OLD WAYS NEW
86 | May• 2019
the mammary gland – a little bit of
oil does the trick.
Julia and Mario are rapt. “I’ve nev-
er 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 bar-
ren 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
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 arti-
sanal cheese. First he filters it through
two layers of cloth, then adds a dash of
ground calf ’s stomach to act as a coag-
ulant, 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
IT IS SHEPHERDS LIKE
JULIA –SAVVY IN
THE WAYS OF THE CITY
AND THE COUNTRY–
THAT MAY SAVE THIS
ANCIENT PROFESSIONbatches 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 Anto-
nio’s sheep are heav y with wool. It’s
time for shearing. Julia and Mario
are in the barn, watching Juan Anto-
nio’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 simulta-
neously shaving its curves turns out
to be challenging. When she’s done,
25 minutes later, the animal hob-
bles 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