S1E95 - Sam and Amadeo on Sheep, Wolves, and Climate Change

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret talks with Sam and Amadeo about their experiences shepherding in the Swiss Alps. They talk about the problems that shepherds are facing in Switzerland with wolves, climate change, city mentalities, and right-wing propaganda.

Host Info

Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Live Like the World is Dying: Sam and Amadeo on Sheep, Wolves, and Climate Change

**Margaret ** 00:16 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy and this is an episode about sheep...and sheep farming. Shepherding, I believe we might want to call it, in the Alps. I'm really excited about it. We've been planning this episode for a while, because we are going to be talking to two sheep farmers in the Alps about climate change and about the return of wolves and about ecology and about why the right-wing picks all the wrong talking points and a bunch of other stuff. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. 

**Margaret ** 01:52 Okay, we're back. So if y'all could introduce yourselves with your name...your names, your pronouns, and I guess just a little bit about your background with shepherding.

**Sam ** 02:05 All right, Hi, I'm Sam, my pronouns she/her and we are in Vienna right now. And yeah, I'm an artist and also a bit of a writer, filmmaker. I do a lot of that kind of stuff. Lately I have been working a lot with metal and smithing And yeah, I went with Amadeo on a sheep farm and Alps in Valais in Switzerland. And we want to tell you a bit about our experience.

**Amadeo ** 02:38 Yeah, my name is Amadeo. He/him. I'm 38. Actually, I started to work as a teacher now. I teach biology and some other stuff, politics, and so on. And yeah, This was my third year...third summer, not third year, third season to work as a shepherd but the first time with sheep, actually. Before that I worked with cows and milking and so on. Yeah, and for me it was also the first time with sheep and the first time in this area of Switzerland. I'm Austrian. But the payment in Austria is really bad so we went to Switzerland. So we are also the working migrants. Or what do you call it in English?

**Margaret ** 03:31 Migrant workers, I guess. 

**Amadeo ** 03:34 Yes. 

**Margaret ** 03:36 Okay, so what brought you all to sheep farming or to farming in general as like the thing to go do with your summers for work? 

**Amadeo ** 03:47 Should I? 

**Sam ** 03:48 Yeah, you can.

**Amadeo ** 03:50 So, I had this experience in 2020 and 21, I think, and I really liked it in a way. It was very hard work back then, but I learned a lot. And we met after that, actually, and decided we would like to go together. And then we just hit up the internet and looked for work and places to go and then we found this place that sounded pretty ideal for us because it was sheep farming and no milking, which is nice. I didn't want to do the milking job and do cheesemaking and so on again, I wanted to stay outside mostly, like the whole day under the sky and not in the staple. And yeah, we found this place where you don't need your own dogs, which is nice. We were working with blacknose sheep, they're called. It's like a breed that is only bred in this area. Or not only but traditionally there. And yeah, we tried to get the job and we got it.

**Sam ** 05:08 I guess we also got in because Amadeo also already had a lot of experience. And yeah, they were looking for two people there and without dogs. And yeah, I also got...I was really lucky that I was with Amadeo because, you know, like some very daily stuff, he already was prepared for this job. Like, you need a lot of some equipment and know what to take. And yeah, I was really....

**Amadeo ** 05:36 The thing was that, of course, the owners of the sheep, they want someone who has some experience because it happens often that you think, "Oh, it's nice. It's in the mountains. It's bea