Tag #117420 - Interview #87373 (Berta Finkel)

I didn’t have a job. We raised sheep. That’s what my husband did for a living before we got married. We had a large garden where we lived, we also had an enclosure in the back, and he had room for the sheep. And there was this man, who didn’t live with us, he only came during spring to milk the sheep. Then, around May, when sheep are put to pasture, they constructed a sheepfold, and we sent the sheep to the sheepfold. There, at the sheepfold, on the pasture, it was a different matter, it was out of the city. I used to go to the sheepfold myself, I went on foot, I sometimes brought my daughter along, even though it wasn’t nearby. That’s what I mean, each of us worked, for I don’t know how to describe the work that I did. But I seem to remember we had many sheep. We had 20, 30 sheep. You couldn’t keep too many sheep, for the number of sheep you could keep was very strictly regulated during the Ceausescu’s regime [6]. You weren’t allowed to put the sheep to pasture in the spring, when the grass starts growing. You weren’t even allowed to let them out of the courtyard until it was time to put them to pasture. People always put the sheep to pasture as late as May, you weren’t allowed to do it sooner. I had to keep them at home, feed them. And I did, what could I do? And I had to keep the homestead clean, the courtyard as well, I couldn’t let it get dirty. They didn’t come to check every day, but still, they did so when they remembered to do it, the courtyard had to be clean as well, everything had to be clean. That’s how it was during the Ceausescu regime. They erected the sheepfolds in May – everyone brought planks, this and that. That’s where the sheep were kept until autumn, when the cold sets in, and then the sheepfold was dismantled. Two shepherds lived there, and people took milk by turn. When your turn came, you went to the sheepfold, and took as much milk as you were due. It was very hard. We had a hard time raising sheep as we did, stop asking me questions about it.

We raised sheep until my husband died, and then we sold them, we stopped raising sheep. Ten years have passed since my husband passed away, he died in 1996.