Hi All,
We live quite close to a farm. When we brought our house we thought the farm was only cattle but it seems a large number of pigs are housed inside.
The consequence of this is being virtually imprisoned in our house. We are overrun by flies and the smells get very bad.
Is there any thing that can be done or said? Plainly we have no wish to stop or particularly interfere in the business of the farm and they are our near neighbours - but there must be a limit...at times we really can not open windows as the house quickly becomes full of flies. It is difficult to have windows open with the extreme smells and given the temperatures recently this has been miserable...
Any advise or thoughts appreciated...
Cheers
Les

You bought in the wrong place. You failed to exercise diligence. Sell - if you can find a buyer. Be more diligent next time. Sorry foir being so blunt.

Plainly an option is to move.... But I am more interested in learning if there is anything that can be done... There must be a limit... The cattle graze metres from our house... But the real issue seems to be a large slurry pit....

...... and you didn't notice this (or the cattle or the pigs) when you were looking at the property? Why does there have to be a limit? The farm was there before you bought the property and as long as the cattle are grazing on the farm's land there is little to nothing you can do about it.

Sorry, "caveat emptor" springs to mind and there's nothing to be done since, as said, the farm was there before you.
In addition to the animal smells and accompanying flies which you must have suspected on seeing the cows grazing nearby, slurry pits aren't unusual in farms, and it's surprizing that you didn't think about that aspect, whether you were aware of it before buying, or not.
If it's too unbearable, then sell up and move, and put it down to experience....

Hi Les. First, do you have fly screens at all the windows you want to open. If you do then as long as you keep the doors shut you should have very few flies. If you don't have them, get some. Buy an electrocutor for the few flies that do get in, they work well and it's very satisfying to hear a fly go sizzle. It won't solve the smell but it will solve the flies.

Secondly, if it were me I would start trying to build a good relationship with the farmer, since he's my neighbour. In the long term he is more likely to be considerate of a neighbour and friend, than of an anonymous foreigner who just happened to buy the house next to his land.

But I would not really expect a working farmer to change his farm layout or his methods of working just to suit the sensitivities of an incomer. In the UK there are two kinds of countryside, In England these days an increasing proportion is the sanitized chocolate box pastoral idyll type such as the Cotswold villages where people buy holiday homes or live and commute or go to retire. People might keep a few hens and the odd pig or goat and think that is country living, but real working farmers would feel out of place there. Then there is the working countryside which is a noisy smelly place. This is where farmers get on with the business of producing food, they work hard on our behalf and they already have to (or feel they have to) fight hard to get recognition for what they do, in terms of fair prices etc. I wouldn't want to be the one to tell a farmer that it's more important to keep rural France free of smells so that people can come and retire there without being inconvenienced, than it is to produce food There are still some areas of "real" countryside in England but a lot more in Wales for instance, and most of rural France is "real" countryside. It's farmer territory, not really the place for city folk unless they're happy to adapt. France has plenty of villages and small towns where folk who don't like big conurbations can live, there is absolutely no need to go and live cheek by jowl with farming unless you actively want to.

Saying that, I've lived in rural Wales quite happily. Flies and smells are a summer thing, and you learn to cope. Compensations such as the pleasure of watching the lambs in spring more than made up.

I was wondering about fly screens too so at least you can get some ventilation when the wind(excuse the pun) is in the right direction.
Farms are smelly places unless arrable but then you get the noise of harvesting and ploughing and the possibilty of crop spraying or much spreading.

I suspect you were/are a townie. If so ,welcome to the countryside!

Many thanks for the ongoing replies!
I grew up in a semi-rural location a couple of hundred yards from a farm with cows.
We have, where possible added fly screens and also have a small electrocutor.
The slurry pit is 300/400 metres up the road.
There are sometimes bullocksgrazing at the back of our house - this puts them within a few metres of our property.
There are cows across the road at the end of our drive - say 50 metres away..
The pigs are housed in large buildings 200/300 metres away.
With the exception of the pigs and the and the bullocks we knew about the rest during the purchase and certainly knew there would be a whiff at times...
We aim to integrate into the community as best as is possible (there are only 6/7 houses in close vicinity including the farmer) and we certainly do not want to cause any issues there!
Our near neighbours (further away from the farm than us) feel the flies and smells have intensified recently.
I am interested to know if and what responsibilities a farmer may have towards their neighbours on these matters... anyone have any knowledge on that front?

Haven't found anything official about farmers' reponsibilities towards their neighbours, but
https://www.service-public.fr/partic...sdroits/F19299
gives info. on neighbours' rights.
Pig-rearing is one of the "nuisances" mentioned. You could try your nearest Conciliateur de Justice or the relevant Maire-Adjoint of your Mairie, but you'd risk whatever relations you have with the farmer deteriorating...
It's probably the heatwave which has made the problem worse and the situation should improve as the weather becomes cooler... Were you there during the long heatwave last summer?