Limousin (Region, France)

Chestnut is the emblematic tree of Limousin. Until the introduction of potatoes around 1850, only rye could be grown on the poor, acid soils of Limousin. The carefully managed, natural chestnut groves saved the local population from starvation in harsh winter time for centuries.
According to a census made in 1808, 33,500 ha were grown with chestnuts in Limousin. A 0.6 ha chestnut grove - that is, 50 trees, each producing 20-30 kg chestnuts per year - could feed six people for 100 days. Chestnut conservation was a challenge, which was solved with heat dessication operations performed in specific stone huts called clédiers, once a significant component of the social life in the Limousin countryside. Frozen, broken and damaged chestnuts were used to feed the pigs, the second staple diet in Limousin.
Being not only the "bread tree", chestnut was grown for its resistant wood; easy to work, chestnut wood had many usages in building (lintels, rafters, boards, claddings, floors) and agriculture (fences and ropes, baskets). Around 1850, the local forges, once the main users of chestnut wood, all closed, and the new job of feuillardier appeared in the countryside. The feuillardiers were specialized workers of rural origin, who exploited chestnut coppices for wood merchants. Producing "black stuff" (unbarked) and "white stuff" (barked), the feuillardiers worked in harsh conditions, living in small huts (loges) built near the coppices. Probably on the model of the Limoges porcelain workers, the exploited feuillardiers set up a first workers' union in 1893 in Saint-Yrieix; the different local unions set up a central bureau in 1906, organizing ten strikes during the gilded age of the feuillardiers, 1880-1939, their membership peaking in 1906 at 1,280.