For a few days back there the internet and phone were cut off, so we were reduced to reading email on Jean’s cellphone while standing in a field.
After a couple of visits the Orange techies hooked up their fancy meter to the end of a line and found that the fault was about 150m our side of the junction box on the road a couple of farms down.
Walking 150m down the road from the box they found this brand new trench with some cut wires sticking out of each side. This looked a likely candidate.
Some patching work…
…and we’re back online.
The new trench was dug because that farm has a big chicken shed that was flooding in all the rain.
I had a chat to the farm owner while the techies were testing the lines. Inside the shed were 17,000 little guys that get slaughtered very young at a weight of 800g. The operation is automated, with temperature and food very closely controlled. She checks them three times a day.
grasspunk.com 
I must admit I did chuckle at the thought of what your neighbors thought of you standing out in the middle of a field playing with a cell phone. 🙂 But internet troubles are not fun! Glad you got it back up. And oh, my gosh, those poor chickens! That’s what they do around here, but I thought France was more into Poulet Rouge. Why on earth do other countries borrow the worst of what is American? 😦
It’s funny how cut off we feel when the internet is unavailable. Good to know it all got sorted out for you.
Such a massive scale of chicken farming – I guess our chickens are pretty fortunate to be living the good life rather than the alternative…
Susan Lea, I am not sure if the neighbors could see me but there were a couple of cold and frosty mornings out there.
Chicken houses all seem to look like that. I’ve seen them with an attached dirt yard, but they still have a house like that they spend most of the time in.
Our egg layers run around the farmyard but you wouldn’t want to eat them, they’d be way too tough. The old British chicken tractor might be a good idea for meat chickens but we haven’t tried it.
Sarah, how cold does it get where you are? I’m thinking your chooks don’t get much of a winter,
On behalf of the internet, we welcome you back, you were missed. The internet seems to be one more thing that is done differently in France. Here in the US we send our internet through either the information super-highway or a “series of tubes.” Apparently in France it’s a data trench?