It's in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department that this new stage is being carried out. Well, not only! To be more precise, we stopped in the Basque Country. Much more than a country composed of four provinces in Spain (Navarre, Alava, Guipuzcoa, Bizcaye) and three provinces in France (Labourd, Basse-Navarre and Soule), the Basque Country is above all an identity! The Basque language is spoken here, pelota is played here, the people love to party... And here, traditions are very important. It is therefore natural that the traditional agricultural skills have remained established here: Espelette pepper, Irouléguy wines, Ossau-Iraty sheep's cheese, Kintoa Basque pork, these are the four great specialities of the region now protected by a PDO in the Basque Country. As we are always talking about breeding, we will present the last two here!
Our route takes us to Bunus, a small village in Basse-Navarre, where Sébastien Astabie's farm is located. Sébastien lives with his wife Christelle, his children and his parents on the family farm: Maison Aozteia. Together, Sébastien and Christelle raise 300 Manech Tête Noire ewes for the production of Ossau-Iraty cheese on 23 hectares of meadows and about forty Basque Kintoa pigs on a few hectares of woodland with a variety of species (chestnut, oak and beech trees). Sébastien is one of the 1300 Ossau-Iraty PDO breeders and of the 200 breeders who sell their product directly to the consumer, without intermediaries.
With two large horns curled over its dark head, the Manech tête noire is a historic sheep breed from the Basque Country. The black-headed Manech is a small, hardy ewe that thrives on the steep terrain of the Pyrenees, where the grass is rough and the natural resources of low nutritional quality. It is the breed of excellence for achieving fodder autonomy on farms in the Basque Country, where it feeds on hay from the valleys in winter and on grasses and plants growing on the mountain slopes in summer. It is the ideal breed for transhumance. The Manech tête noire is one of the three local breeds of sheep used to make Ossau-Iraty (along with the Manech tête rousse and the Basco-Béarnaise). The number of black-headed Manechs in the Pyrenees is constantly decreasing, as the red-headed Manech and the Basco-Béarnaise, which are more productive in terms of milk, are preferred.
Manech tête noire
At Sébastien's place, the ewes lamb during November and December and produce milk for the production of Ossau-Iraty until May. From then on, they go up to an altitude of 500 metres to survey the steep, semi-mountainous slopes for the summer. It is in the summer that the shepherd's work takes on its full meaning: he guides the flock to make the most of the natural resources available. Sébastien explains: "The ewes tend to stay in the mountains, where the flora is not very nutritious. They are therefore guided by the shepherd in the morning and evening from the higher areas to the valley, where they recharge with good quality green fuel, before setting off again to conquer the arduous mountain areas. Sébastien employs a female shepherd in the summer to look after the flock in the mountains.
Yearling ewe lambs on pasture near the farm
On the farm, the lambs are sold as suckling lambs at one month, mainly in Spain, where their meat is highly popular. Three quarters of the milk produced by the ewes is transformed on the farm into Ossau-Iraty cheese. The cheese is matured for a minimum of three months. The remaining quarter of the milk is sold to a dairy factory. At Sébastien's farm, the cheeses are marked on the top with a sheep's head in front: the sign of a farm production made by the farmer, from the milk of his sheep.
Ossau-Iraty marked with a sheep's head in front
Maturing room
It too has a black head, but also two large ears that fall over its eyes! The Kintoa Basque Pig, from the great bloodline of Iberian pigs, is also a race historically bred in the Basque Country. It comes from an old tradition from the 13th century, when the King of Navarre levied the Quinta, a tax on pig farmers who took their animals to the mountains in the Aldudes valley. The Quinta was the levy of one pig in five for the King. Threatened with extinction in 1981, the breed is now synonymous with quality meat and ham, the latter being sold for between €50 and €70 per kilo. The determination of a few breeders and the Appellation obtained in 2016 has made it possible to rebuild the herd of Kintoa Basque pigs, which was around thirty head in the 1990s...
Kintoa Basques pigs
Sébastien has a small Basque Pig farm since 2007, to make use of the whey from the production of Ossau-Iraty cheese. Sébastien, like all the PDO Basque Pig farmers, raises his pigs on hilly land, made up of grass and woodland. The pigs feed on grass, worms and acorns and are also fed with cereals, mainly (70%) from the production area. Cereals are not offered to the pigs all year round. In autumn, when the fruits fall from the trees, the pigs feed exclusively on them. For Sébastien, the decrease of cereals given to the pigs is done visually: "In any case, if you give them cereals when they have what they need under the trees, they won't touch it". Sébastien buys his weaned pigs between 2 and 3 months of age and raises them until they are at least a year old (on average 14 months). The plump pigs then weigh 180 kilos!
Photos 1 and 2. Well-deserved rest for Sébastien's Basque pigs
Photos 3 and 4. The pig's dream playground.
The meat from Sébastien's Basque Pigs is transformed into charcuterie and preserves in the Xuhito cutting plant in Anhaux. Xuhito is a rather special cutting plant! In 2012, the village's butcher retired. About twenty farmers bought his cutting plant and trained in butchery. They rebuilt a processing laboratory as a cooperative for equipment and hired an employee to run the laboratory in 2019. Today, the plant has about thirty breeders.
At Maison Aozteia, the products are sold in the farm shop, but also at trade fairs and through a number of companies specialising in the sale of quality products, such as the French website Pour de Bon (www.pourdebon.com). Internet sales represent an interesting alternative to the usual means of sale, as it allows the customer base to be extended to a much larger radius around the farm. Sébastien also offers his ewes for adoption via the Crowdfarming website. How does it work? When a ewe is adopted, the farm sends part of its cheese production to the adopter. This method of sale has required some technical adjustments to manage the supply to the farm, which is a victim of its own success!
In the shop, Sébastien sells his Ossau-Iraty cheese and a variety of charcuterie and preserves made from Basque pig. The ham and dry sausage are particularly noteworthy, both exceptional!
Farm shop
Did you know ?
- Country with identity, cheese with identity !
Ossau-Iraty cheese is divided into three main categories, identifiable by the marking on the cheese: cheese produced in a cheese factory, symbolised by a sheep's head in profile, cheese produced on the farm, symbolised by a sheep's head in front, and farm cheese produced in the mountain pastures, symbolised by a sheep's head in front and an edelweiss on the mountain. This categorisation of Ossau-Iraty cheeses illustrates the value placed on tradition and above all on the identity and quality of each product. Sébastien made us feel the weight that the collective of breeders in the Basque Country represents in a system that tends to standardise products and constantly increase the productivity of farms. Here, the decisions taken around PDO are the fruit of the farmers and they want to keep it that way. Sébastien explains that here, the industry does not have much weight in the decisions: "even the big dairies, it's 1:1, they don't have the last word against the farmers of the country. The three symbols that characterise the three categories of cheese are proof of this. When the cheese dairies had to establish a symbol for their category, the farm producers fought to have the symbol clearly distinguished from farm cheese: no to the front sheep's head for dairies!
From left to right: Ossau-Iraty from the dairy, farm Ossau-Iraty, farm cheese from mountain pastures. Image taken from the website dedicated to the Ossau-Iraty PDO / ossau-iraty.fr
- Production versus adaptation ?
The increasing demand for milk in the Basque Country has led to the replacement of the black-headed Manech by the red-headed Manech and the Basco-Béarnaise, which have a higher milk production. The decrease in the number of black-headed Manech breeders has also reduced the capacity for collective action to protect the race. An association, Buru Beltza (black head in Basque), is involved in drawing up a future for the breed. The association brings together Manech blackhead breeders to work on a project for this race: to orientate selection to combine aptitudes for transhumance and milk production. However commendable the initiative, it is not unanimously supported by the Manech Blackhead breeders. Sébastien left the association and the genetic scheme a short time ago, because he deplores that the selection was geared towards milk production to the detriment of the breed's hardiness. So, should the Manech tête noire start to upgrade to adapt to a market focused on quantity, even if it means gradually losing its ability to be adapted to the mountains? We have our own opinion on the matter. Let's remember that quantity and quality are two very different ways.