Rebecca Skillman talks to residents of the hamlet Villeneuve d’Uriage, near Grenoble. She shares with us her discoveries about issues of sustainability and community in Alpine village life.

Perched above the thermal spa town of Uriage, the idyllically located hamlet of Villeneuve d’Uriage is home to around 150 people. I was curious about what attracts people to live here; how people relate to each other in the village; and whether there is more to the hamlet than simply “Grenoble satellite”? 

I talked to three couples who have made the village their home. The interviews reveal the similarities and differences in how we view “nature”, our overall need to connect with each other and our search for sustainability in the 21^st century. 

Kelli (Project Manager, HP) and Olivier (Sales Manager, HP)  

Kelli: I was born and raised in Boise in the US. The decision to move to France wasn’t difficult – this was the right place to be at this time in our lives. What was hard was leaving family and friends. I told myself: part of my cost of living is getting back to the US as often as possible. That’s how I talked myself into making it work, and it has. 

People here have been very kind. At the same time I miss the feeling of community I had back home. In Boise, when you do something like running errands, you have a list of people you’re gonna do things for. You walk in and out your neighbours’ homes – you don’t knock – and it’s very informal. You garden together and you build your houses together. One time my mother’s basement was flooded and suddenly there’s a whole crowd of people fixing the problem and drinking beer, making a party out of it. If there’s an issue, you sort it but have a good time doing it. But here in the village it’s just the two of us. 

I’m very happy here but if I could change anything it would be the distance between Boise and France!  And, day to day, I wouldn’t choose again to work from home. Much as I love our place it’s one of the things that’s slowed me becoming part of the community. 

Olivier: I was looking for a balance between proximity to Grenoble, for my job, and a village that is really alive – people working here, farmers, tractors passing the house. Other mountain villages may be pretty but at 9am they are empty. When I see a tractor here, I’m happy. And it’s the first time in my life I feel content coming back home after work. 

Living in this area, I’m ideally placed for my outdoor passions. I love wild places and I like to spend my weekends rock climbing and skiing. What drives me is being challenged by nature, having the feeling that it’s stronger than me. The down side is that it means I’m rarely home at weekends, and that doesn’t help for integrating with the community. 

Pierre Yves (Research Scientist, CNRS) and Françoise (Research Engineer, CNRS) 

Françoise: My husband, Pierre Yves, discovered the village 15 years ago – and I wasn’t sure, because the road gets very iced up in winter. But the spirit of the village worked its charm on me – even though I didn’t know the place at that time – and I was captivated. 

What appeals to me is that the people who live here are very close to the natural elements, flora and fauna and this closeness expresses itself in the way they rear their animals, and gives the village a special kind of energy. I love being able to walk in the streets in the evening and having nothing but pleasant surprises, and smiles, in my encounters with the neighbours. 

With regard to village life, when we first lived here I was involved with a village association. We organised several events to help people meet each other. As time went by that stopped because we ran out of energy. But now something similar is happening around Alain and Yvette’s farm. 

The people who work on the farm have an attitude and philosophy that’s a little different from mainstream agriculture. For several years they have produced organic wheat using an ancient stone mill to create flour. From this they make bread, the main source of income. Around the farm, there is a small kernel of people who have created an association, Grains de beauté, whose main aim is to promote contact, and a meeting place in the widest sense of the word. This word “meeting” is a common theme in everything organised. For example, it could be a willow basket or bread-making workshop, or the regular choral events.

Pierre Yves: This hamlet is probably unique in the Grenoble area: it is small, isolated and surrounded by nature. The thing that struck me when I first arrived, well before I knew people here, was the timelessness of the place. When you go to Alain and Yvette’s farm, you enter another age; the place feels unchanged in centuries.

Referring to what Françoise said about how people relate to each other …  she mentioned that everyone is friendly. This didn’t happen as easily as that. What’s interesting to me is that on the one hand – of course – there are different factions. The other side of this coin is that there is no such thing as anonymity in the village. 

In Villeneuve there are three broad groups of people: those who have always been here (mostly former farmers), new arrivals such as us (one is a “new arrival” for a long time!), and farmers actively farming. The fact that most of the farming around the village is organic, and connected with nature, contributes to the atmosphere of the hamlet and the area around it. 

The smallness of the hamlet, surrounded by nature, resonates very strongly with me. We aren’t going to be able to forever extend the metropolitan areas; towns, in general, are located in the middle of the richest agricultural land. So at some point this urban expansion will have to stop. Villeneuve feels like a potential model of how we will need to live our lives in the future. 

The development of non-agricultural activities around the farm is, for me, very much linked with the question of how we make the transition to sustainable development. The farm, and the activities linked with it, represents a local approach that restores a sense of collaboration, whether material or artistic, on a human scale and in sync with the rhythms of nature. What happens around the farm seems to me to answer a need that isn’t met in the way we currently organise society in terms of how we connect with each other. It is one way in which people are trying to satisfy this need. 

Yvette (agricultrice) and Alain (agriculteur)

Yvette: I’ve always worked on the land and my life in Villeneuve began when I found a small farm to rent, way back when was 17. I arrived on my own and, at that time, there weren’t many women farming in that way. Suddenly everyone was giving me a helping hand. 

I started farming with some goats and, at the same time, Alain started the vegetable garden. From that, he developed into market gardening. Little by little, I wound down the goats and both of us worked in market gardening. We began to integrate ideas from bio-dynamic agriculture – an organic approach using an awareness of the energies that govern the land, the animals and nature in general. 

We lived through a period that was challenging, economically. At that time the local farmers were amused by our way of doing things. But, when we bought the house, that changed our relationship. They saw that we were managing to make a go of farming and we became the enemy by virtue of the fact that, as people working in agriculture, we blocked land that they wanted to develop. Overall, we had 10 years of good relations, 10 of bad and now we have had 10 years of neutrality – but at least no tension. Our closest links are with people who have moved here from elsewhere. 

In terms of the farm itself, there’s potentail for our level of activity to develop. My personal project is to develop animal rearing: in addition to the cows that we already have, introduce a few goats again, some hens and turkeys. 

Alain: This work may evolve through the support of the association ; it isn’t necessarily a profit-making activity. But you or I, or any of the people at Villeneuve realise that it’s important to have animals in a village and it’s also important to have people to look after them. That’s where I see the link between the farm association and the people of Villeneuve and around. People need to realise that animals bring a particular type of energy which helps us to live. It’s not just the responsibility of farm workers, it’s for all of us, for the future, to realise that we have a role and that it’s important to maintain farm animals. 

In today’s society 9 out of 10 people are doing a job that has nothing to do with our physical world. They live in a virtual world in terms of computers and IT, producing things that we don’t need. This may create employment but it isn’t real in the sense that if this work were to suddenly stop … where would we be? We’d still need to feed ourselves, somehow. This way of living and working leads us to completely disconnected lifestyles where we travel and lead our lives in a complex way when there is a far simpler way of nourishing ourselves. This “virtual world”, on the other hand, generates ridiculous ideas … like that it’s ok to take a plane to the other end of the world for 20 euros. For me that is completely unreal! People want to live in a “green” way but they think it’s ok to buy a plane ticket at such a low price?! There’s hard thinking is needed there.  

I believe people have a fundamental need to regenerate, to get together and do things with others. I see an alternative way forward that contacts what’s deeply important for all of us. I mean, what’s fundamental in order for society to develop. For this we need to make contact with each other, starting with those of us who are able to meet around a place and try to move towards something better, socially. 

I think that a farm is the ideal place to start rethinking how society can work. There’s already a structure, and a sense of birth and creativity – animals, the food we produce. From here we can begin, gradually, a project to develop our society.

For further information about the farm association, Grains de Beauté, and its activities, contact the association: beaute.des.graines (at) gmail.com

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