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Shepherdess Berit Kiilerich & Lystbækgaard (farm and association)

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Since 1999, shepherdess Berit Kiilerich has been running the farm Lystbækgaard (Ulfborg, West Jutland, Denmark), maintaining and restoring the surrounding heather heath landscapes in a collaboration with herding dogs, a sheep flock of 500, and through mosaic burning and grassing of the neighboring farmer’s fields. The association Lystbækgaard, run by Berit and a group of locals, hosts workshops in sheepherding, traditional wool crafts, local markets and salons that explore the potentials and challenges of sheepherding today. The practice of shepherding and the landscape of the heathlands are connected to histories of pastoral life and common land long before the Nationalistic logics and colonizing systems of enclosures, industrialised farming and homogenisation of people which took its beginning in mid 1700. Today, shepherding is a practice of resilience and resistance against suppression and stigmatization of peasant culture and nomadic people, against colonial and capitalist systems of borders, landgrabbing and enclosures, against industrialized food, culture and time. It is a practice that insists on human—non-human co-existence (in the non-naive sense), autonomy and collaboration, ecological sensitivity and time. The heath offers a place for exploring and reimagining our relationship to land and our culture(s) towards more diverse, common and sustainable ways of working, cultivating and living. Hosting Lands weaves different artistic, ecological, pedagogical and communal practices into the existing rhythms of Lystbækgaard and the heath by inviting artists, farmers, and craftspeople from rural communities elsewhere to create and share (both permanent and temporary) works, meals, and conversations with the local artists and people. A central element in the collaboration is exploring food (sovereignty) traditions and how food connects us to land, crafts, memory and to one another, across translocal contexts. Hosting Lands approaches the heath as both a living ecosystem and a site of shared knowledge, engaging with questions of food, care, and commoning.