Poitevin Marshes: flavors within reach of an oar, at the Vanneau-Irleau water market

Producers of cheesecakes, mogettes, honey, and other delicacies awaited visitors by boat and at the quayside this Saturday between La Rochelle and Niort. A popular annual event

"This is the eleventh year I've been to the Vanneau-Irleau waterfront market and I love the atmosphere of the Marais Poitevin . We had to get up at 6 a.m. this morning, but it's one of our biggest markets of the year!" In 2013, Jean-François Ferru took over a pastry shop located just an hour's drive from the village of Deux-Sèvres, near Niort. Dressed in yellow and black, the fifty-year-old sitting at the end of the boat sports the colors of the local specialty he loves, the cheese cake, but could just as easily pass for a Stade Rochelais rugby supporter. "There are quite a few of them in the area!" jokes Pierre, known as Pierrot to the friends he meets on Saturday, July 26, the day of the ^26th edition of the summer market gardening event.

At 45, the man is one of 63 volunteers recruited locally by the festival committee to run an unusual annual event, where visitors can glide from one stall to another seated in a boat, guided by a boatman. Enough to attract crowds of curious onlookers and tourists on holiday.

How many people walked down Rue du Port, the village's main road of about 900 year-round residents, leading directly to the marsh, then to the Sèvre Niortaise, the Aiguillon Bay, and finally to the Atlantic Ocean? "It's hard to say," concede Jo and Véro, the two co-presidents, "but there were up to 5,000 people last year, and we've planned for about 1,000 meals this lunchtime." The fact is that, at 10:30 a.m., the queue at the pier is getting considerably longer, and business is picking up at the counter of the 57 morning exhibitors.

Local honey, traditional brioche, goat's cheese, arts and crafts, mogettes (dried white beans), garlic, beef from the Auzille farm, which Tilia, 11 and a half years old, promotes by reciting a short text from her boat... "We make sure that the offer is diversified," says Jo, "while sticking as much as possible to products from the Marais!" Most of the stalls occupy the quays, against a backdrop of a still very green wooded landscape.

Céline, for her part, is on the water. Her boat displays the produce from the aromatic and medicinal plants of the Chaudron fleuri in Lagord, near La Rochelle, and the Semeuses de lumière in Saint-Georges-de-Rex, a few lengths away by pigouille, the pole used to push boats through the canals of the "Green Venice."

Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), angelica (Angelica archangelica), and elderberry from local harvests are offered in small bottles rocked by a gentle lapping sound. "I like it here. There are people, but it's calm. It must be an effect of the water..." A murky marsh water, where the green duckweed from the postcard and the water lilies have largely disappeared. The same goes for the native eels, frogs, and crayfish that struggle to resist their Florida cousins.

Invasive animal and plant species do not spare this remote corner of life, which is not always peaceful. Nor do climate change or conventional agriculture. The surface and groundwater of the Marais Poitevin, a regional natural park, is largely degraded by nitrates and pesticides, as elsewhere. The question of its sharing between irrigating farmers and other users regularly generates strong tensions and clashes, culminating in the Sainte-Soline incident in March 2023.

“People here are a little reserved at first, but if they trust you, they adopt you.”

A natural resource that is already deserting part of the 107,000 hectares of wetland that flows into Charente-Maritime. Faced with the drought, the prefect was forced to issue an initial decree limiting water withdrawals for agricultural (irrigation) and domestic (swimming pools, car washes, etc.) use starting May 23!

The village's environment is changing. Situated between La Rochelle and Niort, the region is also attracting newcomers looking for cheap land. But in the port of Vanneau, "there's always water," rejoices Pierre, the boatman for a day, who continues to take his boat, a strong element of local identity, to go fishing, hunting, and "to take passing friends for a walk."

Having arrived fifteen years ago, he discovered solid social relationships – "the people here are a little reserved at first, but if they trust you, they adopt you." A way of life that the water market can give a folkloric, joyfully old-fashioned image of, but which the population seeks to perpetuate by any means necessary. For a quality village life and for the greatest pleasure of visitors.