Here’s something for the category of “it can only happen in England.”
Last month, shepherds guided a flock of sheep over a busy London bridge as part of an annual effort to recognize the wool sector’s historical importance to the English economy.
It is a quaint tradition that finds its roots in the country’s history-dripping past.
Officials wore long robes and floppy hats that could have been at home in Shakespeare’s day.
One of the animals would occasionally make a run for it and have to be coaxed back into the flock.
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Families lined the route to watch the procession, which has been happening since 2013. That’s the year the ancient practice of driving sheep into the City of London was revived by the Worshipful Company of Woolmen. (Why can’t Canadian farmers name their commodity groups like that?)
It is meant to pay tribute to shepherds’ historic right to drive their animals across London Bridge into the City of London to sell them at market.
Fun fact: during medieval times, Freemen of the City didn’t have to pay the bridge toll required of other people crossing the bridge in recognition of their status as local traders. I guess today, they still don’t.
But what about on the Canadian Prairies? Do we have room in our busy modernity for such throwbacks from an earlier time?
London’s Sheep Drive for Freemen of the City commemorates its 800-year history in the wool industry, and prairie agriculture’s roots obviously don’t go back that far.
However, there still might be ways to tear a page out of England’s obsession with history.
For example, local farmers could put together teams of horses and old wooden wagons filled with wheat and organize an annual procession into town to the local elevator. Of course, most prairie towns don’t have local elevators anymore, so some appropriate facsimile would have to do instead.
Or, in honour of the early milk trade, farm families could find old cream cans, fill them up, bring them to town and leave them on the platform of the local railway station for transport to a nearby creamery. Again, most prairie towns don’t have railway stations anymore, but I’m sure a suitable substitute could be found.
Our livestock and grain industries may not be 800 years old, but there’s still plenty of history to go around.
