POSTCARD
__________________________________________________________________________
Now,
Adopt - a - Sheep
By Alessandra
Stanley
New York Times Service
ANVERSA
DEGLI ABRUZZI, ltaly - In a twist on long - distance
adoptions, sheep lovers can now select their pick of the
flock over the Internet. A $154 contract entitles adoptive "parents"
to a year's supply of their chosen one's merino wool and
fresh cheese, as well as a photograph and adoption papers.
The less sentimental can also choose to receive their
adopted pet in the form of lamb chops.
The sheep
adoption program was created by a farmers' cooperative in a
medieval village in Abruzzi, a mountainous region in central
Italy that has become one of the more depopulated parts of
the country as traditional sheep farming dwindles and young
people move to the cities.
"People have
tended sheep in this area for the last 2,000 years, and we
want it to continue for another 2,000," said Manuela Cozzi,
who with her husband's farnily runs an organic sheep
cooperative and an "agritourism" inn in Anversa degli
Abruzzi "Sheep around here are in danger of becoming an
endangered species, and we hope this initiative will help
prevent that". The cooperative farm Cozzi runs with her
husband has 1,300 sheep. The local sheep farmers'
association has 40,000.
In all,
Abruzzi has 350,000 sheep. At its height, before World War
I, the region boasted more than 3 million. Cozzi, who sells
her organic, handmade smoked ricotta and wool socks by fax
and over the Internet, said she sends her raw wool to her
hometown, near Floreece, to be spun or worked by local
artisans because that cottage industry has all but died out
in her area of Abruzzi. Her flock is tended by three
shepherds from Macedonia, immigrants whom she credits with
saving the farm since Italians are no longer willing to do
the work.
Since she
started the adoption campaign last month, Cozzi said, more
than l00 applications have been received. "I am an
environmentalist and adopting a sheep seemed as good an idea
As Daniele
Romano, 25, a civil engineering student in Bologna who
adopted two sheep. "I tried to convince my friends that they
should do the same, but there were more who laughed than who
adopted."
Cozzi's farm
produces fragrant cheeses, using their sheep's
nonpasteurized milk The adoption contract includes five
kilograms (11 pounds) of sharp pecorino cheese, three of
ricotta and a choice of raw wool or knitted hiking socks.
Organic
fertilizer made of sheep manure is also part of the adoption
package. So are sausages, sheep brain and legs of lamb.
Seventy-five percent of the flock is destined to be
slaughtered. Cozzi is not squeamish about killing off her
woolly charges.
"I would never
eat meat from a butcher, but I am not a vegetarian," die
said. "I eat rneat but only if it is from one of ours." New
sheep owners find this harder to accept.
"I know that
in Abruzzi, lamb is a traditional dish," said Luigi
Marangoni, 53, a ceramics executive in Milan who traveled to
Anversa degli Abruzzi and adopted a baby sheep of his own.
"But I first saw my little lamb prancing in the green hills,
and now I cannot think of him in another, perhaps tastier,
state."
