Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
staple crop was chestnuts. The chestnut woods still cover the sides of the steep mountains
up to the point where the beech take over over, but they are by no means the only compon-
ents of this once self-sufficient ecosystem. There are cherries in the narrow valley bottom,
vines on the lower slopes, gardens and potato fields on flat land, and clearings for pasture
and meadows on the less steep bits of the mountainside for sheep and goats, meat and milk.
What more could anyone need?
On top of that, the ecosystem, even though it is semi-abandoned, remains very product-
ive, bearing out what Whitefield says about the potential of trees. The quantity of chestnuts
produced on these steep, schistous mountainsides sprinkled with a thin layer of acid soil is
impressive, and there is an abundance of building wood, fencing materials and fuelwood.
Overall productivity, as well as water capture and erosion prevention, is far greater than
could be gained from felling the trees and turning the steep mountain slopes over to sheep
pasture.
This once self-sufficient rural economy had its animal component, which was probably
necessary since the protein to calorie ratio of chestnuts is only half that of potatoes. The
meadows fed not only sheep and goats, but also, until the 1970s, mules who did the work.
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The sheep mopped up the chestnuts that didn't get picked. They returned to the
bergerie
every evening and their manure ended up on the vines and the potatoes. The meadows also
served the invaluable purpose of alleviating the woodland. Anyone who has ever lived in a
forest knows what a wonderful thing a clearing is. Most humans find too many trees claus-
trophobic, and animals are the best way of keeping space clear.
The railway which ran along the valley bottom was, I suspect, the death of this rural eco-
nomy. Before its arrival the inhabitants of this valley were 20 miles or so from the nearest
land capable of supporting wheat in any volume, and even further from any land that could
produce wheat profitably. The Canal du Midi was just as far away. The postman, so I was
told, would leave to start his round on foot on Monday morning and got back on Saturday,
having passed the night at various mountain farmsteads on his route. I've always fancied
that job.
When the railway arrived it brought wheat and cash, and the rural economy collapsed.
By the early 1980s, the chestnut woods were still vigorous, but untended, and suffering
from chestnut blight. All over the hillsides the
secadous
- the stone huts where the nuts
were smoked and dried - were falling to ruin. 'How happy we would be', Patrick White
field remarks, 'if we could create systems which combine the yield and self-reliance of the
wildwood with the highly edible nature of the wheat field'. Well, how happy would we be?
The magnificently sustainable chestnut economy around St Pons, which did just this, capit-
ulated, I suspect, partly because people were fed up with eating chestnuts, and when wheat
became more accessible they found it was a better staple, with a higher protein and calorie
content. Nowadays all the local people eat bread; and when I lived there, in a household
