Friday, April 3, 2009

Lambing Season!

So, last night I was reading about the lambing season, this being Spring and all.

Since moving to Croatia, I've actually met a real live shepard. While it is a fairly common profession, particularly here in Dalmacija, the only shepard that I've known personally is Lukić in Ražanac (I like the tag line in this link to Ražanac ...). We had coffee and cakes at Lukić's house once. I was interested in buying some of the wool during the shearing season. The modus operandi around here is to burn the wool, because who actually wants wool in Dalmacija? At the time, I was working on a craft project that required stuffing. In lieu of wool from the Lukić flock, I used a little bit of Husband's grandmother's dowery. A dowery of wool (!)...I mean, even that there WAS a dowery blows my mind. When was the last time you heard of families getting doweries?

So anyway, husband met Lukić some years back walking around the village with his flock. Lukić told a story that the winter wind from the NorthEast, the Bura, is so strong in Ražanac that a gust knocked him off balance and he fell into the water which - naturally- got his clothes wet. Rather than catching a cold walking around in wet clothes, he walked back to the village naked. Ahhh, Ražanac...it's a unique place.
Anyway, Lukić was getting tired of the sheparding business and was thinking about going into the business of raising snails. That would be another first for me...snail wrangler.