Cowboy Blues: Etseri, Svaneti
You did ask for this, I reminded myself as the phone rang at 5:19 am. You did ask Ramaz to wake you up to go get the cows with him if he was leaving early in the morning. It’s true, I did. So there was no one to blame but myself.
Once the village fields free themselves of snow in late spring, they’re available for a while for our cows to graze in. Usually there are a couple of locations they hit, one after another, the migration occurring as one field’s gate is closed and another’s opened. Word gets around both the cows and their owners, and we know where to send them, when.
In summer, though, the best pastures are halfway up a nearby mountain, the distant top of which has a tiny lake and an ancient stone church. The lake reflects Mt. Ushba magnificently, a photographer’s dream, but it’s about a seven-hour hike to it. I’ve only been up there once, and that was on horseback. The Mountain was kind enough to show itself, reflection and all, and I was delighted with the results.
The cows don’t get that high, but believe me, it’s far enough, their good grass. A few ruined or still used wooden huts allow one to overnight in rustic comfort, away from the pesky distractions of cell-phone signal or electricity, drinking and washing with water from a delicious nearby spring and cooking on a wood stove.
Problem is, they like it so much up there that, although one may lead them a short way to the village outskirts and mountain’s edge every morning and they’ll go up alone, they must be fetched back every evening. Either on foot or on horseback. Until late autumn. Otherwise they’ll get used to spending the night up there... This chore has usually been done by teenagers or their fathers on a rotating basis, according to whose animals are actually up there. Our one cow has subdivided into three now, so I feel more responsibility towards doing my part in this time-consuming operation. So it was time for me to refresh myself on the tortuous way and pitch in.
On the way back, in the stunning Caucasus scenery which I honestly would have appreciated more after a cup of coffee and a bite to eat, Ramaz and I got to talking about the problem, soon joined by another of our neighbors whose animals are more in number than ours together and pasture in one herd with them. I told them that I’m just not going to let my three cattle out today after milking the one; I’ll rather give them some of our hay from the store and keep them in. They’re tired, I’m tired, enough for today! I’m not doing this again tomorrow before sunrise!
He had the suggestion of hiring a local person to do the trip every evening, by horse, and bring the herd of our three houses back. If we could divide the cost proportionally by our numbers of animals, I was in, I said. (It works out to about 18 GEL/month for me.) More discussion with the other neighbor, and it was a done deal, at least theoretically. Ramaz will seek the person to hire and, if he succeeds, our worries in this regard will be over. Although the walk is into glorious territory, which I never tire of seeing, it’s about a three-hour round trip up a good kilometer of altitude, and this on a daily basis I could do without.
While the calves won’t stray, and will catch up with the herd, the older ones are a bit less inclined simply to go where they’re told. There are all sorts of side paths for them to take and disappear into the forest, and while a local like Ramaz knows all of these forks like the tendons on the back of his hand, I don’t. If I had to do this alone, I can think of a few ways I could get it wrong and need to call for help, which would be embarrassing as well as frustrating.
So my cows are chewing over their fate, punished with an indoor stay until the matter is resolved and the new system is up and running. We still have about a stack’s worth of good last winter’s hay for them to eat, along with what I or someone else better than me scythes off our land now. I really hope it won’t be just a great idea which failed to come into reality, because I do have other things to do around the house and farm and school, a whole list of them. Whoever takes up the job offer will earn not only my share of their salary, but also a healthy dollop of my gratitude.
P.s. I can now add that the Wrangler has been found—the teenage son of one of our close neighbors, whom I previously described in another GT article some years ago by the title “Grim Reaper as a Happy 12 Year Old”! His first shift is this evening as I write, and we three participating families are delighted to have the Cow Problem stricken off the list of our common frustrations.
Tony Hanmer runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 1000 members, at
www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/ .
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
Tony Hanmer