Ah
Drediock the city boy
That remembers me living in small vilages. What a priceless piece of time, seing those ederly going at it. Rushes my brain with memories of small villages where everybody knows everybody, and querels last generations, fights end up with minor bruises later patched up over beer. Kudos to the famers in their 70s still working the fields.
Those sticks are walking sticks. You use them to go hicking, or just walk around your land. They are part of the French tradition for "countryside people", often selected and crafted by a friend or dear familly member.
As an example, my grand father was in the resistance in his small village. A neighbor showed up to warn them that the Gestapo was coming to arrest them. His father as well as his brother, left the house, runing down field to the woods. My grand father's father forgot to take his stick. It was so important that my grand father ran back to the house to get it, and found himself arrested by the Gestapo, later tortured, then deported to a concentration camp.