Passadoc Gazette – No. 104

« Themen lived from gathering, hunting and fishing »... That was about seven thousand years ago. With the sedentary nature of small communities, agriculture and livestock are developing; Little by little, the animals are domesticated giving valuable help to humans.

So is the beef. Solid, more docile than the horse, less stubborn than the mule, is the farmer's preferred partner. For a long time he was very present in the rural world.

With the consolidation and thus the expansion of agricultural estates (law 1941 whose effects will be clearly visible in 1960), it is necessary to think differently the ploughing of the land: appears the tractor now barred electronics.

– What about our oxen in all this?

Patience... They're still here! Although they are less and less present in our countryside... Finish these photos, like that ofAndré Abbewhere in « autumn mist, one guesses a chilly early morning. Behind the ox, the man more young grows the ear; probably has under the bud, a wide band of flannel* that keeps the kidneys... In the distance, one perceives the barking of a dog, the singing of a cock that sings » [Jeanne Monin] (1).

Giselle Penat-Lorde continues:

Contemplating a peasant drawing furrows with the artisan plough makes the observer plunge into a distant past. The grace of gestures, the smells of earth turned and the effort of the peasant combined with that of the beef or sometimes of the pair of oxen bring up many emotions...

For me these are memories with the horses, my grandfathers and my father, still girded with the « tuft », most often followed by our untiring little bitch, who also traced her furrow... I don't remember seeing a lot of beef in Provence in those '50s.

Remember also these distant poems learned in primary school:
The plower, the faithful worker of the earth,
Bent on the plow, opens a deep soc
The breast always wounded, the breast always fruitful.
Under the inflexible yoke of leather tied to their horns,
Bloody-eyed oxen go, stupid and wretched,
Swinging their heavy foreheads at such a pace...
Extract from the poem The plower, by Albert Samain.

I have two great oxen in my stable,
Two large white oxen marked with red;
The plow is made of maple wood,
Cuckoo moth.
It is by their care that we see the plain
Winter green, summer yellow;
They win in a week
More money than they cost.
Extract from Pierre Dupont's poem – Beef.

Extract from a text by George Sand, in the preamble of The Mare to the Devil :
I had just looked long and with deep melancholy at Holbein's tiller, and I was walking around the countryside, dreaming of the life of the fields and the destiny of the farmer.

I also see these precise and quasi-religious gestures when my grandfathers and even sometimes my father wore the taillole, this red or grey flannel belt, « taiolo » Sometimes brown or blue. Several towers were needed to wrap this « taiolo » about 3 metres in length. This large belt held the size well to work without having a pain in the back.

Image yes full of nostalgia that strengthens my well-rooted peasant roots ...

(1) * « The flannel band is a tuft in Provencal », precise Claude Boyer.

Small search:
– There appears on the threshold a lean, fourteen-year-old thug. He's got softbands, a huge police cap, and a large taiole cloth holding his pants.. (Pagnol, Marius, 1931).

And Daudet says almost the same: A great boy, alert and solid, his kidneys are tightly tightened in his red wool clay.