Ghita Ciobanul on the BBC

This is the text of my piece about Ghita and the shepherds broadcast on 13th January 2014 on the BBC radio programme, From Our Own Correspondent:

On a dank Monday evening some weeks ago, a Romanian shepherd called Ghita left home with his sheep. He wasn't in a lorry but on foot, accompanied by several angajati, or hired men, some shaggy dogs, and seven donkeys loaded with gear. Ghita was off on his autumn transhumance, heading north for his winter pastures. It would take him six weeks.

For a country whose defining myth revolves around shepherds, Romania isn't all that keen on its pastoralists. The Ballad of the Little Sheep (Miorita) tells of a herdsman who lets himself be murdered by two rival shepherds even though one of his lambs, who has miraculously acquired the power of speech, warns him in advance. Miorita is sometimes taken as a metaphor for Christianity, another way of showing Christ's courage in turning the other cheek. It's also said to mirror the experience of the Romanian people who have endured numerous invasions, occupations and humiliations without, it is claimed, ever losing their identity.
When Romanians were agitating for independence in the 19th Century, Transylvanian shepherds were seen as the rugged pioneers of the nationalist movement. Long before then, they had established shortcuts over the Carpathian Mountains to seasonal grazing in what is now Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, the Caucasus, southern Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Poland and the Czech Republic. Having crossed from Hungarian and Habsburg lands into Ottoman Turkey and Russia, they returned home to their more isolated communities with information, ideas and ambitions fired by the world outside.

A shepherd's CV has to offer some crucial USPs: caringness, self-reliance and dedication. He - and it's almost always a he, although in real life women did the same job - is synonymous with the kindly ideals of Christianity and for that matter Islam - but for all that, he is a humble, often solitary, sometimes rootless figure.

During Communism, certain Romanian sheep farmers did rather well. People still talk about Mr B from Poiana Sibiului who asked Ceausescu's permission to buy a helicopter. Mr B's flocks were hefted over several mountains, and he argued that being able to fly would let him keep track of them more easily. His request was refused, but Poiana is famous for other reasons - many of its shepherds built luxurious mansions at a time when most people had to stand in queues to buy food and lit their homes with 40 watt bulbs. Inaccessible to big machinery, many mountain farms escaped collectivisation, and the men and women who commuted there from the less exclusive plains, spoke of "going to America".

Like farmers worldwide, Romanian flock masters enjoy a good grumble. But things have got tough for them since 1989. Once guaranteed, prices for wool have plummeted. Although there is an international market for Romanian lamb, and sheep's cheese sells well, "slow food" has not made enough of a difference to the shepherds who find it healthier - and cheaper - to walk their sheep to far away winter pastures rather than keep their animals inside.

With its origins in the Bronze Age, if not earlier, transhumance is a form of semi-nomadism. It sounds romantic but in the past, Romanian shepherds occasionally resorted to transporting their animals by train, something they could never afford to do now.

Romanian shepherds still look archaic. They wear a long sheepskin cloak called a cojoc or sarica. With the shaggy fleece on the outside, it's also their bed, so when shepherds call the cloak their house, they aren't joking. When they sleep at all, it's outside, in all weathers. The hired men earn between 200 or 300 euros a month. They also receive daily meals, work clothing, and a cigarette allowance.

Romanians are generally learning more about their shepherds thanks to television.
In August this year, a well-known phone company* began an advertising campaign that highlighted real people doing real jobs. One of them was Ghita.
Dressed in his cojoc and rimless pot hat (another must-have piece of shepherding rig), sitting by a campfire and dancing with sheep, Ghita Ciobanul, or Ghita the Shepherd, has taken Romania by storm. Ten days after the phone company put him on Facebook, his page had clocked more than 200,000 likes. A month later, they had doubled.
In the past, Ghita has had to move his sheep illegally, during the night. Given the hazards of crossing Romania's rapidly urbanising, motorised countryside, it's the only way. Accidents and shootings have cost him scores of sheep and many dogs. Maybe this year, thanks to his new-found celebrity, Ghita will be luckier.

*Vodafone: but I think Vodafone should pay its taxes, and if you agree, see this link: http://action.sumofus.org/a/vodafone-tax-dodging/?akid=5701.863102.vCD__-&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=2

You can hear the audio version via this link; it should work for over a year from 13th Jan 2014:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01p2pcm

Another airing on the World Service, 7th March 2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01t399s 

For more information about my search for Romanian shepherds who migrated to Russia and the Caucasus, please visit this page and follow the links at the bottom. 

Piping shepherds

August 15th is a huge day in the Romanian Orthodox calendar.  It marks the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, also known as the Feast of the Assumption, celebrating the belief that after she died, Christ's mother was assumed straight away into Heaven before her body had a chance to decay.   Other names for it are Assumption Day or Mary's Day and it's not only a national holiday, but also the occasion for pilgrimages and solemn parades at many Romanian monasteries, including the famous ones of Moisei in eastern Maramures, Nicula near Cluj in Transylvania, and Putna, one of the magnificent churches that the 15th century prince, soldier and saint, Stephen the Great, founded in Moldavia.   As with many Christian feasts, the Dormition replaced a pagan festival, in this case, one that was associated with the harvest.  In Tilişca, a village in the Cindrel range of the Southern Carpathian Mountains, they reserve Assumption Day for the annual sheep breeders’ festival.  A couple of years ago, I went to see what it was like.  

Celebrating saints is something Romanians excel at.  Religion is worn on the sleeve and often mixed with a vigorous dose of pagan mythology.  Folk beliefs and folk music are closely intertwined, so adding the practical side of pastoralism to this holy event doesn't strike the wrong note.   

Up in the mountains south of Sibiu, and other regions where transhumant shepherding continues, raising sheep is regarded as an art as well as a vocation, and sheep farmers still play pipes.  It's a way of whiling lonely hours away.  True, you’ll probably see more young shepherds listening to their mp3 players than tuning up their panflutes or their single pipes but come festival time – and most festivals are linked to a saint’s day, because here every day of the year has a saint attached - young and old alike delight in showing off how well they can tootle a pretty tune.  Musical competitions – singing, dancing and playing an instrument – come naturally to the Romanians.  Their folk music was bowdlerised under the Communists – especially under the forced homage to Ceauşescu called Cântărea al României – but the simple beauty of shepherds’ impromptu piping survives.   Clad in their sheepskin cloaks the shepherds resemble the god Pan himself.  

Shepherds who kept their flocks on the high mountains sometimes need to call to neighbouring farmers: to do this, they used an alphorn called a bucium, or just shouted, as they do today, hollering across the valleys to make themselves heard. 

Romanians are intensely proud of their Dacian heritage, especially here, so close to the Dacians’ strongholds.

Back to St. Mary's Day in Tilişca.  To start the proceedings, there was a meeting in the town hall.  After the protocol speeches, voices were raised in anger: what’s going to happen to our small-holdings if nobody will collect the milk from one or two cows, or a handful of sheep and goats?  It didn’t matter that this was a shepherds’ gathering, the points were valid: the cooperative and state farm systems had destroyed some feudal estates along with a lot of what was good, but the European Union’s farming model was not designed for purpose either.  Nor was it proof against local perversion.  

Some peasants country folk still took a few litres of milk by hand to Bucharest, where city dwellers were hungry for real-tasting food and happy to pay for it.  But they couldn’t go on making these long journeys indefinitely.  ‘What happens when we get too old to work?’  ‘How will we maintain our meadows?’  Since the 1989 Revolution when some land was given back to its pre-Communist owners, Romania has become a nation of tiny farms.  Most of them are under a hectare in size, and while they provide inestimable benefits to the environment, they are deemed too small to count in the so-called ‘free’ market.  Reforms to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy which come into effect in 2014 are supposed to take account of this. 

But at the shepherds' annual meeting, the questions went unanswered.  It was easy to feel that the assembled authorities, the mayor and president of the sheep-breeders’ association who sat in a jolly row facing the audience, didn’t really care.  They were here for the party: and so after sending a few blandishments in the protestors’ direction, they led the company to the church.  

It wasn't a long service, and afterwards, there was a parade.  Teams of folk dancers and musicians had come from far and wide.  They were of all ages too, from tots to totterers.  One behind the other, the folk groups processed down one street, over a river bridge, along the main road, and back into the village centre along another street.  Their flutes and pipes played plaintive rhythms that were out of sync with each other and changed key with the Doppler effect as they passed.  They were rousing though; a wake-up call that rang against the rock walls of this tight little valley, asking for a response that didn’t come.  

Then we all went up the road to the caminul cultural (the community centre) for a slap up meal. 

People bowed their heads for grace, but after those few seconds of silence, the noise was devastating: raucous chatter and laughter reverberated around 30 trestle tables where red paper napkins adorned snowy cloths and a wealth of food met our eyes.  Now and again, you could hear the shepherds playing their pipes for fun.  We ate loads of soup, meat and bread, and drank each other’s health in plum brandy.  We gorged ourselves on local specialities such as bulz and balmos, milky, cheesy dishes based on the bright yellow sweet-corn flour that makes one of Romania’s most famous dishes, a spongy staple of every peasant home, that polenta or porridge they call mămăliga.  And then there was dessert: sweat, creamy layer cakes so squidgy they are almost obscene.    

With sated stomachs, the company drifted out.  Before we left, my friend and I thanked one of the beaming, bustling middle-aged women who had provided the feast.  We asked her if she had her own farm, and how she survived.  Her face crumpled.  ‘We get nothing’, she said; ‘less and less each year for more and more work. And we are growing too old.’  

The sheep-breeders’ party reconvened in a natural, grassy amphitheatre on a hillside overlooking the village.  At the bottom was a high wooden stage replete with amplifiers.  On this, the folk troupes sang, twirled and strutted to the jerky rhythms of time-honoured dances.  The rest of us lolled on a carpet of grasses so varied in shape, colour and smell and so riddled with cornflowers, bugloss, tiny pinks, sage and thyme that we were drunk with the abundance of it all as well as the alcohol we’d consumed.  The only solution was to doze in the shade of the willows, with only half an ear on the proceedings. 

Above us in the beech woods lay the remains of Tilişca’s own Dacian fort.  It was only a ten-minute walk away, but nobody went to look at the few remaining stones, the beautifully engineered, square-cut blocks which are one of the Dacians’ hallmarks.  

It was easy to imagine the Dacians lounging about here too, in more or less identical black and white get up.  They would have been shepherds, miners, builders and metal-workers.  Thanks to the Communist propaganda, we have been taught to think of them as proto-socialists, ordinary folk with no pretentions but their courage.  Their farmers might have had the same kind of shielings that Romanian shepherds use today. 

Lying there among the grasshoppers, I couldn’t help feeling the Dacians would have made a stand against the corruption that’s bringing Romania to its knees.  And that their true heirs were not the demogogues who love to call themselves simple shepherds, but the querulous pensioners who had had the courage to pipe up in the town hall. 

Animal fair

Poiana Sibiului, 19th September.  It was my last day in Romania.  I had postponed my flight home to visit the annual animal market.  It's said to be the largest in the country, and according to those in the know, is unmissable for anyone with the remotest interest in sheep, rural life or woollen socks.  

Leaving the mountain-top village of J is like going to a fair in itself.  I had got on the 7 am bus, and as soon as we were off, the driver started spinning the steering wheel to negotiate the cumbersome vehicle round the dizzying number of kinks in the road to the north. 

It was a sullen morning.  An unbroken ceiling of flat clouds hung over the landscape.  It wasn't conducive to a holiday spirit but if I was feeling crest-fallen my companions were made of sterner stuff, and nobody from J was going to be put off by a bit of bad weather.  Otherwise the passengers were quiet; they could have been on a normal, weekday commute to Sibiu and back.  That it was Fair Day became clear when we narrowly missed a van with two donkeys in the back.  A couple were sitting next to me, dressed in smart clothes: both wore black leather jackets, the wife had a neat headscarf tied under her chin, the husband sported a pork pie hat.  Taking the jolt in their stride, they perked up at the sight of the donkeys.  He said to her: 'How many do you think there are?'  She replied, 'I don't know - I can't see: two I think.  What can you do with two donkeys?  Sell, them I suppose.'   In this shepherding area, it's not that two donkeys are too many, but too few: for a flock of 1000 sheep travelling on foot between winter and summer pastures, you need several shepherds, and six or seven donkeys to carry their food, cooking pots and all the other gear to make life possible during a journey that can last for six weeks.  The same applies if you are travelling between your village house and one of the summer folds. 

We had just cleared the forbidding fir wood that separates J - supposedly founded sometime in the late 1300s by a ravishing heroine whose name means Fairy - from the mundane world.  Far below, to the left, the Transylvanian Plateau opened before us; to the right, I recognised Mr. B-S herding 30 sheep in tight formation over the rounded hillocks beside the road.  It's only four kilometres to Poiana Sibiului, but I have got so used to seeing sheep in vans and transporters at home in Britain, that I still did a double-take.  

Poiana Sibiului, they say, is home to the wealthiest shepherds in Romania.  Instead of the humble hovels and bothies you might expect in a pastoral haven such as this, the streets are an unbroken facade of block- or brick-built houses with reflective glass windows, balconies, panelled wood doors and pretentious pillars.  Top of the range cars have replaced the horses and carts.  But I had a hunch that the people were still down to earth - in touch with their bucolic roots and practical enough not to turn their noses up at your money.

The village centre was busy already: there were stalls all over the wide square, on both sides of the main through road.  It took me a while to realise that the animals were at another location, out of sight of the square, in a properly rural setting much further down the hill. 

Mesmerised by all the activity, I wandered past stands of tat: the kind of skimpy, garish clothes you can find at every street market in the world.  Gypsies were selling candyfloss, and one of them was tending a little spinning game where, if the pointer landed in the right place, kids could pick up a colourful plastic gizmo or brooch.  One or two of the traders were purveying fine, Astrakhan caciuli, the tall grey or black curly-coated, lambskin hats that shepherds wear in winter.  I carefully avoided the hat-sellers' eyes, torn between horror because of the way the lambs are treated - killed when they are 48 hours old, before their wool loses its curls - and the desire to handle such attractive objects.    

Along the street leading to the animal market, elderly women were laying out stacks of gorgeous, hand-made woollen clothes.  There were scores of these matrons, each one ready, if not desperate, to capture passing trade.  Was it because of the leaden sky that nobody was buying?  The range was limited but within it, the choice was phenomenal: socks; check-patterned wool jackets lined with real fleece; brown and white check stoles called ţoluri which shepherds use instead of raincoats, embroidered and fur fringed sheepskin jackets; piles of jerseys and cardigans in natural colours.  Feeling one of the jerseys I was taken aback: they were full of oil and as stiff as boards.  Made for real mountain men and women, not wimps, obviously.  

I made a detour to the wooden church, slipping in through the curlicued metal gates.  A few people were decorating family graves; there were masses of flowers both real and artificial, on the tombs and plenty of them growing in the ground.  The graves were lavish too: black and white marble slabs, gold lettering, sculptures.  Poiana Sibiului looks after its own, or at least, its dead, I felt.

Then to the animals.  I went downhill, past another graveyard, and into a natural amphitheatre with an even more spectacular view of Transylvania than before.  On one side of the track leading onto the fairground, there were more socks, more ţoluri and more stiff jumpers.  My heart bled for the knitters and weavers but at least they had each other for company.  

I stopped to get my bearings.  There was so much going on, and more people were coming all the time, in cars, vans, lorries, or on foot.  There were stalls selling all kinds of farming gear, sheep's bells in at least ten different sizes, decorated leather horse harnesses, nylon headcollars made in China, sheepskin cloaks, ropes, stainless steel buckets.   Everywhere I looked there were small groups of sheep, mainly the long-fleeced Turcana breed (but one of an Austrian variety, bred for its meat, whose heads were too large for their bodies).  

The sheep were clustered in pens or herded by shepherds on the tussocky banks that surrounded the fair ground.  There was atmosphere of bustle and excitement and, as the hours went by, of increasing joviality.  Beady-eyed, ruddy-cheeked men and women assessed their own and other people's animals.  Deals were struck, hands slapped noisily in agreement.  It seemed a far cry from the world of banking and international lonas, and of constricting EU legislation for that matter.  Was I getting a glimpse of Transylvania's counter culture, its alternative economy, of its only true democracy, even? 

It wasn't a good day for taking photographs but as if that gloom weren't enough, I was troubled by the issue of cruelty.  Not because I saw any glaring examples, if you exclude the legless man who was begging in the village square, but because most of the animals I was looking at were there because one way or another they were going to slaughter.  Many of Romania's lambs get sent by ship to the Near East while they are still alive.  Well, you will say, farming animals is cruel, and what did you expect if you visit an animal market?  Most of the Romanian farmers of my acquaintance are caring people, but they can't afford to be sentimental.  So, apart from all of us becoming vegetarians (which may be the only answer), how can we make the killing kinder?

Farmers - and for the sake of simplicity, I'm not including or even trying to define agribusiness here - are Romania's backbone.  There are still such things as 'farming villages' where people support each other, where there is inter-dependence, mutual reliance and trust.  The Romanians call it tovarășire, or comradeship - a word that came into use long before the Communist period.  It is the same sort of phenomenon that inspired George Ewart Evans's books about rural Suffolk in the early 20th century.  These clusters of kinship, of mutual friendship and practical back-up have no commercial value.  Break them up and what are you left with? 

Hairy Carpathian sheep dogs were chained in the backs of vans, or on the ground, cowering, snarling, or looking lost.  I had to pinch myself to leave them alone.  There were horses - a magnificent strawberry roan stallion built like a tank, a glossy black mare with a cergă (a stripy, loose-weave, woollen blanket) over her back; cows with calves, cows tied up to acacia trees which stood in little spinneys on the edge of the fairground, pigs in carts.  A couple of huge animal transporters, lots of small trailers.  I made the rounds, glad to say hello to people I knew, to feel I belonged, by proxy if nothing else, before going to my own home, several thousand miles away. 

Dinu B was there, with a penful of handsome rams with spotless, bouffant fleeces.  (You couldn't say the same for all the animals.)  I met Gheorghe Căţean, who had just returned from his epic, international transhumant walk from Rotbav to Koniakow in southern Poland.  

And there was Mr B-S, who had arrived safely with his little flock.  After hailing me with conspiratorial glee, he was quickly distracted, looking around keenly for buyers.  Many soon materialised, although they all affected indifference: animal trading involves the same stand-off between sellers and potential takers the world over.  Mr B-S is a natural salesman, nothing daunts him, which is lucky because as we were talking, his sheep disappeared over a bank.  When he had rounded them up, I asked him how much he was asking for his ewes.   '200.' he told me.  200 lei a head - RON, that is, roughly equivalent to £40.  Mr B-S was too busy to chat, so I moved on.  As he waved me off, he hissed, 'Aduceţi clienţi!'.  I said I'd be sure to drive people to his threshhold in their thousands.  Even if I'd been able to, it was an empty promise, because, mesmerised by the brooding view and the curious sights, I promptly forgot all about it. 

An hour went by in pleasant wanderings, enjoying the Romanian version of Irish craic.  The sun came out, in parts.  It helped to anaesthetise some of my frankly hypocritical angst - I'm a meat eater. 

I had another bus to catch.  Before turning my back on the animal fair, I saw an old woman walking through the crowd, hawking wooden donkey saddles.  They were just bent frames, made of I'm not sure what type of wood, but with absolutely no padding.  The saddles were like the ones you see in medieval illustrations.  They were meant for carrying sacks, not people, and if you were going to ride on one, you'd have a sheepskin or two to cushion your backside.  The old lady had two of the saddles slung on her back: hardly enough, I thought, remembering the conversation I'd overheard on the way to Poiana. 

On my way back to the village centre, I bought a pair of socks.  They were knitted in two different kinds of brown, both of them natural - beautiful, soft colours.  They cost 10 lei, the same as the rather nasty sandwich I'd bought to stave off my hunger.  £2: hardly enough to keep a body, let alone a household, going for long, even in Romania.  



 







 

Coliba life

Mid-September 2013.  I am back in the Southern Carpathians, staying with the D family at a coliba a couple of miles to the south-east of J.  It is my third time in this place, but the first that it has rained enough during the summer to turn the pastures green.  Since my earlier visit, things have changed in the family too.  The son, Ghiţa, has married his sweetheart, Andreea; they have a baby daughter, Georgiana, who is four months old.  

Not only this but Ghiţa has become a celebrity.  He has been signed up by Vodafone for a tv advertising campaign.  Dressed in his cojoc (or sarică, another word for the long, sheepskin cloaks with the fleece turned to the outside), and his tall, black, pot hat made of stiffened lambskin, Ghiţa is shown in a series of quickly changing vignettes: sitting with a fellow shepherd by an open fire, sampling a typical but untypically well-presented supper of onions, slănină (pork belly) and mămăligă (polenta made from sweetcorn flour), dancing with sheep, and exulting in his new role as a cool, switched-on dude, with his tablet, smartphone and facebook page.  

All of which has up-ended a common perception of shepherds as numbskulls.  Ghiţa's family is a bit bemused by all this: his parents still wake at 4am to milk 700 ewes, staggering in to the cabin for a bistro breakfast at 7; at least they only have to do this twice a day since the yield has started to dry up.  (When the ewes are first separated from their lambs, in June, they have so much milk that the shepherds have to collect it three times a day.)  There are daughters to help now, too: Ionela, while she is on school holiday, Maria when she's not at home looking after the house in J, and three or four hired shepherds, who may or may not stay from one day to the next.  At least Andrei is still there; this is his fifth year of working with the Ds.  (I have a special affection for Andrei because he was such a sympathetic companion when I spent five days following Ghiţa's flock in April 2012.) 

Changes in the climate are more abrupt than I anticipated: on the Transylvanian Plateau the temperature was much higher than here.  On my first day, on a three-hour hike down to Stănişoara from one of the higher folds with Dan and Bogdan, two of the hired men and some 300 lambs, I regret not bringing better insulation.  My rainjacket is fine for city storms (from which you can usually escape), but it isn't much of a match for the chilly winds which were a distant rumour when I was on the levels but have suddenly become real.  As I discovered the next day, the hi-tec coat lets in water under the kind of steady, relentless downpours which I was warned about but didn't really believe.  My trusty Swiss hiking boots, bought over 30 years ago and as comfortable as gloves, have started to leak as well.  Never mind: it's exhilarating to be out on the mountains, 2000 metres above sea level, in scintillating light, getting whiffs of wild thyme and sage, and being part of witty, down to earth company.  And that's only the sheep. 

When she has time and is in the mood, Ghiţa's mother, Paraschiva, tells me about her life.  I learn about her grandfather, the father of Evdochia, the 'Dochie' from whom Paraschiva gets her local name, Chiva lui Dochie.  Her grandfather left her grandmother and their children for a richer woman.  At first I assume he had abandoned his peasant bride without another thought but Paraschiva says he was good to his first family, gave them money for clothes and - if I heard aright - education, too.  

Paraschiva is as sparkling and sharp as the quartz in these mountains; even when laughing - and her merriment is volcanic - her manner inclines towards asperity rather than softness.  Her tirades are terrifying, so it's a surprise when she takes me into her confidence.  It feels like a privilege too. 

She is seldom free to chat and I am curiously gratified when she asks, or rather tells, me to do chores: take care of the lambs for a couple of hours while the other shepherds are milking, fetch water from the spring that lies in a half-hidden pool a hundred yards down the slope, lift the milk cauldron from the fire and haul it with her into the barn.  Then I watch fascinated as she adds cheag, a commercial thickening agent, that sets the liquid (thicker now at the end of the season) into a jelly.  

At a rough guess the daily milk yield contains 100 kilos.  (Is this crazy?  Writing here in a hurry, I'm not sure of my facts and will have to calculate more carefully.)   In any case, it only takes 20 minutes for the large tub of milk to solidify.  The next stage is to ladle the jelly into a stainless steel trough to drain off the whey, cut it into chunks that are roughly the same size (a kilo or two in each one) and press them together with wooden slats.  

When Paraschiva is satisfied that the chunks are consistent enough, she soaks them in salty water, called saramura, and packs them into plastic tubs for transportation down to the village.  This type of sheep's cheese is called telemea, and it's said that Romanian shepherds learned the technique from Greeks who settled in Dobrogea, at the time when that magnetic coastal region was still under Ottoman Turkish rule.  (Most of it now belongs to Romania although a southern portion lies in Bulgaria.)  Telemea is basically the same thing as feta.  It's the most popular type of sheep's cheese on the Romanian market because it keeps through the winter, and for that reason sells more easily.    

It's from Paraschiva that I hear there are more transhumant flocks in J than I thought.  According to her, some 30 sheep farming families still walk their sheep north in the autumn, and back again in the spring.  They mostly go to Salaj, a county of smaller hills, lower altitude and milder weather on the north-west edge of the Transylvanian plateau.  She rattled off a few names - far fewer than 30 - which I tried to jot down.     

I want to meet the other transhumant shepherds.  Paraschiva tells me one or two of the families live quite close by; why don't I go and talk to them?  Like the Ds, most of them rent the summer farms, the colibi or stâni as the Romanians call them, from private owners: the days when J controlled the majority of izlazuri - a huge area of common land that reached to the outer boundaries of the village, are gone.  (One of the statistics often mentioned in histories of J says that this remote mountain comuna encompasses the same area as Bucharest, Romania's capital city.  I once made a note of what the measurement actually was but have long since lost it; Bucharest is probably a bit larger by now!)

Closest of all is the A family.  Iancu A, known, like all respected elderly males, as moşu, will be able to tell me about many of the other transhumant farmers.  'Can I get there in a day?' I ask, rather naively.  Paraschiva looks baffled, as if I ought to know that they live barely a brisk half-hour hike from here.  All I need is to follow one of the many cart roads that criss cross J's outlying pastures like the ribs of a leaf.  

Taking a makeshift staff to ward off unfriendly sheepdogs - and possibly wolves - I set off past Simion and Dan, looking after the lambs which are due to be sold any day now.  Simion, Ghiţa's father, looks happy in his environment, if a little wizened.  It is beautiful today: very calm under a half-blue sky.  Rolling hilltops bar the horizon.  There are clusters of tiny yellow and white pansies in the taller, dying grasses.  Wild boar excavations have scarified patches of the open grazing.  Someone has been cutting down invasive birch trees, probably taking advantage of the current EU grants to aid sustainable farming in mountain areas.  

I sing to myself as I head into a clump of fir trees whose low-swinging branches obscure the exit, and make everything dark.  My walk brings me over the brows of several hills, into the dips between, fording streams and clambering up the other side.  The going is harder than I thought; after a summer of sitting at the computer I am unfit.  Half an hour becomes 45 minutes, and I wonder if I'm going in the right direction.  There is no-one to ask and my phone has no signal.  I feel singularly alone in the vastness and solitude of the mountains.  It all looks so peaceful, so bland, so almost-Home Counties, with the curves of the hillsides swooping down into valley bottoms, the decorous woods, the smooth grass - but that's an illusion: here, potentially, be dragons.  Telling myself I'm an idiot, my heart-rate rises.  

At last I see it: the rust-coloured corrugated iron roof of a coliba, nestling in a hollow behind some wire and palisade fencing.  Inside the perimeter, the grass has been mown to Home Counties perfection.  Nobody is playing tennis.  Mrs A is tending her cows, which have the freedom of the three or four well-groomed hectares which surround her shieling.  She is, I guess, in her 70s.  As soon as she realises I'm there, Mrs A points to the gate, round the other side of the corral.  Relief: a chance to sit and talk with other human beings.  Something I've taken for granted.  

Mrs A and her daughter, Maria, invite me into a little timber shed, a narrow rectangle with a sloping roof.  It stands a few yards away from the main coliba.  It is surprisingly comfortable and cheerful inside the shed: instead of a window, a section of wall is missing from the top of one of its longer walls, and this lets in a lot of light.  There is a stove in one corner, next to a large table which is being used to prepare food.  

Apart from seeing to the cows and their calves, they have been harvesting their cabbages, hoping to salt them for winter.  But the slugs have got there first, leaving shredded stumps instead of nice fat leaves.  Disappointing.  Mrs A sighs at the waste but is not cast down for long.  She sits me on the only chair and plies me with food: bread, slanina, telemea, tomatoes, peppers, coffee, creamy chocolate cake...  Maria comes in and out, checking on her mother, the cabbages, and her six month old baby Ioana who is in the house.  

Maria is slight and wiry, with a sensitive face; physical work and winter winds have worn her lean with no extraneous flesh.  She and I have met before, at Ghiţa's wedding.  'I looked a bit different then', she jokes, pointing to her flat belly.  Both women have accepted me without reserve.  No wonder I feel so at home.  

A number of interesting objects hang from nails along the back wall.  The morning sun falls on them casting sharp shadows: a patterned cloth, turquoise plastic sheeting, enamel mugs and cooking pots, a rolling pin, a radio hanging from a wooden frame.  Set against the log walls, they look like a still life composition.  

Mr A is away down in the gully, chopping wood.  Would I like them to call him?  He is the only one who is supposed to know the other transhumant shepherds.  Of course I would, if it's not too much trouble...  

It never is: the clear atmosphere of the mountains makes its people clear and uncluttered too.  If you ask, they will say yes or no.  There is hardly ever any shilly-shallying.  (Later the same week, after I returned to J, Ileana told me that 'people here are hard, but they are sociable and communicative too.  When you live like us, sometimes never seeing another person for days on end, meeting someone is a real event.')

Maria and I walk down a steep slope into trees, climbing over fences.  Iancu, her father, is moving logs.  Like her, he is lithe and quick but when we get closer, I see with a shock how old he looks.  Would he be any better off sitting in an old folks' home?  I doubt it.  Bearded and bristly, he is at one with the timber.  Maria explains why I've come, and without complaint, her dad shoulders some branches and we clamber up the hill again.  I take photos of Iancu, who sits on a log beside the shed.  Mrs A kindly arranges a tol for me - this is a type of brown and white checker-patterned woven wool rug which shepherds from the Cindrel range of the Carpathian Mountains use as a rain coat - but I am afraid of missing anything, and squat on the ground as close as I can get to Iancu's face.  I ask him about transhumance.  His voice is fragile and hoarse with fatigue.  I can hardly make out what he says.   Dismayed, I ask if he'd mind if I make a recording.  

Iancu says that when he was growing up, in the 1930s, most of the villagers had animals, and transhumance was a normal way of life.  He had looked after sheep in Cluj county with someone called Nicolae, some forty years ago, but the words are so difficult for me to understand that I can't really make out what he's saying.  Odd bits do get through my language barrier.  

'How long have you had this land?'  At first I mishear him: 'Forty six years?'  'One hundred and forty six!' Iancu puts me right.   

I could insist on his repeating every sentence so that its meaning is clear to me, but I haven't got the heart.  Iancu is tired and this is not a good moment.  The conversation wanders.  We veer off course to the Second World War and the injustices which he and his family suffered under Ceauşescu.  He is vehement about this, and Mrs A chips in to smooth the waters, telling me, 'for some, they were better'.  I had heard, read, or assumed somehow that life was easier for the people of J and the neighbouring village of PS in the 1980s, because of their remoteness, and the advantages that some shepherds had in a system that guaranteed fixed prices for meat, milk and wool.  It is well known that some people in Marginimea Sibiului did do well: the tales of four-storey mansions with lifts, and marble-lined stables were not false.  But it seems the As were not so fortunate, and they do not agree with the opinion that is repeated often in these uncertain times that things were better for Romanians under Ceauşescu than they are now.  'They were hoţi (crooks)', says Iancu A, but he is more exercised by current inequalities, adding, 'Lady, the people who raise animals are not well paid; others (I assume he means middlemen) get the money; we are just the slaves.  What we have now is not democracy; it's daylight robbery'.  Tears fill his eyes.  

Maria shows me her baby.  She has been married before and has older children; this relatively late arrival is bonny, cheerful and cherished, surrounded by warmth and plastic toys.  Maria and her mother tell me I could stay with them overnight, but, although reluctant to leave their cheerful company, I'm also embarrassed by their generosity and decline.  At around 3pm, I take my leave, anxious to get back before dark.  I say I will send them copies of the photos, and keep in touch.  Outside the As corral, a sheep dog bounds up to me: another flock is moving ground; I see it in tight formation a quarter of a mile away, too far for me to yell.  

I keep my cool and the dog hesitates, but Mrs A sees what's happening and runs to the fence with a stick for me.  It's one that she made for herself.  'Take it, don't worry', she says when I hesitate.  'Go that way, turn right by the tree over there, it's quicker'.  She points to the left of a memorial cross, and I see a direct line across one deep valley to Stănişoara, the Ds' fold.  The growling dog has retreated.  I would have liked to look at the memorial, wondering if it's the one that Mrs B had put up after her eldest son was struck by lightening in August 2010.  But discretion wins the day, and I head off into the wide expanse of grass where there are no signposts to direct my way.  

Half way down the hill, I meet yet another flock, outridden by five hairy Carpathian sheep dogs.  I stay very still and hold out a hand.  The leader sidles up and licks it.  The others follow, half cringeing, their back ends wagging, teeth bared in ridiculous, ingratiating grins.  Two shepherds are making their steady way up towards me, one middle-aged with an open friendly face, one young, hooded and startlingly handsome.  They walk steadily forwards, poles in hand, like pilgrims.  'Where are you going?' I ask.  To Alba, says the older shepherd.  'Are they your sheep?'  'No, they belong to a priest in...' and he mentions a village in the next county that I haven't heard of.  For all I know it could be several days' walk away.  They have been summering the sheep in the Cindrel's high pastures.  'How many have you got there?'  Five hundred head.  They move off with the same deliberate, unhurried, tread, like apparitions of antiquity.

Shepherds' Own Paper

It's good to see that I'm not the only nutcase.  Surfing the net a few weeks ago I came across Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice and a stunning article about Kurdish nomadic shepherds in eastern Turkey.  

Pastoralism Journal is an open-access, inter-disciplinary, peer-reviewed, on-line journal that publishes articles about traditional herding societies all over the world.  Subjects range from 'people to people' diplomacy, the impacts of industrial development and insurgency on pastoral groups, environmental-archaeological studies, to modernizing traditional pastoral practices and what to do with sick animals and many more.  The areas covered so far dart from Southern Iran, to Northern Sudan, to Northern Mexico, as well as Cameroon, Tibet, North-East Pakistan, Australia - and Romania. 

Its editors, Carol Kerven and Roy Behnke, explain: 

'Pastoralists rely on rangelands and livestock for their livelihoods, but exhibit different levels of mobility and market involvement, and operate under a variety of different land tenure regimes. Pastoralism publishes research that influences public policy, to improve the welfare of these people and better conserve the environments in which they live.'   

One of the articles on Romania was Long and short-distance transhumant pastoralism in Romania: past and present drivers of change (2010) by Sally Huband, David McCracken and Annette Mertens.  The three researchers interviewed 23 shepherds and made a case study of one village in the counties of Brasov, Covasna, and Sibiu.  They write that the outlook for the survival of Romanian transhumance isn't good (no surprises there!) but cite Spain as an example of a country where shepherds have protested loudly enough to effect a change in government policy and help preserve their long-distance drovers' routes, called las canadas.  (In 1993, Spanish shepherds led thousands of sheep into Madrid's centre which blocked the traffic and forced the authorities to take notice of them - since when the event has become an annual fiesta, visited by even more thousands of people.)

Though justly maligned for ill-fitting rules, the EU has also been doing its bit.  Huband et al take up the story:

'Agri-environment measures (AEMs) have been in existence in Europe since the 1980s but became a formal part of EU policy under regulation 2078/92 in the 1990s.  It is now compulsory for all EU member states to implement AEMs but they remain voluntary in the sense that farmers choose whether or not to apply for an agri-environment agreement. Farmers that are successful in applying for AEM funding are required to follow a set of management prescriptions that aim to maintain or recreate specific habitats considered to be of value for nature conservation.'

Earlier in their article, the authors gave us some of the reasons why 'low-intensity' grazing and transhumance are important for the environment:

'Nationally there are an estimated 2.4 million hectares of semi-natural grasslands (RMARD 2008 p34) and one source estimates the existence of 1.2 million hectares of semi-natural pasture and hay meadow habitats in the mountains (Rey et al. 2001).  The importance of Romania’s semi-natural grasslands is being highlighted by ecologists, conservationists and in rural development policy documents (Sârbu et al. 2004, Baur et al. 2006, Schmitt and Rákosy 2007, RMARD 2008). The country has an exceptionally high diversity of species, largely because of the occurrence of several biogeographical regions but also because of localised areas of low-intensity agricultural land use (Baur et al. 2006). Taking Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) as an example, 50 per cent of all species listed in Annex II of the Habitats Directive and 65 per cent of all Annex IV species are recorded in Romania (Schmitt and Rákosy 2007). The conservation of butterflies is particularly dependent on the continued maintenance of low-intensity pastoral land use practices (Schmitt and Rákosy 2007, Huband 2009).

'The Habitats Directive provides the main legal basis for the conservation of biodiversity in Europe and European Union (EU) member states are obliged to designate Natura 2000 sites to protect priority habitats and species. Romania joined the EU in January 2007 and is now in the process of designating Natura 2000 sites and is also implementing agri-environment programmes aspart of the national rural development programme for the period 2007–2013. 

'The Romanian government has chosen to implement an agri-environment measure that will specifically target the conservation of the country’s semi-natural grasslands (RMARD 2008: 713).  The successful conservation of these habitats whether within Natura 2000 sites or in the wider countryside will ultimately depend on the continuation of low-intensity pastoral land management practices including pendulation (as will be discussed, the relatively small number of transhumance flocks and their use of arable stubbles for winter forage means that this pastoral system plays a lesser role in the conservation of semi-natural grasslands). The continuation of pastoralism and pendulation is in turn dependent upon the existence of certain economic, social and political drivers. These drivers are in the process of change as Romania’s economy develops and EU policies are implemented.' 

Sally Huband and her co-authors are pressing for habitat conservation to be one of the main 'drivers' for preserving those semi-natural grasslands, the (often) unfenced expanses of herb-rich terrain that comprise 32.7% of all Romania's farmland.  

Habitat - and pasture - loss, migration of Romania's working population (another form of transhumance?) to richer EU countries, concentration of producing less hardy breeds of sheep for meat rather than milk (cheese), disaffection with rural life, these are some of the reasons why transhumance is vanishing.  
    
In Policies and practices of pastoralism in Europe (2011) Carol Kerven and Roy Behnke discuss three different shepherding scenarios for conserving traditional pastoralism, in Sweden, Italy and Greece.  It's becoming obvious that since the EU began championing shepherds, another problem exists: how do you define traditional pastoralism and how do you preserve its authenticity.  But that is a nicety.  

It might seem surprising, but my (limited) observations have shown that Romanian shepherds, hired men included, are not all dying to leave their profession, vocation - whatever you want to call it.  Far from it, although they are not sentimental about it either.  Historically, raising sheep has often been seen as a stepping stone to higher things, and keeping sheep has been a measure of wealth.  Why is it then that so many people flock (no pun intended) to the annual folk festivals of villages such as Jina, Vaideeni and other places where sheep - if not drink and girl-trapping - are the unifying factor, why do men in their 20s long to go on the road, as transhumance is called, as they do to go on long sea voyages?  Why is there such a desire to get away from 'it all' and keep sheep?  Could it be that economic growth, consumer goods and acquiring money for its own sake have limited appeal?  Or that the solitude you find by the sea, in the forests and mountains has a benefit that has still not been quantified?  It's not all down to money.  

When I met Romanian shepherds on their spring walk in Salaj, they pointed out species of plants that I had never seen before.  What child of the 21st century could - would bother to - do that?  

Let's leave the last word to two more of Pastoralism Journal's correspondents, Anna Degteva and Christian Nellemann.  In their article, Nenets migration in the landscape: impacts of industrial development in Yamal peninsula, Russia, (2013) they write about the totally different perception that two people can have of the same place, in this case the Nenets herders' sacred sites:

'From the point of view of the industrial workers, the sacred place was ‘preserved’, believing that this was limited to the actual offering/praying site; however, the herders felt that it was desecrated. Such sites are particularly sensitive, as there may be sacred hills, creeks or rocks far beyond that of an actual offering site. This is but one example of the very different perceptions of the landscape between the herders and modern society. The authors have noted many such similar examples in different parts of the world, including in North America and the Nordic countries, where traditional indigenous sacred sites used to offer gifts in gratitude for the land and its blessings - typically including an entire valley or calving ground - are merely regarded by modern society as a site-specific localized spot, which is limited to where the offering was placed near a rock, similar to the physical limitations of a church yard or church. Traditional landowner views amongst Europeans and westerners - or in most urbanized societies - are contrasted by the spiritual relationship between the herders and the land incorporating much greater areas and a perception based on user right - not land ownership - a concept among many traditional indigenous peoples which would be considered a sacrilege or impossible.'   





    

Carpathian Sheep Walk: a quest for the spiritual and practical essences of shepherding and transhumance in Romania

This is the start of my book on transhumance, a draughty draft, fragments of fiction and reporting, to kick start it.  There may or may not be more instalments of this novel-fact book, it all depends on how the drift takes me.  It's meant for Romanian and English speakers, so no apologies if I don't translate everything for everyone, nor that the action happens in a bewildering number of places, and through several different voices, not always connected...  It is a shaggy sheep story, after all.  

First, catch your quotations

Domnul paşte-mă şi nemica nu-m va lipsi; la locul otăvii, acolo mă l-au sălăşluit (opening of Psalm 23, The Lord is My Shepherd, from the first published Romanian translation of the Bible, 1688.)

In Romania there are two indigenous sheep breeds: Ţurcana and Ţigai. Both breeds are supposed to descend from the wild Ovis vignei arkar.  (From ‘Genetic diversity using microsatellite markers in four Romanian autochthonous sheep breeds’, Kevorkian, Georgescu, Manea, Zaulet, Hermenean and Costache, in Romanian Biotechnological Letters Vol. 15, No. 1, 2010)

Buna-i oaia săleaca, Cât traieşte, Te-ndulceşte, Şi hrăneşte, Daca moare, Te-ncalzeşte (The sheep is a blessing, for as long as she lives, she sweetens and nourishes you, and if she dies, her fleece warms you, Romanian folksong, recorded in 1898 and quoted in Mihai Coman, Bestiarul Mitologic Românesc, Bucharest, 1996)

‘Hai, hai...  Nu le bat, le chem - oaia nu se bate... oaia nu e pretenţios animal, nu ca vaca, nu ca porcul, nu s-apară ca nu apară cioban... (‘Come on, come on [to the sheep waiting to be milked].... You mustn’t hit a sheep... she is not pretentious like a cow or a pig; she can’t defend herself so the shepherd must be kind to her....’ Dionisie Dancea, sheep farmer, recorded at Smâlzul, the sheep’s milk measuring day, 1 May 2010, Rudăria, Caraş-Severin)

‘...working with sheep has a benediction all its own’. (H. G. Clarke, Introduction to Practical Shepherding, London, 1959)

‘Oile ţinem din dragoşte, nu numai să iau bani... ce să facem!’ (‘We keep sheep because we love them, not just to make money...what can I say!’ Dumitru Capota, sheep farmer who still goes on the road, Răşinari, August 2011)

‘[Oile sunt] animale blânde dar şi blestemate... nu se lasă să mulge...’ (‘[Sheep are] gentle animals but also bloody-minded... they won’t let you milk them...’, Dumitru Capota, while milking his sheep at the strunga later the same day at his fold near Poplaca

‘Sunt proaste pentru ca să duce una dupa alta... se înneaca daca e apa mare’ (‘They are stupid because they follow each other... they drown if they get into deep water’, one of Dumitru Capota’s hired shepherds while pushing sheep through the strunga with the aid of a whip, later the same day)

‘O vaca, o capra, un cal vin acasa noapte.... dar oaia nu vine... să se duce tot mai înalta... (Dumitru Capota, while milking his sheep)

Sheep, ridiculed for a non-questioning herd mentality, possess a sharp sense of individuality and can recognise the faces of at least 10 people and 50 other sheep for at least two years. Scientists at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge also discovered that sheep react to facial expressions and, like humans, prefer a smile to a grimace.

Further studies which reinforce the notion that sheep are more like us than previously believed involved tests showing they mourn absent individuals. (‘Sheep might be dumb... but they're not stupid’, Mark Townsend, environment correspondent, The Observer, 6 March 2005)

Are sheep stupid?  We have Wikipedia to thank for the following information:
“Sheep are frequently thought of as extremely stupid animals. A sheep's herd mentality and quickness to flee and panic in the face of stress often make shepherding a difficult endeavor for the uninitiated. Despite these perceptions, a University of Illinois monograph on sheep found them to be just below pigs and on par with cattle in IQ, and some sheep have shown problem-solving abilities; a flock in Yorkshire, England found a way to get over cattle grids by rolling on their backs. In addition to long-term facial recognition of individuals, sheep can also differentiate emotional states through facial characteristics. If worked with patiently, sheep may learn their names, and many sheep are trained to be led by halter for showing and other purposes.” (‘Everything you always wanted to know about sheep’, Su Jordan, Daily Info, Oxford, 6 April 2008)

‘There’s nothing special about being a shepherd; it’s a job like any other’ (Niculae Dordea, sheep farmer, Crinţ, judeţul Sibiu)

‘Oaia e un animal sfânt; cine se ocupa cu creşterea oilor şi albine va avea noroc la toate. Când nu vor mai fi oi şi albine, va fi sfârşitul lumii’ (The sheep is a holy animal; anyone who keeps sheep and bees will be lucky in everything they do.  When there are no more sheep or bees, it will be the end of the world’.  Quoted in Mihai Coman, op cit)

‘If you spend all your time with sheep you will end up by only being able to say “Baa”’ (Comment heard on BBC Radio 4)

Chapter One:  Trans-what?

Who apart from British farmers hoping to make a killing or a terminal insomniac would want to read a book about sheep?  It is a question that Clare frequently asks herself as she spends another small fortune on travels around Romania for the book she hopes to write.  Shaking the depressing thought out of her brain with a mental head butt, she counters it with one of her own: anyone with the imagination and tenacity to follow a story with as many twists and turns as the Minotaur’s maze must get somewhere.  It would be better than gazing at her navel in some old folks' home.    


A foreigner with only the haziest notions about Romania’s place in the world, she did not know – who but a specialist would have done? – when she arrived there twenty years ago, that this is a country which practically sweats sheep out of its pores.  Its pastoral traditions beat Britain’s by a mile, she thought.  Trouble is, sheep – and their shepherds - are not cool.  Things look a little better if you look at it through the perspective of transhumance, then you can start to see the romance of shepherding as a form of travel, letting your mind float into the starry realms of myth, with Jason and the Argonauts, Daphnis and Chloe, and such like.  Not what the sheep think probably, but this tale is more about the shepherds than the animals they farm.  


But come on, say it out loud: transhumance.  The very word is romantic, inspiring images of limitless plains, wild mountains and not a fence in sight.  All it means, literally, pedantically, is moving from one piece of land to another, and you can apply it to people as well as animals.  The dictionary definition would tell you that it is connected to the seasonal movement of animals between summer and winter pastures.  You can see it as a half-way station between nomadism and sedentary farming, but transhumance dates back to the Stone Age and, in some places, places that are generally regarded as poor, backward, and remote, it is still going on.  The transhumant life happened on every continent where people kept livestock on open ground, and needed to find grass all year round.  

Most transhumant farmers were mountain men, and needed to move their sheep, cattle and other animals down to the lowland to avoid the winter freeze, and vice versa in summer, when it was too hot to stay near sea level.  Such mountain men and women still exist in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania, and I have spent the past five years looking for them, and in some lucky cases living and walking with them and their animals.  Hence the title of this book.   

Chapter Two:  Clare's Story

Clare is researching the history of transhumance.  She is from London but fed up with big city life.  A series of chance encounters leads her to Romania soon after the Revolution.  She describes the experience as a kind of spiritual mugging.  Nothing prepared her for the beauty and the poverty she found there, but she became addicted to the country, cannot leave it alone.  As one wall came down, another went up, blocking off the path behind her.  She cannot go back, but the way ahead is far from clear.  Her interest in transhumance is almost instinctive; she wants to follow its story as a moth seeks the sun.  

Clare is afraid of progress but wants to conquer her fear by what she thinks will be a path to light and freedom. 

Her research brings her to Sibiu, Romania's shepherding capital.  Thanks to an introduction from a curator she knows at the National Peasant Museum, she makes friends with the Micleas.  This is a family who once lived in Rod, a village in the Cindrel range of the Southern Carpathians.  Rod is one of several communities that was renowned for its shepherding connections with southern Russia.  But that was long ago, in the first half of the 20th century.  Today Rod is little more than a ghost village.  

Ioan, the father, is a retired railway man; Sanda his wife makes pottery and Mariana, their daughter is also an artist.  There is a son, Radu, who is a petrol head.  Ioan and Mariana are intrigued by Clare's interest and bring her to meet Ioan's mother who remembers, vaguely, that her grandfather raised sheep somewhere in the Crimea. 

It seems so unlikely, these links with pre-Soviet Russia (now Ukraine), and as in a dream, Clare is drawn into skeins of history that have, in effect, woven a grand tapestry out of a modest, and very Romanian enclave in the southern Carpathians.  Not only Rod, but seven or eight other villages in the same area yield people who, with some effort of memory, can tell a similar story.   It captivates Clare that once upon a time, their inhabitants explored many lands that were new to them, because of a need for grass.  And it fascinates her that these almost forgotten individuals should have doggedly forged their way into other countries while the great powers slugged it out virtually over their heads.  She wanted to know who they were, how they lived, what happened to them.        

It is October, just before Sanmedru, the day the sheep used to leave the high pastures.  In a walled garden beside a back street in Saliste, Clare and Ioan meet Mrs V.  They sit together in her freezing kitchen with its pistachio walls, they listen patiently to a tale of such staggering courage and woe that hairs prickle on the back of Clare's neck.

Mrs V. is the grand-daughter of a shepherd who followed a different road, one of the many who were driven further and further afield with their sheep until they came to a stop in the Crimea, or in northern Caucasus.  They went because it was cheaper to find winter pasture there than at home, where the Saxon settlers had taken their mountains and the other fields worth grazing were needed for hay.  Mrs V's grand-father did well in Crimea, where the pastures were cheap and Romanian shepherds appreciated for their hard work and the quality of their wool.  

The Romanians introduced salty sheep's cheese they call telemea to the Russians; telemea is like feta, and it was Greek shepherds in Dobrogea, that part of Romania that touches the Black Sea, where so many Romanians wintered their flocks during the Turkish period, who gave the Romanians the idea that you could make a longer-lasting cheese out of sheep's curds by adding salt to them.  

Mrs V's father left school at 14 and joined his father in Crimea.  It was still part of the Tsar's land.  Then came the October Revolution.  Things weren't too bad in the early 1920s, and her father married a girl from Saliste, leaving her there to bring up Mrs V.  After that, collectivisation, persecution, famine, deportation, war.  Mrs V. never knew her father.  He disappeared during the famine.  She told Clare and Ilie that people were so hungry they would eat each other's children. 

   

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/.