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Courtyard Life
A courtyard garden is central to the way of life in the villages. Every household raises a range of fruits, vegetables and livestock for their own consumption.
Some of the produce is eaten fresh but much is preserved for the winter.
Vegetables are grown in enclosed gardens. Many are stored in the cellars or preserved by pickling, in summer the salads are fresh and full of flavour.
Soft fruits are grown in the gardens, whereas stonefruits are in orchards behind the barns or individual trees in the courtyard. Much of the fruit is made into jams and juices or used in baking.
Vines are grown in every courtyard, although this is no longer a commercial wine-producing area. The grape varieties are hardy enough to survive the severe winters.
Herbs are cultivated in courtyard gardens or collected from the wild. They are used in cooking, in refreshing teas, and are still extensively used medicinally for many ailments. Solar dried herbs and teas are available for sale at the Tourist Information Centre in Saschiz.
Poultry are totally free-range and hens and guinea fowl produce eggs with dark yellow yolks, ideal for breakfast or for baking. Geese, ducks and turkeys also roam freely.
Pigs are reared in pens in the courtyards but often spend their early days in the summer meadows with the sheep.
Cows graze communally in the village pastures by day. They are generally milked by hand morning and evening in the courtyards.
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'Each courtyard is different but most have a well and a trestle table under a vine for outdoor eating.
The dwelling runs along one side of it, with adjoining barns for livestock (cows, a horse, pigs, assorted chickens, duck, geese, turkey and guinea fowl, plus sheep in winter), and the privy beyond that. Courtyard gardens are immaculately tended and decorative, brimming with good things to eat interspersed with flowers. Peonies may jostle beside onions, capsicums and rhubarb. Lovage, horseradish, dill and parsley are favourite local herbs. Marigolds, strawberries and lettuces are sometimes used, like box, for edging beds.
A huge hay barn runs across the end of each courtyard. Behind it is the main vegetable plot, and beyond that a one hectare orchard, often terminating with a line of walnut trees to mark the boundary between private property and common land. As the old Romanian saying goes “How can a man die unhappy who has a walnut tree?”'
Philippa Davenport
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