Never has the name of this feature been more accurate: this is a true encounter, and one we at Women in Ag will remember fondly for a very long time. Our encounter with the four women running the Notre Dame des Couleurs dairy farm in Belfort-du-Quercy, a tiny village in the Lot region in southwestern France, was just that: an unexpected encounter with three generations of pure girl power. Let us share this inspiring meeting with you.
As we were enjoying our first few days vacationing in the countryside in Southwest France and posting about it – we were staying on a farm, of course – we got an Instagram message on the Women in Ag Instagram account. « Are you in the Lot region ? We live in the south of this region and we breed dairy cows with my mother and sister ! » The message was signed « Solenne » and sent by the account of a farm called « Notre Dame des Couleurs » (« Our Lady of the Colours »). We were intrigued. Three days later, we were sitting at the kitchen table with Solenne, her sister Isaure, their mom Isabelle and grandparents Marie-Claude and George, lovingly nicknamed « Mamy » and « Papou » to join the family’s lunch, ready to spend the day at this 100% women-led farm.
Matriarchy
The Ferme Notre Dame des Couleurs is located smack in the middle of the tiny village of Belfort-du-Quercy, nestled on top of a hill in the Causses du Quercy natural park, a mountainous region between the Pyrenees and Massif Central composed of green hilltops and rocky plateaus – the “causses”. Solenne, who runs the farm’s Instagram and Facebook accounts, comes out to meet us and take us to the family kitchen, where her sister Isaure, mom Isabelle and grandparents Mamy and Papou sit ready for lunch. “You never know what your day is going to be like when you farm, but we make a point to lunch together as a family every day”, Solenne explains. Introductions made, we sit for a hearty country meal of soup, cold salads, stew and cake.
The farm has been a matriarchy since its foundation, that much is made clear to us from the start. “This is my farm”, Mamy says with self-assurance as we ask her to introduce herself. At 83 years old, she is officially retired but still very firmly involved in the activities on the dairy she, and no one else – she is clear on that – started. Papou sits next to her, nodding with a proud smile. They married in 1963: she, the daughter of a sheep merchant, he a farmer’s son and settled on the farm that was founded by the family matriarch, five generations ago. “My grandmother Alexandrine was a widow from the first World War”, Mamy explains. “She was already pregnant when her husband died and gave birth alone. It was she who decided to farm here. My dad was also involved in agriculture, he traded sheep. I remember that I took over the flock of an elderly neighbour when I was only four years old. I liked keeping sheep.”
There was no question about Mamy’s future: she decided she would be a farmer and that is exactly what she did. She attended a program provided by the French government to educate women in agriculture, visited a lot of farms during her formation, obtained a degree in agriculture and settled on her grandmother’s farm with her new husband. Baby Isabelle was born on the farm in 1964. Immediately, Mamy decided to invest in cows. “Why? To make money, of course!” The idea came from seeing her sister and her herd of Quercy cows, a breed that has since been absorbed into the Blonde d’Aquitaine. “I started with eight beef cattle and decided I wanted to transition to dairy, because there was money in that at the time.” The farm was operational as a dairy in 1967.
Farmers from mother to daughters
One might think that Mamy was an exception as a woman farmer in early sixties rural France, but that is not how she perceives it: “being a woman and farming was not a big deal, all my girlfriends did it! The difference between them and me was that they were farmer’s wives, and I was a farmer, full stop, even though it took another thirty years for me to be able to get the official recognition as such, meaning I only get a partial pension even though I have worked as a farmer all my life.”
Mamy’s best memory? “The birth of my daughter Isabelle”, she beams. Isabelle who is sitting at the head of the table and joined her mom on the farm in the eighties, smiles.
“I left to live with my aunt, Mamy’s sister, when I was ten”, she says. “Even though I had started an education, I did not get a degree in agriculture. I was very interested in biology, but returned to the farm in 1985. I was twenty-one years old then.” In 1989, after working alongside her parents for four years, Isabelle registered the farm as a GAEC or Groupement Agricole d’Exploitation en Commun, a French legal status for farms that allows the association of multiple farmers to officially work together on a family exploitation. “We had about forty cows by then”, she explains. “Thirty of them were milked. It was a small herd for this region, but the Lot is not renown for its cow milk, so we were pretty unique.”
In the 2010’s, Mamy and Papou retired and Isabelle needed an extra pair of hands on the farm. She worked with an associate for a little while, but found herself alone to carry the heavy burden of the farm when this person left rather suddenly. “I had not wanted my daughters Solenne and Isaure to join me on the farm right after their studies. They could join if they wanted to, but I insisted that they needed to look around and have other experiences first. It was something I didn’t do.”
