The hybrid workers in France seeking fulfilment in the fields

Desperate for a break from office drudgery but scared of not making ends meet? France has an idea that might interest you: part-time farming.

A new tribe has been identified that wants the best of both worlds: city and country; laptop and the land; the digital and the manual.

These young mould-breakers use the opportunities of technology and workplace flexibility for a hybrid lifestyle that – they say – fits today’s desire for meaning as well as money.

Working the soil brings the rewards of physical labour, and a sense of purpose too often missing from their spreadsheets and tabulations.

But by edging in gently to farming, they keep the financial assurance of a back-up city salary, as well as the intellectual sustenance of their urban social circle.

“In the corporate world, there are more and more people questioning the meaning of what they are doing. There’s an awful lot of burn-out and anxiety,” says Julien Maudet, data-engineer and cider-maker.

“On the farm, you don’t have to ask. It’s obvious why you’re doing it. It’s to produce food for people. But you’re doing it in conditions that are often very uncertain and risky.

“These two worlds – the farm and the office – are in crisis. And it dawned on me that each is the solution to the other. What we need to do is bring the two worlds together.”

Maudet is one of the founders of Slasheurs-cueilleurs, an organisation that seeks to promote these new cross-over careers.

The name is a wordplay in French, because it sounds like the expression chasseurs-cueilleurs (hunter-gatherers). The slasheur part comes from the slash key on a computer, and denotes someone with more than one job (as in “I’m a chef-slash-football coach).