A book for a successful rural exodus

Settled for ten years in Brittany, Claire Desmares-Poirier launches an appeal to leave the city and join the countryside.

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• Settled in Brittany for ten years, Claire Desmares-Poirier released a book in which she launched an appeal to leave the city and join the countryside.

• Through her experience, she gives her advice on how to successfully go green.

• She believes that employment should not be an obstacle to this change of life.

Leave the city to go green.

Flee pollution to find the pure air of the countryside or the mountains.

Many urbanites dream of going into exile and the period of confinement has only accentuated this trend.

According to a study by Cadremploi published at the end of August, 83% of Parisian executives questioned thus plan to leave the capital.

So certainly not all city dwellers will flee the city.

But some have already taken the plunge.

And long before the crisis like Claire Desmares-Poirier.

The one who presents herself as "an activist of positive rurality" settled ten years ago in Sixt-sur-Aff, a small town on the border of Morbihan and Ille-et-Vilaine.

I would really like us to talk about the urban exodus in terms other than those of the trends in the real estate market.

The next world is in the countryside!

#ruralpride

- Claire Desmares-Poirrier (@clairedmars) May 6, 2020

Working as a political communication advisor, she left Lille to settle down with her family on a farm where she produces aromatic and medicinal plants and runs a café-bookshop.

She shares her experience in the book

(Terre Vivante editions) in which she invites urbanites to reflect on their lives.

With the undefeated ambition to get them to leave the city for good.

What was the trigger for you to leave the city?

It was first of all a meeting with my companion during a Climate Action camp.

But I was already thinking about it before because I no longer felt too much in harmony with the ideas and values ​​that animated me.

For me, moving to the countryside has been a militant act, but I am well aware that this is not everyone's primary motivation.

What exactly drives these candidates for the urban exodus?

It is the realization that we are vulnerable in the city and that they are crushing machines.

The city today is not about employment but about competition and unemployment.

There is also the price of land.

You can't build a family there, have a workspace if you are self-employed or liberal.

To achieve what is really important to them, personally and collectively, and to see the future without too much anxiety, people decide to leave.

To those who hesitate, what advice would you give them?

First of all, it must be a choice to live in the countryside and not be experienced as a constraint.

But for that, it is necessary to be able to upset the hierarchy of its priorities.

We do not come to the countryside to earn millions but for a balance and a quality of life, moments of joy and happiness every day.

So many things that the city does not offer and that cannot be bought.

The choice of the place of installation is also important.

How not to crash?

You must first be able to identify your needs and ask yourself: Where do I want to go?

How much space do i need?

When selling their apartment in the city, many dream of a large detached house in the countryside.

But you have to be able to heat it, maintain it or renovate it.

You can very well live in a tiny house and have plenty of space outside.

For the place afterwards, it's very personal.

The choice can be made according to the origins or the friendships that the person has in such or such region or if he appreciates such or such landscape.

But this choice is not final and we can very well settle in one place and then move to another.

Like in town in fact.

For many, employment remains an obstacle to this change of life ...

Of course, but you also have to keep in mind that moving to the countryside does not necessarily mean changing jobs.

There are plenty of tools now, such as teleworking, that allow you to continue your activity remotely.

There is also a way to find a salaried and qualified job in the countryside.

It is wrong to think that all the jobs are in the city and that there are only agricultural jobs in the countryside.

And then, it is also possible to change jobs by wondering if there are any special needs in the area where you live.

If so, do we have the skills to answer them?

If not, how can I acquire them through training?

It's a totally different way of experiencing your relationship to employment.

Once installed, how do you adapt to local life?

You must first get to know the space in which you live.

There are social spaces like everywhere, such as sports clubs, associations or village festivals.

The difference with the city is that in the countryside we will have much less elective social relations.

We will not necessarily meet people who have the same living environment and the same political opinions.

Relationships are also more intergenerational.

But that's precisely what makes all the wealth.

The countryside is a space of openness and dialogue unlike any other in the city.

Here, we know that we all depend on each other to keep the territory alive.

We therefore prefer to focus on what brings us together rather than what divides us.

World

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Society

How Mazamet wants to attract city dwellers tired of metropolises

• Deconfinement

• Exile

• Campaign

• City

• Society

• Reindeer

• Confinement

• Rurality