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5th stop
5th stop
05
Man and forest
People living in a place embraced by woods, besides agriculture, also keenly used the forest. As the weak soil of the area gave little food, villagers also utilised “gifts of the woods”: they regularly drove their animals into the surrounding forests and their livestock put on flesh grazing in groves and pastures dotted with lonely old spreading oak trees (left as seed trees). In autumn they fattened up their herds of pigs on the abundant acorn crops of extensive oak forests and then drove the pigs on foot to the markets of distant lands. This kind of husbandry gradually ceased from the 1950s, pastures dotted with trees reforested and today only a few huge ancient trees hold the memory of this traditional husbandry.
