The grain store, le grenier

The purpose of a grain store is to protect the precious harvest from vermin like rats, and also to provide a dry place so the grain does not rot in the damp. As the grain dries, it needs to be stirred to expose the damper kernels to the drying air. The store must have sufficient ventilation for this purpose.

Different strategies to keep the rats away from the grain have been developed, with varying degrees of success. Mme LeBlanc’s grenier may have been generations old, but its design would have proved its worth over the decades. Since her family came from the Basque country, where the leg stilts holding the store off the ground are doubly protected with wide flattened stones forming a ledge barrier over which rats are less likely to scramble, we can imagine that she may have introduced such a strategy to her small farm.