Generation Farmers in Savoie, Caroline Frison producer of Beaufort

In the Frison family, here is Caroline! She is the fifth generation to work on the farm in Tarentaise, above Bourg-Saint-Maurice (Savoie). In GAEC with his father, they raise cows for the production of Beaufort. Five generations and a profession that has evolved considerably.

In Savoie and Haute-Savoie, there are more than 5,000 farms. 14 products are under geographical indication, AOP, IGP, organic or other label and in particular the many cheeses of the mountains, Beaufort, Reblochon, Tome de Savoie, Abondance, Chevrotin.

Making Beaufort, between tradition and modernity

Caroline Frison is in her thirties, she is settled at Chatelard above Bourg-Saint-Maurice in winter, in the mountains at the Cormet de Roselend the summer. Son Gaec has more than 150 animals, 80 suckler cows plus calves. Caroline is also one of the two female muses of the campaign to promote Beaufort this winter. Her mother, then before her, her grandmothers were already on the farm, but they did not occupy the same functions: “ma grandmother, it was the calves and the house. My mother was mainly responsible for administrative tasks. Today I am versatile. And I have the same place as my father“.

“I think it’s mandatory to have modernity in our farms” – Caroline Frison

Caroline is aware that fewer and fewer young people are ready to engage in agriculture, “so you also have to protect yourself physically and gain in working comfort”. You have to accept to change your life according to her. “We often put our animals before anything else in fact. So it’s not obviously when you don’t come from the environment to cut yourself off from this modern life to which we are accustomed, the outings on Saturday evenings, the trips. The outings on Saturday evenings we still do a little, after that for sure, we are a little more tired than the others when we get up in the morning to milk.

An agricultural building adapted for less hardship

The work is less hard thanks to the automation of certain tasks and the technical installations in the building. On the Frison family farm, for example, there is a machine that distributes hay, the milking parlor is very modern and there is even a brush to allow cows to scratch their backs !

But the work of a farmer remains demanding and constraining. For the production of Beaufort, for example, two milkings must be made per day, early in the morning and at the end of the day. You also have to be versatile.

Life also changes in the summer, for Caroline and her herd who spend four months in the pastures, Cormet de Roselend, almost 2,000 meters above sea level. But it is this life that Caroline has chosen among the yellow gentians in the summer and in the warmth of the hay in the winter.