Patter of hooves sustains a tradition in Tuscany
CHIUSDINO, Italy — As the morning dew faded recently, a group of riders in these Tuscan hills polished their boots and groomed their horses, then swung into the saddle, ready to drive their cows to the nearest pasture.
The ritual was part of an ancient tradition, the
transumanza, the seasonal moving of cattle from one land to another. For centuries, it has taken place twice a year in Italian regions where it was necessary to move cows and sheep from the cool mountaintops where they spent the summer to warm lowlands as winter approached, and vice versa.
But while the dayslong ride through Tuscany’s marshlands and steep paths was once a necessity of life, today it is done mostly to keep the tradition alive, and, in doing so, to maintain an essential link to the land, to the rhythm of the changing seasons and to the ancient Italian past.
“It’s not nostalgia,” said Ernesto Benini Galeffi, the owner of a construction equipment company and one of the event’s organizers. “We take to the past to improve our future.”
His group of about 40 riders, who saddled up early this month, included professional cowboys and horse performers and breeders from Italy and France.
But they were also joined by horse aficionados who usually work as doctors, accountants or entrepreneurs.
“Transmitting the tradition of the transumanza is important to us,” said Marco Mariotti, 37, a third-generation breeder with a doctorate in zootechnical genetics who was an organizer of the drive. “When you see hasty passersby who stop to look at animals, it’s beautiful.”
Today, some farmers still move their livestock in the seasonal tradition, which dates back centuries. More often than not, though, they transport the animals in vans, which are less expensive and more efficient.
Today’s drive is deliberately intended to straddle epochs. The riders were equipped with both the traditional staffs of the herders and cell phones, a concession to modern-day necessities.
And though the season would normally demand that the livestock be moved to warmer lowlands in the fall, their drive went in the opposite direction — from the coastal region of Maremma to the foothills of the Apennine mountain range in central Tuscany — for logistical ease
No matter, organizers and participants said. The event was intended to underline the human aspect of the ride, which passes through countryside and city alike, in what has become spectacle at once timeless and anachronistic.
The transumanza and its tracks once marked most of Italy’s regions because of the country’s conformation with a long mountain chain running through it and beaches all around the boot-shaped peninsula.
Shepherds used to help keep the woods clean and checked the mountains for erosion or fallen trees. In Tuscany, they also contributed to the area’s economy for centuries, as Tuscany’s grand duke exacted a toll tax from the shepherds at each passage until the late 1770s.
As mechanization came about in the 1950s, shepherds started moving their cattle in vehicles to save time.