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--- About the Fallet family |
| My aunt Pierrette, ~Mamie Paulette's eldest sister was a woman of incredible energy. Beside working most of her life at Peugeot and doing everyting in the house she was also the one taking care of the vegetable garden. She was also the one preparing huge meals for numerous relatives in frequent occasions. Seventy years later I still remember those meals where she would serve the most succulent "pâté de lapin" and "escargots". The end of the dinner was like paradise when she was bringing all sort of home-made pies: apple pies, mirabelles pies, plum pies, sherry pies, rhubarb pies, ... |
| Aunt Pierrette was incredibly fast and efficient. After preparing and serving these huge meals for a dozen people, she had dishes and kitchen cleaned in no time at all. I wish I could describe how she would dry a stack of six or eight plates a way a juggler would envy. |
| This brings another memory, the chore of preserving green beans every summer. After having filled several clothes baskets with the freshly harvested green beans one had to trim and string them, thousands of them. Then Aunt Pierrette would blanch them in batches. Finally this was the time to bottle the beans. Using jars would have made it easier but it was the custom to cram the beans in used champagne bottles. Every family member and even neighbours were involved in this tedious task. At the end of the day everybody was proud of how many bottles he or she had filled but here again we were all crushed by Aunt Pierrette's dexterity. |
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| During my summer vacations, it was my duty to feed ~Oncle Willy's rabbits. There were at least one hundred of those critters. I learnt by experience what are rabbit's favorite foods. They are very fond of dendelions and some other milky weeds you find everywhere that has still not been paved on if you know how to look. They love lucern and clover but it may kill them if they overeat it. I also learnt a lot about harvesting hay and grummet which are the animal main diet during the long Franche-Comté winter. On the other hand my cousin Raymond was the one cutting the grass with a scythe, something I never was very good at. |
| For the ones who don't know: Hay is the grass mowed and dried around June, grummet is a second crop cut in late July or early August. |
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| Oncle Willy's parents were from Délémont, city located in the Jura County in Switzerland. Switzerland towards the end of the 19th century was not the rich country it is now. It was not uncommon for Swiss people to leave their home for America or in this case just a few miles across the border. Valentigney is less than five miles from Fahy, Switzerland! |
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| Oncle Willy like many others in Le Pays was what we call "paysan-ouvrier>, those who while being factory workers also took care of the small family farms they had inherited from their folks. At the beginning of the 20th century they would take a factory job once they were through harvesting and preparing the land for the following spring. This life style finally disappeared since Peugeot by far the main employer in the area needed a more stable manpower for continuing its expansion. The younger generations anyway rather worked at the factory since it provided steady jobs that were less demanding than taking care of a farm. |
| By the early fifties, only a few large land owners were still farming. |
| My oncle even working at Peugeot, in the Baulieu-Valentigney factory was still raising a few farm animals. Unfortunately in the earlty thirties its stable was destroyed in a fire and several horses perished. I don't think he had any insurance. For a while he raised sheep and finally only a large quantity of rabbits. |
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