sea salt
Salines du Breuil
Outside of the adoption period
The project
Adopt a salt pit from the orchard "Salines du Breuil" in Beauvoir sur Mer (France) and receive your harvest in the form of sea salt from Vendée at home. The Farmer Julien will take care of your adoption and take its picture. Also, you will be able to download the adoption certificate and, if you wish, plan your visit to the farm. As the production coming from one salt pit is big, the adoption is shared among various people. If you wish to have a bigger share, you may adopt more than once. You do not enter into any long-term commitment: once you receive your harvest and you enjoyed the experience, you may decide to renew and extend the adoption.
What do you adopt?
A pit is a rectangular shaped saltworks basin. It is the final destination of the sea water flowing into our salt mine.
Our sea salt crystallizes at the bottom of the pits. This salt has a unique grey colour due to the natural presence of clay at the bottom of our saltworks. The traditional harvesting method allows our sea salt to benefit from all the trace elements present in this clay.
Each salt pit produces an average of 1000 kg of sea salt per season.
Each salt pit is adopted by 250 CrowdFarmers who receive a box with 3.5 kg of sea salt.
What will you receive?
The box we will send you contains:
1 x Coarse sea salt (2 kg bags)
1 x Fine sea salt ground in an artisan way (1 kg bags)
1 x Fleur de sel (500 g bags).
Our fleur de sel and our coarse sea salt are hand-picked and are not washed or treated. They crystallize naturally and are dried in the sun, without any mechanical process to respect and preserve all their qualities. Our fine salt is hand ground from our coarse salt.
We carefully harvest our fleur de sel from the surface of the water. It is composed of very fine crystals, and is formed with the combined action of the sun and the wind. This fleur de sel, natural white when dry, picks up a slightly pinkish tone when it is harvested and has a perfume similar to that of violet.
When will you receive it?
The coarse salt and the fleur de sel will be harvested from the pits during the summer season.
Please, check the deadline for participating in this project (deadline for adoption) below. As of this date the Farmer will start preparing the orders that are to be shipped.
You may select the delivery date of your box as suggested by the Farmer at check-out.
Why should you adopt?
* Learn who produces your food, how and where. Receive your food in a conscious manner.
* Buy directly from the farmer. Help to generate wealth and better jobs in the rural areas.
* Plan ahead and enable the Farmer to produce on demand. This way we can avoid overproduction and fight food waste.
* Reward Farmers who make an effort to use environmentally-friendly packaging and cultivation techniques.
Environmentalist
Farmer 360
How does it work?
Meet the Farmers
Adopt and plan your harvest
Let the Farmer and nature work
Receive your harvest at home
Environmentalist
Farmer 360
Renewable energy
Young Farmer
Small Farm
Family Farm
Visitors welcome
Julien Lemaire
The history of Salines du Breuil begins in Argentina, in the city of Mar Del Plata. That's where Analia and I meet. Ana works in tourism, and I Julien, I am an engineer on oil platforms. We chose to move to France, and after four years in Nantes, we started missing the country air. We have always dreamed of working in accordance with our ideals. Then, Analia left the hotel business to took care of the reception and visits of the Salines du Breuil. On my side, I left the black gold for the white gold....
It has been three years now since we exchanged our city shoes, the noise of cars and machines, for flip-flops and the singing of birds.
We quickly chose to join CrowdFarming because it allows us to create a stronger link with environmentally friendly consumers and traditional production methods. Being able to take the time to do our work well, with care and dedication, to prepare the crates and share part of our harvest with them, is very important to us and we don't see it any other way. It is important that people become aware of and interested in where their food products come from, how it is produced. We wish to contribute to the growing demand for a general food transparency.
In addition, we have a little girl named Mailèn. To see her grow up in nature, to be able to share our passion with her, to transmit to her the love for the countryside: you can't buy it with money. Nothing beats such happiness.
And of course, wearing flip-flops all day long is priceless!
Julien Lemaire
"Becoming a salt worker is above all about embracing a way of life. It means being in communion with nature, working for and with it, every day. It is a daily learning experience. You have to learn to synchronize with the magic of the environment and enter into harmony with nature."
Salines du Breuil
Salines du Breuil
Welcome to Salines du Breuil.
Our farm is located in the village of Beauvoir sur Mer, in Vendée, France.
We are a stone's throw away from the famous Passage du Gois, a submersible road at high tide, which links the island of Noirmoutier with the mainland.
Our marsh is located 100 metres from our home, in an exceptional setting classified as "Natura 2000" and recognised as a wetland of international importance protected for its exceptional flora and fauna.
We have chosen a reasoned cultivation and we use 90% of renewable energies. Indeed, the sun and wind are the fundamental actors in the process of evaporation and drying of the marsh for salt production. We dry and drain our salt in the sun, without using any additional artifice. On the other hand, the electricity we use on our farm comes from the Donzère-Mondragon dam, an ILEK contract.
In addition, we are in the process of converting to "Nature and Progress".
During the season we have an idyllic setting animated by the songs and dances of the different types of birds nesting on our marsh: avocets, common redshanks, stilts, black-tailed godwits, and much more!
We are three metres below sea level, which allows us to enter the marsh by simple gravity.
Our marsh is 1 hectare wide and includes 17 pits with which we harvest 20 tons of coarse salt and 2 tons of fleur de sel per year (in the best case, when the season is favourable and if Mother Nature allows us, of course). For CrowdFarming we have provided two of our pits so that you can share the adoption and receive our Vendée salt.
Technical information
Address
Salines du Breuil, Beauvoir sur Mer, FR
Altitude
-3 meters below sea level
Size
1 hectare
Team
2 (1 woman, 1 man)
Irrigation
Land irrigated by the ocean
Location