Twenty Mile, Three Day Hike with 300 Sheep - You Call that a Honeymoon?

I can hardly believe that it’s already been a week since we were with the sheep. Anversa degli Abruzzi is a small town tucked neatly into the Sagittario Valley between the picturesque mountainsides of Abruzzo, Italy. It was our mission to take Nunzio Marcelli’s sheep flock from Anversa to the top of the mountains in Chiarano. It was a ~20 mile, three day journey, full of cured meats, aged cheeses, many gallons of wine, bottles of moonshine grappa, and 300 sheep friends that we will never forget. Click on the thumbnails to see a rough approximation of our route.  

Click each image to enlargeTranshumance RouteTranshumance is the ancient practice of moving ruminant animals to fresh pastures on a seasonal basis. Before feed could be imported to the farm, shepherds would walk with their animals to faraway pastures in order to graze at various times of the year (see our previous transhumance post). Nunzio Marcelli has been practicing this tradition for many years and has recently opened it up to visitors who would like to participate. Check out his site at www.adottaunapecora.com for more information. Even if you can’t go on the transhumance you can still adopt-a-sheep! For the final three days of our honeymoon we decided to join him and his shepherds on the trip, it was a great decision.

The night before we set off on transhumance we celebrated with the townspeople of Anversa in a “Sagra degli Gnocchi del Pastore”, which is basically a Shepard style gnocchi-fest in the town piazza. The whole town of 300 was out in full effect. Tables lined the plaza streets,

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The Fading Art of Transhumance

Transhumance is the ancient process of seasonallt shepherding animals through large tracts of fresh pasture. Back before our animals were fed grain and kept inside warehouses or fenced in permanent dirt lots all day, shepherds would guide ruminant animals across public and private lands to consume forage at the optimal times of the year. In the summer the animals were brought to higher elevations as grasses and shrubs matured in the low country. Before humans came along animals would just do it themselves.

In Abruzzo we're staying at La Porta dei Parchi, which is owned and operated by Nunzio Marcelli and his team of farmers, shepherds and cheesemakers. We'll be participating in a couple days of transhumance starting tomorrow morning. We got a little practice yesterday morning with the goats and rams, check out the pictures below.

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What's in a Name? Scrapple and Sweetbreads, Defined

Phew! A lot of activity going on over here. You may have noticed Sweetbreads has been on a mini-vacation from the blog as she prepares for our wedding this weekend (Sunday!). We've also had a change in plans to absorb, and on top of all that it looks like the economy might take another dive. Yikes. So with all that turmoil going on around us, we thought it might be a good time to give a little clarity on why we're using pseudonyms (for the time being).

Images from Accidental Hedonist, Midlife Magazine, domesticesq, and chomposaurus.wordpress

As great as it would be if our actual names were Scrapple and Sweetbreads, alas it’s not the truth. Someday soon we'll write freely under our own names, but for now we're choosing to write under pseudonyms. No, we’re not running from the law. No, we’re not impostors operating some sort of farm-blog experiment. The simple fact is that we have to take into account our day-to-day lives. We don’t want our work on Little Seed to interfere with our day-jobs until we’ve made a clean break with our past. One thing that’s absolutely essential to both of us is our integrity and our focus on doing what’s right. I have a demanding day-job and feel a deep responsibility to to give my work 100% of my focus while I’m in the office. Yes, like anyone with a dream, I sometimes wander off in my mind and jot down little notes here and there, but I don’t specifically dedicate time to Little Seed while I’m “on the clock”. Sweetbreads similarly needs to separate work from dream. That doesn't mean, however, that we can't dedicate our free time to pursuing our dreams, thus our efforts to start our farm education and get our website up and running.

We both feel the responsibility to our employers and do not want to publicly rub our dreams in their faces. Luckily, I have a great relationship with my boss and have expressed that in a year or two I'd like to start my own business and he's ok with that. It's all about openness and respect and it works both ways. 

So that’s the rationale for using pseudonyms, but why did we choose Scrapple and Sweetbreads?

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