The Parts are Wearing Out | Australian Markets

Elizabeth rounded the sting of the home. There, within the back yard have been two of Pierre’s prize cows. Sleek. Fat. Muscled. They have been the sort of limousine cows that butchers should dream about.

“Oh no….they’re going to eat our flowers.”

She known as Pierre.

“Just close your gate so they can’t get out onto the road,” he suggested. “It’s too dark for me to get them now. I’ll come in the morning.

“And don’t worry; they won’t eat your flowers.”

He was proper. They didn’t eat them; they trampled them.

We bought on the ferry final week. The wind was sturdy. The waves have been high. The sea was tough.

After a fast dinner, we returned to our cabin and lay down. We have been afraid to get up. The ship was pitching and rolling a lot, we feared we would get sick. Better to fall asleep.

The subsequent day, the sea was calmer and we bought into Cherbourg with out incident.

It is a long drive from the highest of the Cotentin peninsula, on the north coast of Normandy, down to our home in Poitou. Along the way in which, the colours modified. From the inexperienced fields of Normandy, we handed by means of the pale grass of the Loire Valley after which on to the stunted corn and limp sunflowers of Poitou.

“It’s a disaster,” Pierre reported. “The grass is all dried up over in their pasture. They came over to your place…I guess it really looked greener on the other side of the fence.”

Dressed in dishevelled shorts and a short-sleeve shirt, his sturdy legs tanned, his darkish hair turning white on the edges, our neighbor is retiring this yr. After a lifetime of attempting to coax a residing out of the poor soil of the realm, he appears completely happy to be transferring on.

Pierre walked the cows back to the place they have been presupposed to be, fixed the fence, after which joined us within the kitchen for a cup of espresso.

“So…what happened since we were gone?” is similar query we’ve posed every summer time for the final 30 years. Pierre brings us up thus far. Most of the news is concerning the neighbors who died within the final 9 months…and those that are getting close.

We are in an space of Europe the place little adjustments. Except, like an outdated man, it stoops over a bit more every year. Families don’t have youngsters the way in which they used to. And these they do have are inclined to grow up and go away. Left behind are getting older mother and father and grandparents, retirees and hangers-on.

To make issues worse, its foremost industry — farming — is turning into more durable to do. Small farms are no longer viable. Big farms require massive, subtle and costly machinery. Pierre is retiring. Finding somebody to exchange him gained’t be straightforward.

Some landowners are giving up. They are planting trees, renting to massive, industrial enterprises, or just letting the weeds take over.

It was whereas we have been discussing the grave state of French agriculture that Damien came to visit.

“A cup of coffee?” we instructed.

“Sure…”

Damien wore a pair of free working pants, topped by a t-shirt that was both very soiled or a drab brown shade designed to appear like it was soiled. An element-time handyman, Damien is more of a retainer than an worker…more like household than employed help. He is growing outdated too.

For the final twenty years, he has tended the greens, cut the grass, cut up the fallen trees, fixed the gutters, unclogged pipes… and made struggle on the ragondins (a giant water rat from South America that now infests rivers and ponds in Europe.) He traps them. He shoots them. He poisons them. They come at him in his nightmares.

It is a struggle he appears to be shedding. Yesterday, we walked down to the garden and startled two of the animals — younger ones, concerning the measurement of small rabbits. They had come up from the canal subsequent to the garden to eat plums that had fallen on the ground.

As a gardener Damien has two short-comings. He is shade blind, so he can’t all the time inform when issues are ripe. And he has a dislike for flowers that’s nearly as intense as his hatred of ragondins. Given his druthers, he would spray round-up on all of them and pave the flower garden with asphalt.

Damien took the cigarette out of his mouth and sat down on the desk.

“The weather is supposed to break tomorrow. We’ve had a terrible heat wave. Everything is cooked. And did you see the fire? Somebody must have tossed a cigarette out of a window and it set fire to the dried-out bushes and grass next to the road. They had fire trucks from all over on the scene. But they got it under control pretty fast.”

Damien gave a chuckle. The fire should have livened issues up.

Last yr, we labored with a grandson and framed out a studio condo in a single of the barns close to the home. We didn’t actually need one other bed room, nevertheless it was a enjoyable project. While we have been gone, Damien had completed it: he put up the insulated wall board and layed down an oak flooring. We thanked him.

“That took me the whole month of January,” he defined. “And then I was in such pain from bending over I had to go to the doctor. They tell me I have a pinched nerve. I’m going tomorrow to see what they’re going to do about it.”

Damien, too, is eyeing retirement. He grew up in an orphanage, went to work at 16, and has finished bodily jobs all his life, typically preferring brute power to labor-saving improvisation.

“The parts are wearing out,” he says.

We have been all sitting exterior, underneath an umbrella. The day was simply starting nevertheless it was already sizzling.

“Bonjour.”

Across the gravel driveway got here a tall determine…tanned, skinny…with binoculars dangling from his neck. He was sporting solely a pair of cut-off denims and flip-flops. Edouard seems like somebody in his 40s…however he’s really fairly a bit older. He goes about in heat climate with as little on as doable as a result of he suffers from a uncommon nerve dysfunction that makes it uncomfortable to put on garments.

He is a member of the household…good-looking…intelligent. Though not a blood relative, he has been with us, on and off, for more than 50 years.

“I like the heat. But last week, it was too hot, even for me. I slept on the couch in the kitchen, where it was cooler than my bedroom.”

The kitchen is within the oldest half of the home. Its thick stone partitions keep it cooler than the remaining of the home.

“But I don’t like the drought. The trees are drying up. Several of them are dead. You lose an old tree and you can’t replace it. I mean, you can put in a young tree, but not a noble, old one. And the birds like the old ones.

“An old tree takes time…decades…to develop. You can create something new,” he continued philosophically. “But not something old.”

As we puzzled over what he meant by that, Edouard pulled up a chair. He ready himself a tea, which he drank by means of a silver straw, like an Argentine consuming mate.

After a jiffy of dialog, all of us bought up and went to our separate occupations.

The day grew hotter and warmer. But because it went on clouds appeared within the west. They growled as we sat down for dinner. Then, after a long night on the desk, with wine, cigarettes, candles and dialog, we went to mattress with the home windows open (there’s no air-conditioning) and heard the rumbling within the distance.

During the evening, as we lay, heat and dry in our beds, lightning flashed…thunder cracked…and the rain poured down.

The subsequent morning, we went down to search out the kitchen flooring – barely above ground degree — flooded. A gutter had clogged up, sending a Niagara of rainwater splashing underneath the door. We baled and mopped…utilizing a mud pan to scoop up the water.

“Well,” mentioned Edouard, wanting on the intense aspect. “Maybe the drought is over.”

Regards,

Bill Bonner,
For The Daily Reckoning Australia