Back to the land of childhood. “My Auvergne Tuscany is reborn” by Muriel Fauriat

Massive, its silhouette dominates a row of volcanoes aligned at its sides. At the foot of this great site of France, Clermont-Ferrand, bristling with the two spires of its cathedral. Beyond, the cultivated hills. During the day, the chain of puys is blue, at sunset, the sky turns fuchsia, bright orange, salmon pink. “When the puy de Dôme has its hat, the Auvergnat takes his coat”, says the adage. More scientifically, the tutelary summit is equipped with a weather antenna. From the balcony of the family home, 25 km from Clermont, the puy de Dôme remains a landmark.

In 1980, on a small mountainous outcrop of the Limagne des Buttes (a territory made up of agricultural plains and hills), I live in a farming hamlet, Contournat, the second largest of the 35 that make up the commune of Saint-Julien-de-Coppel. The dairy cows are at home then. About ten herds of ruminants with black or brown spots return to the farm in the evening. I go to get milk from Jojo and Josette with my milk jug. Swallows nest in the stable. Wheat, barley, sunflowers, garlic, vines, tobacco, potatoes, it is the time of mixed farming on small plots. The farmers are old; the abandoned houses serve as playgrounds for the rascals that we are; the old ones in smocks chat on the Place de la Fontaine. My grandmother, Reine, is not the least talkative. Then, in the late 1980s, milk quotas arrived and I saw Josette crying, forced to throw the milk in the gutter.

Renewal and rebirth

Forty years later, the Puy de Dôme is still there. The town has doubled its population (from 600 to 1,209) and lost its dairy cows. “Continuing with small herds was no longer possible. We had to invest and expand. My father preferred cereals,” says Matthieu Quesne, in his forties, a winegrowing enthusiast. “I settled in 2002 and developed the vineyard.” Affiliated with the Desprat Saint-Verny cooperative (cellar to visit in Veyre-Monton, Editor’s note) I produce Gamay d’Auvergne AOC and Pinot. But it was hard to convert the people of Auvergne to our nectar! », smiles the man who also grows wheat, corn and sunflowers.

For his part, Jean-Claude Fournet, after working hard on the family farm, reluctantly took over. Today, his 45 superb Charolais cows give birth to a calf every year. Even though Jean-Claude was struggling for a long time, meat prices have finally gone up and, for the past three or four years, his income has improved.

Only about fifteen farms remain, but the commune still has 80% of agricultural land. “I am committed to Saint-Julien-de-Coppel remaining rural,” confirms its mayor, Dominique Vauris. “We are helping to restore the roads and encouraging new farmers to set up, a goatherd this year, and soon a free-range pig farmer will arrive.” The brightly coloured plots of land sway in the wind in the little Tuscany of Auvergne. It is not a luxury, the farmers work hard, but they live well, particularly thanks to the Limagrain cooperative which supports promising initiatives and buys the produce according to a contract agreed with the farmer.

In my town, the farmhouses have been renovated and new ones have been built. Most of the residents now work in the metropolis. When I was a child, between Cournon and Clermont, we drove through the fields to go to Mammouth, the city’s first supermarket. Since then, business parks and housing developments have flourished there. “We haven’t experienced a revolution. But a major evolution,” explains Olivier Bianchi, Clermont-Ferrand city councilor and president of the metropolis. We escaped the fate of a city landlocked between the mountains thanks to the Michelin brothers – the city’s transformation embraces that of the company – and thanks to the opening of a medical and law school at the end of the 19th century. These creations transformed Clermont-Ferrand. The farm workers came from Auvergne, then from Europe and the Maghreb. Other centers of excellence have developed and we are a large university city, which attracts people from Lyon to Nevers. »

Michelin, the faithful

When I was a child, in Contournat, before sunrise, the Michelin bus would pick up its workers who were working three shifts. “I worked for forty years at Michelin, in training and logistics. What a joy!” says Liliane Avit, the first female mayor of Saint-Julien from 2008 to 2014. “Michelin never let its employees down. I remember one who was an alcoholic. We supported him and his whole family.” The workforce shrank (from 30,000 to 10,000 employees), blue-collar workers were replaced by white-collar workers: the family business did not abandon Auvergne.

Eighty percent of the group’s global fundamental research is carried out at its ultramodern center in Ladoux, north of Clermont, which opened in 2016. There, chemists and physicists work on the airless tire, develop the wheel for NASA’s lunar rover, improve a sustainable recycled material, and manufacture rubber belts for medical prostheses. Upstairs, 75 top-secret cross-platforms accommodate 2,000 engineers, technicians, standards and marketing specialists from 40 nationalities. Pierre, Josette’s grandson, from whom I went to get milk, is a materials engineer there, specializing in computer testing.

From crafts to industry

Michelin is also innovating in the city center, on the Cataroux site, the site of its first factories – only one remains, dedicated to racing tires. On 42 hectares, an area of ​​activity, life (with housing and restaurants) and culture is taking shape. Hall 32 houses a training center for industrial professions, an agora, a cutting-edge Lab with its ten 3D printing machines. “We are a business incubator,” explains its young director, Luc Létoffé. “We provide our equipment and our know-how to those who want to improve their products.”

Across from Hall 32, the newly completed Sustainable Materials Center is Stage 2 after the incubator, an accelerator that helps companies move from craft to industrial level. There, in huge premises designed to house giant machines, anything is possible. “Our ambition is to create the Sustainable Materials Valley (valley of sustainable materials, in reference to the digital Silicon Valley in California, Editor’s note) “We are planning the world of tomorrow and want to attract talent,” argues Jean-Philippe Ollier, director of the Parc Cataroux program, with thirty-six years at Michelin in the highest management positions.

Still under construction, the Collaborative Innovation Hub (PIC) will bring together housing, restaurants, shared workspaces or “coworking” rooms. Further away, on the side of the “toboggans” (former Michelin test tracks), a cultural and fun space will emerge where an interactive museum, the Michelin Adventure, will be installed.

Clermont, metropolis of the future

Getting to Cataroux is easy, just take the tramway, resurrected in 2006. Clermont wants to be the metropolis of the future. To this end, it is increasing the number of cycle paths and is promising two electric buses for 2026 to connect the airport, the SNCF train station and the business parks. The population is suffering from the work, grumbling, but the mayor persists: “Each household has three or four cars that can’t all find a place. Park and ride facilities will exist and the city has just been chosen to be equipped with a metropolitan RER.” This is good news because what strikes you when you return home is not only the business parks and the mushroom houses, but also the number of vehicles. And the traffic jams at the roundabouts at peak times.

From my village, it is impossible to go to the city without a car. The nearest train station is in Longues, 12 km away. As for the buses that serve Billom, the medieval town 6 km away, they are rare and slow. “The car is a drag on me,” confides Manuela, a facilitator in a nursing home in Clermont. “I would like a train to Billom, it’s fast!” “I understand,” replies her policeman companion as he contemplates the landscape from his terrace: the meadow, the orchard, the garden, the chicken coop, the view of the Tuscany of Auvergne. “But isn’t it nice here, in the open air and in peace?” asks the one who is also my cousin.

We are so happy that I invite myself for a beer, to be drunk in moderation. In fact, the whole family does the same. Because, scoop! the local children are coming back to settle down and work, alongside those who are taking over on site, like the sons of Matthieu Quesne and Jean-Claude Fournet. So, see you at Saint-Jus (read ” Muriel Fauriat’s favorites at the end of the article» ) . Pizzas await you under the mirror ball!