Transylvanian horseman

Market visit

On a rainy Monday morning, we visited the market in the next village, 10km (6 miles) away.

In the street, horse carts were variously in motion and parked. It really was a grey day, with sharp rain showers passing through every half hour or so. The concrete road was covered by a thin film of liquid mud, and everything on and around the road seemed to be more or less dirty.

In a yard off the village road, maize was being sold from the back of a truck. Whilst a rare hatless man covered his head with his coat in this land of hat wearers, someone else loaded a ubiquitous hand cart. A pair of horses stood patiently, rugged and warm.

Under the covered bridge opposite, the off-duty postman waited with his horse until a break in the weather. The main road through the village once was host to a succession of covered bridges, all of which had secumbed to the needs of large trucks by the 1970's.

This covered bridge is said to be around one hundred and twenty years old. It is rather beginning to sag in the middle. It has survived because it serves only a minor side road, and really is rather quaint and photogenic.

The old main timbers of the covered bridge are hand-hewn and obviously date from a past age before modern sawmills and chainsaws. Metal fittings were made by a blacksmith. There are still two covered bridges serving side roads, and one (which appears to have been relocated from the main road) crossing the river into a farmer's yard.

Going home in a rare brighter spell during the dull wet morning, a farmer was taking a cow and calf that he had bought. Both are well wrapped up against the rain. The calf is catching a ride in the cart. With this kind of load trailing, one has to remember not to trot the horses on.

Others had bought sheep as well. Viewed in the beginning of another rain deluge, these animals seem rather more waterproof. Their owners are in a nearby bar (inevitably, at the weekly market, when the men need to share news over a drink or several), and have only a couple of kilometers to get home. Even so, I expect that we, faraway dwellers, got home long before them on account of our lesser thirst.

Village excursion

Yesterday we made a trip around the village with two visitors from Ireland. I captured some pictures during the day.

Gelu and Tudor wait patiently with the carriage.

Neighbours pass with manure and new window frames.

A traveller and his horse climb past us with blocks of lime for sale, used to make whitewash.

We pass a cart of hay travelling in the other direction.

At the blacksmith's, we can choose between a stove and having a horse shod. The blacksmith is very versatile in the range of things that he can make, repair and do.

On the way back, we ford the stream rather than take the bridge so that the horses can drink.

Back at home, a very hairy and rather grubby Pintea is being used for a shoeing demonstration.

View over my yard

Here's the view from my balcony, taken a couple of days ago. After working hours, a neighbour's horse was sneaked it for shoeing. He steadied his young and rather fidgetty horse, whilst Oprea held up the feet for Nelu.

It cannot be a whole lot of fun holding up the foot of a less than quiet horses whilst trimming and nailing on. I can see why Horseshoeing Housewife would like to see her clients hold their horses' feet up. (In Britain, Health & Safety rules would get in the way, and farriers probably would be afraid of litigation if an owner got hurt.)

There is a part of me that really appreciates living in a country that isn't overwhelmed by "health & safety". Too many rules in a nanny state breed a lack of responsibility. Is it a coincidence that Britain is a huge nanny state and the British are (by my reckoning as a riding centre proprietor) amongst the most accident-prone riders?

At the same time, I would like to live in a country with a good national health service, and where basic infrastructure isn't falling to pieces. Probably I cannot have it both ways. The State will be bigger than I might like if I want decent hospitals without paying through the nose for private insurance (which I wouldn't be able to afford anyway doing this badly paid job) and roads that aren't full of holes. People in Britain might complain about the National Health Service, but at least it isn't necessary to bribe doctors and nurses in order to receive treatment. When the health budget per person is under $200, one can predict just how little a Romanian medical professional is paid (and why so many have fled to the West).

As you can see, the shoe that Nelu is fitting has been made for long life. I really don't like these sorts of shoes. They are left on for too long, and the tall toe pieces and calkins wear very unevenly if the horse isn't well balanced in the first place. However, no-one listens. If the horse isn't shod here, it will be shod up the road somewhere. This is an area where borium is very useful, because a very thin layer gives a great deal of wear. However, borium is hard to come by, little known and expensive in Romania. Even borium electrodes for arc welding are difficult to find.

Here's a view of the completed front feet. They are raised very high, exaggeratedly so, however that is the custom in these parts. No-one seems to notice (or want to notice) that my draught horses go better with flat shoes (using borium) or very little raised using 1/2" rebar welded flat onto the bottom of the shoe.

Scary kindly gave me the following award, for which I am grateful. I would like to pass it on to Horseshoeing Housewife, who merits it for a variety of good reasons.

For being a good farrier - and not fitting shoes like the ones in the photos above:) For describing, with honesty and enthusiasm, an interesting life of work, family time, animals and leisure. For being no more diplomatic than strictly necessary. Rarely do I delve into my past personal life, however I have been married to a female farrier. (Unhappily, thanks to her attitude and behaviour.) So I have some insight into the tension between doing a tough physical job with powerful and sometimes fractious animals, and being a compassionate female partner. And just how difficult it is to attain a good balance. Knowing this, Mikey, I am impressed by how successfully you manage these diverse and potentially conflicting aspects of your exciting life, and by how well you write about your adventures en-route.

Dog in the manger

After filling the mangers in the early afternoon, we let the horses back into the newly cleaned yard. Here is the familiar row of bottoms as the main herd of twenty feeds. They are busy eating, with little in the way of herd politics interfering. Except for one.

The yard provides a total of 32 metres (105') of manger for twenty small to medium sized horses. It is plenty. However Pintea does not agree. Not only is the cheeky grey thoroughly dirty from rolling in the mud, he wants to eat on his own as well. So here he is, enjoying a great swathe of manger like, well, a dog in the manger.

It's not as if Pintea is a complete newcomer. He's been here for two years now. During that time, I've used him as a lead horse until I switched to the larger Doru. Plenty of guests have ridden him before he became Danielle's favourite.

Personalities do take time to appear. Over the years, we have watched many of the horses develop as characters. Some, like Olga and Pintea, are bigger characters. Others, like the roan mares Mura and Roua, have grown into steady, reliable working horses. The old alpha mare Nelly is allowing her mantle to fall onto her assertive adult daughter Lee.

My horse Doru and I are getting used to one another too after somewhere around three thousand kilometres on the trail together. There is something in one's relationship with a horse that is beyond ready explanation in words. Teachings of the Horse made me think of this yesterday. A master:slave relationship won't prosper, yet a horse needs to respect his handler. I like the idea that one has to be just one step up the hierarchy from one's horse, not necessarily at the top. One needs to spend a lot of time with one's horse, and that is a challenge whether one has to divide one's time amongst thirty horses or spend one's day in an office (or even both, as can happen here). It is interesting getting to know Doru's personality, to discover what he enjoys, to learn the cues that he gives to show interest, boredom, pleasure and displeasure. To see how work or, conversely, lack of activity affects him. (He is one of those horses whose temperament benefits from work.) The season, too, as he is a stallion. He is quieter in winter, when he can even be turned out with the geldings, however there comes a time as the weather warms when he needs to be separated from them. Perhaps because he is neither treated as an oddity nor filled with oats, he is quiet and sensible around other horses, he just can't generally be turned loose with them.

Is there still snow?

When I travel 80km and descend a few hundred metres to town at this time of year, a common question posed by people who know me is whether there is still snow where I live? Seemingly, I live in such an alpine wilderness that townies wonder whether we are still snowbound. There is still snow higher up, however mud is a commoner commodity after several days of rain and drizzle. The fields are muddy, the yard is muddy, the roads are muddy. This does not stop a few teenage girls from teetering around in heels looking (as Danielle delicately puts it) like hookers outside a biker bar. However most of us manage fine with wellingtons. The town people, safe in their conglomeration of concrete apartment block and congested communist-era road system, have a less scenic but relatively mud-free existance.

Spring is far advanced in the low rolling hills of central Transylvania. Ploughing has begun, creating a thrilling patchwork of rich brown and fresh green. Down there, the world is coming alive again, as it will here after a few more weeks. However, for the moment, up here it rather feels as if we are in the corner of the fairytale garden that is forever winter.

This is my favourite time to travel the lowlands. There is plenty of agricultural activity, little traffic, and the temperature is mild. Snowdrops and crocuses are blossoming. When the sky is a clear blue, the slanting light emphasises the gentle topography. It is a big landscape beneath that wide open sky. Yet it is also an intimate, small-scale land, with woods and gulleys, villages tucked away in little valleys. It has hidden places, as every special landscape should have.

Nothing important is hidden from Doru, who concentrates on a manger full of hay. I stood on the manger to take this photo, though it would have been better with a wide angle lens. His rope headcollar is heading towards replacement time. Fortunately he is not a horse to pull back when tied up, nor an escapee such as Gelu who has freed himself in the stable during two of the past three nights. Fortunately Gelu is trustworthy and has a good sense of self preservation. His companion Tudor has not worked out how to free himself and, perhaps surprisingly, nor has Gelu liberated him. Gelu has developed the habit of removing his neighbour's headcollar. Each evening around nine, I free each horse in turn to drink from the old enamel bath that holds the stable drinking water. Gelu and Tudor are privileged to be sent to drink together. Occasionally Tudor drinks and then heads to the stall where spare sawdust is stored, quickly dropping down and rolling. Afterwards he rises and heads quietly back to his place, knowing that he has not overstepped the bounds of good behaviour. He is outside all day long, free to roll, however the sawdust is soft and dry. These older horses have developed such individual personalities. As far as is safe, I allow them to exercise their personalities, since they are happier as individuals and nearer to what they were created to be. They are not mean or rude horses, and they and I are comfortable around one-another. There is a lot to be said for working with geldings.

Clearing up

We have been clearing up, in more ways than one. The yard, of course, has needed cleaning. It always does, with so many horses circulating.

I have also been getting the passports for the horses. Those outside Europe may not know that, in the EU, each horse needs a "passport". This carries information such as the microship number, name and appearance of the horse, and vaccination details.

Until now, horses in Romania merely have been issued with identity cards which record the six-monthly tests for equine anemia and vaccinations against anthrax. These vary from county to county. As our local vet (who has himself only just come face to face with a computer and clearly dislikes the experience) remarked, some counties made a real hash of the identity cards. In neighbouring Suceava county, the identity card records the age of the horse, rather than the date of birth, without recording the date when the card itself was issued. My stallion Doru came from Suceava county and has just such an identity card, moreover filled in with such scrawl that I wonder whether a drunk or a delinquent child completed it.

Needless to say, getting equine passports is not simple. Two of my horses don't even have identity cards. I allowed the local vet to abuse in absentia the person who sold one horse to me without papers before dropping the punchline that the vendor is another state vet. Anyway, for 15 lei (5 euro), I can get new papers for each horse. There is also a 15 lei tax on selling a horse, even to one's neighbour. I read in a newspaper that Romania has (if I recall) 387 different taxes. The Ministry of Finance protested that there were "only" 295 (or some such number) or taxes. Living here, it feels like more than 387.

I wonder what border vets in the West would make of these Romanian papers? The passports don't necessarily include markings, just a word to describe the colour as brown, roan or whatever. (Although cat and dog passports have room for a photo.) I hope that Western microchip scanners can read Romanian microchips. There is a rumour that the Romanian equine microchips were imported by the Chief Veterinarian (who had awarded himself a monopoly) at considerable personal profit without checking whether they met EU standards. Apparently they don't. In most countries, this would be an urban myth. Out here, it might just be true.

King of toilet paper

Driving the hundred miles to Cluj today, I finally stopped to photograph this building. It has stood like this for years, a testament to post-communist proto-capitalism.

The two advertisements translate more or less as follows.

TOILET PAPER - IN LARGE AND SMALL QUANTITIES

ANIMAL REARING STATION FOR SALE

Indeed, business people are well advised to diversify. Toilet paper and meat are two diverse staples that most people prefer not to go without.

Winter traffic

There are, it seems, people who can load even more firewood onto a cart than my staff can. It must be that rare incentive of paying per load. Danielle might joke about my Scottish heritage, however I am not the meanest firewood loader in the village!

The load pictured is rather large, however the journey is very slightly downhill on a hard surface. So it isn't difficult on the horses.

The equine welfare situation in southern Romania has hit the news again. It seems like the authorities decided to persecute the Roma (i.e. Gypsy) minority, presumably to get them to move on. (With the open EU borders, they might even emigrate and become someone else's problem.) In fact, what happened was that hundreds of horses were abandoned. This is very bad news, and not altogether surprising when some of the poorest people in society are stopped from taking their animals out to work. The link, if anyone wants it, is http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/17/wrom117.xml.

Some friends in Fundatia ADEPT are arranging a meeting with the Romanian Prime Minister to discuss the situation, which is likely only to get worse over time. I have been busy drafting proposals to enhance road safety for animal-drawn vehicles. Friends and draught horse enthusiasts in Britain and Germany have given useful feedback - thank you everyone.

I hear that several equine and animal charities are taking an active interest in the situation. One charity says that it has funding to care for some abandoned horses. For how long?

However, the real issue is legal, since ill thought out laws will result in more and more horses becoming redundant. As usual, politics is at play in the animal welfare world. A well known British equine charity is trying to minimise the problem. Of course: their Romanian sources seem to be telling them what they want to hear, which is that their existing project in Romania is succeeding. No it isn't! It is ignoring the biggest single challenge to equine welfare. However, the directors of that charity hate to be contradicted, so their local agents are safer toeing the line and continuing to receive funding. I know: I have been threatened by that charity for questioning their judgment in an email conversation with them - not even for saying something publicly. (I was threatened by phone, via a third party on the charity's payroll, so that I can't prove anything in a court of law. Have they done this before?) Leaks occur almost everywhere, and one duly came my way later, a sympathetic individual confirming that I have indeed been blacklisted by the charity. Indeed, it was confirmed that, in at least one instance, they have attempted to harm my company (which owns and cares for 30 horses, I might add). I will not publish names here (readers can email me for details) since I know that an employee of that charity is subscribing to this blog. If that person has been reading posts with an open mind over the past few months, they will realise that real action is needed to help protect Romanian draught horses, not denial of the main issues blanketed by a smokescreen of projects that barely scrape the surface.

Someone in Europe commented to me that "redundant people aren't shipped to slaughterhouses, they are supported and work is found for them. So why should 'redundant' animals simply be killed?" This is an excellent thought.

Enough: I am annoyed and frustrated by this situation, where the utimate losers are horses. I have nothing more to say without beginning to really rant.

Stress.....

Anne asked the question: is life less stressful where you are, or is the stress level the same, just about different things? Your hay cart falls in a stream. That's probably right up there with a computer crash. I wonder if the stresses of an agrarian life, where you fix things with the sweat of your brow, which releases good stress-relieving chemicals in your brain, leads to a better quality of life -- if you can do without all the things that make our modern life easy. I realize I'm writing this to a man with an Internet connection, which may or may not qualify you to answer but I hope you will. I sometimes think that my grandparents, with their struggles in farming, weren't better off sitting on the porch and talk after a hard day than we are seeing the news on TV where mentally impaired women blown up as a way to kill innocent people.

That's an interesting question. Most people out here, in the deep countryside, are relatively free from stress. Life has its irritations, however the land and climate are good enough that almost everyone has enough food, fairly good health, a home and some money. The occasional hay cart falling into a river isn't welcome, however it doesn't mean starvation or poverty.

The other side of the coin is that levels of responsibility can be rather low. That is something that I notice as an employer, and that does raise my personal stress level. It can be quite difficult to get ordinary people to connect their actions now to what may happen later. This is also clearly visible on the roads, where common sense is not the most obvious attribute of most drivers.

Running a business creates similar issues to life in the West. People here tend to be more fatalistic than in the West, so they deal with problems in a somewhat different way, worrying less and perhaps also taking less precautions too.

Therefore many businesses seem to tick over, never earning a great deal, but fulfilling their owners' immediate needs. In a peasant society, where next year may bring war, plague or invasion, not taking work entirely seriously is an approach that has its merits. At the same time, most people know next to nothing about any news beyond the purely local. That way there is "less to worry about".

From my point of view, operating in a bureaucratic system where nobody seems to take the situation entirely seriously has great potential as a generator of stress. However, there are plenty of reasons why I enjoy living here, so it is a matter of establishing a mental balance and not focussing excessively on the negative.

There are some particularly pointless stress raisers emanating from outside Transylvania which do annoy me. One is the pervading media prejudice against this country. The barrage of xenophobic newspaper articles (especially in Britain) about "Romanian gypsies" damages our business through dissuading people from booking. Dishonest charity fundraising (again, especially in Britain) portraying Romania as full of suffering people and animals damages tourism. The lack of any desire to co-operate within the equestrian tourism industry (much of which is run by expatriates) and the way in which some resort to dishonesty and dirty tricks to siphon trade from others is irritating (though, fortunately, not very effective).

The way in which EU regulations are, slowly but surely, destroying rural life and sustainable farming across Eastern Europe is a still-unfolding tragedy. My near-namesake Sir Julian Rose of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside wrote: How they hate small, independent farmers! I know first hand having spoken with the committee responsible for negotiating Poland's entry into the EU (2004). Quite simply, I was informed, the objective is to remove approx. 1 million small, ecologically friendly, family farmers from the land and replace them with modern monocultural agribusinesses designed to supply the super markets of Europe with bland, tastless and cheap food. In the jargon is is called "restructurisation".

That, more or less, is what Communism set out to do within the Soviet Bloc. Replace ownership and incentive with obligation and propaganda. Don't think that everyone was equal back then. The leaders and aparatchiks lived well, surrounded by luxury, just as the bosses and aparatchiks of agribusiness do today. Every road seems to lead to some tyranny or other. I was going to write that, perhaps, this is the biggest cause of stress, seeing a way of life destroyed and millions of proud farmers made into wage slaves so that Tesco and Walmart can make more money through selling rubbish to the ignorant. However, this gaping open wound is more of a tragedy, a deep and continual pain that accompanies one throughout every day. Witnessing it is like slowly dying. As time passes, I begin to see what Jesus meant when He said: "You are in this world, but not of it." Perhaps this is the lesson that I was brought here to learn?

The firewood arrives at last

Despite a hilarious, well lubricated social visit yesterday afternoon, I did not forget the firewood that I had agreed to take. Nor did I forget to buy camera batteries this morning.

But first an admission. I must have had a glass more than I thought yesterday. My typing was more awry than anticipated. Hence my mis-naming a reader in a comment that I posted: BarGodess. Having spent plenty of time in both bars and barns, I know the difference. However the innocent absent "n" had slipped away, making BG sound like the denizen of a drinking den. Sorry. I'm sure that you've never hung out in a bar. I don't know whether I could say that about igallopon who admitted to seven interesting things. Her charismatic 19 year-old purple punk incarnation would have frightened me off. I was shy at that age.

Anyway, we went and collected some offcuts for the fire. Here Tudor and Gelu pull a load into the area behind the house, where the boiler is. Nelu steers whilst Vasile and Oprea brace the overloaded cargo that had begun to slip. We paid per load, so I approve of the overloading so long as it is safe.

Nelu lounged about for the camera, feigning idleness. So well in fact that it seemed to come naturally to him. All my staff know that I post pictures, and they and their friends look out for my illustrated posts. This is all good fun, however sometimes I need to remember (and bring to their attention) that I am paying them, so real work does need to be done.

Anyway, we brought and unloaded two carts filled with these offcuts. The chimneysweep made an appearance, realising simultaneouly that he hadn't been here for a while and hadn't any beer money in his pocket. He reproached me, as he reproaches everyone, for allowing their chimney to become completely blocked. The emphasis was on completely, as though I were a truly negligent householder and my chimney a defenceless creature wantonly abused. Well, at least the fire burns better now. All this green wood will clog the chimney again soon enough.

The space behind the house is mainly a service area where we unload and cut firewood. The reinforced concrete roof slab of the septic tank makes a good working platform, and is sufficiently massive that we can cross it in safety with vehicles. That's a good thing, since no-one would like to fall in!

In the Spring, I hope to construct a new, larger lean-to on the right so that more firewood can be kept under cover. The new boiler uses a considerable volume of wood, especially softwood which has a lower calorific value. If I can burn waste wood then my impact on the forest will be less, and that is what we are doing with these offcuts. Other than as firewood, they are valueless. A community like this, working a local forest sustainable, can have a very low environmental impact.