Thursday October 19, 2006

The last Sierra Shepherds

I grew up in Bakersfield, CA in a farm family. One of the things I remember growing up was seeing the sheep in the fields when driving or running through the agricultural areas. A family tradition was to go to a Basque restaurant for holidays. Even living in northern Nevada my wife (who likes lamb and quickly came to like Basque food) and I make it to Wool Grower's on an annual basis.

A recent article entitled The last Sierra shepherds in a local newspaper reminded me that some of the sheepherding tradition from the southern San Joaquin valley also exists in northern Nevada. The tradition has changed over the years away from the Basque sheepherder but we still see the Basque influence in a fair number of Basque restaurants in the local area (our local favorite is JT's in Gardnerville, NV although its doesn't compare to my childhood Wool Grower's).

An interesting focus of Bunker's article is that the grazing tradition is kept eventhough the cost of the grazing isn't completely supported by those profiting from the animals. As is noted in the article sheep are rather hard on the land (Muir called them "hoofed locust"). If society is not seeing economic value and the environmental value is negative I think we would be better off helping find economically viable ways to meet demand other then government welfare. In this case I suspect that the demand is at least somewhat inelastic (speciality foods tend to be comfort items) and that necessity would drive those managing these animals to find economically viable ways to continue to do so. ( Oct 19 2006, 10:47:02 PM PDT ) Permalink