Eye-balling sheep

As a nr. 8 bus whisked me into the centre of Cluj on Thursday, it passed a little park where I noticed one or two shiny new tractors on display.  I was dazed from the flight and the heat, and wondered idly what was going on there.  Three hours later I was back, meekly following in the wake of my energetic farming friend, Alina, who informed me that this was the 19th edition of the Cluj Agricultural Show, which is the second largest farming extravaganza in Romania - Bucharest hosts the biggest one.

It was a sweltering afternoon - 30 degrees - and I felt sorry for the caged and penned animals in their thick coats who had only a light awning to keep them cool.  They had been washed and brushed to perfection, and strolling up and down the rows gave me a chance to do some homework: at last, thanks to Alina, I know that the Tigaie is not a cross between Turcana and Merino, but a breed of its own which has a shorter fleece and better meat than the elegant Turcana (my favourite), and that the Mangalita pig, which is a small, demure animal with a bristly, reddish coat resembling a wild boar's, is low in cholesterol which ought to make it a winner in the food-faddy West. 

Alina gave me some other interesting information about how certain sheep farmers of her acquaintance manage to obtain subsidies for hundreds of animals that they do not in fact possess, thanks to their relationship with certain mayors who hand out these subsidies - butter would not melt of course.  I also learnt that the priest who officiated at the mass exorcism I witnessed just over a year ago also keeps sheep: his name was on two pens containing some Turcana ewes.  Except that I believe his 'volunteers' do the hard work.  It does make me worry about the Orthodox Church's attitude to Christianity. 

Leaving the animals, we walked in the sunlight along rows of glistening red, blue and green machinery - not two shiny tractors, but scores of them together with combines, cow presses, spanking new Allen scythes, which are a boon to mountain farmers with lots of pasture to mow but a crying shame for those of us who love to watch men at work with the slow, sweeping rhythm that they develop when wielding a manual scythe, which cuts short and close without making a horrid noise.  Having tried a bit of manual scything myself, I know how hard it is on your back and hands but it does a better job around tree trunks! 

Finally we went into the food and crafts tent, which was about to close.  There, in a corner stand, almost alone, was Mrs Pascu, the pretty, buxom, happy-looking (though not in my picture) wife of a transhumant shepherd called Vasile who has just given up his regular sheep walk between Muntele Mare in the Apuseni and Satu Mare (at a rough guess, a distance of 150 miles).  She was clearing away a bowl of delicious telemea - salty sheep's cheese, a bit like feta - and sucking on a few stray pieces, we passed the time of day and shot out again, Alina first, with me in her slipstream, to look at some peperite (quails).  Alina wanted some for her own farm.  The fowls and rabbits were also beautifully coiffed, but housed in cages that were too small for them so that the quails were falling over each other, and on wire bases so they had to walk gingerly if they could move at all.  It was depressing, but not as bad as real factory farming, which is little comfort to the beasts.  All of which ought to turn me into a vegetarian.  I'll let you know...  

Note: I'll give the pictures captions later, must get some sleep now because it's 3.55am here.  I must be barmy. 

Spring transhumance - it's that time again

The first of April is the official start for the spring transhumance in Romania, because it is usually the day after winter grazing arrangements come to an end.  It means that shepherds have to get their sheep safely across country before the young crops appear on the unfenced strips that patchwork the hillsides and dales.  I am hoping to contact my friends to see how they are getting on in the next week or so.   

1st of May is the day when the joint Polish-Ukrainian-Romanian transhumance begins.  The trek from Brasov county in southern Transylvania to the borderland between Poland and Slovakia is set to take 100 days.  Its aim is to raise awareness of the benefits of extensive farming, pasturing animals in mountain areas to encourage biodiversity, and of slow food. 

At the end of this month - with luck - I'll be off again to find out about the connections between Marginimea Sibiului - an area where people are staunchly proud of their Romanian origins - and villages of 'Ungureni' (Transylvanian shepherds) on the southern side of the Carpathian Mountains.  The fact that these ties existed was almost the first thing I learnt about the Marginime, nearly 20 years ago.  Noted experts such as Corneliu Bucur and Dumitru Budrala told me that the Oltenian and Muntenian shepherding communities were founded in the late 18th century by Margineni on the run from the Habsburgs who destroyed their Orthodox churches and wanted to conscript them as border guards.  Before you start protesting about the beneficial effects of the Habsburg Empire, I know that things are hardly ever black and white, and that there was a more positive trade-off, as for example when villages in the Marginime received land and privileges in return for their military support. 

Meanwhile, I have been looking at the history of Margineni shepherds in southern Russia and the Caucasus between c. 1880 and 1950, with the aim of going there to see if there are any traces of them left, and also looking for people who know about shepherding in Georgia and Azerbaijan.  The search has already revealed some fascinating characters, about whom I hope to tell you as soon as I get the time!  It's all go... 

April Fool's Death

Gheorghe skinned the lamb without saying a word, and now he stood facing me with bloody hands, the carcase lying at his feet. 

E trecut.  

Over and done with.  The five-day-old berbec had run into the wheels of a goods train two hours before.  I was supposed to be in charge, and I had expected – deserved - a tirade.  I had volunteered to look after 21  of Gheorghe’s sheep for a couple of hours while he was busy elsewhere, and he had, hesitantly, left me looking after a score of mânzari (ewes which had given birth) and their young.  I could see that he was torn between his doubts about the wisdom of leaving an inexperienced person on their own with his animals, and wanting to give me a chance.   

I had felt so smart, a real shepherdess.  Poţi sa le lasi acolo, unde iarba e mai proaspata; nu o sa trec linea.  Gheorghe with his slight lisp, his air of mastery belied by his unfamiliarity with foreigners, had told me that grazing the sheep by the railway track would be alright; even during the winter there had not been enough moisture in the ground to grow grass and now, on 1st April, there was so little decent fodder anywhere that they needed every available blade. 

Like most of Romania, this quiet corner of north-west Transylvania hadn’t seen serious rain for nine months.  In spite of heavy snowfall in January and February, the ground was parched, and the hills were the colour of dun and khaki.  They won’t cross the line, he had said, they’ll stay with the most succulent grass.   

Of course I should have reacted quicker but as it was, I just stood there, in disbelief as the tiny male lamb passed for a split second within reach and headed straight for the thundering, lumbering train, five feet away.  He ran beside it for yards, while I followed clumsily trying to grab him.  But I was paralysed.  Horrified, I saw him falter and his limbs flail beside the grinding metal.  Then he disappeared altogether. 

There had been plenty of warning; the siren from the nearby level crossing had wailed for three or four minutes in advance.  The train vanished as inexorably as it had come, and I imagined the driver cursing me – he had stood on his horn, and disentangled the soft and twitching limbs.  The lamb had fallen in a crumpled heap between two sleepers.  I cradled him in my arms.   His blood dripped onto my sleeve.

Stricken with sadness and guilt, I hustled the ewes and their offspring away from the ditch by the railway track.  They seemed unaware that something catastrophic had happened to one of their tribe.  There was no traffic on the narrow country road which ran beside the line and I harangued them across it up the low hill which separated us from the village. 

I couldn’t believe I had let the lamb get hit.  Every now and then a chill wind ruffled his ears, mocking my hopes that he would come to again if I held him long enough.  My tears dripped all over him, willing him to live, but he did not move.  His eyes had milked over and his neck hung limp.  He remained warm long after he had died.

Gheorghe had been busy with arrangements for the 200-km walk to his summer grasslands high in the southern Carpathian Mountains.  He had said it would be OK to let the sheep stay near the railway; because that was where the best grass was, and although he was still feeding them on maize they were terribly short of fresh food.  

As the minutes ticked by and no-one came - Gheorghe had only left me half an hour before and I had no mobile phone - the flock grazed on regardless.  I had to quash my urge to run and hide.  The sheep cropped the dry spikes with a frenzied nibbling.  Driven by hunger, they had no time for sentiment.  

It wasn't hard to identify the dead lamb’s mother.  She was the only one who was seriously perturbed.  She ran here and there, calling for her baby, sniffing alien lambs and rejecting them with an impatient jerk of her head or stamp of her hoof.  I watched her with the sickening realisation that her distress was a thousand times worse than mine.  What should I do?  Eventually, I put her lamb down on the grass and retreated.  I was still in shock myself but I thought, She has to know.  How else will she accept its disappearance?  

A long spell passed before she had the courage to come close.  She walked forward uncertainly and then suddenly changed her mind, running away from me as well as the small white heap on the ground.  Then she came back again, her muzzle outstretched in fearful tenderness, inching closer, not wanting to believe.  Then again, turning her wary, accusing eyes on me, she would rush away to the safety of her sisters, unable to cope. 

It seemed years before Gheorghe’s van pulled up at the derelict farm where he and his hired shepherds had lived for the past five months, while over-wintering a thousand long-haired Ţurcana sheep.  The air was so clear that even though it was a quarter of a mile away, I could see every movement as he busied himself in the yard.  Agonised because I couldn’t shout loudly enough, I followed him with my eyes, anticipating his sense of anger and loss, dreading the moment of confession.

As I was standing there, impatient to leave the sheep in safe hands, Marcel came up beside me.  Marcel was one of Gheorghe’s hired shepherds.  He said he was fourteen and that he had run away from school because it bored him.  Marcel was half man, half child: gawky as a lamb but street wise.  His dark brown eyes, innocent and clever, were set in a flawless skin; he was as ready to pounce as to submit.  He loved laughing, and would yell his carelessness to the world, heedless of the outrage he caused.  Life should be a breeze to a kid of fourteen. 

I was carrying the lamb again.  Marcel looked askance at it, screwing up his eyes against the sun.  Ce s-a întâmplat? When I told him what had happened, stumbling over the Romanian words, his looked disdainful, but said, D’you want me to take it?  I shook my head; I wanted to face Gheorghe myself.  Fighting against an awful, cold, indifference, I walked down the cracked slope, past the balance well whose sun-bleached arm looked as though it were grasping a sword of judgment, and into the farm. 

A split-second stab of shock, then Gheorghe put his emotions aside.  Is it dead?  He took the lamb from me; I didn’t want to let it go.  He said, Nobody slows down, neither cars nor trains.  I knew it wasn’t the driver’s fault.  Gheorghe had the lamb by its hind legs so that its head dangled.  Where is its mother?  I pointed dumbly behind us to where Marcel’s slender form stood outlined against the late afternoon sun, the ewes scattered around him, but not too far. 

Gheorghe took a folding knife from one of his pockets and set about removing the lamb’s skin.  He slit the soft tissue under the belly, peeled the skin forwards from the tail end forwards, and yanked it expertly over the ghastly head.  As he pulled the curly fleece from the lamb’s skull I saw the extent of the damage, a bloody mess where two hours ago there had been a bright and frolicking eye.  Finally Gheorghe cut the skin away from the legs.  Several of his dogs - two large white hairy Carpathian ciobănesti and a Scottie-sized, dark grey heeler called a câine de întors, crept towards the enticing smell.  They shrank back again when their master kicked out at them, roaring Cuşti-mă! 

Throwing the body into the tumbledown wattle-walled farm house, Gheorghe took the skin across the yard to a straw-bedded lean-to where the latest newborns and their dams were sheltering from the cold.  Some of the ewes had twins, and Gheorghe grabbed of them by the scruff of its neck.  Fitting the lambskin like a tight football jersey over the surprised infant’s head, he tied the leg flaps in place with some red wool that he happened to have about him, tucked the replacement lamb under his arm and went into the barn next door.  Two ewes were suckling sickly babies in the dark; one of them was snug in a pen that Gheorghe had made for individual sheep and their lambs by fencing off a corner with wooden palettes.  He dropped the substitute infant into the next door slot.  The other ewe was a first-time mother who didn’t want anything to do with her off-spring.  Gheorghe had tied her to a feed trough so that the two-day old lamb could get at her teats.  He swore violently at the reluctant mum, letting his stress show for the first time since I had brought him the dead lamb.  Seeing my discomfort, he threw me another peace-offering: Nu ai fost primul.  I hadn’t been the first, and regrettably, I probably wouldn’t be the last.  Then he strode off to his van and drove back up the hill, bumping over the grass to collect the bereft and bewildered animal.     

Wolves

After what has seemed like an eternity, last week I finally got out on the road with a flock of Romanian sheep.  I was in Salaj judet, also known by its traditional name of Tara Silvaniei, in the Eastern Carpathian foothills about 200 km north of the home farm. The ewes, rams and now their lambs had been over-wintering here since November.  They were about to start their six-week trek across the Transylvanian plateau back to the Cindrel Massif. 

Though it was not nearly as bad as in eastern Romania, there was a lot of snow here in January and February.  Apart from the rare treat of a shower and a change of clothes, the shepherds had lived outside day and night during most of that period.

My host was the 29 year old Ghita, a nickname for Gheorghe, and together with three hired shepherds and at least 1000 animals (including ten dogs, and six donkeys which carried our food and other equipment) I walked with him for six days at the start of his spring transhumance.

By the time I arrived on 30th March the snow had long gone; it had left no visible traces except deep cracks in the pastures, and was no help to the grass at all.  The hills were dun-coloured but during the week I was there, willows began to flower like ghosts materialising in a pale yellow mist.  Yellow, orange and red dogwood branches stood out against the brown and the apple trees were full of mistletoe.  It too was in flower; some of it glowing with acid yellow florets.  In the woods a solitary orchid known as The Monk poked beautiful pink and blue petals and toxic looking leaves above thick carpets of dead oak leaves.

The sky was often overcast but even then, the landscapes were magnificent: we wandered in large loops over land that varied from ploughed strips to burnt stubble, from marshy valley bottoms to sturdy young forests through which the sun, if it shone, made dappled shadows on the bronze coloured leaf mulch.  We walked on soil that varied from chalk white to dark chocolate with amazing shades of ochre, rust and pink in between.  No wonder they call Romania a land of milk and honey.  Pity about the guys at the top though.     

At night we slept around a campfire - or rather I did; the others took it in turns to keep watch throughout the night in case of wolves, robbers and other threats, and they got very little sleep at all.  Catnaps during the day were the only chance they had to catch up on shuteye. I began to understand the typical stance of a Romanian shepherd as he leans on his bata (staff); he may well be dozing on his feet. 

Having spent so much time trying to join a transhumant flock when the time came I wasn't ready for it.  Like a new army recruit, I had to fall in with the shepherds' routine or lump it: if I overslept my covers were yanked off me unceremoniously.  We set off at 6 or 6.30 am - later on it would be earlier - and kept walking with very short breaks until 8 or 9pm.  No breakfast, not even coffee.  A slurp of water if we had the chance.  We were lucky if we got a mid-day meal - don't expect room service on transhumance and do take hard rations!  But what did I expect: this was a serious enterprise and there was no room for slackers.  With Ghita, his sheep's needs came first, last, and much of the way in between. 

So much happened during the eight days I spent with Ghita and his crew that I haven't had time to absorb it. What follows is an extract from the end of my trip, which I was tempted to with the end of Hardy's The Return of the Native, which I read just before coming to Romania.  But Egdon Heath is a poor substitute for upland Salaj. 

After months without rain, on Friday, the fifth day of our walk, skies darkened.  It had been scorching since 10.30am but around 3pm scowling clouds gathered right overhead, promising a dramatic change.  I was grabbing a rest on a steep hillside while watching Ghita separate his flocks into two groups, so that the strongest animals would be in one lot and the weakest in another.  Catching sight of the black smudge overhead he gave a shout and did a little triumphal dance.  He was desperate for wet stuff.

Ghita wasn't disappointed.  Within 15 minutes the premature summer had vanished and we were in the midst of a tremendous storm.  We had the full works - thunder that rolled and crashed like Kudu drums and lightning that rent the heavens like tearing silk.  And with depressing speed everything I had on was drenched - it had been so hot in the morning that I'd packed my waterproofs deep in a donkey bag.  There was no time to dig them out: the shepherds couldn't take time off to dress and we had to keep moving for the sheep's sake.  And did they move.  I trudged after them in my squelching boots and the men in varying degrees of stoicism and misery, trying to help keep the seething mass of fleeces on legs to a path we could control without preventing them from getting the nutrition they wanted. Not for the first time I wondered what the hell I was doing here.  It was 9pm before Ghita found an appropriate place to camp.  We had to have water to cook with and although there was plenty falling on us, potable water wasn't easy to collect.  And still the rain came, interrupted every three or four minutes by drum rolls and flashes that forked the sky.  Some were so close they made our faces go as pink as blushing girls. 

After 'parking' the flock in a dell surrounded by oak and beech woods - squint at it, and it could have been in rural Leicestershire - all ten dogs exploded into paroxysms, and shot off into the dusk.  Iosif (40) and Andrei (22) were closest to me at the time, and they shouted one word, 'Lupi!' (Wolves).  Gripping their staffs they both disappeared in pursuit of the noise while I stayed close to the solitary oak tree we had chosen to sleep under.

The sheep, still divided into two separate groups were within 50 yards of each other, as close as they could be without getting mixed up.  They were remarkably unmoved, I thought, scanning them with my torch.  I was rewarded with the reflections of 1500 pairs of eyes fixed like green stars in the black night. But although they stayed put, their bleats showed that they were on red alert. 

Somehow, with all the alarms and excursions, someone managed to gather wood for a fire, get it going and make food in the smoke-blackened cauldron.

Wolves and rain apart, I was in turmoil over the animals' welfare.  I never knew how the men would react to the suffering of the creatures they had in their charge, fearing their cruelty but as often as not, witnessing deep and immediate compassion.  On one of his excursions away from the flock, Ghita had brought a cojoc for me because I had said I was cold at night.  Tonight the heavy sheepskin cloak was needed elsewhere: one of the ewes had lost nearly all her fleece during the winter and he carried her to the fireside in his arms, flung the cojoc around her and a plastic sheet on top of that.  For the next two hours she sat there, invisible in her tent except for her breathing which came steadily more easily; we could see she was still alive by the plastic rising and falling. 

Cries of 'wolf' continued for the next two to three hours and meanwhile it was still pouring.  Hugging the fire as though it were a lifebelt as well as the only way to dry my sodden clothes, at one point Iosif nudged my shoulder, 'Lup la deal' ('A wolf, up there on the hill.')  I searched the gloom in the direction he pointed to.  'Uita acolo, nu vezi?'  But I didn't see it.  My glasses were dripping - forget contact lenses! - and the only shape I could make out was a moving something a hundred yards away; it might have been a wolf or a figment.

The scare continued all night and I was the only with time to doss down: every few minutes the dogs broke out into another uproar and the night sky was bright with the crossbeams of four powerful head torches. They were like antiaircraft lights but no-one was going to sound an all clear.

For most of that night, Ghita was nowhere to be seen: he was rushing around, checking and rechecking the sheep. At 1.20 am while I was buried in my bivvi trying to be oblivious, Marcel, a 14 year old Rrom who had run away from school to become a shepherd, raced from the woods to the fire screaming, 'A luat un magar!' (It's taken a donkey!' It hadn't; one of the donkeys had either slipped over or was rolling.)  Ghita was furious; his stress levels were at breaking point.  That night more than any other we felt the lash of his tongue.  He was like a captain at sea in a hurricane. 

I might have dropped off peacefully after that but for the aforementioned Marcel who at 2.10 am yelled right in my ear, 'Tanti, tanti, umbla ursi!!!' ('Auntie, auntie, there are bears about!!!'). There weren't of course - we were too low down - but I didn't know that and his electrifying news got me out of bed in seconds flat. That was the last zizz I had till morning. 

No sheep were lost to wolves but during the downpour one of the ewes slipped down a steep bank into a stream and drowned.  Marcel and I found her in the morning by chance while taunting each other about wild beasts in the woods, when the rain had eased and we were off again on the quest for grass.  Ghita's anguish was palpable; he spoke little when upset, and after he and Marcel had hauled the corpse up onto the bank by its horns, and after Ghita had kicked it with his boot, wobbling her sides to see if there was really no life left, he cut off her yellow tag and turning away with his face turned down, he abandoned her for the crows, the wolves and the worms.  It meant another motherless lamb to feed and protect; another source of income gone; another living thing that he had nurtured, dead. 

My jeans, boots and socks were sopping and freezing even after the roasting they got over the camp fire; during the rest of the day I had to make a decision, if it was time to withdraw I had to leave now.  I wanted to rethink my equipment; I was afraid I was an extra responsibility; I didn't want to get ill.

A lot depended on the weather, and on how much food there was and how often.  When it was there it was wonderful: mamaliga, telemea and branza de burduf, delicious soups, and slanina all cooked in a cauldron or grilled on an open fire. Purple onions, coarse white bread, the occasional apple or piece of chocolate.   Water, when we had it, came from wells, in varying degrees of purity.  A great deal of grease and salt, no such thing as five fruit a day.  Not my usual fare, but at the time it tasted ambrosial.

Ghita can't afford to up sticks and leave though I'm sure he sometimes feels like it: he faces another four to five weeks on the road until he can reach the relative safety of his home village and enclosed fields.  Soon after that - when he has decided which of the lambs will be sold - there will be other dangers and hardships: he'll be off to the summer pastures 1000 metres above Jina in the Cindrel Massif.

 Gadina (monsters) are everywhere: as for the immediate future, he will often travel at night so as to avoid traffic in town centres; he will have to cross railway lines and main roads braving drivers who think they have priority; he will have to face angry farmers who don't want sheep on their land and keep his animals from trampling new crops.  And last but not least he'll have to rely on his hired men who may get fed up and leave him stranded. 

I stayed until my things got so soaked I could bear it no longer.  My bivvi bag, bought from eBay as almost new, ex-army Gortex and rainproof, wasn't.

It was an incredible, extraordinary experience, a huge test of human and animal endurance.  My strength - and sometimes my patience - were stretched to the limit and I never want to eat lamb again.

If I had time to sort my gear I would go back to the flock but my time has run out.  A return visit will have to wait for the autumn or next spring. Who knows if Ghita will go on the road again; if I were him I might shrink from the idea but he's made of stronger stuff, is much younger, has been doing this since he was a child and more importantly than all of the above, it's the way he makes his living. While I was with him and the other shepherds I saw how simply they live, how inadequate their gear is, how much responsibility they have.  Other people might despise shepherds for being uneducated - which some certainly are - but while I was with them, their courage, team work and stoicism struck me as little short of heroic.  They were also very courteous towards me, and it can't have been easy to nake allowances for an ignorant foreigner, let alone one from a different gender.  True, there were grumbles about pay, conditions and the rest.  There are no fixed pay rates and each man must negotiate his own fee. Iosif told me that depending on what experiience and responsibilities he has, a hired shepherd may get between 800 and 1200 lei per month.  Iosif said that a sterpar (who looks after the ewes without lambs) gets the most because he has the most responsibility and the hardest life.  Hired shepherds also receive their food, clothing and cigarettes.  The clothes include short wellie boots which most shepherds wear with obiele, thick wool wraps inside rather than socks; they may have anoraks and most have their own cojoace (which cost around 120 Euros new, and I don't know if they are provided).  Compared to my old Swiss hiking boots, their gumboots seemed woefully inadequate and the sight of Marcel lying down on the sopping earth in nothing but a thin wind-sheeter, thin slacks and a thin plastic sheet made me shudder.  But my sources tell me that Ghita pays well in comparison with other bosses.  

Ghita and his men - and his girlfriend who came to his rescue because Marcel went AWOL after I left - are still out there, dealing with the realities of shepherding life while I have retreated to a nice warm flat in Cluj.

My overall impression? A respect and liking for this courageous young man who undertakes an incredible journey twice a year so as to maintain his animals in the most natural conditions he can find, so that the milk and meat they provide will taste really good. Compassion both for him and his shepherds who were great, most of the time, and who had to put up with a lot of hardships and anxieties of their own.  As an animal lover and a carnivore my short walk with transhumant sheep threw my hypocrisy in my face.  Was it that rather than the physical discomfort which has, for the moment, driven me away?  Had Ghita not been the person he is, had the hired shepherds not been so considerate - and all of them were human, and often very funny, if not always humane - and had the landscape not been so breathtaking and the animals so charming, I might have thought the whole thing a waste of time.  But even though there were cons, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.