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Shepherd Life – Wooded Pastures – Birds – In Baranya
Film screening and conversation with cast and crew, behind-the-scenes photography exhibition, wooded pasture tasting (featuring products from wooded pastures, such as wild pear cider or cheese), shepherd music, interactive family programs, guided museum tour at the Museums' Autumn Festival.
"Autumn is here, Saint Michael's Day approaches, The shepherds count their sheep."
International Year of Shepherds and Pastures, 2026
Wooded pasture habitat as habitat type of the year, 2026
The wooded pastures and associated shepherd culture and bird life represent outstanding natural and cultural heritage values of Baranya County. Wooded pastures in Baranya County and throughout Europe serve as model areas for natural and healthy food production, biodiversity conservation, and farming practices adapted to climate change. Wooded pastures have exceptional nature conservation value from a biodiversity perspective, whose preservation depends on the continuation of nature-based, grazing livestock farming. Their maintenance and conservation are the daily task and responsibility of the people who work the land. The greatest recognition and support for their work comes through the consumption and use of products from wooded pastures. Wooded pastures offer not only healthy delicacies but are also the cradles and sustainers of shepherd culture. Without pastures, this cultural and spiritual heritage is lost. Moreover, wooded pastures once served as communal spaces and community-building areas for villages. Although their role has gradually faded over recent decades, their memory is still preserved in many places through living memory, venerable trees, and folk music archives alike, for wherever shepherds have lived or live, there too the shepherd music tradition remains significant.
On October 2nd, near Saint Michael's Day, we introduce visitors to all of this—its memory and its present—through the screening of an ethnographic short film presenting the shepherds of the nearby Sumony puszta, and we personally welcome the film's cast and creators. Through photographs by Tuboly-Vincze Gabriella, we gain insight into the filmmaking process. During the evening, the Misina ensemble will perform the melodies of Mihály Stanics, born in Somogy but raised from infancy on Sumony puszta, who continued his shepherd father's profession. Folk music scholarship recognizes his song repertoire and performance style as outstanding musical heritage of the southern Transdanubian shepherd tradition.
Our aim is also to draw attention to objects preserved in the ethnographic collection as carriers of traditional ecological knowledge, for nowadays many elements of formerly peasant knowledge are being re-evaluated and reinterpreted as part of and foundation for a new ecological knowledge system. Natural material use, reuse, renewal, longevity and uniqueness, personalization—all these are being established as characteristics of a new material environment set against mass-produced, disposable objects. Additionally, due to their practicality, forms proven effective through repeated use, an increasing number of people are using former tools that rely on human and animal power.
Our event is also occasioned by the fact that in 2026, the Habitat Protection Section of the Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society has chosen wooded pasture habitat as habitat type of the year. The FAO and UNESCO have declared 2026 the International Year of Shepherds and Pastures. Through this program, we also wish to pay tribute to Dr. Bertalan Andrásfalvy, former head of the Ethnography Department, whose work on floodplain grazing management theory indirectly makes him one of Hungary's first researchers of wooded pastures.
17.00-18.00 Family programs and guided tour, during which visitors will become acquainted with the bird life of wooded pastures and their natural and cultural values and land use through games, images, and museum objects.
● Guided tour with Dr. Anna Varga (17.00-17.30)
● "Lost Bori's Lamb," a board game introducing the life world of wooded pastures, led by Anita Morvai
● Interactive medicinal herb workshop with ecologist Boglárka Amrein Tamásné Miskolczi, European Climate Pact Ambassador
● Children can do crafts at the Öko-Kuckó Education Studio table, making animals from wooded pastures. (https://www.facebook.com/okokucko.pecs)
18.00-19.30 Film screening and conversation with cast and crew
The short film We Had Memories! Memories of Pastures and Shepherd Life Around Sumony will be shown (30 minutes). The film offers a glimpse into the 20th-century history of Sumony and Ormánság shepherd culture, the role of wooded pastures in village life, women's roles in pasture farming, and how a shepherd boy from Sumony became the Eternal Shepherd of Bakony-Balaton. (With the Misina ensemble.)
The film trailer is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5USCO1XLrHA
Following the screening, there will be a discussion about the film's creation and the content with the cast and crew.
19.30-20.30 Wooded Pastures Today: Musical Wooded Pasture Tasting
Tasting of food and drinks from wooded pastures accompanied by folk music.
Participating:
Andor Végh, Pál Havasréti (Misina ensemble)
Ancsa Gergely (Abaliget Garden Projects - Cider, Perry, tree nursery, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063563163207&sk=about)
Additional producers
Event organizers:
Dr. Réka Kurucz, ethnographer, head curator of the Ethnography Department, Janus Pannonius Museum
Dr. Anna Varga, Czech Academy of Sciences, Botanical Institute, Institute of Vegetation Ecology, Brno, Czech Republic
Co-organizer:
Dr. Péter Gaszler, MME Baranya County Local Group
Cooperating partners:
Boglárka Amrein Tamásné Miskolczi, ecologist, European Climate Pact Ambassador for Hungary (https://climate-pact.europa.eu/meet-community/climate-pact-ambassadors/…)
European Climate Pact: https://climate-pact.europa.eu/index_en. (Event link on their website: https://climate-pact.europa.eu/articles-and-events/events/shepherd-life…)
Anita Morvai, biology researcher, head curator of the Natural Sciences Department, Janus Pannonius Museum
PTE Human Environment Science Research Group
PTE Faculty of Humanities Department of Ethnography – Cultural Anthropology
Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society (MME), Habitat Protection Section
MME Baranya County Local Group
NKFIH project K 147073 "Crisis and Everyday Strategies: Anthropological Perspectives on Social and Environmental Crises," PTE Faculty of Humanities Department of Ethnography – Cultural Anthropology
Supporters:
NKFIH project K 147073 "Crisis and Everyday Strategies: Anthropological Perspectives on Social and Environmental Crises," PTE Faculty of Humanities Department of Ethnography – Cultural Anthropology
Janus Pannonius Museum
PTE College for Sustainable Development
Photography and audio recording may take place at the event. By entering the venue, participants consent to the creation of recordings, as well as their use and publication.
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