Pasture by Laura Kwong

This morning I moved bales of clover. I moved 450 bales an average of 4 meters. And at 10-15 kg each, that is a lot of work. I could figure out the number of Newtons if I care to draw the force diagrams, but let’s just say that it took me three hours in the hot sun and even I took a break to lie in the shade on the clover.

When was the last time you laid in a pasture? And not just on the pretty green grass in your front yard (although that was probably a long time ago, too), but in a field of grasses with orange and white butterflies fluttering about, incessantly buzzing flies, crickets jumping from here to there, and birds chirping in the shady tree above you? I watched a ladybug climb up a blade of grass, over and around the top, and back down a few paces to rest. I thought, “What a head-rush she must be having, clinging to that blade of grass upside-down.” Good thing ladybugs don’t have blood and a circulation system like we do. Good thing they are not like us at all because if they were, not only would this little ladybug have a head-rush, but she also wouldn’t be climbing on a piece of grass and her little feet wouldn’t be perpendicular to the ground. As I watched, a little yellow aphid climbed up the same blade of grass and I thought for sure that I’d see the food chain in action. The aphid climbed up and around the top, and back down, right in front of the ladybug. Either she was blind or not hungry, because she let the little fella go.

I listened to the cicadas and tasted a few of the purple clover flowers that the sheep love so much. Sweet. With a salad of clover leaves, it was easy to see why the ruminants were always trying to escape to the clover pasture. They made one break-away attempt last night, but I dropped my rucksack and ran after them, routing the naughty four-leggeds just in time. It is always the big, white German sheep that lead the breakaways. Andy has three types of sheep, the big, white Germans, who have been domesticated so well that they grow better on milled corn (a general term in Europe for any grain) than in the open pasture. The all-black sheep that are native to this area graze well, but Andy is shifting his flock over to the black-headed, black and white spotted sheep that graze better than the other two breeds. By “graze better”, I suppose he means that they are more efficient munchers, eating more quickly when they are taken out to the pastures every morning and evening.

Efficient grazing is important because, whereas shepherding used to mean watching the sheep in the fields from dawn to dusk, allowing the sheep to graze all day, Andy’s sheep only get to graze six hours a day. Sheep don’t graze well in the heat so being a sheep farmer in the summer in Central Greece means long days. Andy wakes up at 5 am and takes the sheep out until 8:30. He comes home and has some toast with us (his voluntary workers), before we all head to the barn to work on various tasks until half past noon. After showering, we eat lunch around 1:30 and rest until seven, at which time we take the sheep out for another three hours. Chores aren’t usually finished until 11 and lately we haven’t been going to bed until midnight to give our stomach half an hour to digest our late-late-night dinners. At five am the work starts again. Enjoy that meat you are eating, because raising it well, in a traditional pasture-fed manner, takes years of labor, working day after day from before dawn until after the sun has gone to bed. When you eat your next chunk of meat, remember to thank the farmer and the animal he helped to grow.