Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/583/en

The small ruminants are herd animals — sheep more so than goats. Consequently, by their essential nature, they are more landscape-shapers in the large sense, less a formative organ within the individual agricultural organism. As long as village-organisms with their village lands still existed as a more or less closed whole, it was the calling of the shepherd to make his flock the organ of that whole: whether in grazing the fallow, the commons, or the waste ground; in driving the animals across the harvested root-crop fields, across the winter sowings that had shot too luxuriantly into leaf; or in grazing the herb-rich verges of paths and field margins in autumn as a dietary measure before the coming winter stalling; or finally in folding the sheep on the arable for the purposes of manuring. All of this was established right, and it was done in agreement with the village community. There are narrow limits to any prospect of reviving the shepherd's calling. Opportunities present themselves in the care of nature reserves or on large farms with marginal soils.