Peter Davies is a dealer in world textiles and kilim rugs, particularly those from Turkey, a destination he knows well and for which he also is a travel consultant. His partner, Mark Scherzer, has his own law firm, specializing in health law. For most of the past decade, the pair also have farmed on 39 acres in Germantown, NY. At Turkana Farms, Davies and Scherzer raise heritage-breed livestock—pigs, sheep, cattle, and poultry of every stripe, most famously their heritage-breed turkeys, and grow vegetables and berries, all of which they sell from their farm kitchen and from their New York City loft. This blog is adapted from the weekly e-mail they send to their customers.
Last week Mark considered Eggs in the context of Passover and Easter. To me, Easter and lamb also seem a natural combination. I remember years ago, when I lived and taught in Izmir, on the Aegean coast of Turkey, spending one Easter morning in search of sheep. It was my friend Emily’s idea. As a Levantine, a descendant of the European trading families, who had settled in places like Izmir (then Smyrna) in the seventeenth century and remained to modern times, she was in touch with many interesting local customs I was unaware of. She arrived at my apartment early one Easter Sunday morning carrying a large bag of brightly colored sweets. Our group, including her husband and my then-wife, donned our hiking boots, passed out of the college campus gate, and crossed the highway. It was where, in those days, the countryside began.
The aim of our walk, Emily explained, was to wander through the hills until we happened on a shepherd and his flock. After a beautiful, meandering walk through fields lush with spring grass and wild flowers, the most brilliant being the red poppies Emily called “the blood of Christ,” we came on a young, unshaven shepherd lounging on a hillside near his flock of fat tailed sheep. Knowing that, at this season, he would have selected a favorite lamb as a pet, she politely asked if we might see it. As he proudly brought it to us, and prepared to place it gently in her arms, she ceremoniously presented him with the bag of sweets as a gift, which he received gratefully. Almost reverently, Emily received the lamb as if engaging in a ritual. She was obviously enacting an old Levantine religious custom, something, perhaps, like “Behold, the Lamb of God”. While our Karakul are certainly not the lambs of God (au contraire, given the messes they sometimes get themselves into), their breed may go almost to the beginning of time, or at least sheep time. What today we recognize as sheep actually began as a wild, hairy, goat-like animal, called ovis orientalis, which, through thousands of years of selective breeding beginning in Neolithic times in a region somewhere between eastern Anatolia and Central Asia, eventually evolved into the fleece-bearing sheep-y animals we know today. Our breed, American Karakul, got its start in the Central Asian region now know as Turkmenistan, in the valley of the Amu Darya River, in a district called Karakul. “Kara” in Turkish means black and “kul” or “gul” (as it is pronounced in Turkey) means lake. The breed is also known as karakul'skaya (Russian) or Astrakahn, or Bukhara or Persian lamb. But we like “Karakul”. The Karakul region is one of high altitudes, scant desert vegetation, and a limited water supply, conditions that made the breed hardy, capable of thriving under adverse circumstances. The Karakul is thought by some experts to be the oldest existing breed of domesticated sheep; in fact, probably the breed from which all others descend. Archaeological evidence indicates the existence of the distinctive Persian (Karakul) lambskin as early as 1400 B.C. and carvings of a Karakul-type sheep, recognizable because of their bold faces and broad, fat tails, have been found on the walls of ancient Babylonian temples. Our sheep are more accurately called American Karakul. The herds in this country descend from a small number of Karakul brought from Central Asia between 1908 and 1929. They were originally imported into this country for pelt production, that is, as a fur sheep. The once popular (particularly in the 1920’s and 1930’s) Persian lamb coat, spurred interest in creating Karakul herds here. What few buyers and wearers were aware of: to obtain pelts with the tight crimp and sheen suitable for a Persian lamb coat or Astrakhan hat lambs must be slaughtered before they are three days old. Or, worse, taken directly from the womb. Obviously many tiny lambs are required to make one Persian lamb coat.
In their eagerness to produce a large quantities of pelts, the original U.S. Karakul breeders introduced other sheep bloodlines into their flocks, particularly the Navajo’s Churro, another broad, fat tailed desert sheep. The mix with other breeds created a great diversity of color and body shapes in the American Karakul. By contrast, the Central Asian Karakul in its classic form is born completely black and retains its black face and legs even after it produces its mature fleece, which can have a range of colors. While crossbreeding increased production and genetic diversity, it also produced an inferior pelt. As a result, the fur market for American Karakul dried up, and now the breed is raised for its other qualities: its fleeces, which are ideal for felt-making and rug-making yarns, and for its meat. There are now numerous small herds all over the United States, and there's a Karakul Registry to document and promote the breed. Nonetheless, its prospects for survival remain on the "critical" list. —Peter Davies
