Page 88 - Upland Families, Elites and Communities

Matteo Di Tullio and Claudio Lorenzini

diately imported from the plains (Fornasin 2001). Of further innovations
during the time interval we are considering there were none; even the in-
troduction of the potato is later, although it appears earlier than in the
plain, that is, after the crisis of 1817 (Gri 1999; Monteleone 1969), but it is
difficult to establish that the nineteenth century population growth (For-
nasin 1997, 191) found in this product one of its engines.
The second concerns the primary sector in its entirety. When communi-
ties were asked to answer how long they could survive on what they pro-
duced, they referred precisely to agricultural production: wheat and minor
grains (rye, buckwheat), including legumes (broad beans, beans). Ample
confirmation for the area of Lake Cavazzo comes from the preparatory
acts of the cadastre, in which the products declared by the villages were
maize, buckwheat, rye, wheat (but very scarce), legumes (beans) and pota-
toes, products sufficient to cover the needs of three months in the year
(Ciceri 1987, 305–6). This small time threshold does not include the ben-
efits derived from animal husbandry, especially cattle, and the caloric in-
puts obtained from other livestock, starting with pigs, but also sheep and
goats. All of the above–mentioned descriptions recount this: yielding to
provveditore Stefano Morosini (1601), Carnia, ‘set among mountains in a
very poor placeissustainedby thesoleearning from animalsand by trade
with Germany’ (Istituto di Storia Economica 1975, 124). If we consider the
contribution of livestock products, including monetary income from the
sale of calves and cheeses, as Nicolò Grassi mentioned in 1782 and Iacopo
Valvason of Maniago in 1565, the annual survival threshold improved sig-
nificantly (Fornasin 2005).
Animal husbandry in Carnia meant having use not only of the meadows
and pastures of the livestock owners, as much as, and more importantly, of
the alpine pastures, common resources held by the communities. The sys-
tem of using these resources, known and widespread in the alpine area, in-
volved moving cattle to highland pastures during the summer period. The
animals would feed in these meadows, and their care (cleaning, milking,
and milk processing) was carried out by the staff employed by the alpine
pasture keeper. In Carnia, each village held rights to one or more moun-
tain pastures, sometimes even jointly. The possibility of entrusting their
herds to outside personnel during the summer was exploited by almost all
owners as this freed up labour to be used in forage production at the bot-
tom of the valley (Mathieu 2001). By the time the animals descended from
the alpine pastures in early autumn, the barns were full and they could
return to the stables to remain there until the following spring (Barbacet-

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