Parlez vous francais?

I have finally booked some foreign travel, not on my own this time,but en masse with all 5 kids, 1 Farmer and my 80 year young dad. This will be quite an adventure! We are off to the Dordogne, an area I have always wanted to go to, looking at duck farms. The planned visit is to see Mylène et Yohan Guicheteau at Val de Chanedière, which just happens to be a cousin of a friend of a friend, or something complicated like that. They run a diversified farm a bit like ours with farm visits, holidays and canard production.
What i have always admired about the french is the way they are not frightened to know how their poultry is reared and slaughtered. It amazes me that websites for Foie Gras production and Poulet de Bresse show you with great pride and detail all the gory bits. We sometimes have customers that visit us and really like to understand all our process but I am unsure that having a website with it on would help my marketing much. Obviously Foie Gras is not organic and is seen by many as cruel, but i feel that we need to look to have an opinion
I am hoping not just learn about the help new entrants get in France, but how to preserve Duck and increase not just value but shelf life. At Val de Chanedière they produce canard Foie gras and then Confit with everything. Nothing is wasted even the Gesiers is made into a delicous confit (that's giblets to all you uneducated!!).

The other week We had a brief visit from the family that will act as my translator and they bought us some tins to try. They were a real treat, perfect convenience food and I am now counting the days to our big trip. I was left a bit embarrassed during their visit by my lack of French. Being obsessed with farming from an early age I never saw the use of learning it at school and so far that has not been a problem. At college we had some good French friends and we spent three days at their wedding not understanding much but getting along just fine (it may have been the muscadet.) Since then we have had French Agriculture students on the farm for the last 11 years and my french has still not improved beyond describing the anatomy of a poulet and canard (Nevil can do it in polish and Latvian too!).
So in the true spirit of the Nuffield Scholarship i have bought myself learn french on the computer and sit here trying out weird phrases as I try and do the wages. More fun is the school program that Elsa found for me which is a game with aliens speaking french. I've got 6 weeks to go.......