Festival de la viande

The Evron harmonie played at the opening of the Meat Festival at Evron this weekend, as we usually do.  Notable were the big concrete blocks scattered around as defence against terrorist attacks.  Some had lumps on the tops like giant Leggo bricks, rendering them useless for sitting on, but others had flat tops where you could put music bags and instrument cases.

The machinery at the event was impressive as ever; the tractor here is at least the height of two men.  And the bunnies and ducks were present alongside the cows and sheep.  I didn't notice any pigs, but I'm sure they were there.

There were also numerous stands for energy management products; wood-burning stoves, solar panels (significantly cheaper now than a few years ago), boilers and so on.  This is becoming increasingly important to farmers.

Quite a lot of farms have good lengths of hedgerows surrounding their fields, and the management of these results in big heaps of wood suitable for burning.  You can either burn the logs as they are, or shred the wood into little chips for feeding automatically into a boiler.  In any case, the winter heating is free, or very nearly so.