{"id":1076,"date":"2026-01-17T21:34:49","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T21:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/?page_id=1076"},"modified":"2026-01-17T22:56:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T22:56:36","slug":"before-our-time","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/?page_id=1076","title":{"rendered":"Before our Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We bought Kerolivier from Mme Peron in 2001. Her family\u2019s ownership of the farm goes back to the 1960ies. Grandfather Peron was a French Railway employee who reportedly had lost a leg in a work related accident. The compensation he received from the SNCF allowed him to purchase the land and buildings within present boundaries for his wife who came from this local area and was known to be fond of rural life. Her daughter grew up on the farm, became a school teacher and married a Paris based politician with connections. Their son Yves Marie tried to make a go in agriculture but was unsuccessful. His opera singer wife eventually left with their daughter, who also became a successful opera singer.<\/p>\n

H.\u2019s mother lived in the longere for much of her youth looking after her father and brothers after her mother\u2019s death. She was treated as the family work horse \u00a0until she married H.\u2019 father after he returned from the war in Algeria and took on neighbouring Le Villeneuve Pin as a tenant farmer. He and other neighbours carried out paid work for Grandmother Peron including planting a stand of pine tree saplings around the northwestern slope between the buildings and the road. Grandmother Peron was remembered as kind but treated as an outsider by the locals. She loved unusual plants and well bred animals and kept a dairy herd with a special bull given as a gift by a government minister friend of their son in law. We owe the mature Secoya, Ginko and Acers to Mme Peron among other rare and foreign species she had the foresight to plant. M. Peron commissioned the earthworks and building of a \u00a0dam in the valley at the far end of the farm resulting in the 2ha lake in the 1960ies. It was the remnants of this lake and it\u2019s imagined potential that attracted our attention to the farm in 2001. His grand-son Yves-Marie confirmed my suspicion in 2021 that this lake had never served any useful purpose. M. Peron had the means and was able to obtain authorisation to change the natural landscape, which others might have been refused. \u00a0Perhaps it was a fashion, a prestige project. Little wonder, \u00a0some of the locals mocked the Peron family\u2019s antics. The story goes they shot her pure bred cat for a laugh.<\/p>\n

The land now attached to the farm was first brought under single ownership as a result of Canihuel\u2019s \u00a0\u00ab remembrement \u00bb in the 1950ies. The buildings and land were originally tenanted by three separate families, one in each set of buildings. Old maps of the 1950ies show the paths and lanes around the farm well maintained and intact where nowadays only overgrown talus mark their former passage and existence. What a wonderful project and monumental task it would be to bring those old lanes back and keep them cleared.<\/p>\n

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Aerial photograph of Kerolivier in the 1950ies (Geoportail) showing smaller field sizes, byways, planted talus and hedging.<\/i><\/p>\n

The top field to the southern end, akin to a saddle, slopes south\/east and north\/west and used to be divided by a path and wooded talus along its \u00a0watershed preventing soil erosion, providing wind protection and benefiting the fertility and irrigation of the sloped fields below. Knowing this has inspired my plans to replant this top field with mixed hedges on contour in an agroforestry fashion.<\/p>\n

Before the \u201cremembrement\u201d united the 38ha of land around the hamlet of Kerolivier, there were three separate tenanted farmsteads with only a few acres of land attached. Said top field apparently did not form part of Kerolivier in those days.<\/p>\n

In WWII a German prisoner of war lodged in the house in the woods by the opposite side of the road belonging to the commune de Saint Gilles Pligeaux, where there is only a ruin left now. He was obliged to help local farmers with their farmwork.<\/p>\n

Around 2016 we found a German made pistol with ammunition dating back to the war that had clearly escaped the amnesty and we passed it to a grateful collector.<\/p>\n

Paul found an entire collection of stone tools including stone axe heads while digging in the garden. These remnant signs of the historic presence of our predecessors are few and far between. I am conscious of the many human stories lived out here before me that were never recorded and will never be known to anyone. Still, sometimes I have the curious feeling that the land remembers them all.<\/p>\n

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We bought Kerolivier from Mme Peron in 2001. Her family\u2019s ownership of the farm goes back to the 1960ies. Grandfather Peron was a French Railway employee who reportedly had lost a leg in a work related accident. The compensation he … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1076","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1426,"href":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1076\/revisions\/1426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kerolivier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}