Farms

Do Prčic … it’s a funny phrase you learn when you first explore the Czech language. It essentially works out to mean “Oh crap”, “gosh darn it”, or “F*(k” in English. But it literally means “go to Prčice” a small village in the southeastern part of Central Bohemia. Besides being the namesake of a crazy, fun, torturous hike from Prague that takes place about this time in May every year, the area around Prčice is fun for day-walking and exploring.

I was just there last weekend and got to wear out my legs and take in springtime in the rolling hills of this area. It offers everything from sweet-smelling apple groves, to overabundant fields of rapeseed plants, on to nonplussed herds of cattle (Herefords, Charolais and Simmentals) grazing in newly vernal pastures. I love the area because it offers quiet, beautiful walks through fields and forests that are interspersed with ponds and lakes and sometimes the occasional horse farm.

The area is also beautiful because of the varied sites the villages have to offer: the colorful facades of homes and farms decorated in the village baroque (selské baroko) style or the animals, usually chickens, ducks or geese, who come to greet you as you pass the gates to their yards. Oftentimes tourist paths lead you alongside cool, babbling streams where frogs sing and make their homes or where ducks have recently begun to raise their young.

In the fields near Prčice, Javorová skála and Vojkov/Podolí, you can sometimes catch sight of deer as they make their way to the fields to seek food at dusk. Or, if you walk quietly, in the adjacent forests, you might happen across a random doe or buck, as they return to their herds in the nearby fields. Other times, you come across discoveries that can be less pleasant for certain hikers: like a mother garter snake protecting her nest of babies.

My favorite sites in the Prčice area include the climb up to Javorová skála to see the old post office that someone transplanted from the Czech Republic’s highest peak Sněžka to this random hilltop in Central Bohemia. Of, if you go a little farther, you can climb on top of Čertovo břemeno (which translates as the devil’s burden/load) which is rumored to be a huge boulder that that devil had been carrying to drop atop, and destroy, a newly-built village church before it’s consecration. Luckily, the devil was late in his mission and the church was consecrated before he could destroy it. So, he dropped the boulder in shock (or perhaps disappointment), leaving it perched atop a nearby hill.

Most recently, I took time during a hike to enjoy the teaching trail (naučná stezka in Czech) that is named after Sidonie Nadherná of Borotín, a Bohemian baroness who is famous for hosting literary salons and is known to have corresponded with German poet Rainer Rilke. The trail takes you through a newly-restored horse farm and riding school in another village called Podolí. It’s such a beautiful area, I took the opportunity to each my lunch under a lovely oak grove while I watched the farm’s owners lead their horses to and from the fields and exercise them. There are so many hidden gems in villages of Central Bohemia, so I as close this text, I can definitely advise … go to Prčice (or any of the villages nearby).

I was trying to get into the mood to write and share something with my readers that would have an interesting, cohesive element. I have lived in the Czech Republic for almost 26 years now and just got back from a sabbatical in Armenia. When I write I like to think of things about both countries that are similar to, and which in some ways remind me of, my childhood in Missouri. The answer was animals.

I grew up in a rural community in northern Missouri. Although I didn’t live on a farm, most of my younger life was farm-adjacent. My maternal grandfather and his brothers grew angus cattle; my paternal grandmother kept a small number of animals in her backyard farm; and my dad raised cattle, sheep, or what have you on land he rented. It always surprises my friends from the city, when I tell them stories of how I spent the late springtime of my pre-teen years plucking chickens or how, as an even younger child, I helped my dad and his friends butcher cattle or pigs. I never had big jobs, mind you; I usually just stirred the pork fat so that it didn’t scald or burn OR I helped feed chunks of beef into the meat-grinder.

That said, my stay in Armenia often brought back memories of my rural childhood and farm-adjacent life. One occurrence that always made me smile was the work of local shepherds. On occasion I would run into them on hikes. But even more amusing was when they were moving animals to new pastures or mountain fields and the cattle “would come to town.” It didn’t happen that often, but it was always entertaining to watch the disinterested bovines wander through the streets of Vanadzor: rarely in a hurry to get anywhere and giving curious looks when drivers would become irate at the animals’ lack of urgency.

Other times, I would meet some smaller animals in the park. Usually, the sheep or goats showed up during a sunny afternoon when I went to the Sayat Nova այգի to read. As the bushes swished behind my bench, I assumed that either squirrels or birds were foraging. But no, it was the “children“ of a local shepherd who had come to dine on overgrown grass or on the tasty leaves of the abundant shrubbery.

As I watched them, it came to mind that domesticated animals are a unifying force across the world. In almost any country, you can wake up to the crows of an early-rising rooster. Or you can slalom on your bike as curious hens scurry across roads or field paths in search of bugs for their lunch. In Armenia, I most loved the proximity of the animals; for it took me back to my childhood. A time when I knew the provenance of the meat and dairy products we put on our table; also an age when I had a love-hate relationship with chores related to caring for livestock. These days though, the animals of the Czech countryside and Armenia’s Lorri region bring back fond memories: of driving with my late dad to check his cattle, of working with my grandma to gather eggs or feed her hens. So many nights my parents spent worrying about whether the “cattle were out.” My dad would surely chuckle if he saw that the cows of Armenia certainly are out: AND they rule the roads.

Go to Prčice …

Lorri marz (Լոռի մարզ) – where the animals run the show