Quality over quantity; something which is
often said and heard, and in my opinion this is true. Unfortunately in real
life quality mostly isn’t a priority nowadays. Short term vision dominates the
human world; fast money and huge quantities top quality and sustainability.
Good things are presented as backwards or even bad, huge corporations rule our
world without mercy, all for the sake of (their) money, control and power.
These three belong to each other; they’re tightly connected and very addictive for mankind.
People are much alike, but also very different.
Fortunately today, the world isn’t the same yet everywhere. There still are
people who practice quality over quantity, sometimes because they have no other
option, but often because they want to and believe in it. Every day it becomes
more obvious that for the long term, we need sustainability which goes hand in
hand with responsibility. A very interesting feature which is still present in
traditional areas and returning to ‘modern’ areas is the smallholding. Originally
the smallholding is a small farm where one family grows and produces their own
food. When the conditions and approach are good, the smallholding provides enough
food for the family to be self-sufficient, food wise. Today we see the
smallholding is becoming a trend, or at least a desire, for quite some people
in ‘modern’ civilization. I understand this very well and encourage those who
want their lives to be quality over quantity. It isn’t easy, but well worth it
for many reasons.
In Romania, Canine Efficiency’s prime
working area and our true home, traditional/original smallholdings are still
very common. We could say that almost all village inhabitants, or people who
have some land, grow and produce their own food and maintain a traditional
lifestyle, some more traditional than others, quite similar to the descriptions
of this topic in history books. I’ve been in many small Romanian villages and
also a guest in quite some smallholding households. They all have one thing in
common; hard work, sober life, superb food and equally superb hospitality.
Sharing what you have is normal here and quality time is the result. Don’t get
me wrong, I am not romanticizing this lifestyle or closing my eyes for the
reality of this tough life, on the contrary I recognize and support it and
exactly that is what unites and encourages people. Romania is a unique country
of huge contrasts. In front of a red traffic light, the waiting ‘vehicles’ can
vary from the biggest and newest cars to the oldest Dacia’s (Romanian car
brand) you can imagine, to horse and cart. It’s sometimes like a time machine
without the machine, around every corner ‘another’ world can occur.
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| Chickens, perhaps the most common animals on smallholdings |
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| Once found wounded, this Roe deer now lives on a smallholding |
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| Piglets, chickens and Jaktterrier sharing lunch |
The Romanian soil, particularly the Transylvanian
soil, is very fertile. Transylvania is a region in Romania which contains the
Romanian Carpathian Mountains and literally means; land on the other side of
the forest. Skilled and knowledgeable farmers produce plenty of high quality
food, without needing to spend money in supermarkets or other food stores. The
target is to feed their own family, when they have more they may give some away
or trade it but often sell it on the local market in the nearest big town or
city. The local market has the best, and most healthy, food for a good price
and without the junk preservatives which the supermarket food contains. In
addition it is almost always organic or biologic food; not GMO. The people eat healthy;
their animals eat healthy, resulting into some fine quality meat as well.
Most Romanian smallholdings grow their own
fruits and vegetables and have their own livestock varying from bees, chickens
and other poultry, rabbits, pigs, sheep, goats, cow(s) to horses. The food for
the animals comes from their own land. The range of products coming from the
farm animals results in a variety of products filling the wonderful traditional
Romanian (smallholding) cuisine. Don’t get me started. Because smallholdings
mostly have more different kind of animals in small numbers, there is a lot of interspecies
interaction; this is also a form of coexistence and resulting into very
versatile LGDs.
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| Cow's and pigs; free range, organic livestock farming at its best |
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| Carpatin pup on a smallholding |
The rural people here poses a vast
knowledge about their direct, natural environment. Nature provides them in many
things, such as; high quality vegetation for their livestock, medicinal/edible
plants and herbs and numerous precious natural resources. Due to the fact that
the traditional, rural people practice small scale farming and resource
harvesting this lifestyle is still present and possible today. The connection
to this subject and the people made our work a little easier. Very important is teaching this to our children in real life.
Many of our
fieldtrips, to monitor wildlife/predator activity and shepherd camps (LGDs) in
the mountains, are done on foot, but on several occasions local people took us
with them with horse and cart to show us exactly what we are looking for.
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| Monitoring shepherd camps on foot |
More
important; this shows how much the people know about their home area, this is
of vital importance, especially when living together with large predators. A
shepherd needs to know what threats surround him to be able to protect it
sufficiently.
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| A bear winter den. Only 10 % of the Romanian brown bears use dens under trees (roots) |
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| Brown bear track back paw |
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| Brown bear tracks back and front paw |
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| Wolf feces with alot of (wild prey) hair |
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| Wolf kill site, victim: Roe deer |
Tracking and camera trapping are important features for Large
Carnivore projects, but the funny thing is that the local people don’t need the
technology since they often know exactly what predators there are in the area
and where they can be found. This is very helpful for our data collection and
plan of approach. The time we spend in the field teaches us so many things,
good things and things which need improvement. One of the most important
activities of Canine Efficiency is the improvement of LGD use, to obtain and
maintain descent livestock/predator conflict prevention.
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| Caught on camera trap: brown bear family |
Everyone with a little common sense knows
that quality over quantity is the only way to have a long term, sustainable
future. For that we need large, intact nature areas with large predators,
responsible harvest of natural resources and healthy, natural production and
consuming of food. This brings us to the value and importance of the
smallholding, natural life, coexistence and LGDs.
At his time we monitored, in their working
area, 150-200 different LGDs or shepherd dogs (Carpatins excluded) and quite
some of them more than once. The remains of Ceausescu’s communist regime are
still present in Romania and can be seen within various subjects.
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A shepherd proudly shows us his young LGD pups
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| Yet these are the signs of recent wolfattacks on this camp |
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| And this from a recent bear attack on this camp |
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| Five month old Carpatin with the flock |
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| Eight month old Carpatin with the flock in the mountains |
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| Important feature and practiced young: move with the flock |
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| Important feature and taught young: move with the flock |
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| The working terrain of Carpatins working with the flocks |
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| Moving through the forest to the next meadow |
As said, traditional rural Romanian
villages consist mostly out of small family farms (smallholdings). In winter
every farm has all animals on their farm/land. In spring, summer and autumn
however the sheep, goats and cows graze outside the villages on the hill- and
mountain meadows. Cows are grazed by a shepherd, often with LGDs, close by the
villages, leaving early morning and returning home in the evening.
They are milked after they come home and spend the night in the barn.
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| Cows grazing on a mountain meadow |
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| Even in spring it sometimes snows, the job of a shepherd continues none the less |
In this period LGDs are free on the shepherd camp, around
the night pens, and walking with the grazing flock during the day.
In this time of year and in this environment it is of vital importance to have good and enough LGDs, collaborating in a pack. Carpatins are at their best and in their
element here. In winter, the LGDs of the sheep flocks are on the farm in the
village, together with all other farm animals. For most LGDs this is a quiet
period, but in several areas and villages bears and wolves venture to farms as
well. The LGDs of the sheep flocks are used to different setups; free in the
mountains in the warm season and within fences on the farm in winter.
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| Mixed LGD and young Carpatin resting while the flock is milked |
In some
cases the farm property is open in the back, which is also the case where some
of Canine Efficiency’s Carpatins are. When treated and reared well they accept
and respect what’s asked of them without problems and mostly stay close to the
barn where the sheep are.
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| Open farm; young Carpatins remaining next to the sheep barn |
The ancient traditions of rural Romania result into
very valuable LGDs, used to live with a variety of livestock animals and in
various setups. The demand for good all-round LGDs is increasing around the
world and the Carpatin is slowly moving across the map to execute its skills
abroad in various setups, often small holdings.
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| The typical lupoid (wolf like) appearance and movement of the Carpatin |
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| Carpatin pup growing up with poultry |
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| Carpatins with poultry |
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| Young Carpatin pups; born and raised with poultry on a smallholding |
In addition small scale, quality
over quantity lifestyle is important for the long term future, all that comes
with it and for the good of us all. We must respect and stay close to nature
for Nature gives us everything we need to live, including ways to coexist.
Everything is connected, one has to believe, recognize and preferably live a
coexisting, sustainable way of life to gain experience, reaching the next levels.
Absence of this is a direct blockade to obtain the desired and required
results.
For more background information; click the sub
links in the text.
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