Bonjour again from La Forge. 2016 was another difficult year for farming here in France. Normally if one sector in farming is bad, another is good; but now almost every sector, including beef, dairy, sheep and cereals, is suffering from bad prices.

The beef farmers are particularly hard hit with low prices for weanlings and a lack of demand for fattened cows. This is on top of another year of drought.

We had a very late spring – the hay in Ireland was baled a few weeks before the hay in France this year. In some areas, including here, the maize was not sown until June. We had about three weeks of good growth and then we were hit with three months of intense heat, well over 30oC and no rain.

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The silage and hay harvests were good, but the maize harvest was well down. The yields from the barley and wheat were down also and the prices being paid were very low. The oilseed rape came in OK.

We were feeding hay and straw with molasses to the cattle in the fields from July as there was no grass anywhere. Luke was back in Ireland in September and was amazed at how green everywhere was. Here in France the fields looked like they had been sprayed with Roundup.

We had a visit from the Water Police this year because we sprayed too near a small river in one field. They were fully armed and looked threatening. They let us off with a caution, which was good because apparently they are supposed to be very strict and have a lot of power. Not complying with water regulations can result in fines and even a jail sentence.

At the moment the weather is very mild. The cattle were all out in fields of grass until close to Christmas, and our autumn calving is recently finished. We had scour problems with the calves from the first lot of heifers. Our vet took dung samples from the calves and samples of the colostrum from the heifers and sent them off for analysis. They said the quality of colostrum was not good, but that this was a big problem in the area because of poor quality grass this year.

Normally we don’t have scour with the autumn-calvers, only the last of the spring-calving ones. We had one fatality early on, which put us on close alert, so the rest were caught and treated in the early stages.

A lot of the antibiotics that we normally use are now under stricter regulation. We cannot buy them from the vet any more, and the vet can only use them after certain tests and controls have taken place. This meant we had to sit down with the vet and agree what antibiotics we could use and have at hand for the future.

We did manage to take a four-day break to Portugal at the end of March. We were expecting the weather to be better as it was a two-hour flight south, but it was actually colder than France. We hired a car and did some sightseeing. It was a very mountainous area and there were lots of vineyards with very little land wasted, and lots of people out working in the fields.

We also took a 10-day break at the end of the harvest in August to do a road trip through Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium. Austria was a lovely surprise. The countryside was very scenic and clean and tidy. There was no land wasted as the farm sizes are very small.

There are a lot of dairy farms and any green areas in around the villages had a few dairy cows grazing. Every evening you could see the cows being brought home for milking. We visited one farm that had 15 dairy cows and they made their own cheese. There were no Friesians or Holsteins, mainly Simmental and other breeds we didn’t know.

In Germany we visited the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. We were amazed by the sheer size of the place. There was a map on the wall showing how many people from each of the various countries were imprisoned there. We were surprised to note that this included one person from Ireland, and we wondered who he was and how he ended up there.

Surprisingly, with all the heightened security in France and Belgium after the various attacks, we only came across border security checks going from Switzerland into Austria.

Laura and I met up for a few days with my mam, sister and brother and their families who were holidaying in the Saumur region in July. It was a lovely few days and we did some kayaking on the Loire together. For the 14 July – Bastille Day celebrations – we attended a huge firework display on the bridge in Saumur. The place was packed and full of young children. There were a lot of police about, but that is now normal for any large gatherings.

It was the next morning when we heard about the attack in Nice where a lorry ploughed into a crowd gathered on a bridge for the same celebrations, killing dozens of people including children. We could only imagine the horror they must have felt. My nieces had to reassure their friends back home that they were a long way away from Nice and that they were OK.

Declan’s mother was 90 years old in September. She still loves to travel and managed to come over for a visit at the end of October, with Declan’s sister Vera, to help us celebrate our 10-year anniversary in France – we moved in to La Forge on Halloween 2006.

She arrived over with a barmbrack and apple tarts she had made, as well as sausages and rashers, so we had some proper Irish breakfasts. While she was here, she kept us busy picking mushrooms in the fields, as she would eat them for breakfast, dinner and supper! It had been four years since her previous visit, and any changes we had made during this time didn’t go unnoticed. We hope we are still as sharp if we reach 90 years of age.

Laura and William are both in Clermont Ferrand now. Since we last wrote, Laura has gotten her BAC (Leaving Cert) and is doing an apprenticeship as a pastry/dessert chef with a Michelin-starred restaurant in Clermont. The hours are long but she was expecting that, and so far all is going well. We are being treated to new desserts when she comes home. She has her own apartment in the city centre, just a minute’s walk from the restaurant, and is enjoying her independence.

There is a lot of unease in farming here at the moment. The government has just announced some assistance for dairy and beef farmers, so we just have to wait and see what comes of that.

Meanwhile, we will just continue with the day-to-day business of farming and hope for a better 2017. CL