It says in the subtitle of the book: “The sheep have made me shepherds.” How does it relate to sheep?

I see myself inside the flock. The herd focuses on sheep and I am very lucky, I have been admitted to the herd. With them I have learned what I know about them. Yes, of course, I have received training, and Exker has been instrumental in this path. But in the end I have been made shepherds by sheep, no one else.

At those hours that we've spent together, the sheep have fixed me. It has been very useful for me to spend time on the block. Finish the work without “nothing”, sit in a corner and see what happens between the sheep.

What is the core of grazing?

His name is the same, the care of sheep. But the care of sheep pursues the care of the land, of the mountain, of life... and of the people. It's because we are here, because we create the food of some people and we're taking care of them.

With what intentions have you written in the Reflection?

I've been at the School of Writers for two years, and by the time I signed up, I was clear about the goal: to put on the table the concerns, the joys and the realities that we live in our lives and whoever they are the starting point, to reflect on different issues.

The recommendation of colleagues from the School of Writers and Tere Irastorza was fundamental. They soon saw that mode was a diary. That testimony would give strength to the rest.

In your daily life and death are brutal. How do you understand the relationship between the two?

One implies the other. If we are alive right now it is because other beings have died. It can be nasty, it can be crude, it can be hard -- but it is. The life cycle includes death.

This does not mean that it is sometimes painless. And on other occasions, death serves to relieve pain and what you want you can't wish life if it brings so much suffering. And you already know that the indicator of rest and love at a given moment will be the knife.

When we send the lambs to the slaughterhouse, what reassures me is that these animals are going to die in order to feed people properly, so that people stay alive, healthy. The only consolation I find is that when they're alive, they live as smoothly as possible, try as best as possible. And give him the most dignified death possible.

My job is to relieve the grief of the sheep mothers of these lambs, to care for the sheep in that sense.

Sheep mourning? How do you do this?

Communication is the key. We are two species, but we live together and form a universe. Communication is not only verbal, we communicate with the eyes, with the hands, with the tone of the voice... and I do not know why, but I feel that the sheep receive that intention: “I’m with you, thank you, I know it’s not easy, but you need it.” Because infinite growth is not possible: we couldn't leave all the lambs to live.

During childbirth, some lambs die and in these circumstances grief with the sheep must be worked. The sheep see it clear at a certain point that the lamb has died and somehow reject it and make their lives. But others remain tied, clean up the body, give him little blows with his leg to see if he gets up... How can we act in these cases? It is customary for the dead lamb to retire as soon as possible, thinking that if the lamb were removed the lamb will be forgotten and will continue as if nothing had happened. But not so, for the sheep there have been many things... At a meeting of northern livestock women, they said that some pastors left the corpses until the sheep recognized the death of the child. We have been doing so since then. You have to give it time.

What about the relationship with the ancestors? In the book are present both the mother and the grandmother, and the Galician and Galicia.

In my career my referents have always been the grandmother and mother: when it comes to taking a bank or being with the sheep... and they are in me because before there were other grandmothers, mothers or aunts.

We women are left out of livestock with that “wonderful” machining revolution, but I feel very sorry for myself and in the case of my mother and my grandmother also felt the livestock in them.

The language of our house was Galician. I received the Galician world that makes me, but I have always lived in the Basque Country. I live what happens to migrants and their descendants: you are neither one, you go and don't go, and here you are...

Considering the relationship with the land, what do you see from the Pikunieta farmhouse window?

From our house you see a landslide forestry policy. Less bad than nature does its work and we have many beautiful corners.

The big infrastructures that you see from our home, for the time being, are shadows. In Mt. Irimo, in Meaka, in Oleta, in Samiño, in Izazpi, in Karakate -- it's scary to feel that this landscape you're feeling is going to stop being. And to what extent that change is going to change you. And you might see yourself in exile, even if you're at home. It's a big worry, you get drowned in some moments.

I do not understand why everything that is thought to be done in defence of nature is done by destroying nature itself. I want, of course, renewable energies and renewable systems, but not on that scale. And not to transport it later by electric highway to Germany. I would like every hamlet to have its own Community system or system, as small as possible. Because I really feel like we can't cover and artificialize one more square meter. No, because we think we don't have any dependency on the environment, but that's where life takes us.

We are very concerned about the climate situation and the changes it has brought us. We have also detected that the rhythm of cycles is breaking, that you cannot foresee and plan as before. And that creates a lot of concern. What will sheep eat if there is no grass? And if I have to go shopping outside, what price will they put me? Because if there's no grass here, it won't be out either... The head can get into that suffocating wheel.

He says in the book that cheese is “the art of balance.” What is the relationship between cheese and art?

Agriculture and livestock farming have always been linked to hardness, and I think the opposite is the case: working with the land and with animals is very delicate, we have to look at very small details to maintain the balance. When you get into milk, that's another sea or a universe.

There are many small things in milk, and they form a community or a universe. They do it one way or another, and you go in and try to move that community to you. To do this, you have to seduce that community and scare other peers to get the cheese you want. Above all, it is a very delicate job. Every step and every movement of the body influences. You can't do a field time, you need your rhythm. I find that very complex. That's why it's art.

How does the food of the future see who produces the food?

In our supposed first world we have been forgotten that we died without eating. For us, hunger is something cyclical, it doesn't happen to us that we can actually starve to death. The baserritars have to remember again and again. Because otherwise, gastronomy, gourmet -- is out of the picture because food is a fundamental right that cannot be speculated with food.

Hyper is a technological society in which we must begin to simplify life. Today there is laboratory meat, there are also animals fed with soy that is destroying the corners...

Even though I'm a farmer, we need to start thinking that we can't eat that much meat. You can't eat meat every day. It's not good for our health or for the planet. We have to go to another measure and eat more chickpeas, lentils, beans -- and that the meat we eat is the meat that actually sticks to the earth. Let the animals we eat be the ones who have had the opportunity to develop their life, their nature. How will an animal that has passed its dead life feed us?
Today there is still a group of people in the community who are conscious and choose to go to the fairs, who one afternoon go to a hamlet to buy vegetables or meat, milk, cheese... There are consumer groups, the cooperatives are there, and I believe that we must give that strength. We all have to create a framework of trust: I'll go quiet and ask what I don't know, and so I'll know what feeds me and trust that person, who cares that I'm seeing in their eyes. From there I see the future.

You're a pastor and a vegetarian. Explain this binomial...

When I was 22, I stopped eating meat because I didn't want to donate my four sosas to people and companies that were treating animals badly.

Then you start to think: not like vegetables or beans that I should eat, just like I'm eating artificially grown plants and many chemicals ...

Or maybe when I'm eating vegetable burgers I'm creating what I wanted to avoid by stopping eating meat: the reduction that has occurred to make all that soy, the suffering behind that soy ... It is a great contradiction. He starts exploring and discovers that the same company offers him ultra-processed meat and "green food" and "healthy", that is, he lives within a niche market. And that there's a lot of plastic around that food, and that these foods have traveled many miles -- and that maybe these people don't always work and live in the best conditions.

We have to eat much less meat, but if we eat what we eat, whether it's vegetable or animal, we have to look at those other things. Know the hands you have received, how, what way of life you have, why you work that way and not another... I once heard a friend of Iparralde “agroecology or barbarie.” That is what is there.

What does it have to do with loneliness?

Great! We have a few hours of work on our own. In the stable I don't feel alone, I'm always in the company, I have over a hundred heads back. In the cheese shop we do the cheese alone and there I have the opportunity to get in touch with myself and look inside. I love more and more, maybe so much.

I think that's why I write. Grazing allows me to realize the reflection required by writing.

In the book, the strength of militancy relationships is felt.

EHKOreader, groups working on renewable energies, Biolur elkartea... can be a misunderstanding of loneliness, and in militancy you feel that what you have inside has a mirror in front of you, that there are people close to your ideas. Moreover, being together allows us to continue to build and deepen these ideas and impulses. That enriches you as a person, a lot.

The relationship between the remote town and administration is one of the melodramas of this book.

Life is organized for the city and its people. We are 11% of the CAPV population, but we are and are here. Mediators are votes for politicians and if 89% of the population lives in the city, they will adopt policies and decisions directed to them. But in reality, those who deal with public institutions have to have a somewhat broader vision. The decisions that are taken in the policies that they want to promote must be aimed at all citizens.

Consequently, you are yourself taking on things that if you live on the street you would not be able to assume. The problem of school transport has been fully realized at the beginning of this course, and the government is going to compensate these parents. I think that is fine. But no one thinks of children and young people living in rural areas: no one proposes compensation or no one proposes how to organise their school transport or how to organize the school so that they can go to bertso-eskola or sport so that they have that opportunity. Or when they want to get out of play ... Is there Gautxori service in cities and for rural youth?

How are the dwellings here not going to be empty? Around our house there are nine fireplaces and only three smoke comes out. And husbands fall. In many dwellings everything has been one, being children and going down to the street. This society will have to decide whether it wants young people and children to live in the home and what it is willing to do.

This society will have to think about what community it wants. If we're not, what? Do we have to eat cheese from a Spanish industry? Most of what is sold comes from there.

Another element is that, given the panorama, I think that in the city a lot of people will be forced to leave, because cities will not be stimulating for them. When people come to live in the countryside, what? As a society, we have to turn this issue back.

The book presents the annual chart of the pastor, with almost 100 related works. He says in the book that “in our calendar there are no red or black days, days have sheep color.”

Our work is not a life/non-life alternating system. For many people, life ends when they think they have to go to work. Then life begins, when he leaves his job eight hours later he returns to life and the next day he returns to life.

Ours is different, with all the advantages and disadvantages. Ours is a life. So I say we live with sheep, not sheep. We live at their own pace. Time acquires another dimension. At this time we are calmer, we don't have to milk ourselves, we don't have to make cheese, we don't have to take care of the delivery -- the life of sheep marks ours.

In our house we do not experience the feeling of “I need a weekend”. Or yes, but it is related to fatigue, especially physical, at different times. It helps a lot to find meaning to what you're doing. It would be hard for me to spend eight hours on a job that I see no sense, a day later and dream of August.

Is your life attractive for young people to start pasting?

I believe that one of the biggest barriers for young people to start farming or farming is the way to be in a world that is widespread in this society. We want to achieve everything at the moment, everything is easy, the effort is a matter of tones...

Life is much more implicit than that indicated by this system. But in a consumer-based society, what is our job? What is food? Less important things are valued and the really important ones are neglected. You just have to look at the pay tables, our salaries are down there and those who care for people. The working conditions of teachers are neither the best nor those of health workers.

But I think this way of life is attractive. I think if young people found other conditions and other support, many would choose this job to live. We are on the Wwoof network [the wwoofers live a time in the farmhouse while studying their work and agroecology while working], and many of those who come to wwoof are citizens who want to give a new direction to their life, but find many obstacles in their way.