Rediscovering the lost arts of the country

SANTANYI
PEOPLE living in Santanyi can now get a first-hand look at how farmers worked the land in times gone by after an agricultural skills association put on a display of traditional crafts and techniques at the Sa Tanca de Sa Creu countryside estate on the Cala Figuera road.

The association has long been concerned that the skills of reaping and threshing which were used in the Balearic countryside more than 20 years ago will fade from living memory. Measures need to be taken to ensure that the heritage of a way of life is not lost to posterity, said the association yesterday.

The exhibition has recreated the atmosphere of yesteryear and in a modern era when concerns over pollution and climate change are high on the agenda, shows that for hundreds of years, farmers were tilling, sowing, harvesting and threshing without damaging the environment.

Tools used were elementary but effective, tried and tested to maximum effect over generations. One association member claimed to remember the time of self-sufficiency on Majorca and other Balearic Islands, claiming that people were well able to live off the land prior to the introduction of exploitation, intensive farming and mass consumerism.