[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G14mY0ea4Q]

Remember me telling you the other day about my having met Pascal Coudray, a fifth-generation Breton dairy farmer who could no longer keep his farm going? Pascal is fortunate in that he has a strong Catholic faith; he has seen nine other small farmers in similar positions commit suicide.

What Pascal is trying to do today is to turn his farm, Le Chadoux, into a kind of working school for teaching organic farming and tradition. His long-term goal is to provide a model of social re-integration, by using the land and those who work on it to resist atomization and rootlessness. Coudray is looking for stakeholders to come join Le Chadoux and build a kind of village there.

If you read the site through Google Chrome, you can get it to automatically translate the page (which is in French — though unfortunately, it can’t translate the video). [UPDATE: An English-language version of the video is now above. — RD] Watch the video, though, if only to see Pascal’s great face. That is a man through whom the Light shines brightly.

Specifically, Le Chadoux is searching at the moment for someone to raise cows, someone to raise chickens, someone to oversee vegetable production, someone to raise goats, and an artisanal baker. Do you speak French? Are you interested in agrarian life? Le Chadoux may be calling you. This is a Benedict Option project I discovered on my recent trip to France.

I’m not fluent in French, and I’m middle-aged, with a wife and kids, but if I were a single young Francophone, I would write to Pascal to see if there was a place for me at Le Chadoux. I’m sure it’s a lot easier for EU residents to get on there than for non-EU residents. I hope some of my European readers will reach out to Pascal Coudray. Here’s the contact page.