A visit to the Transylvanian Food Company

It wasn't what I had been expecting at all: a discussion about genetically modified crops with an environmentalist who doesn't run screaming into the hills.  And who didn't make me want to do the same.  

Until I met Jim Turnbull, I was agin GM per se, entrenched in loathing for a barrowload of reasons while forgetting that the science behind the process has a benevolent, not to say enthralling side.  

Jim is the director of a new venture called The Transylvanian Food Company (TFC).  As it says on the tin, the firm is based in Transylvania, and it specialises in juices, cordials and preserves made from locally-sourced, naturally-grown flowers and fruits.  
 
Before I frighten the horses, I should say that TFC has nothing to do with GM...  but Jim's attitude to the technology and its uses got me thinking.  What are the real benefits?

Well, obviously, there is the alleviation of hunger and poverty: by allowing people to grow their own food for one thing.  So why are people so against GM:

The Citizenship Foundation has summarised the arguments:  In the left-hand column you'll find the pros, and the cons are on the right:

Crops can be engineered to be pest/disease resistant and so reduce or eliminate the need to use pesticides or herbicides. This reduction in chemicals can benefit the environment and wildlife.	The creation of pest or herbicide resistant GM crops could result in superbugs or superweeds that evolve to be resistant to the chemicals or toxins developed in conjunction with GM crops.
GM foods could be made healthier than conventional foods by, for example, modifying them to include extra vitamins and nutrients.	The growing of GM crops could result in cross-pollination between GM crops and non-GM and organic crops thereby contaminating them.
Since the wide scale consumption of food from GM crops began some seven years ago there have been no substantiated cases of harm to human health.	Because it is a new technology, there is a need to adopt the precautionary principle. The long term impacts on human health, food safety or the environment cannot be accurately predicted. It is too risky to allow the commercial growing of GM crops at this stage.
Crops could be modified to reduce or eliminate allergic affects, e.g. by removing the allergic properties from nuts or altered so they have medicinal benefits, e.g. contain vaccines for specific diseases.	GM crops which have additional proteins or altered genetic composition could result in toxic and allergic reactions in certain people.
Crops could be modified to enable them to survive and grow in unfavourable conditions and withstand drought or floods. This could be particularly beneficial to farmers in the developing world.	GM crops will result in increased dependency on transnational biotech corporations to supply seed and chemicals, the result being monocultures. This will prove particularly costly and damaging to small scale farmers in the developing world who rely on saving seed from year to year and often plant a diversity of crops.
Crops can be created that give higher yields and better quality food. This is particularly important to help meet the demand for food by an expanding world population.	GM is not the key to food security and GM crop developments to date have largely benefited northern countries and markets, not small scale farmers in the developing world. Food security lies in the more equal distribution of food, access to land and money by the poor.

  

Why is someone like Jim Turnbull encouraging the use of this technology?  After all, on the face of it, he is running a classic Slow Food organisation, which surely means that GMs are anathema?  Well, no: like a good scientist, he likes the idea in its purity, but not some of its grosser applications.  While mentioning the M word, he cited the example of Monsanto injecting tomatoes with fish genes to prevent the fruit from freezing.  But unlike some of us, he does not start bristling with anger when Monsanto's name is mentioned.  This may be partly because he used to work for Cargill, one of the world's largest trading corporations (in terms of its revenue).  Cargill is one of the giants of food marketing; it employs 140,000 people in 65 countries.  To quote from its own factsheets:

Between 1975-99, “Cargill diversified with new operations in beef, pork and poultry processing, steel making, citrus processing, petroleum trading and merchandising, international metals, fibers and tropical commodities trading, and fertilizer production. By its 125th anniversary in 1990, Cargill, its subsidiaries and affiliates were found in 57 countries representing nearly 55,000 employees. 

And from 2000 to the present, "Cargill's goal of becoming the premier global food and agriculture company pushed a renewed emphasis within the company on innovation and technology. The company evolved from trading soybeans, to processing them into meal and oil, to producing high-value natural vitamin E from a soybean byproduct. And it moved from trading corn, to processing corn into ethanol and fructose, to creating a whole new family of renewable products — from plastics to fabric made from corn."
  
If that all sounds gung-ho, Cargill has plenty of critics.  To see a list of complaints which include human rights abuses, deforestation and food contamination, visit Criticisms of Cargill.  

Jim Turnbull was a relatively small cog in Cargill's wheels, but he has no time for those who damn global companies simply because they are big.  Or who complain about corporations without engaging with them.  

To give 'the other side' their say is a fundamental principle of getting on in life, let alone journalism, but the cynical among us may be forgiven for believing that 'they' (the powerful, the Establishment) won't listen unless they are forced or shamed into it.  Some campaigners can be so extreme that they do more harm than good - animal rights activists who attack scientists and their families, for example - but the other side of this coin is government bullying and the loss of free speech.  It was good to find someone who has had feet in several very different camps.  Apart from this, Jim's willingness to discuss the pros and cons of genetic modification with a complete stranger struck me as more than media-savviness; it was courteous. 

Talking about his time as a rural development consultant in Africa, Jim told me (and I'm paraphrasing him here): "In certain situations, companies like Cargill are the only ones that can get things done.  How would you move thousands of tons of food hundreds of miles to an area where people are starving, without guys like them?  Those are real situations.  You have to be practical."  



TFC is based in Saschiz, a village in Mures county, in the heart of the Siebenburgen, an area of Transylvania famous for the fortified churches which German colonists built in the 13th and 14th centuries to defend themselves from marauders.  Presented to tourists as a fairy-tale land, the region is full of potential for sustainable development but poverty levels are high.  

The factory - which is surely a misnomer for such an attractive timber-clad building - abuts the E60 which runs through the centre of Saschiz.  The road takes the brunt of Romania's transcontinental traffic, and it's unlikely that the truckers who thunder through the village have a clue that the TFC is there, or that Saschiz is such a lovely place.  Its fortified Saxon church is listed as a World Heritage Site, and its castellated clock tower is a copy of the gorgeous 13th century one in Sighisoara. 

If you visit TFC, you get to see behind the scenes in more ways than one: for sure, life takes a deep breath once you leave the highway and goes at a slower pace.  You can still see horse-drawn carts here although they are becoming a rarity.  Rows of wonky red tiled farmhouses stagger becomingly along dirt tracks and a charming wooden bridge with a timber canopy allows people but not cars across the stream.  Stop a moment: the bridge is not as old as it looks: it was built for a British tv film set in the Cotswolds and starring Ian McShane.  

Going round the back into TFC's courtyard brings you into the heart of an organisation that is merging a cottage industry with high-tech ideas.  It is also helping to give employment to the inhabitants of this village of just over 2000 people, many of whom live in squalid conditions and most of whom have very little hope of improving their lives.  Official statistics say that 35% of the population is unemployed.  

TFC can provide work at least some of the time: apart from five permanent, full-time employees and four seasonal workers with contracts, the firm pays people piece rates to collect elder and acacia blossom for its various fruit juices.  During the picking season which may last between three to six weeks, about 1300 individuals collect the blooms.  Some of them work in teams; others collect the flowers alone.  One old lady paid for the medication that she needed for a whole year by gathering blossom for TFC.  Many of the harvesters are Gypsies - Roma who would otherwise have little work except weeding.  Pickers get 50 Euro cents per kilogram.  

Jim told me that TFC has an agreement with the primari (mayors) of Saschiz and surrounding villages that allows their workers to take the blossom from their waysides and common land.  Anyone tempted to increase their yield by cutting down trees will get caught, because it is obvious by the quality of the flowers, and their harvest will be rejected.  

Enforcing legislation to do with food and the way it's produced is a problem: people often just don't see the point or feel that they can't afford to comply with it.  

Jim is strict about his business methods.  'There is no point in being dishonest.  We make an issue of sticking to the rules...  We pay £1800 in council tax, but we're probably the only company [in Saschiz] paying the tax!'   He admits that implementing global food standards may be 'a mission impossible', but better controls 'will come'.  

When I visited the company in May 2013, it was nearing the end of one of a bumper season for elder flowers.  Romania had had a severe drought for the previous two summers but last spring the rain and heat came at the right time.  TFC had just finished making 20,000 litres of elder flower juice in two days.  Two weeks previously, pickers collected 7.5 tons in one day: a record harvest to date.  They bring the flowers in whatever transport they have: in carts, on bikes, using hand carts or on foot.   

Elder and acacia are their best sellers, but TFC also makes a raspberry cordial that is "to die for".  Using beet sugar from Brasov, the fresh juices are semi-processed in Saschiz and exported in tankers to the UK where a firm called Bottle Green makes the finished article and sends some of it back to Romania.  In Britain, TFC's fruit juices and cordials have been taken up by stores such as Waitrose.  There is no doubting the quality of the drinks, or the other products in the company's larder - a delicious range of jams, ketchups, sauces, and chutneys.  Some of them are wild combinations: jam made from chile peppers, and rhubarb and vanilla are recent innovations.  My favourite is the plum ketchup.  

Saschiz is also the home of ADEPT, an NGO founded in 2002 to work with local farmers "in order to solve the range of problems threatening the survival of these remarkable landscapes and of the small-scale farming communities living within thempromote local products and small-scale farming."  ADEPT has concentrated on supporting local people who make jams, and for a limited period, it has enabled several local small holders to sell their milk in Bucharest.  It has won an impressive amount of funding for prestigious development projects.  Through ADEPT's intervention, Tarnava Mare, a "high nature" geographical region of 85,000 hectares around Saschiz, has become a Natura 2000 site, a protected environment that qualifies for certain EU development funds.  One of the aims for the area is to encourage sustainable tourism.  

Although Jim used to work for ADEPT, TFC has a different aim, not only in the type of foodstuffs it makes but by becoming a business it has "a chance to grow and stay alive".  

He told me that is a crucial difference: "NGOs have tended to make a virtue out of negativity", he said (my paraphrasing again), "They often focus on problems rather than solutions".  That is quite a sweeping statement, but Jim was not exaggerating.  He knows the terrain, having started out by doing Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) in Africa.  To quote his profile on LinkedIn, his career encompasses: 

"Over 40 years of commercial business and agribusiness experience in Africa, Asia, South America and Europe. During this time he has been involved in rural development projects, commercial operations, the identification of business opportunities, the preparation of feasibility studies, strategic planning, development plans for privatisation, restructuring, change management and the introduction of commercial management to a variety of micro, small, medium and large enterprises. He has work experience in 30 countries worldwide and has won and supervised over 500 projects in a further 48 countries. A sound understanding of business, the private sector, international aid agencies and the consultancy industry has been combined with the ability to identify specific client requirements, establish the resources required and to provide practical solutions...  He is now putting into practice what he has been advising about for decades..."

"I tell my staff to concentrate on solutions not problems".  This was a wake up call to those of us who get a little bit set in our ways!  One area of real concern is the lack of support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), such as this one.  Romania is not unique in this: it's a global issue that hinges on what's known as the 'missing middle'.  It's main case is lack of access to capital.  Even though respected financial analysts such as the Harvard Business School have proved that in rich countries, SMEs generate up to 50% of GDPs adn 60% of employment, grant-funders, banks and other financial institutions generally are not interested.  So far all of TFC's backers are based in Great Britain. 

In the meantime, Jim is determined to encourage business in Romania.  To this end he has founded a business network for Transylvania which, when I spoke to him, had 45 members across the region.  

There is plenty more to say about TFC, Jim Turnbull and Saschiz, but I want to return to the question of GM crops.  When I got back to Britain, Jim sent me an email with a file attached.  It was an article called 'Genetically modified crops: time for a reasoned stance'.  The piece was from the spring 2013 issue of a magazine published by the Tropical Agriculture Association.  The TAA was founded in the late 1970s and aims to "advance education, research and practice in agriculture for development", particularly in the tropics and sub-tropics.  Its website urges you to join this vibrant, voluntary group of professionals and institutions which wants to:

• "Contribute to international policies aimed at reducing poverty and improving livelihoods in rural areas in the tropics, sub-tropics and countries with less developed economies in temperate areas.  

• Encourage efficient and sustainable use of local resources and technologies, to arrest and reverse the degradation of the natural resources base on which agriculture depends, and to raise productivity of both agriculture and related enterprises to increase family incomes and commercial investment in the rural sector."

  
The article's author was Brian Sims.  Its strap line tells you that Brian Sims is an "FAO agriculture mechanization consultant focussing on the needs of conservation agriculture".  The writer sums up current attitudes to GM crops and pleads for an unemotional reassessment.  He says:

"The regulatory environment in Europe is somewhat hostile to GM and there are just three institutions working in this field in the UK..."

He reports on a seminar held in 2012 at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in Cambridge.  Its title was "Is it time for a public-good programme?" Among the GM products discussed at the seminar were: 

"anthocyanin-rich tomatoes; aphid-resistant wheat; long-chain fatty acid Camelina; and potatoes for bioplastics. There is a wide range of future R&D possibilities for GM, most importantly for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance, but also for resistance to blight, drought and salinity, conversion from C3 to C4 photosynthetic pathways, N(itrogen) fixation and creating perennial cereals."

Brian Sims argues that:

"Genetically engineering crop plants with on-board pest resistance is not only good for production and the pocket, it is of great environmental benefit as well."

He uses Rachel Carson's frightening book, 'Silent Spring' (1962), to show that flooding cereals with chemicals to kill weeds and diseases was a short-term answer that created a long-term disaster.  

The article's tone is eminently sensible.  It wants to set GM in context:

"...let us back-track a little and see how we can transfer desirable traits from one organism to another by an exchange of genetic material."

He continues, almost as though cooing:

"First there is the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens, the cause of crown gall disease, which infects plants by tunnelling into them and delivering its genetic material, which it extracts from a plasmid and is wrapped in a protective protein specialized proteins. The former promote cell division and produce the gall; the latter form the substrate for the bacterium and the invader's renegade DNA is copied with each division of the host's cells. Apparently, it is not difficult for molecular biologists to cut and paste desirable genes into the bacterial plasmid and so gain access to the host plant on the back of the bacterium. Agrobacterium is, as James Watson describes, a natural genetic engineer.

"Agrobacterium has itself been the subject of genetic engineering and it can now be persuaded to perform its magic on even the most recalcitrant crop species. Before this, getting desirable DNA into plant cells involved firing gold or tungsten pellets, attached to the DNA to be transferred, into the target cells. Haphazard and lacking in finesse, the 'gene gun' (or biolistic particle delivery system) is nevertheless successful and is still used."

All this is extremely interesting.  But it doesn't address the problems of misuse, deliberate or accidental.  Hold on, though:   

"There is much debate on the Monsanto 'Roundup Ready' herbicide-tolerant GM crops (soya, canola and sugar beet). At first sight, this would appear to be a multinational company out to lock farmers into using their products and coming back for new seeds each year. In fact, the glyphosate herbicide used is a lot more benign than the herbicide cocktails that would otherwise be required and, when combined with resistant GM crops, much less of it is needed. The introduction of the so-called 'terminator gene', which flips genetic switches and produces seeds incapable of germinating, was a PR disaster for Monsanto and it was withdrawn from the market. As always, farmers have the last word and they are the ones who can see the advantages of Roundup Ready crops and select them through preference."

Are those of us who are hostile to GM crops strangling beneficial research?

"Currently, Europe has a hostile regulatory environment with respect to GM R&D. This means that there is limited private sector investment which could, in the near future, put us at a disadvantage compared with the rest of the world. In this scenario, it may be time to call for increased public investment so that the outputs remain in the public domain as public goods. Barriers seem to have been erected to achieving improved genetic potential from crops and, given the kind of poor harvest that we have had in 2012, this may not be the wisest course to take. One question to ask, for example, is that if the UK needs to import wheat, then where would the source be in these times of droughts, floods and dramatically reduced yields? Crop productivity is the key to increased production and, at the moment, the rate of improvement of 0.5% annually is not enough to satisfy rising needs. With GM, although it would be a long and expensive process, yield improvements of up to 2% per year could be achieved."

So, should we open Pandora's Box or not?  Should we trust Monsanto and allow it to come off the naughty step?  

To find out what one of GM's fiercest critics was saying, I found an article on Greenpeace's website.  Genetically Modified Crops and Soil is a Greenpeace Digital document about the potential for intensive agriculture - and GM crops - to destroy healthy soils.  In it, there is a quotation from Dick Thompson which says "if you take the living component out of soil, it's a bit like switching the lights off in a factory: everything comes to a grinding halt". 

Dick Thompson and Brian Sims were once colleagues.  They both worked at the Silsoe Research Institute where Brian Sims was leader of the International Development Group.  Silsoe, as it was usually called, was a fantastically useful British organisation dedicated to improvements in agriculture, animal welfare and rural livelihoods.  Funded in 1924, Silsoe was first a university department and then a government-sponsored centre for research into agricultural, food processing and environmental engineering.  From 1994 it was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).  Silsoe's aims were then concentrated on developing "physical, engineering and mathematical applications to agricultural and biological processes and systems".  This included monitoring the effects of GM crops.  In 2006, the BBSRC withdrew its support for Silsoe and the Institute closed.

Jim Turnbull was so upbeat about the potential for GM crops that it was hard to be glum*.  Thanks to our encounter, I still do not feel like heading for the hills.  But it is hard to see how discussions about GM technology and the need for enormous increases in food production (and housing) to satisfy the world's population explosion and energy expectations could leave room for transhumant pastoralism (which is the reason for this blog, after all).  If not by hiding in the Carpathian forest, maybe I can express my feelings by using Oscar Wilde's last words: "One of us must go".

*Update, 25th August 2013: In an email, Jim Turnbull commented on this post:

"I am not a fan of Monsanto by the way - I think they handled the whole
issue of GM very badly.

What I was saying was the that the science itself is not bad and should not
be dismissed outright because of the  mess made by Monsanto.

I am very positive in what I do, not about the future of GMO.

The issue of farm retained seed for small farmers is another hot topic. In
the past small farmers have used mostly open pollinated seeds and these were
improved over the years by farmers and by government funded research
stations. It is not normally the domain of the private sector to invest in
maintaining open pollinated seeds. However, in recent decades governments
and donors have failed to adequately fund research stations and this is why
small farmers are now struggling to get open pollinated seeds and why many
traditional varieties  have been lost. The private sector generally develop
hybrid seeds for medium to large scale farmers, without these improvements
in yield we would  be failing to feed the world, but of course there has
been a price in terms of the problems caused by intensive agriculture." 

Update, February 2015:

Since talking to Jim Turnbull in Saschiz, my attitudes have crystallised. In spite of his benevolent view

 – which seems to say that things have got so bad in Africa that the only solution is to accept intervention 

by huge foreign corporations, I'm convinced that the argument for GMO crops and factory farms is being 

propagated by big companies that have vested interests in making them seem essential. If you accept that 

colonialist powers made the problems in the first place, it does not follow that colonialist corporations are 

the only ones that can clear them up. The more I talk to people who are not connected to such organisations, 

the more I think that thinking so is wrong: it still smacks of ‘we know best’. If global markets did not have a 

stranglehold on local economies, and if people were allowed to get on with growing their own, there would be 

enough food for them without poisoning the air, soil and water with high concentrations of toxic chemicals 

and introducing organisms whose effects have been shown to be dangerous: to cite only one case, GM crops 

have led to an increase in resistant weeds that themselves need to be zapped by more chemicals. Monsanto 

et al’s recent attempt (December 2014) to muzzle Oregonians who simply wanted to know whether their foods 

contained GMOs or not show how badly these companies want to monopolise everything we own, eat, wear, 

watch, etc, and how scared they are of losing their stranglehold. If GMOs were safe, why would they want to 

hide them? But you will not take my word for it, so here is an article that explains what I mean very well: 

http://newint.org/blog/2015/01/26/african-agriculture-myths/. 

    



 

Raining in Râmnicu

Last week I went by bus from Sibiu to the village of Vaideeni.  It meant travelling south from Transylvania, along the pass which the mighty Olt River cuts through the Carpathian Mountains, to the province of Oltenia, in south-west Romania.  Vaideeni lies in the forested foothills, 40 km or so to the west of the county town of Râmnicu Vâlcea, and is part of a network of shepherding communities that has linked southern Transylvania with Oltenia, crossing national and cultural boundaries, for more than 200 years.  

Having jumped from winter to summer in a fortnight, the weather had turned thunderous; going through Râmnicu, the skies clouded over again, prompting the poem which you'll find at the end of this post.


Vaideeni has blood ties to the Marginimea Sibiului, a cluster of 18 settlements in the Cindrel Mountains, whose income has traditionally from sheep breeding.  In the late 18th century, people ran away from Marginimea Sibiului to Oltenia, which was then part of an Ottoman Turkish buffer state.  In the west we called it Wallachia; the Romanian name is Ţara Româneasca, The Romanian Land.  Vaideeni was one of several villages that received an influx of Ardeleni, those Transylvanians who fled from Marginimea Sibiului, bringing their sheep and their folklore with them.  They were escaping from the tyranny - as they saw it - of Habsburg rule, which included conscription into regiments of border guards, from Hungarian feudalism, and from the persecution by the Roman Catholics of their own Orthodox rites (viz. General von Bukow's raids of 1761-62).


From Râmnicu Vâlcea, the road passed the struggling Oltchim plant, a state-owned chemical factory which has been facing closure because of huge debts.  Oltchim is one of the largest producers of chemicals in South East Europe; it employs around 3500 people.  Its specialities include pvc, propylenes, caustic soda and construction materials.  The IMF has decreed that Oltchim must be privatised or close, raising fears about job losses.  I had no idea how big Oltchim was physically till I saw it last Tuesday: it stretches for a mile along the River Olt, I guess.

Seeing it for real made me ask why I dislike of this kind of industry, where real people work, which gives them a foundation for life, without - bits of - which (plastic?) I probably wouldn't be writing this blog.  Is it an indulgence that only the privileged can afford?  What kind of life?  Surely there cannot be anyone left on the planet who denies the role of manmade CO2 emissions in global warming; this and the loss of forests and of other natural habitats is terrifying, but maybe universal gloom is not the answer.  Having had conversations with the likes of ecotourism consultant, Gavin Bell, and Jim Turnbull, the founder of the Transylvanian Food Company, I found them upbeat, although not exactly gung-ho, about the future of Romania, if not of the planet.  Encouraged by their positive attitudes, I plunged back into David MacKay's 'Sustainable energy without the hot air' - free download, folks – which I have tried to read before.  As its title implies, the book tries to put the arguments for and against fossil fuels on clear, flat ground.  Second time around, it was a lot less hard-going: what has changed: the world or my head?  

Musing on the minefields thereof, I stayed in Vaideeni for two days.  I received a gracious, generous, easy welcome which reminded me of earlier visits to this part of western Romania, when I had spent time in Targu Jiu, where Brancusi's war memorials, The Table of Silence, The Gate of the Kiss, and the Infinite Column, testify to the city's stand against German troops in the Second World War.  It is a beautiful area, at least to the north, where you can still see the mountains.  Although its villages are always interesting and there are striking, towered manor houses called cula to visit, Oltenia's undulations become wider and less interesting the closer they get to the Danube.  

Vaideeni, first mentioned in the 1400s, was populated by Wallachians who had their own problems - often with the local monastery of Bistrita which owned the village even under the Turkish regime, and wanted its dues in labour and tithes.  The bastinasi (original inhabitants) left their homes in droves, before the Transylvanians arrived, highlighting the fact that Romanians have become used to the kind of instability that the British on their isolated islands know little about, and find hard to appreciate.  Come the Ardeleni, and transhumance: local historian Vartolomei Todeci has traced the routes of the crescatori de oi (sheep breeders) across what is now Romania's frontiers, and across the Danube, hundreds of miles to the south and east but also to the Banat (in the west).  As always when I see these route maps, charting walks on foot over mountains paths as well as near well-established trade routes, it underlines the shepherds' practicality as well as their courage, because they were driven by necessity rather than adventurousness. 

Two days in Vaideeni gave me the chance to meet and interview four people: Vartolomei Todeci himself (now in his 80s, he has to have kidney dialysis but is a mine of information and manages to play a mean flute), Adam Banciu, a retired sheep farmer, and Mr and Mrs Ghencea - who seemed much younger than their probable age (70s?) - and were full of enthusiasm, he for the ancient craft of shepherding, and she for weaving, which she does at a wooden loom that almost filled her small sitting room.  My lasting impression is how energetic they were, how passionate they were about their nation, and how nostalgic they felt about - the undoubtedly tough - shepherding life.

Mild-mannered, eager Mr Ghencea told me he had had to leave Oltchim because of an accident.  Farming was his only option, but he said, 'I was not ashamed to become a shepherd, not at all'.  Which suggests that he was aware, at least a little, of the stigma involved in taking to the outdoor life, in some social circles at least.  

They were great.  For me Vartolomei Todeci, known as Vicu, was the most interesting: his depth of knowledge, enthusiasm and modesty caught my imagination - I could have happily talked to him and his Moldavian wife for the rest of the day.      

Vicu has written several books including a weighty history of Vaideeni and a collection of poetry by local shepherds; like the other two men he plays the fluier, and for many years, he was musical director of the village folk choir.  On the walls of the family dining room there are photos of the group in which everyone looks resplendent in their traditional dress - white clothes embroidered in black for the women, white shirts, trousers and black waistcoats for the men - and are posing stiffly in that unsmiling, unmistakeably communist, style at one or other of the annual folk music festivals, or at Căntarea a României, the biennial competition that Ceauşescu founded in the early 1980s to encourage traditional Romanian culture. 

Rândunica (The Swallow)
Pe-o frumoasă rândunică
Dorul am trimis în ţări
Şi să-i treacă fără frică,
Peste codrii, peste mări.
Şi pe iarnă să-l ierneze
În ţînutul cald, frumos,
Când veni-va-n primăvară,
Vie şi ei sănătos.
În frumoasă primăvară
Când s-o-ntoarce iar la noi,
Rândunica vreau să-i poarte
Şi pe deal, şi pe zăvoi.
Şi-n bordee, şi-n palate
Până-n sănul tuturor.

This poem was written in 1937 by Dumitru Vartolomei Tărtăreanu (born 1891), and comes from the collection, Păstori poeţi, Vaideeni, Vâlcea, edited by Vartolomei Todeci (Râmnicu Vâlcea, 2009).  

Vicu says that Dumitru Tărtăreanu ‘attended the first five classes at Vaideeni school, then became a shepherd.  He was an intelligent man, but, his father having died when Dumitru was a child, his family had few chances to get an education.  However, Dumitru liked writing, and during the First World War, he wrote a poem to Queen Marie.  She gave him a prize which could have opened the doors to university, but he chose to go back to the shepherding life... His poems appeared in county newspapers and in Stâna (The Fold), a magazine published by the Romanian Sheep Farmers’ Union in Poiana Sibiului’.  Poiana Sibiului, a name to conjure with in shepherding circles: a village that perches high above Sibiu, is famous for its enormous houses, and hosts the largest annual stock market in Romania.  It was a man from Poiana Sibiului who asked Ceauşescu for permission to buy a helicopter – to keep an eye on his flocks which were so large that they grazed over several mountains.  

This trip has underlined what a fascinating, attractive, talented, conflicted country Romania is: so many wheels within wheels, so many bruised egos, so many insecurities, so much pain to heal, and so much simple faith and common sense whiich could do it, if anyone would listen, would believe in themselves a bit more. My head is spinning from listening to so many contradictory opinions in Romania: politicians, journalists, church leaders.  I heard so many expressions of doom, frustration, anger and their polar opposites:  the genius of the people, their talent, their enthusiasm. Just one example: the teenage soap Lala Band on Pro tv.  I found it while channel surfing during an idle moment, and was captivated.  Lala Band tells the everyday stories of the mixed-up youngsters who play in a band together - soppy stuff you might think but rather than looking and acting like human Barbie dolls, the characters are realistic, the angst that they portray is understandable, their problems are sympathetic, and, given that they are fictional and limited by time, the way their stories are resolved is convincing.  If these are some of the advantages of coming from a 'backward', 'isolated' country (not my opinion!), then bring them on. 

Raining in Râmnicu
An umbrella opens like a flower
On a patent leather street:
Râmnicu Vâlcea in a thunder storm.
Liquid mirrors the city's harder architectural past
Dripping subversion into concrete ears;
Then someone tells a joke.
Humour is rainproof against the official clattering:
A sun-yellow, spring action coverall
Smelling of roses.

Sheep in diaspora

Thanks to my occasional 'day job' of guiding British visitors around Romania, I'm lucky to get several trips here a year.  One tour has just ended and the next is about to start, so in the breathing space between them, I want to record a few of the new insights that are lighting my way to what I hope will by a richly rewarding transhumant experience that will help to remind us just how much we owe to sheep and shepherds.  One of these flashes has come from Alexandru Surdu's book, Scheii Brasovului.  The book is a fascinating history of the Schei district of Brasov, published in 1981 after years of frustration and stone-walling by his fellow academics, censors, publishers and the like.  Schei was inhabited long before the Saxons elbowed their way into Brasov.  It (probably) gets its name from the Slavs that swirled in and out following the Romans' withdrawal from Dacia in 271AD - but Schei was also a cauldron of other peoples with their own long-forgotten claims to belonging here, including Cumans, Pechenegs and the Dacians themselves. 

Tomorrow (12th May), if you can get here in time, you can enjoy the spectacle of a spring-time rite of passage that dates back to the Dacian pastoralists who lived, loved, herded sheep and fought here so long ago.  Called Junii, a word for youth, it is a gathering of clans of men who have sworn eternal brotherhood.  They dress up in all kinds of weird and wonderful variations on traditional Dacian costumes and parade - or gallop - on sturdy semi-grei (small cart-horses) from Schei through the old Saxon citadel and back to the grassy glades of Pietrele lui Solomon to get legless.  Pietrele lui Solomon, or Solomon's Rocks, are cones of schist which close this end of the city in mountainous mystery.  It promises to be very hot. 

On another spare day, I walked to Pietrele lui Solomon myself.  You can carry on panting up forestry roads far beyond them until you reach Poiana Brasov, or you can meander off into the leafy woods in scores of other directions, sucking in moss-clean air and quite forgetting that Transylvania's second largest conurbation lies at your feet.  Spring sprung quickly in Romania this year - it took two weeks from cold winter and dead, yellow grass, to temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius and greenery bursting out all over.  At the moment the apples, plums, apricots, pears and cherries are at their tender best, with blossom drifting about on the roads as if it grew on trees. 

In Piata Uniri, Schei's main square, stands a 15th century Orthodox Church with spires like you see on a Disney castle.  Disney must have copied them, though, because these are the real McCoy, and this church, dedicated to Sf. Niculae, is the most important centre of Romanian culture in Brasov if not the whole of Transylvania.  Why?  Because it was here in the 16th century that a group of theologians and teachers got together and opened the first Romanian school, founded the first Romanian printing press, and here where there is the largest collection of Romanian manuscripts in the entire country.  

The school and printing press were housed together in a charming two-storey 18th century building which is now a museum.  You can visit it for the price of a packet of chewing gum and, if you have any Romanian at all, treat yourself to a presentation by the priest, Parintele Olteanu.  I just happened to be there at the same time as a group of secondary school kids, and the banter was fast and furious.

Upstairs in the museum there is a display of some of the museum's precious Romanian literature, written in Cyrillic letters (Romanian did not use a Roman alphabet until the 19th century), and to catch the children's interest before it disintegrated into mobile phone conversations, Parintele Olteanu asked them who they thought was the most famous Romanian character in the world.  'Dracula' was the - predictable - reply.  But who was the real Dracula?  'Vlad Tepes' came the shout.  'Not at all', replied Parintele, and he went on to give a account of the blood-curdling activities of Countess Erzsebet Bathori, a 16th century Czech noblewoman who believed that bathing in virgins' blood would keep her young.  'She was the real Dracula', said Parintele, 'and Vlad Tepes had nothing to do with Bram Stoker's fictional Transylvanian count.  Stoker read about the Countess on a visit to Prague and realised that she was the perfect model for the vampire he was looking for'.  All he had to do was change her gender and move the location to the mysterious Land Beyond the Forest - Transylvania.  But where was Dracula's castle?  'Bran', said someone.  'No, absolutely not: it was near Bistrita [northern Transylvania]' - and that does tally with Bram Stoker's tale, since his Dracula lived near the Borgo Pass (Pasul Bargaului) which is near Bistrita.

When the kids had filed out, declaring that they had not been bored, Parintele Olteanu gave me five minutes of his busy time.  I mentioned my interest in transhumance, and received another flash: Parintele Olteanu is a brother of Parintele Pavel of J, the one who raised the money to restore the paintings in the 18th century Orthodox church, and the one who told me so much about one of Romania's most famous shepherding villages, and the villagers' independent, self-reliant spirit.

I rang Ghita before I began the last tour.  He was on the road with his sheep near Cluj, and sounded as though he were suffering from lack of sleep.  He and Andreea have a daughter.  I cannot wait to see them and their families again.

And today, the Polish-Romanian-Ukrainian transhumance must have set out from Rotbav on its 100 day journey across the Carpathians to Koniakow.  It would have been great to be there but I had to stay in Brasov to prepare for the next tour.  I heard that an Austrian film company is making a documentary about the trek for the BBC. 

Meanwhile my Georgian (Caucasus) friend, Devi, is leading her own transhumant tours with people rather than sheep, but we have a lively dialogue going about who will visit whose shepherding country first: she is as passionate about shepherding as me, and with her German-Javanese-Turkic background, keeps coming out with the most amazing facts - such as that one of her Turkic grandfathers was a shepherd in the Crimea, which makes me wonder if it is possible that his path crossed those of the Romanians heading east with their flocks of Turcana, and later Karakul, and if so, what they thought of and said to each other.

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. 

The cloakmaker

Constantin Vîngârzan must be one of the few sheepskin cloakmakers left in Romania, but such is the prevalence of sheep farmers in the village of J, where he lives, 900 metres up in the Southern Carpathians, that there are two of them there.  When I called round at Constantin's house, he showed me into one of those super-tidy courtyards where suburban modernity and old-fashioned wonkiness whirl round each other in a dance so fast that it can only be happening at molecular level.  Plastic windows, mirror glass and chrome balcony railings versus uneven cobbles and good, solid wood doors, and not a speck of mud or even dust - my head was spinning with the disorientation - no sign of the rich dirt that surrounded us, here in the wild, magnificent mountains, and this in mid-autumn when the concrete road outside was lined with dung, earth and leaf litter like a proper rural village.  I still found it hard to get used to the differences between how J looked from the street and from inside the domestic citadels that functioned as family homes and farmsteads.  They must have been copied from the hugger-mugger style of building which the Transylvanian Saxons developed: cheek by jowl for protection, and sealed like containers from prying eyes. 

Dl Vîngârzan's workshop lay at the back of the property, and was in the same neat state as the yard.  You had to go through a kind of conservatory to reach it, and once out back, the craftsman's studio turned out to be converted animal barns.  Looking up, I realised there were rows of new wool cloaks hanging in a huge loft above my head.  It felt as though I were tunnelling like a mole under a forest of creamy-white fur and the muffled atmosphere made that sensation more real.  Not for the first time, I realised how luxurious humble sheep's wool can be and the smell of oily fleeces and leather was intoxicating.  

First catch your fleece 

Before he can start, Dl Vîngârzan has to get hold of the sheepskins.  He keeps some capes in stock, but he generally makes them to order, and usually his clients bring him their own skins, from their own freshly-slaughtered sheep.  A single full-size cloak takes three or four skins, but before he can get down to tailoring them, he has to cure them - which he does in a tank containing a mixture of fairly toxic smelling chemicals), then he must clean, dry and sand them before cutting and sewing the leather which he does more or less by hand, although he uses a small electrically-powered sanding machine.  He let me watch him at work at his sewing table, where he sped through the process of cutting the skins into the right shape to fit round the shoulders in the light of a single electric bulb, and then sewed them together with lightning accuracy.  He skill was masterly but it was poignant to realise that as close shepherding dies out in Romania, this beautiful craft will probably disappear as well.  The Vîngârzans' children are not interested in taking the business over, and you cannot blame them because the market must be shrinking, if you will excuse the pun, and in these times, such a painstaking way of making money is not regarded as cool.  You can still find cloakmakers hawking their skins at the animal fairs that take place at villages in this area throughout the year.   

Until now I have made the mistake of calling these ankle-length, sleeveless sheepskin cloaks which shepherds wear with the fleece outside, cojoace.  Mr. Vîngârzan calls himself a cojocar, which comes from the same root.  None of the shepherds I met has ever corrected me, but a page from the brilliant anthropological website, Eliznik, shows that the correct terminology for the shaggy capes is either sarică or bituşcă, while a cojoc (pl. cojoace) is a sheepskin coat with sleeves.  

I have seen photographs of sarice (plural of sarică) with very long sleeves and the fleece worn inside, but as far as I know these are mainly worn on ceremonial occasions and decorated with embroidery.  The long sleeves look exaggerated, like the sleeves of a kimono, and very elegant on the men who carry the coats draped around their shoulders, with the sleeves hanging loose, as they do at New Year rituals, but the sleeves had a practical purpose - to protect shepherds' arms during blizzards.  And having worn a sarică and even slept in one, I can say that they are very much like a house.  Hmmm, imagine a whole building made of sheepskins... 

 

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... 

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.)