The state prefers to turn a blind eye to the problem of shepherds
Ukraine’s Carpathians still observe two very old major holidays — seeing shepherds off to mountain pastures and seeing them and their herds in after the end of the grazing season. On such days, Transcarpathian highland villages welcome the shepherds as the most respected toilers, with trembitas (long horns — Ed.), bands, and songs in their honor. Among the essential attributes of the feasts are different varieties of sheep and goat cheese and vurda (specially fermented raw cheese — Ed.).
From May until early October, more than 100,000 sheep and goats graze in hundreds of Transcarpathian mountain pastures. For example, there are eighty herds in Rakhiv district. The Rohanianske pasture is situated at the foot of Mount Hoverla. Here three shepherds tend up to 700 sheep belonging to the inhabitants of the village of Bohdan. The sheep belong to the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountain coarse-wool breed. Their wool is used for making the best army coats. The shepherds themselves are reluctant to dwell on the romance of their calling, for one tends to be in high spirits when it is sunny and warm, when a gentle wind is wafting, and the mountains appear beautiful and majestic. But this kind of weather is a rare occurrence. Excruciating heat gives way to gusty winds and rains. But even if bolts of lightning strike the earth, your herd will leave for the pasture all the same. You must cover several dozens of kilometers a day with the herd. The tough grass, shunned by cows, is a favorite treat for your fluffy and curly animals. They do this quickly and hurriedly. When the four-legged army passed by Hoverla, it lined up, like a military unit, in a very long file.
Morning in the pasture begins with milking. 250 sheep give up to 40 liters of milk. They stand in the sheepfold in a close ring, snorting, with their heads down. Once they feel it is their turn, they come up to an opening in a latticed fence and find themselves in the hands of male milkers. All the milk is used to make cheese and vurda. Every day, some of the farmers comes up here on horseback to take his measure known here as heleta. One sheep accounts for seven kilograms of cheese (two heletas ) and three kilos of vurda. Making vurda is the most difficult thing. Milk is poured into a wooden barrel and is mixed with the so-called kliak, the gastric juices of a just-born and immediately slaughtered calf or lamb that has not yet tasted grass. The cheese quickly curdles and is then boiled. The result is a thick mass known as excellent Hutsul vurda.
According to Mykola Roshko, a Rakhiv shepherd, it is profitable to keep ten to twenty sheep on a farm because a smaller number is of no use. One of his acquaintances in the village of Kosovska Poliana keeps fifty sheep, six horses, and four cows. He is well off because he has enough produce to feed his family and sell to others. His vegetable garden brings bumper crops thanks to the manure. Mr. Roshko got married last fall after several years of sheep herding. The wedding party cost him the thousand hryvnias he had earned in one season only. Until recently, his wife traveled to Eastern Ukraine to process beets. Now they tend a communal herd together. It is not so easy to land a shepherd’s job in the mountains, where unemployment is everywhere. The senior shepherd selects his assistants from among reliable people he knows personally. The cherry-picking farmers are also afraid they might entrust their livestock to someone unreliable. A true shepherd must “go dry” in the mountains. Otherwise, it is murder to drink some liquor and then have to walk a marathon distance. Then, when they come down to the valley, they like to sit in a tavern for a few days. Sometimes they will begin a song, the favorite one being “Sheep, oh my sheep...” When it comes to the line “who will graze you when I pass away?” they hush and silently tell themselves that next spring they will not do this infernal work for love nor money and, instead, find an easier job where you don’t have to live in a ramshackle wooden hut every crack of which lets in the winds and torrential rains. After the celebration, they go home, look their wives and children in the eyes, and long for the mountains. Then they again wait for the snow to melt.
In today’s Zakarpattia the small livestock population is 122,000, including 82,000 sheep and 40,000 goats. More than 90% of them are being raised by private farmers. The leaders are Tiachiv and Rakhiv districts (30,000 and 26,000, respectively). Transcarpathia, Ukraine’s leading producer of goats has fourteen breeding farms. Some of them really work, others only exist on paper. The government-sponsored program to support sheep breeding called for the allocation of UAH 375,000 last year to improve selection, but not a penny has come. It was planned this year to allot UAH 3 million to keep ewes, i.e., 16 hryvnias 60 kopecks per animal, under the condition you raise forty or more ewes. This money is still unavailable. The wool is being bought by intermediaries. Peasant women use it to make carpets, bedspreads, sweaters, and socks. An artificial fur factory was built in the village of Yasynia in the Soviet period. But for some reason it does not employ wool-processing technology. And why is not there at least one sheep milk processing facility?
Some Transcarpathian experts advise drawing the experience of increasing the productivity of mountain pastures from the past, i.e., the period before the Word War II, when Transcarpathia was part of Czechoslovakia. This is what, for example, Doctor of Economics M. Rushchak, professor at Uzhhorod National University, says, “In 1925-1928 alone, the Czechoslovak Ministry of Agriculture appropriated 1,734,500 korunas for mountain pasture development. In addition, the individuals who made use of such pastures collected another 80,000 korunas for the purpose... In 1941, 103,520 head of cattle grazed on the 41,889 hectares of pasture. Today, these pastures lie forlorn and neglected. They can only be restored to their proper condition if there are proper investments and a full-time government agency in charge of restoring and maintaining them. So it would be a good idea to set up a regional department to deal with mountain pasture development and establishment of the required infrastructure.”
In the former Soviet Union, Ukraine was the fourth largest producer of sheep. For example, it had more than eight million head in 1988. Wool accounted for 80% of light industrial raw materials. Sheep breeding has been on the decline in the past few years. Although Transcarpathia has seen an increase of a few thousand in the sheep and goat population, the nationwide population has dropped by 28,000 since last year. According to Agrarian Policy Minister Serhiy Ryzhuk, the sector that began to boost output in 2001 was undermined by a drastic fall in selling prices and livestock breeders’ incomes. The State Statistics Committee says that the meat and wool of sheep and goats was minus 36% and minus 78% cost-effective, respectively, last year.
To draw at least some public attention to the sector’s problems and to adequately reward its workers, Rakhiv district has been holding, on the initiative of district administration chief Mykhailo Daskaliuk, a festival of brynza (salted sheep cheese — Ed.) on the first Sunday of September for the past three years. The family of Rakhiv-based Hanna Melnychuk, who has three children, consumes sixty kilos of cheese a year. Ms. Melnychuk, an active trader at the festival, says that all the Hutsuls who eat a lot of cheese, brynza, and vurda are in good health, for these natural foodstuffs help keep one healthy and long-lived. Viagra fades into the background — it is perhaps for this reason that Rakhiv districts ranks first in Transcarpathia in the number of large families. At the festival, every host first treats the guests to brynza and only then sells it. Every village council offers various free snacks and beverages, after which the hosts and guests break into a dance to a happy tune. Visitors inspect the exhibition-cum-sales of folk crafts. Many Rakhiv district residents invite Ukrainian and foreign tourists to their homes. The tourists daily ask the former to prepare them cornmeal with sheep cheese. It is this dish that Transcarpathian Hutsuls solemnly crown a wedding banquet with.
The Rakhiv festival also saw the establishment of the All-Ukrainian Association of Sheep Breeders.
