How shepherding is under threat and evolving in Spain

It’s late June and in the rocky, sun-scorched hills north of Granada, Spain, a young woman tends a flock of 170 shiny black goats as they graze on tufts of yellowing grass. Julia Abalos Reznk, 23, tall and lanky with short-cropped hair and a serious face, looks as if she’s been caring for these animals since she could walk. Yet just four months ago Julia was living in bustling Madrid and studying translation.

As the goats begin to wander too far, Julia takes the handwoven sling that dangles over her shoulder and folds it in half, inserting a stone into the middle section. She swings it in a looping circle, releasing one end at just the right moment so that the stone goes flying, sailing a hundred metres in a wide arc over the herd and clattering down on the other side. The noise startles the goats, and they flock away from it—and back towards Julia.

Watching her is 62-year-old Juan Antonio Jiménez Almagro, a weather-worn shepherd with a gentle smile who has been roaming these lands for decades. Herding animals with sling-thrown stones is an ancient shepherding method, and something that Juan is proud to have taught Julia. It’s just one of a multitude of skills that Julia is learning here at the Andalusian Shepherd School in the south of Spain.

That young people are taking an interest in tending animals is of critical importance to those running the school. Without the small-scale shepherding of free-ranging animals, the lands of Europe would change dramatically. The effects of climate change would accelerate. Whole breeds of animals both domestic and wild could go extinct.

Every March for the past eight years, 15 to 20 eager students begin classes at the Shepherd School of Andalucia. They’ll spend ten weeks in the classroom learning about everything from veterinary science to pig ranching to accounting.

The first five weeks are held in an agricultural research centre near Granada, while the second five take place in a different location every year. This year it is in the Cazalla de la Sierra, an hour north of Sevilla. During the course, students also complete three, ten-day placements in the field, where they are instructed one-on-one by experienced shepherd tutors.

Tuition, meals and dorm accommodations are all provided to the students free of charge; the programme is part of a EU initiative that funds similar courses in France.

The majority of the students are sons and daughters of rural small holdings, but there are also those like Julia who are leaving the city behind to pursue the solitary profession of shepherding. Anyone can apply, but applicants must demonstrate that they understand the realities of the job. Those without a family background in the profession must have a solid plan, because beginning without land or animals can be near impossible.

It’s a scorching Tuesday afternoon and the class of 2018, including Julia and 15 classmates, are hunched over computers at the local community centre, examining a multi-coloured spreadsheet.

Their teacher, Carmen Leal Munoz, points to an overhead image. “Just click here and everything adds up automatically,” she says as her students enter hypothetical sheep prices into a meticulously designed spreadsheet.

Carmen is a business management teacher at the Andalusian Institute of Agricultural Research and Training. She has created this document specifically for people like Julia, who will soon be depending on every litre of sheep’s milk, kilo of goat meat and ounce of manure to ensure a profit margin and eke out a living.

A student from Granada named Mario Ballestín is watching extra keenly. With a background in telecommunications, he’s one the few students without familial ties to the profession.

Mario’s already worked for five years as an extra shepherd hand with a flock completing the transhumance, a centuries old practice of seasonally guiding animals thousands of miles across the country to graze in more agreeable temperatures. He could work for someone else again, or even tend his own flock of animals on public land. But what he really wants is his own flock and land. As he’s learned over the past weeks, there are grants to help young shepherds—but only if you already have 500 sheep or 170 goats.

To have what he wants, he’ll have to work smart. He knows these spreadsheets matter.

Later that afternoon the students gather on the patio of a local bar. “Milk and meat prices haven’t gone up for 25 years,” complains Cristobal Padilla Garcia, a fellow student whose family raises animals. “You have to make sure that your animals are productive all the time.”

Julia sits and listens. Raised by architect parents who farmed pigs on the side, she only really discovered her love of all things rural while working on a farm in Colombia after finishing her studies in literature and philosophy in Paris, and then studied theology in Madrid. But on the farm, every day was different, vibrant and new. She loved the work. She connected with the animals and the land.

“Before today, I liked the idea that shepherding is more bucolic, that there aren’t a lot of numbers,” says Julia, dragging on a hand-rolled cigarette. Now she’s learned that the modern technology and accounting she thought she was leaving behind might actually be useful for her dream of making cheese—and help her find peace of mind out on the land.

“The class convinced me,” says Julia. “The tools the professor gave us are perfect.” But what she likes most about becoming a shepherd “is not the business part, but the time spent with the animals in the countryside.”

It’s 9aM the next day. Sixteen bleary-eyed future shepherds climb into a large van for one of the last educational field trips of the course. After a bumpy 20-minute drive, they arrive on the land of Jaime Hidalgo Ruiz, a local shepherd who raises a rare race of indigenous pigs used to make Spain’s prized Jamón Ibérico. The students stare out at one of Jaime’s lush green fields, at the moment overrun with large black pigs.

“This type of animal isn’t being raised on big intensive farms,” explains the school’s coordinator, Francisco de Asís Ruiz Morales, who has come along for the day. He’s speaking about the modern practice of having thousands of animals kept in indoor stalls. “If we lose shepherds like Jaime, we will also lose whole races of indigenous animals.”

As the students wander the brush-free tundra that makes up the much of Jaime’s land, Francisco explains that without grazing herds, invasive species such as thistle, heather and boom would quickly destroy the biodiversity that has developed over the past thousands of years of non-industrial farming in Europe.

“Animals like the lynx and the eagle, that depend on cleared land to hunt, could disappear,” says Francisco. And without animals grazing and keeping the land clear, he explains, the forest fires plaguing Europe, thanks in part to climate change, would become even more uncontrollable.

He points at a cow, munching on a tuft of grass. “Plants that depend on wandering farm animals to spread their seeds would no longer grow,” he says. “There is a big gap in knowledge. Society in general doesn’t realise what is disappearing and its impact.”

A few days later it’s time for the students’ last ten-day placements with a shepherd tutor. Mario and Julia have both chosen Juan Antonio. They’ve been waiting for this: the chance to to be on the land with a real shepherd and soak up his wisdom.

“This is called torvisco,” says Juan Antonio, holding up a long, slim leaf. The three stand outside his milking shed, oblivious to the hot Andalusian sun. He passes them the plant. “It’s a natural antibiotic, antiseptic and anti-inflammatory.”

He holds up a weathered plastic water bottle filled with a dark, potion-like liquid. “This is a mixture of olive oil and torvisco,” he explains. “It can be used to treat infections instead of antibiotics.”

When one of his 200 goats or 170 sheep slips on the rocky hills and gets a cut, he wraps its foot in one of these leaves. When a milking sheep gets mastitis—an inflammation of the mammary gland—a little bit of oil does the trick.

Julia and Mario are rapt. “I’ve never worked with sheep or goats,” Julia explains. “This experience is perfect. I need to learn everything.”

They scramble up a scrubby hill behind Juan Antonio. The almost barren land is rolling and dry, punctuated by thirsty weeds that make excellent snacks for goats and sheep. The trio arrives at Juan Antonio’s makeshift dairy, cut into a three-metre natural creamy marble quarry. Within its cool walls Mario and Julia watch intently as their tutor demonstrates how he turns the goats’ milk into perfect wheels of artisanal cheese. First he filters it through two layers of cloth, then adds a dash of ground calf’s stomach to act as a coagulant, and then gently flips the wheels by hand so that they age evenly. The final product is free range, organic, antibiotic-free and sold locally.

In these simple wheels of cheese, Julia sees a future. She describes her dream: a bit of land and a small herd of sheep and goats; making small batches of high-quality, organic, cheeses and selling them in town.

“I want to be self-sufficient,” she explains. “I like to paint and write, but I don’t want to make a living from that; I want to make cheese.”

Of course, there’s more to being a shepherd than brewing oily tinctures and making cheese. The summer’s heat is just setting in and Juan Antonio’s sheep are heavy with wool. It’s time for shearing. Julia and Mario are in the barn, watching Juan Antonio’s son as he expertly flips a sheep onto its back, gathers its four legs with one hand and quickly binds them with rope. Then he turns on a large electric shearer and gets to work. In a matter of minutes, the once grey and matted sheep is on its feet, free and overjoyed at its new-found nudity.

Things don’t go as smoothly for Julia. Wrestling her sheep’s spindly limbs together takes her minutes instead of seconds, and holding the large animal down while simultaneously shaving its curves turns out to be challenging. When she’s done, 25 minutes later, the animal hobbles away, spotted with blood where the shaver nicked it. Eight hours later, Mario and Julia collapse on a stone wall near the herd, exhausted, drenched in sweat and covered in a gritty layer of dirt and wool. They’ll be doing this from dawn to dusk for the next three days.

“The life of a shepherd is a lot of hours of hard work,” admits Juan Antonio. But that’s nothing, he insists. Surprisingly, it’s the administrative load that drags him down. “The bitterness of life comes from the paperwork,” says the old shepherd, shaking his head.

Juan Antonio is talking about the ever-expanding rules and regulations that have controlled the livestock industry since changes were made to the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy back in the early 2000s. The rules are designed to lower food prices and control food quality and consistency. Shepherds say they vastly favour intensive animal production and make the livelihood of small scale shepherds with free ranging animals unsustainable.

Once Juan Antonio was more or less left to his own devices, but today even something as basic as moving a goat from one plot of land to another requires the approval of the local agriculture office. His homemade dairy in the mountains is now technically illegal. His son is constructing a dairy in the nearby town so that they can sell Juan Antonio’s cheeses legally again.

Yet in many ways, shepherds are still freer than most. It’s evening on the rolling tundra, and Julia, Mario and Juan Antonio stand in the shade of a scrawny tree, the land around them bathed in the day’s gentle last sunlight. They are quietly braiding straw-coloured fibre as Juan Antonio demonstrates how to weave the strands into a good, strong sling.

“This has existed since David and Goliath,” says Juan Antonio. “Did you know that David was a shepherd?”

For Julia, this is the highlight of the course, sitting up on this mountain with her wise tutor at her side, watching the animals and hearing their bells. It’s a contentment she’s willing to work to preserve.

“I have the tools to make shepherding sustainable, and to change the system,” she says. It’s young shepherds like her—savvy in the ways of both city and country—that may be what saves this ancient profession from fading into the past. Julia knows that the path ahead will be difficult, but the peace she finds in these moments makes it all worth it. She gazes out at the horizon as the sun dips low over the rocky terrain. “There is a lot to fight for.”