La Farga (La Fargue - the forge) in La Vallée Heureuse is one of Languedoc's best kept secrets. Barely signposted from the village of Sorède, you drive through the middle of a housing estate, becoming more and more convinced you must be on the wrong road until, suddenly, the road deteriorates into little more than a track. Continue further past the Tortoise Farm and the valley literally erupts in front of you. At the entrance is a waterfall and fishing lake before the road climbs up and up.
Alas, it is no longer safe to take a road vehicle beyond the village because part of the forest road has been washed away. It is an old smugglers' trail and, more recently, the route many Germans used to try to flee to Spain at the tail end of World War II. Few made it because of the local Resistance. Escaping Nazi butchers simply...vanished...without trace.
Half way up the valley is a bridge crossing Sorède Bec and, on the right beside it, the old forge which was first mentioned in documentation in 1342 as Ferreria Furnum. This was no ordinary blacksmith's forge as it made much more than horseshoes. The site was chosen because of the abundance of timber for fires, the presence of local iron ore, and the power of the floodwaters rushing down from the mountain. A little higher up the valley you can still see the aqueduct used to divert the water from the stream into a narrowing chute which powered the bellows to generate extremely high temperatures along pipes to produce the finest steel in the entire district. The technique became so well known it was called the "Process of the Catalan".
The Lord of Sorède was one of the first owners. It was used at its inception by a master blacksmith, and then from 1735 by a farmer/director of lands and forests. Rebuilt in 1749, it then became the property of the Marquis d'Oms Lord Sureda, owner of the castle.
In 1784, a hammer was added to supplement the forge and to meet the needs of increasing production. It was used to make objects of iron from iron bars produced by the forge as well as nails, straps for barrels, garden tools, fittings, horseshoes, etc. This project consists of several buildings clustered to fit the slope of the site.
The main feature of this Martinet was its air horn. The aim was to breathe the humid air to promote combustion which causes a depression of its air drop; It is made from one fund to the wind, topped by a timber water tank and a nozzle extended by more than 6 m. It is oblique in two slopes, with a narrowing its orifice, to increase the flow of air. The Martinet ceased to function on 17 July 1790, when it was seized along with the Forge. The repeated lack of water due to inadequate flow of the river forced the shops to do work only a few months a year, as well as many legal difficulties and deforestation, likely caused the disappearance of forging here.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the entire valley fell into decline. Terraced vineyards which had replaced the used timber slopes became uneconomical because of the the Wine Lake resulting from the continuing surplus of wine over demand (glut) produced in the European Union. A major contributor to that glut is the Occitainie area, which produces over one-third of all the grapes grown in France. For the past several vintages, European countries have been producing 1.7 billion more bottles of wine than are sold.
Vineyards still cover the flat ground below the valley but most of the land in the valley itself was sold for development during the 1970s and 80s. Most of the dwellings are second homes for city dwellers. Some have been occupied and renovated by immigrants from French Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) and this is evident from amazing decorations on some of the villas.
