The village Guérande is famous for its sea salt production - still the old-fashioned way: by hand! All over Western Europe if you sometimes buy/have bought salted butter, most of the time the salt inside is from there:-) The salt evaporation ponds surrounding Guérande is where everything takes place under the sky. The salt concentration from the ocean is 35gr/l, in the ponds it goes down to 300gr/l within 15 days!!!
I was very lucky and happy to be there end of August when is the actual harvesting-time. There are 2 salt products: the "gros sel"(heavy grey salt this one stays at the bottom of the pond) and the "fleur du sel"(salt flower = the light one, that stays at the surface). One salt evaporation pond (with a size of 7x10m) usually brings a harvest of 50-100kg "gros sel" and 2-4 kg "fleur du sel"...
