These small farms practised mixed farming with other crops, in the form of vegetable gardens or small plots, producing maize, potatoes, pulses, cabbage, hemp or flax. This particular work required specific tools for digging, weeding, planting, mulching, harvesting, shelling or maintaining hedges and ditches. With the exception of weeding with the horse hoe, these agricultural practices only became mechanised very late in the 1960s.
Illustrations :
– Postcard of the town of Douzillac, set on a hillside, with a plot of corn and another of potato in the foreground in the 1910s. (Collection Henri Brives)
– Photograph of the Faure family at the Grande Vacherie in Saint Etienne de Puycorbier in the Double, working with a pair of oxen and weeding a plot of potatoes in 1938. (Collection Faure)
– Corn stalk, corn cobs and corn husker (Photo Pierre Broussouloux ©Musée André Voulgre)
– Horse hoe for illustration in the form of a sketch