La Corroirie estate near Loches, France (this Hemp oven also served as a prison for misbehaving monks when not in use)
Getting Baked With Hemp
Across France ruins of hemp history decay. These abandoned structures loom high over farm lands awaiting the time hemp gets baked again!
Restored Hemp Oven in Auvers under Montfaucon (an old French commune) in France dating to at least around 1826
The decaying structures used in a technique for processing hemp are found dominating the farmland all across the French countryside. These stone ruins are often all that remains of the area’s history of hemp.
After harvesting the hemp, the crop would need to be soaked in water during a process known as ‘retting’. After retting the hemp, farmers needed to dry the hemp out quick. This step could be accomplished by laying the hemp out in the field for the sun to work its magic over time but the process was time consuming while increasing the risk of mold to the finished crop. To avoid this weak point in the hemp harvest, hemp farmers in France came up with a ingenious solution, they got baked!
Hemp Oven in Le Perche in southern Normandy, France turned into a guest room (notice the original stone steps leading to 2nd story room)
The solution? ‘Four à chanvre’ or hemp ovens!
The design was simple but elegant, a 2 story stone building usually round like a silo would be separated into a top and bottom room. The first floor would hold a oven/fireplace, often designed as a bread oven serving the farm with a duel purpose.
The second story would have a separate entrance from the oven floor and essentially was an empty room where the wet hemp was placed to dry in the ambient heat created by the oven below.
diagram of a Hemp Oven
The Hemp Ovens would also keep the hemp inside dry from the rainy seasons that usually followed the harvest season in France further expediting the drying process while keeping the process controlled.
The structures would often be placed away from the main house for fear of the fire danger the ovens presented.
A hemp oven in Sarthe, France
Although mostly round in shape, hemp ovens were also built in a square design adding room accommodating the larger hemp farms.
This Hemp oven from Teloche in Sarthe, France shows the size obtained by building in the square shape including a look inside the oven room.
Outside and inside look at a square Four à Chanvre/Hemp Oven in Teloche (Sarthe), France
Madonna Park in Coulaines, France is located at 3 Rue du Petit Closeau surrounded by a sea of suburban houses. Tucked away in the center of the park down a winding path is the parks centerpiece, ‘Hemp Oven Square’.
When the park was built a old stone hemp oven was centered in the parks design, rather then destroying the ruins the hemp oven has been restored allowing park visitors to peak into the hemp history that surrounds them! (some for the very first time, someone laughed at that)
Hemp Oven Square in Madonna Park, Coulaines, France
Often overlooked the hemp oven ruins of France stand as a testament of the time when humanity got baked with hemp!
Old Hemp Oven ruin’s near Neuville, France