February Duc du Berry

(click on the image to enlarge.)

February, the coldest month of the year. This is my favorite of the lot...no castles, no bishops or mucky mucks. Just ordinary folks trying to survive.

Here, we can see that things are being made ready for the spring...the beehives have all been cleaned out, and made ready for their apian tenants, the cart has been repaired, and stashed away in the yard. The sheaves of grain for the fluffy sheep are being shared by the birds (who probably can't find food anywhere else). The barnyard is very well fenced with a wattle fence, the barrels of beer have been stored outside out of the way. The inside is quite warm, the tenants have hung their underwear to dry in front of the fire, while the mistress of the house delicatly looks away and is much more modest...though no less chilled from doing the morning chores.

To the right is a large pottery kiln. I have had people suggest that might be a grainery, but I saw "bottle kilns" like this one all over the south of England. Admittedly, they were more squat, but then, the ones I saw were nearly modern...dating from the 19th century. (Another commentator calls it a dovecote. That could be...the door is more likely on a dove cote than a pottery kiln...just never seen a solid stone or brick dovecote though.) The wood cutter is copicing the trees, taking the top parts, and leaving tall stumps and his assistant is bringing wood to the village for heat and cooking fuel. The trees have been cut about 4 feet above the ground to allow for copicing...a process where the tree is not killed by harvesting the wood, but rather, shoots and withies will grow out of the stump, to be in turn harvested for wattle. Wattle is what the fences and walls of the house are made of. That explains the ugly bumpiness of the trunks. In the yard is a beautifully rendered apple tree...all ready to burst out into a symphony of blossoms. (Another commentator called it a hare tree...also known as a "corkwood tree". Looks like an apple tree to me!)

And in the distance, a pretty little village, with the distinctive church spires of Burgundy and northern France.