There is a beautiful article with a stunning picture on the “it’s not you, it’s brie” blog about the ancient movement of animals along historic trails, the transhumance:
Defined as the seasonal migration or movement of humans and their livestock from lower to higher pastures in spring and summer, transhumance is when pastoral people or shepherds move with their animals to take advantage of the seasonal landscape. ~ Transhumance: What Goes up Comes Down Cheese
Kirsten goes into the reasons for this movement; she finds four of them. I think there are more.
I’ve recently written about the waning Queijo do Serra cheese industry in the Serra de Estrela mountain range of Portugal. Shepherds are not passing along the art; the cheese is becoming rare.
And each year the natural fires on the slopes get hotter and more destructive.
Oh, my! You see, sheep and goats eat that stuff, things that grow and die on the slopes. As we hunt away the natural predators and remove the animals that replaced them, the balance tilts.
Getting the sheep out into their natural habitat makes much better cheese. Folks willing to pay the bit extra for all that extra complexity of flavor also, and perhaps unwittingly, promote the environmental balance that comes from a way of raising animals that doesn’t differ much from the way they’d live naturally.
When I worked in central Sardinia, I remember the time every year when local shepherds took their sheep to the sea. It was odd because if our group went swimming, the old women would be astonished. Many of them had never been so far as the sea, less then an hour drive away. But the transhumance was part of the fabric of the society. Shepherds gathered, told stories, drank, spread news and the sheep ate well.
Sheep-edible plants in the salt marshes near the sea brought a tang to the Pecorino cheese that makes Sardinian Pecorino some of the best. Not only that, but some elements of traditional Sardinian cuisine were naturally produced from the transhumance: the dry flatbread called “Carta di Musica” or Pane Carasau was developed to survive the long journey in saddlebags, and could be cooked like pasta or eaten like bread. Today it’s an expensive luxury food, even in Italy.
So the transhumance is an important historic event that warrants a new look at its value to today’s rural society and our own feeling of well being when we’re eating well.
Here’s a proposal. Next time you crave cheese, put down that big ‘ol orange block of industrial crap cheese and pick up a little package of Sardinian Pecorino or some other cheese born from tradition. Same price. You don’t have to eat much to be satisfied. Touch a little to your tongue. There’s a world of difference, and if it can help stop forest fires, hey, why not?
But really, read Transhumance: What Goes up Comes Down Cheese. It’s beautiful.