Monday, February 19, 2007

I've been busy......

Well, I haven't been posting much lately. I have been posting on other peoples blogs a bit and thinking about a lot of things...I have been blogging as bit about the French Elections and Maybe I'll let a few days go by before I post anything again about them.
Segolene Royal will be on TF1 for 3 hours tomorrow night for an intense live studio audience question and answer program. Sarkozi did the show 2 weeks ago and there are charges that the questions were vetted by him and his staff.
We have a little political matter here in La Sechere...A farmer has been buying up all the land around here because he needs pasturage for his veal cows. Fair enough, but he has been doing unapproved land deals and violating land use clauses written into deeds.
Last week, he started to cut down a lot of forest. It's sad for me because the forest is a part of the landscape I love here and I spend a lot of time hiking in it. It will still be here, but very cut up. They are pulling some huge oaks out that will sell for quite a bit.
Now we have found out that this part of the Dordogne is being looked at with the intention of redistricting it. They want to put low income housing up, which is a good thing, but where? In a week there will be a meeting at the Mayors office to discuss this issue and we want to be able to assert the non-constructable clause in the notarized deed we negotiated when we bought this property. It was part of a big farm that was being split up. This hamlet, La Sechere is a very tiny place at the end of a rural road.
It was almost totally abandoned a few years ago, the houses and barns were slowly falling apart and disappearing into the brambles. Now there is a pretty eclectic, young group of people here. I say young from my point of view, all under 60!
My Dutch neighbors down the hill, our new neighbor who bought the farm buildings next to us, he's French, but very progressive politically, A young French couple from Toulouse who bought a parcel of land at the same time we did to build a new totally ecological house on...they are very concerned that their investment might get ruined.
One of the old residents, Christiane, a widow who owns a lot of property, but is shy and needs to be supported by us if she is going to speak up and old Andre, who is one of the farmers who owns a lot of land. He's a nice enough guy and he always offers to plow our garden in the spring, but money and land? He's a tough old peasant and likes to cut trees to sell for fire wood. He works 12 hour days just cutting down trees lately.
It will be interesting to see what the plans are for this area. We don't see any housing being built here, but we do think we have to keep our expansive veal farming neighbor
at bay. He has to be reminded that there are legal limits to what he can do around here! I was outside around 11 pm and marveled at how clear the sky was and as usual, when it is clear, you can see the milky way and if I stare at the sky long enough, there is always a meteor. I don't want to lose that...............

2 comments:

-Sepp said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy

Here is some Sarko info for those of us who aren't fluent in French.

liberal_dem said...

There is a novel written by a relative of mine in the Black Forest which begins with the scene of a very ancient and majestic oak tree falling and thudding to the ground due to old age.

My cousin, the author, is deeply touched witnessing this natural event and speaks of the 'things it saw' throughout its lifetime.

Trees apparently are quite the strong meme in our blood and I, like you, am saddened with every tree that is felled by the woodsman axe.