such a short time, well ... your sympathies may well change!

Happy New Year