Transhumance: in the footsteps of a shepherdess
Audio 48:30
Léa Cohelo, shepherdess in the Alpes de Haute-Provence with her dog Piano, during her summer vacation which will last four months.
© Raphaëlle Constant
By: Céline Develay Mazurelle Follow
51 mins
Each year in France, in fine weather, they and they are more than a thousand to take up their summer quarters in the mountains, the time of a summer pasture, with their herd.
They are shepherds, shepherdesses: a tough and demanding job, a unique and fascinating way of life, a universal and ancestral pastoral world, which we know to exist up there, but that we often know below. little or bad.
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"Go beyond the country" is the meaning of the word transhumance and it is the journey that Raphaëlle Constant made in the Alpes de Haute-Provence, in the footsteps of Léa Cohelo, a sovereign shepherdess in her own way. in its mountains.
At their side, 200 sheep, a hundred goats and other shepherds like Léa, on their way to the alpine pastures at an altitude of 1,500 meters, between the Verdon and Vaïre valleys.
The pastoral world is changing, becoming feminized, they say.
But far from the myth of the shepherdess, Léa and her fellow travelers show us the way: that of a coherent, generous and indispensable dialogue between man and his environment.
Let's follow him!
A report by Raphaëlle Constant.
Find out more:
- The
House of transhumance
in Provence
- The
Shepherd's House and alpine pastoral cultures
in the Hautes-Alpes
- The
Center for Studies and Pastoral Achievements Alpes-Méditerranée
in the Alpes de Haute-Provence
- The association
La Sarriette
which promotes sheep's wool and plants from the mountains of the Alpes de Haute-Provence.
To read :
- “Shepherdesses in their mountain pastures”,
by Hélène Armand, Éditions Glénat
- “Bergère
”, by Florence Debove, Éditions Transboréal
- "In the legs of the sheep
", a comic book by Maiiva, Éditions la Cardère, and a film by Natacha Boutkevitch
- “
A shepherd, shepherdesses, New challenges of a changing profession
”: a survey by Guillaume Lebaudy (ethnologist, School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences) and Julien Seghers (INFOMA intern at the Ministry of Agriculture), 2010.
Meadows not far from the Braisse summer hut, at the foot of the Grand Coyer.
© Raphaëlle Constant / RFI
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