March fun

For several years now, every spring we've noticed signs for the Fête du Cochon (pig festival) in the nearby town of Feuillade. This year we finally made it for a visit and a meal. There was supposed to be a demonstration of truffle-hunting pigs in the morning. We were there in time, but didn't find the demo. In fact there were very few pigs to see at all. These adults and two youngsters were on show by one farmer. They were all there were to see.

Nearby, three pigs were roasting for the midday meal.

The weather was dry but determinedly gray the whole day. A marching band (from Chabanais) did their best to cheer things up. 

We expected the meal to be a one-plate thing, fairly quick, but it turned out to be a full-out sit-down multi-course meal that went on for several hours. Soup, a plate of charcuterie (sausages and pâtés), spit-roasted pork, cheese, and apple tart, with lots of wine. The marching band even played for us in the tent.

After the meal there was a pig-calling contest for the kids. We didn't wait around to see the results.
(We have a little video to put here, but Blogspot is not having a good time uploading videos today, so you'll have to use your imagination. We'll try again in a few days and see if it's working better.)

The fête included a big market with lots of interesting local foods. We've never seen these "cakes" before. They looked like a pâte feuillitée (puff pastry) type of dough, rolled out, then wrapped around an iron cylinder to bake from within. There were a variety of toppings for the finished cakes: powdered sugar, sprinkles, chocolate, etc. We had thought to take one home with us to munch in the car, but we were so full from our  meal we couldn't think about eating still more.

There was also an indoor market of crafts in the salle des fêtes across the street. We especially admired the frugal way in which signs pointing the way were reused by re-directing the arrows.

Finally, in the isn't-it-about-time category, we managed to hang some of our pictures up the stairwell last week. There are still more to put out, but at least we're on the way. It does feel very strange to have things hanging where it's been so bare up to now.