Traditionally, within the framework of the small farm engaged in mixed food production, family arboriculture existed in the form of fields planted with peach or apple trees or fruit trees present in the peasant gardens: plum trees, cherry trees, pear trees, fig trees.
With the phylloxera crisis, a few orchards replaced plots of vines that had been decimated in the 1900s in the upper Isle valley, notably on the former estate of Marechal Bugeaud de La Durantie near Lanouaille.
Then this intensive and specialised cultivation spread and changed the landscape between Excideuil and Lanouaille with large apple tree plantations after the Second World War.
Illustrations :
– Postcard of the church of Saint Laurent des Hommes with a few vines and fruit trees on the edge of gardens in the 1920s. (Escarment collection)
– Postcard of a Mussidan hillside with an orchard in the foreground in the 1910s. (Escarment Collection)
– Advertisement for crushers, crushers and fruit presses in the small farm newspaper of 1925. (©Musée André Voulgre)
– Postcard of the nurseryman Demaison de Mussidan before 1900. (Escarment Collection)
– Advertisement for L. Bachelier-Charvot nurseries in Chateauroux in Gardens and lower courtyards in 1935 (©Musée André Voulgre)
– Photograph of the Plantations d’Essendiéras apple orchard with capital from the Sylvain Floirat group in 1963 (Cliché J. Lagrange, in R. Pijassou, Regard sur la révolution agricole en Dordogne, 1966)