A farm in the Sarthe

Once upon a time ... nowadays farms seem such a distant world, that when I am in one I feel I am living an old forgotten tale ... Last weekend I visited an organic farm in the Sarthe (180 miles west of Paris). We went to buy eggs, and ended up with chickens, fresh butter, creme fraiche, fresh cream cheese, zucchinis, and more.
Our host has quite a few cows in the fields, she calls them by their names every morning to milk them. Here is Rosalie.
They come into this space, and our host milks them using this artifact. The milk is stored in buckets.
Some of the milk is used to make beautiful "creme fraiche", by separating the fat of the milk and leaving it aside to ferment by itself.
This is the machine used to separate the heavy fat from the milk. Part of the fat is left aside in these jars until it becomes creme fraiche, part is beaten and turned into butter (you see the butter mould on the left of the picture). The rest of the milk is used to make cheese. The French are not very fond of drinking plain milk. But they love cheese - which gives a country where you can find more than 260 different types of traditional cheeses. The picture shows the first step to make cheese: faisselle.

I am back in Paris and still enjoying the butter and creme fraiche with my meals.