Are baserritars on vacation? They ask in school. The students have answered no. So, working every day, would you like to be baserritarra in the future? And if nobody wants to be a baserritarra, who is going to make food for us? The question stayed in the air.
For the health and well-being of the person it is necessary to have time to develop their own tastes and interests, to disconnect from day to day and to have time for rest. In addition, Euskal Herria is a highly industrialized place, the network of thought and relationships that exists in the dwelling is small and the baserritarra lives in the citizen life. In it, leisure, holidays and travel are of great importance.
Nowadays, in the hamlet, it is an opportunity for more than one person to work, for workers to know how to develop in different areas of the hamlet and for the work schedule to be agreed among all. The other option is to use the holiday replacement service and search for a trusted worker to perform short-term housekeeping tasks.
I have worked on this second, in a hamlet of the Guipuzkoan Goierri, during the months of August of the last three years. I've been doing seasonal work for a long time, picking headlights for tractors, lambs for pastors at birth, rapacious sheep for scavengers, etc. I like to move around, to know different environments, ways and families, to finish the jobs and receive your reward. I've seen and learned a lot like this.
Small farms need people with knowledge in the cultivation of livestock plants and in food processing, for jobs and substitutions.
However, compared to seasonal work, the replacement service has its peculiarities:
- The relationship with families and farmworkers is stronger and narrower than in seasonal work.
- It requires a rapid capacity to adapt, understand the functioning and tasks of the dwelling to start it immediately.
- Availability to perform different jobs.
- It generates a lot of responsibility and a point of tension so as not to make mistakes.
The replacement services for young people from rural schools can be interesting to train in the different tasks of the farmhouse, to delve into the field of interest (cheese making, horticulture, grazing..) and to broaden their vision through the knowledge of the different marches.
On the contrary, small farms need workers with knowledge in the cultivation of livestock plants and in the processing of food, for jobs and replacements. It is not easy to search for people with both knowledge.
To do so, we would need a service that would link the south of the North, the students, the schools, the workers and the elderly of agriculture in the Basque Country. Facilitate the relationship of older workers and encourage mobility. Respond to the needs of the farmhouses and give more opportunities to the workers.