Portrait of a shepherd

Nicu R is scouring pots by the fire.  He has his head down, concentrating on scraping off the remains of polenta which have solidified on the metal.  When he looks up I see that his eyebrows meet in the middle, making a curve like an arrow's flight across his forehead.  His sardonic expression suggests that he is older than his 21 years; his small stature and sweetness of countenance make him seem much younger.  When he holds his soggy footwraps to the heat, they steam as though in pain. 

Nicu may be short but he is immensely strong.  He proved his strength a couple of years ago, when he brained a landowner who had knocked down his boss, Ghiţa’s father, over a disputed trespass.  I had heard a version of the story from Dragoş Lumpan: the shepherds were taking the flock to their winter grazing, it was nearly dark, and the sheep may or may not have strayed onto a field of lucerne.  When the angry landowner floored Simion, Nicu attacked him with his bâta, a tough hazel staff.  As Nicu went for him, the man had raised his forearm in self-defence.  Nicu broke that as well.   

He was put away on a charge of attempted murder.  He could have got 15 years, but, happily, the man Nicu attacked survived.  Ghiţa hired a lawyer to defend the young shepherd.  After 18 months in gaol, Nicu returned to the fold.   

Nicu comes from Mediaş, a town in central Transylvania, and has worked as a hired shepherd for eight years.  Here he is, at 9.30pm on 30th January, drying his ciorapi after a supper of pastrama (mutton) grilled on the embers, and bread.  Above his head, the stars are diamonds in black ink.  Scents of sheep's dung and wood smoke mingle with frost: I could make a pretentious reference to olfactory challenges here but will not.  I can think of few more live-giving smells.  The sheep, gathered a few yards away in an unfenced orchard, gossip and bicker among themselves.  A molly ewe shimmies down to the fire, nosing for scraps.  Her silky tresses glint in the firelight. *

Ghiţa and the other three men, Tica, Dinu and Sorin, had left for the night, leaving Nicu to look after the sheep.  Ghiţa was going to his wife who was staying with her mother, 15 miles to the east.  Andreea was expecting their first child and Ghiţa was more than usually preoccupied.  Like Ghiţa, the others were two hundred miles from home.  They had come north from the Southern Carpathian Mountains to help him build a lambing shelter.  I did not know where they were lodging. 

I was there out of curiosity: having started a book about transhumance, I wanted to know more about what shepherding in Romania was really like.  It was hard to tell what effect prison had had on Nicu, but his self-possession was impressive.  He was articulate too.  This surprised me: although I knew it was patently untrue, I must still have thought that being often illiterate, hired shepherds were idiots as well.  I did not know if Nicu could write, but his brain seemed as sharp as an icicle.     

Ignoring Ghiţa’s advice to doss down with the pups in the barn, I accepted Nicu’s invitation to make my bed on a slope in the orchard behind the yard.  He brought an extra cojoc for me to lie on, then helped to  lower me like a ladder to the ground, where I lay like a shag pile mummy, listening to the sheep’s jaws clicking as they snipped sparse shoots of grass.

“Cojocul e casa ciobanului.”  ‘The shepherd’s house’ is what they call these armless, ankle-length sheepskin greatcoats which make the eastern European shepherds who wear them look prehistoric.  The cloaks have the fleece on the outside, and once installed, you feel as safe as a castle. 

Nicu lay about three feet away in his own cojoc and asked me about sex.  For some reason I did not mind all that much.  It was like being interrogated by a younger brother, or a nephew, and whatever the reason for his enquiries, I took them as genuine curiosity, not seeing any prurience or other suspect motive behind them.  

Time passed, and I remained rigid in my cloak.  Cold crept from my feet up to my shins, not quite reaching my knees.  I kept my head tucked well inside the tickling hairs, lulled by the ewes’ stertorous breathing when they finally slumped down to rest.  

At 2 am, a call of nature made me get up fast.  Nicu had disappeared.  A silver light glinted on intricate patterns of pale grey-green lichen which grew on the bark of the plum trees.  Although it was nearly freezing, there was an exhilarating tang in the air.  It consisted of sheep, wet earth, snow, and countless other night-time smells from woods and mountains.  

At 8 the following morning, Ghiţa shattered my fragile peace.  He was furious.  “Where the hell have you got to?  Why aren’t the sheep out on the hill?  What the damn do you think you’re doing letting the donkeys into the hay?”  For a moment I thought he was firing all that at me, but as his boots stomped past my head, I realised it was Nicu he was after, so I kept cavy. 

Five minutes later, I picked my way down to the farmyard, carefully keeping the cloak out of the mud.  It was too late for that; the beautifully tailored skins which Ghiţa had dropped onto my shoulders the previous evening were already besmirched with snow and soil.  Probably I had twigs in my hair. 

Ghiţa was so cross that I was afraid to look him in the face.  I felt a sudden empathy with the bitch who cowered on the edge of the human circle with her tail between her legs.  We were both ravenous.  Sensing the tension, Tica, Dinu and Sorin were pretty quiet, too.  Not knowing what to say, I lifted the cojoc onto a gate to dry, and returned for the other, smaller one.  Having acted as my mattress, it was in a far worse state.  There was no sign of Nicu. 

Dinu fashioned a spatula out of a scrap of pine that had come from a pallet.  Instead of leaving its sides smooth and ordinary, he cut symmetrical steps into its shoulders making a piece of rubbish into something special.    

“Doamna, mâncaţi!”  It was an order, but welcome: I was afraid Ghiţa would ban me from eating.  We had bulz.  This is a wodge of mămăliga squashed around melted sheep’s cheese so that it resembles a miniature rugby ball.  We cooked our own in the ashes of the fire which Tica had started again, amongst the sheep and donkey dung.  Trying to distract myself, I looked for abstract patterns in the shit.  I scoffed my charred bulz while it was still burning, cradling it in my hands like a grenade.  It was delicious but stodgy and there was nothing to wash it down with except chemical green juice from a two-litre bottle.  Sorin passed it to me; the sugar rush was surprisingly good - in the circumstances I was grateful for anything. 

An hour or so later, Ghiţa handed me a plastic carrier bag.  “Will you take this to copilul?  He hasn’t had any breakfast.  He’s over there, on the other side of the hill; go past that big tree up there and keep heading to the right.”  Copil means child: since the youngster had defended Ghiţa's father, there was a close bond between them, though given the force of Ghiţa's rages you might be surprised to hear that.  I scurried off, glad to be doing something useful. 

The hills were cheetah skins: spots of sodden black earth spattered with beige grass, and melting snow. 

Nicu was standing in a wide hollow.  For an instant, in his conical căciula, he was an emperor surveying his kingdom.  An amoeba of sheep were his people: they nibbled submissively around him but could explode into 500 hydra at any minute.  His dog, an elderly, dark grey Puli bitch called Linda, was keeping close to Nicu’s heels. 

“What was it like in prison?”

“A fost, a fost.... între Dumnezeu şi dracul.  It was hell.  La început, a fost cumplit.  Horrible at first.  They kept moving me from place to place, so I never got to know anyone.  N-am potut să mă obişnuiesc cu nimic.” 

“Were you lonely?”

“Da. I felt like an animal’s prey.  Nobody helped you.  Have you seen those films about American jails?  It was like that.  Think about it.”

He was looking straight at me. 

“They beat me too.”

“Why?”

“I had a phone, and it wasn’t allowed.  So.... two or three of the prison inmates piled on top of me, and beat me up.”

His jaw was set. 

“This, this... stuff you’re giving me, it’s useless.”  He peeled one of the mandarins I had brought, along with chocolate and bananas, as a present for the shepherds.  “We need more than this.”

Who ‘we’ were, and what more, I did not ask.  It felt insensitive, as though I ought to have known: Nicu is one of the thousands of destitute Romanian kids who are struggling to make a decent lives.  And to make themselves heard, I thought.  When we met at Stâna Domnilor the previous autumn he told me he had been to school, but I did not believe his assurance came from book learning.  Nicu knew what the world was about, and he did not need any footling do-gooders muddying his waters.

“Ghiţa taught me to use the Bible.”  He opened his hands as though proffering a copy of the precious book.  So he could read after all. 

“Tu te sălbăticeşti.”  You get a little wild here.  Nicu's gaze wandered off to the horizon.  “Şi m-am întors la oile.  E liniştit.  E bine.”  ("I came back to the sheep.  It is peaceful.  It is well.") 

Before I could reply, he sped away: the flock was on the move and keeping them safe was his first and only responsibility. 

It was time for a discreet withdrawal.  Lambing had not yet started, and although
Ghiţa had said I would be welcome, my time was running out.  A friend, the abbess of a nearby Orthodox monastery, said I could stay for a while and I decided to go there before I flew back to a country where, in theory at least, a beneficent state looks after the weak. 

At the edge of the road that ran down to the village, I looked back.  The sheep had come over the ridge before me, and were heading slowly for the farm.  Nicu was concentrating on keeping the animals together and had his head down.  I called “Să trăiţi” – which means something like “Take care”.  He looked up briefly and shouted, “Drum bun!” 

In the farmyard, Ghiţa explained his outburst: “I was worried about you; you could have got ill.”  I was sad to have upset him, and moved by his care for me.  But I had wanted to hear Nicu's take on things for a long time.    


Who learnt the most from our meeting?  Spending time with Ghiţa and his shepherds had blasted my preconceptions about what poverty means.  There is a loyalty on both sides.  Travelling together over such long distances, far from help, they have to rely on each other.  I have heard hired shepherds complain about their conditions, and their bosses complain that their employees live in clover.  I could not endure the shepherd's life, but then I have not grown up the same way.  It is easy for people in remote offices to dictate how others should and should not live, while not really understanding what their lives are like.  (For a similar discussion which is much better informed, see anthropologist Katy Fox's doctoral thesis on life in two rural valleys of northern Argeş).  

I cannot bear to see small farms disappear in a welter of ignorant bureaucratic huffings, and financiers' greed.  They are destroying things which are beyond price - extended families and closely-knit communities which are part of a social order that works, not to speak of ecosystems, clean air and water...  


There is much talk about bad shepherds in Romania, where, as in Britain, farmers are generally despised.  No doubt there are dreadful, tragic cases, but I saw every instance of negative press about close shepherding and transhumance as another nail in the coffin of a tradition that had so much to recommend it, not only because it stands at the other extreme from factory farming, but because it gives people and animals a sense of belonging to the universe which you never get in an office - and certainly not in an animal processing plant.  That statement presupposes that Ghiţa's animals are humanely slaughtered, which I am pretty sure they are not.  

You can find a discussion of how sheep are treated when they leave the farm in the post, 'Stand up for sheep', in this blog, but both shepherds and animals need understanding if we are not to disappear down the Polish road demonstrated by Tracy Worcester's film, Pig Business.  (As to that, Smithfield, the giant American food corporation, has already arrived in Romania so my bland hopes are also too late.) 
 
Nicu and Ghiţa are among the shepherds whom Dragoş Lumpan has interviewed for his forthcoming film, The Last Transhumance.  
 

*Ghiţa’s sheep are Ţurcana, whose ancestors scampered about in the Himalayas.  Although their wool is too coarse for fine city clothes, they are good all-rounders, and hardy enough for the bitter Carpathian winters.   

During the Communist period, Romanian shepherds were persuaded to abandon the Ţurcana in favour of fattier types which gave softer wool (Ţigaie and Merino), but since 1989, most oieri (sheep farmers) have returned to their trusted long-haired breed.  (During Ceauşescu’s rule, Romanian sheep farmers benefited from fixed prices for milk, meat and wool.   

After the Revolution, the market for Romanian sheep’s wool more or less collapsed, in line with global trends.  Competition from New Zealand forced Romania’s lambs’ meat and wool trade down further, and although there are signs - in Britain - of new uses for wool, for example, as buildings’ insulation as well as a revival of wool as clothing and carpets - exporting lambs for meat is Romania’s great hope in terms of making sheep farming a viable business.  Romania has one of the largest national sheep flocks in Europe.) 

 
 

   

   

Sean again, I'm afraid

Spring transhumance officially begins on 1st April, which this year fell two weeks before Orthodox Easter.  Most farmers want to get their lambs into the shops just before Easter because it is the only time during the year that Romanians eat lamb meat in large quantities.  Ghita delayed his spring walk because there was so little grass, but he didn't need to rush back home, because he had made his own arrangements with individual meat traders.  Ghita either did not know or would not tell me where his lambs went, but he was adamant that his methods of raising them were more humane than intensive farming.  

Going straight from the farm where lambing had only just finished, to Cluj where I celebrated Easter with friends, the connections between the two were unavoidable.  In Christian imagery, the lamb is a symbol of Christ's sacrifice and images of The Lamb of God abound.   Most of us are so used to the link that we don't bat an eyelid when it comes to eating the animals, no matter how or why they have been killed.  Contemplating silent paintings and carvings of The Lamb in the surroundings of an Orthodox or Reformed church is less devastating than spending time with the creatures themselves when you know that they have only been bred for the butcher's knife.  It took two days for me to start getting fond of an individual lamb - it was Sean, whose mother had rejected him at birth - and I wasn't the only one to have favourites. 

Of course all livestock farmers have to come to terms with the fact of death and do not see a paradox between caring for their animals and killing them.  Since spending time so close to the realities of raising animals for profit, I've got a lot more time for charities like Compassion in World Farming and campaigns to reduce the amount of time during which animals are transported live to abattoirs.  In Romania, small-holders who raised animals for their own food and for limited sales in local markets used to kill them at home.  I have never witnessed this at first hand but have been told that they did not stun them first, but surely it is better to slaughter an animal quickly, rather than subject it to the torture of travelling long distances in horrific conditions?  

In Romania and Poland, horses are often transported overland to abattoirs in southern Italy.  It takes up to three days, often without rests or water and if the horses kick each other or have other accidents, they are not treated.  Ironically since the 'financial crisis' Italian meat traders have been buying fewer horses because of the high cost of fuel.  World Horse Welfare reports that the numbers of horses driven live to abattoirs has halved during the past ten years, thanks in large part to its protests.  But that still leaves some 60,000 equines a year who undergo the unnecessary ordeal of being packed into transporters and driven to their deaths in a state of panic.  The numbers of other animals must be far higher.  Would it not be better to send them away when they are already dead?  If it is all a matter of refrigeration costs, surely there would be huge long-term benefits of killing animals close to where they were raised?  Ghita told me you can taste the difference in an animal that has been kept on limited grazing and killed when it is afraid - if only for the pleasure of gourmet carnivores, the meat is not nearly as good to taste (and therefore less nutritious) and it smells of adrenalin. 

Looking for figures to back up my arguments, I found this extract, reproduced on the British Texel Sheep Society's website from a French farming magazine:  "According to an article published in the French Pâtre magazine, Romanian sheep meat production could rise by 30% by 2015, of which 90% would be exported, mostly live (Greece, Italy, Spain, Middle East). It reckons there are 3 m. people owning sheep in Romania. There are 4.5 m. ha of natural pasture. The largest farm owns 10,000 ewes."

An on-line advertisement for the Carpatic Lamb Slaughter House which opened near Bucharest in 2006 tells us:  "Romania, although it has the third European sheep livestock in size (roughly 9,000,000 sheep), it hasn't had almost any sheep meat export activity. This was due to lack of slaughtering facilities able to fully comply with the European standards. Until recently, almost all the sheep meat export was done by exporting only living animals (roughly 2,000,000 sheep/year)."

And, looking at this link - http://www.airyolland.co.uk/story_romania_summer_trip.htm - it seems that some British farmers are keen to 'improve' Romania's sheep breeds, to make them heavier in meat, so that they can export British rams.  Romanian farms have already begun to introduce German rams.  This is from High Airyolland Farm and 'the sheep farmer who likes to write stories not a writer that likes to keep sheep': "A major part of the sheep industry in Romania revolves around the production of soft cheese made from the milk from their Turcana breed of sheep.  The Turcana is the most numerous sheep in the country numbering approximately six million.  It’s a hill type which has been bred for milk production so, as you would expect, the breed has taken on the physical characteristics of a dairy animal.  Now with the traditional on-farm methods of production and manufacture coming under pressure from Brussels a lurch towards meat production has started.  The professor of animal production at a major teaching university in the town of Timisoara told us.  'We must start to improve our sheep by hybridisation'.  The professor, who has seen attempts to make improvements like this fail in the past, still sees the future of the sheep meat industry in his country to be reliant on the benefit that the vigour and greater weight gain a cross of some sort will produce.'   

That's all very well except that the fatter animals are less well suited to Romania's alpine terrain.  Being less hardy may mean in the long run that they need more specialised and veterinary care.   At the moment, as Airyolland indicates, Romanians eat relatively little lamb and mutton and the sheep are bred mainly for milk to make cheese.  Efforts are being made to turn the various cheese types into speciality brands, and for example, you can buy cas (pronounced 'cash'), telemea, branza de burduf 'from Sibiu' (meaning it's from Marginimea Sibiului) in specialised cheese shops in Bucharest's Crangasi Market.

Since the 1989 revolution, the high prices which Ceausescu's regime had granted Romanian farmers for their milk, meat and wool disappeared.  As the country plunged into uncertainty all the emphases changed, few of us realising that the medieval farming methods which many British visitors find so entrancing to look at had come about relatively recently partly as a result of the fact that many of the country's tractors disappeared 'overnight' after Ceausescu's assassination.  I have been told many times that Romania's notoriously bad roads were in fine shape during the 1970s.  Not having been there before 1993, I saw the  horse-drawn, ox-drawn, and donkey-drawn carts as age-old fixtures.

To get a better picture of how Romanian farming has developed as it has, I've found the doctoral theses of researchers like Katy Fox and Michael Pearson very helpful.   Both have studied the effects of EU legislation and Romanian government application of that legislation on subsistence and semi-subsistence farms.  Katy Fox concentrated on farming villages in two adjacent valleys in the county of Arges, in Muntenia.  Michael Pearson, being a solicitor, looked closely at the legal aspects of EU policy-making and how translation from one language to another can pervert its original writers' intentions almost beyond recognition. 

Other facets of Romania's sheep farming business have floated to the surface of my research: shortly after the 1989 coup, Middle Eastern countries began buying live Romanian lambs, Syria being one of the largest importers; after 1989, Romanian sheep farmers began selling their fleeces to Turkish truck drivers who were on their way home from western Europe.   Apparently the wool was turned into building insulation, but the washing process, carried out with detergents in Romanian rivers and streams, has polluted the water. 

But to return to Airyolland, as he - or could it be a she? - says, a lot of younger Romanian sheep farmers have moved their animals to lowland areas such as the Banat and Dobrogea where they can graze all year round without moving long distances between pastures.  What this will mean for 'traditional' Carpathian mountain farms is anybody's guess - there are EU organisations and NGOs which exist to support the small (ie subsistence and semi-subsistence) hill farms because it's accepted wisdom that extensive grazing by animals such as sheep, goats, cows and horses promotes biodiversity which in turn is good for air and water quality.  You only have to look at the species-rich hay meadows of the Pogany Havas region and others to see that for yourself.  But the relationship between farming as a business, people's need for food, and the perception of environmental dangers is like a football being kicked about by thousands of different teams.  All I can do is try to understand the different pressures - and vested interests - to continue reading and looking, talking to farmers, researchers and, God love them, officials.