French rip-off prices, garden refuse, donkeys, goats and anything else the thread drifts to

Recycling is wonderful… and the décheteries do a great job… but… stuff that can be dealt with naturally is going to be refused everywhere, before long. Our commune is discussing about buying a shredder (whatever) which can be used by locals…

I have been asked to pass the word around to all the Brits (foreigners) … to compost at home, speak with neighbours, everyone helping everyone else… we’ll have to see how this works out. :thinking:

We try and steer our gardening clients to mulching rather than collecting as the volume to be taken to the dechetterie is often huge , unfortunately two in particular simply refuse hence we make an additional collecting/disposing charge which doesn’t go down well. We’re very fortunate though in that we have three dechetteries within 20 mins so it’s usually not a problem.

As I have mentioned… Déchetteries (more often than not) have to pay someone to take the green-waste… and that cost is directed at the locals, within their property taxes…

This is a nationwide problem… :thinking:

What’s the answer Stella?

Finding a way to use the cuttings/chippings in the natural landscape… fields, gardens whatever… branches turned into pellets for fuel… etc etc

There is no one-answer-fits-all… each area is so different… but it really is something that will be addressed more and more as time passes.

Incidentally, I heard that in a few years… the tonnage we put into black sacks will be charged-back at triple today’s rates… and it will be you/me/us… we will be paying that bill. :thinking::zipper_mouth_face:

Goats!!

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Get a Donkey or two, they will eat all the grass cuttings and then provide you with loads of free fertilizer.:wink:

Our local waste body has a contract with a compost maker, so green waste goes off to them and we can buy it back when chipped and composted at something like 5€ a sack.

In our commune we are trying to put in place a local chipping scheme, as we have an area next to the village where we are allowed to dump green waste. The waste body will then bring a chipper up twice a year to chip on site, and we can then take chippings away for free to use as mulch or whatever. Our stumbling block is a few people in the village who have abused the agreement and dump building rubbish and so on in the area where branches for chipping are supposed to be. Hopefully that will get resolved one day soon. (Weeds and grass cutting go on one side and compost down - we have the space. But with the drought in recent years quite a few people have realised that grass clippings are useful)

A few elderly people with small patches of grass are helped by a local man who has rabbits will strim and take away the arisings for his rabbits.

Our football field gets taken over by sheep for a week every few months. Sheep droppings don’t seem to put off football players.

So yes, local solutions are needed…

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This is my son’s suggestion - I’m not sure how it would work when we are not there.

I have friends who bought some goats to keep the garden neat. They were no good, they were only interested in short grass.

Not sure all the flowering plants, shrubs and veg garden would be too keen on a goat or two. The dog could be happy tho’ with something to herd.

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I was being flippant really as goats are a bit of a nightmare. They need incredibly secure fencing as they can jump (vertically!) over fences that you wouldn’t think possible. We got rid of ours because I couldn’t deal with finding that they had escaped again at 5 in the morning.
They are however, incredibly good at ground clearance - ate their way through brambles and acacia and the like ( left my short grass perfectly intact btw - but maybe it was a different type?), but…I think they will also eat any flower / vegetable or washing line that they come across too, so probably not the ideal solution!

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Goats have a reputation for being willing to eat anything so they need their environment controlling.

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In my experience goats are born with an “escape plan” already in place…:wink:

they certainly need stout fencing, preferable with the electricity switched-on… not “just for show” (as my favourite neighbour does…saves him money)

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My friends had great trouble getting rid of the goats. They tried giving them back to the person they’d bought them from but she wouldn’t accept them as a gift and they didn’t want her to pay anything for them. In the end they came to an agreement with someone in the commune connected to running the lotto and when she next bought a ticket, surprise, surprise, she won two goats. She was so pleased with her prize.

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If I had given a Euro for every poor sod who begged for help in the Metro this morning, I would be out there with them. I was in tears for the souls who have all fallen through the rather wide cracks in the French social system, no one looking after them… The only one who had any purses opened was claiming to be a retired Frenchman whose pension was not enough for him to live. Everyone else (too thin, too smelly, maybe drinks, maybe takes drugs?) left empty handed.

We, as immigrants, have experienced refusal of our social rights under the French system many times, notably when the Pole d’Emploi refused to pay my husband the chomage to which he was perfectly entitled after 20 years of working and never once taking a penny from the State, just needing a bit of help to get back on his feet. He needed 2 years of psychiatric help to get over his breakdown caused by this experience, did he get it in France, no…

Even with the legal text of his rights laid before them, the fonctionnaires just said “non…non…non”. Until after 21 months of fighting, my husband was ready to commit an act like the poor sod who around the same time doused himself in petrol in a Pole d’Emploi office and set himself alight. The reaction from the French authoritities reported by the Press “we need better security to protect Pole d’Emploi workers”. Egalité at work!! Sure…

I have had equally good and bad expériences of the healthcare system, also during my pregnancy. Dreadful treatment and left to fend for myself for 7 months until I was finally treated by a (half) decent hospital as an emergency walk in. Operated on unecesarily due to incompetence and “experts” charging exorbitant fees for a 5 minute consultation only to tell me nothing was wrong with me because he didn’t find anything (quickly proven wrong).

The French people I know in Paris and locally in our rural area unanimously complain about the poor quality of teaching and lack of choice with regards to food in school (forcing too much meat and dairy upon children to satisfy the agricultural lobbyists). One vegan girl I know was told she WOULD DIE because of her food choices. They look to us to give free English lessons, admitting that the teachers of this subject barely speak the language.

Virtually 100% of my colleagues in a reasonably “mundane” activity come from white, rich, privileged families and have NO CLUE about the struggles of the majority of people living normal lives.

Far from perfect, I have seen no Liberté, Egalité and certainly no Fraternité since I have been here. The lack of charity here compared to the UK shocks me to the core.

So before I’m asked why I still choose to live here… better work / life balance comes very high up the list. I simply can earn less, pay more (yes almost everything is more expensive) but still spend a bit more time with my family than I could in London.

Oh, and as for the autoroutes, tolls paid for largely by tourists and foreigners to private companies pay for those rather good roads, not the local who largely shun them for free, local road alternatives. Our local roads here are like a bone-shaking, patchwork quilts. It took 30 years to approve and build a very sensible bypass of our historic village which had 500 lorries a day rumbling underneath our narrow 11th century stone archway…

I’m sorry if this hurts a few people’s sensibilities and shatters a few illusions but this is the experience of just one couple, fairly able to look after themselves and pull themselves out of it all in the end - imagine what it’s like for people who REALLY need social help and can’t access it, like those poor sods on the Metro this morning.

Sad for you and your husband all the denied due things. I won’t contradict you, as it is true and situations that are real and have been lived unfortunately.

I personnally just did not experience such situations.

And for the questions about the fact that you haven’t seen the liberté, égalité and fraternité, well it depends from where you live.

North and South are very different, Brittany and Alsace are too. So are the natives.

I have a british neighbour who owns his house as a not residential place. He lives in Sussex and comes one week-end per month. During the last storm on the north last late winter, a giant tree fell down in his garden and damaged his shed. Rain was coming. He has been surprised to see all the inhabitants pumping the water and cleaning the tree for him. And he told me he was thinking french people to be selfish. I answered him that we just value the cult of privacy, which can be perceived as rude and selfish by anglo-saxon. In the Uk and the US, people always talk about being involved in “the community”, serving the community, giving back to the community. If you are not part of a community, you do not exist. Things don’t work like that in France, and will look different for a british or an american.
But he saw me cutting the tree with another neighbour and knew that brotherhood (fraternité) is there when you need it really with french people.

France is what you make about it. Good and bad situations happen, and they can really vary from your history, your own values and your point of view.

I think as a french person, that I will be…“more tolerant” to the small things in daily life who can really annoy british people here. And after reading your words, I ask myself how can you survive France considering you have more downs than ups

Sure, all expériences are different but I’ve worked in Paris 8 years, lived in the suburbs 3 years and the countryside village 5 years and have found attitudes to be roughly the same in all 3 environments.

I believe that SFN is very hepful and necessary in itself largely because we often cannot find the help, little bit of advice or basic neighbourliness in our surroundings, no matter how well we feel integrated into our communities… and I see so many people here excluded from “community”, foreign people first of all, but also certain French people if they are not deemed to be the right “sort of person” or “worthy” of people’s attention.

As Brits we fought long and hard to save a historic Tannery here in the village to create a Community centre for the good of all, all the French agreed that it was fundamentally needed and a good idea but were not willing to participate in either time, money (€2 suggested refundable donation to get started) or even further ideas. Nada, Nothing…. Yet I see lots of English people in France having set up local charities, for people, animals, whatever, in the English tradition. Apart from a few scattered Emmaus shops, we struggle to donate any items to charity here.

Small example, I put out free apples from our garden in a box outside our house, clearly marked for all to take, so that anyone without a garden can benefit. The French neighbours question our motives, are too scared to take the apples, say “its too good to be true”… surely if there was such a Community spirit left, such a simple act woud just be accepted without question?

I have been reliably informed that the uk now produces more cheeses than France

great french are a bunch of bad people, thank you have a nice day