112 ~ Slow food the Swiss way - Scargada
- photo by Corina Cathomen
I recently returned home from Switzerland, where the ways of life, and especially the foodways, proceed at a slower and less instant, drive-thru pace than back here under the wave of the Stars n' Bars. In America we've lately rediscovered "slow food", but it’s something the Swiss never lost or forgot.
A beautiful example of this comes in September, when villages in the Swiss Alps celebrate the safe return of dairy cows to the valleys, after a summer of grazing in mountain pastures. This system has been used in Switzerland for centuries - in late spring/early summer cows are led up to a mountain meadow (a.k.a., an 'alp'), for a summer of grazing amongst rich wild grasses and wildflowers. Throughout the summer they are milked, and the milk is made easy to store and transport back down to the valley by transforming it to large rounds of cheese - winter food for the village.
And to be clear - this is really slow food. The cows aren't trucked up to the pastures in spring and trucked back in September - not enough mountain roads for that. They are walked up, by their human and canine cowherds, who then spend the summer with them in the alp. After a summer of grazing and milking (and cheesemaking), they all return together to the valley for the winter.
The safe return of the cows each autumn is an important event in Swiss mountain life, and is celebrated with a festival. In Romansh-speaking parts of Switzerland, the return in September is called "Scargada", which means 'unload' - that is, unload the cows from the mountain pastures (in spring, they are 'loaded' - "cargada" - into the pastures; the same words are used, for example, for loading or unloading a gun). While the festival is as much a celebration of the safe return of the cowherds (and cowdogs) as the cows, the cows definitely take center stage.
I recently had the wonderful good fortune to join in the Scargada festivities in a small Swiss village overlooking the crystal clear upper reaches of the Rhine River (after the festival, Corina and I went down for some trout fishing!). Village residents and other locals gathered on the upper edge of the village, near the mountains, on a gorgeous September Saturday. On the food menu were grilled sausages, excellent, crisp Swiss white wine, and a big pot of polenta, constantly stirred over a wood fire:
As people milled about, enjoying the food and chatting in Romansh, we first heard the start of the main event before we saw it: A hundred or more cowbells ringing out across the valley, as the cows approached from above, hidden by a screen of trees. As they descended and emerged in view, guided by their proud cowherds, the best milk producing cows of the summer led the way, honored with crowns fashioned from flowers, spruce branches, wild grasses and ears of corn.
The inscription on the bell's buckle is Romansh for 'God bless our cattle'.
- photo by Corina Cathomen
Even the four-footed herders get adorned for the occasion:
- photo by Corina Cathomen
Clearly, the Swiss prize their dairy cows. And if it doesn’t always work out to walk a cow down from the mountains in autumn, perhaps due to an injury to the animal, in an urgent pinch the Swiss will resort to other means - have a look. Call it a ‘helicowpter’ (sorry).
Also this month, for the third time in a row, Switzerland was ranked the world’s “best country”. The timing of the announcement was just a coincidence with the Scargada, but I also believe the two are related. Slow down a bit, take time to celebrate, and honor those who feed you, and yes, life has a chance of being good.
With thanks - engraziel! - to Corina for her help in various ways with this post.