Although we automatically step back just as we’re about to hug each other – something, admittedly, that I find hard to do with my closest friends – there is however a heart-warming consequence of the health crisis we have been going through. Sensibly avoiding the crowds, we have turned once more to our local producers for our food requirements. The maisons paysannes (local produce shops with a human touch) are going from strength to strength and buying straight from the growers or opting for local distribution channels has now become a matter of course. As a result, our local farmers have been able to pick themselves up again, with no middlemen there to fleece them.
We began our information website adventure: www.albuga.info, expressing a truly independent form of journalism, using the full potential of multimedia – feature stories, hyperlinks, lots of photos and videos… – on 21 June 2006, midsummer day; our top story was a tribute to one of those families who supply us with food thanks to their outstanding fruit and vegetable productions. The Castang family, whose son, Éric, is one of the pioneers of Biological Control.
What exactly does that consist of? Observing and reproducing the natural predator-prey cycles of insects so as to avoid any use of pesticides on a farm.
We invite you to rediscover this adorable family, the parents Jules and Yvonne, the son Éric and their tiny little helpers in the seven photo and video reportages and the feature article we had devoted to them. Don’t miss the classic « LES LARVES AU BOULOT » and the absolutely spontaneous remarks of Jean-René Laserre, former director of the Dordogne Veterinary Services, inside a greenhouse where he was choosing tomatoes, utterly dismayed by what is systematically thrown down our throats. Our thanks to all those growers who have abandoned mainstream farming methods and have come to their senses. They are working towards a brighter future for life on Earth and all our children. We shall always be beside them, with admiration and affection, and look forward to giving them a very big hug – very soon!

Trees live for many, many years - and always in the same place. They can’t just “take off” when they feel like it! Global warming is the big issue today, so we would be well-advised to plant them in the right place right now. The EU have been doing just that: they have established in France an experimental network called “CLIMAX” and planted a number of carefully selected trees which are expected to be able to withstand the harmful effects of climatic change. In Dordogne we saw the creation of one of these promising plantations - in Savignac-de-Miremont, on the hill above the famous Neanderthal necropolis: “La Ferrassie”.

The Castang family in Mauzens Miremont have reinvented a natural way of making their garden grow. A marshland where insects and common sense prevail. An eco-friendly approach with a concern for the future – and it is for this sort of commitment precisely that we have created our section entitled “The Future”, to give our children the desire to carry on.

Bernadette Darchen, biologist - or rather, as she likes to put it: “ecologist by trade” - has been using her entomologist skills to make an in-depth study of the Asian hornet. First seen in France in Bordeaux in 2005 in the form of a fertilized female, the species is threatening to colonise the whole of Europe. The biologist, who is president of the Apidor Association, is of course concerned about the protection of bees since it is a well-known fact that these new hornets are voracious bee-eaters. She has just brought out a fifteen-minute DVD revealing the results of her study.