Rural Life

Comice 2011 Vaulandry Day Two

Day two of the Comice sees the less serious side of the ploughing matches, though no less competitive.  Here are the Vieil Bauge heros working as a team.

 
Clefs had to show off and do it with a horse, but actually apart for frequent stops for chats, seemed to be just as good as those using the old tractors.

 
Of course the big event for the Sunday of a Comice is the procession of decorated floats - the Pontigne line up for example was shown in all its glory here!  The theme this year was farming in days gone by, which brought out all the traditional skills you would expect.  Fougere opted for the forge.

 
Bauge introduced the first of two dairies, this one complete with cow and milk maid.

 

Situated as it is by the majestic Foret de Chandelais, it was inevitable that le Guedenieu would show forestry skills.

 
Singing as they went (as usual), Chevire showed off their threshing skills.  They also showed off by having a double trailer!

 
Next up was St Martin d'Arce with a wheelwright.

 
The village of Clefs is home to the best shop around for the needs of bee keepers, and this was emphasised in their bee keeping themed float.

 
Echimire had a theme of the butchering of the family pig - fortunately the float was very sanitised or this one could have been a bit yukky (and smelly given that it was 32 degrees in the shade).

 
Cuon was the first of two villages to have chosen a theme of milling.  The float was really good, and there was occasional community singing (Meunier tu dors), but there were also harpies around chucking large quantities of chaff down people's shirts.  As a victim, I was not impressed.

 
Looking again at my photo of the Montpollin float, I think they too must have had a forestry theme, but I can't remember what it was.

 
St Quentin de Beaurepaire was the second village with a milling theme, and thinking about EU subsidies, it was perhaps fitting that the tractor was driven by the Mayor of St Quentin who is also MEP for the Pays de la Loire.  Nice bloke too, and a very fine vintage Farmall tractor.

 
Pontigne worked hard to give a very full view of village life in olden days.

 
Patricia Leroy pulled out the stops once again for Vieil Bauge this year and taking the theme of the grape harvest, there used to be vinyards all around about a hundred years ago, produced a wonderful float, manned by village children and driven by Robert Letaire.  Two pictures of this one, but it is my village!

 
 
Then there was Boce with the second dairy theme, this time the co-operative of milk producers, and a very fine vintage Citroen van.

 
And finally, Vaulandry as the hosts came through.  They chose to represent the Marquis of Turbilly, founder of the Comice movement, communing with one of his peasants.  It should be noted that Marquis and Peasant were both portrayed by Brits!!

 
Soon the theme of the next Comice, at Fougere, will be announced and then we can all get going on making the next batch of paper flowers for the Comice 2012.

Well done Vaulandry however, as the only issue I have was that the press coverage of the event was awful, and there wasn't a lot they could do about that.

 

Comice 2011 Vaulandry Day One

Yes, it is Comice time again - that season when the preparations by the Comites des Fetes of the local villages are displayed for all to see.  This year it was the turn of Vaulandry to host the event and this meant that the Comice movement went back to its roots, as the whole event goes back to the agrarian Marquis of Turbilly, who wanted to improve the quality of farm outputs on his land, and thought that competition might be the answer (we are talking 18th century here).

The theme for the weekend was Agriculture in Days Gone By, and it was also one of the hottest weekends of the year, so we were pleased to find that part of the Comice area was in a poplar plantation and therefore shaded.  The Saturday was as ever devoted to the serious ploughing matches in the morning and in the afternoon to the Inter-village games.  This year the Games were done in two parts - a song/choreography following the theme of the Comice and a Fil Rouge or obstacle course.  Prizes were distributed on the basis of the times in the obstacle course.

Vieil Bauge did Old MacDonald as its song this year, but translated into French for the comfort of the audience.  Jim McKomisky of the local band Out of Time played guitar and sang (cow), and the other singers were Valentin Devanne (chicken), Antonin Morrisset (dog), Perine Pele (duck) and yours truly (sheep), with John sitting in for Old Mac himself.

 

 
 
Then the obstacle course team took over - the process was that a child (Valentin Devanne in our case) did a sack race effort in a slalom through cones to where a man (Pauline Morrisset - don't ask) picked him up and carried him back down the slalom course to the waiting woman (Florian Morrisset, who may never live it down), who pushed the child back up the slalom in a wheelbarrow, before all three had to fight their way through a rope maze and get over the finish line, against the clock.

 
Our amazing, if unconventional, team bashed the previous winning time by a whole 6 seconds and therefore won the day, and Vieil Bauge were the proud winners of a really nasty cup.

It is a bit sad that it was only young Pauline Morrisset who was prepared to heft little Valentin over her shoulder for that part of the race, but all the chaps around from Vieil Bauge got a sudden rash of bad backs - too much time spent at the beer tent perhaps?  Still, if she hadn't stepped up, I don't think we would have won - they were through that rope maze like greased lightening, so well done all.

Day Two and the Mayoral ploughing match and procession of floats will follow.