Turning back on technology: French man finds happiness in manual farming

The French farmer shuns France's hypermarkets, instead selling his pork, veal and butter to those who visit his ramshackle farm in Riec-sur-Belon

When farm machinery revolutionised French agriculture in the years after World War II, a young Jean-Bernard Huon turned his back on the new technology.
 

Half a century later, in a corner of southern Brittany on France’s west coast, Huon still uses oxen to plough his fields, determined to preserve an ancestral, peasant way of life.

On the small farm where he grew up, the garrulous, white-bearded 70-year-old and his partner Laurence milk eight cows by hand, grind flour manually and tirelessly collect manure to fertilise the crops that feed his livestock.

Huon’s manual approach to subsistence farming makes him a rarity in