In the hamlet of San Giorgio, until the early years following the Second World War, almost all shepherds departed in September towards Apulia, heading for the Gargano and the Tavoliere, and returned to the mountains in June, when the Municipality officially reopened the grazing season. Today, almost nothing remains in San Giorgio of that world: depopulation has gradually emptied the village, while the last large flocks have disappeared and, until recent years, only one sheep farmer remained active in the entire hamlet — Luigi De Angelis.

Luigi comes from a family marked by emigration and the hardships of mountain life. His father, Berardo De Angelis, left for Belgium in the 1950s to work as a miner; his paternal grandfather, also named Luigi, died at the age of thirty-three from poisoning caused by the fumes of the charcoal-burning pit, having fallen asleep one winter night beside the woodpile set aside for charcoal production. Shepherding, therefore, became an activity carried out mainly by women: his mother Antonia, his aunt and his sisters looked after the sheep, while his father, after returning to the village, traded beef cattle. Luigi himself cared for the cows and later devoted himself to cheese production under the guidance of his mother, an expert cheesemaker: “Of our family line, none of my brothers or sisters stayed; in the end it remained with me — he recalls — and I have always made the cheese myself.” His shepherding has therefore, from the outset, been domestic rather than truly transhumant, positioned at the margins of the village’s sedentary livestock system and sustained only for the needs of the household itself.

Over the years, Luigi De Angelis has kept a fluctuating number of a few dozen sheep and goats, raised in the stable and in the meadows surrounding the family house in the locality known as Case Venane, located just beyond the built-up area of San Giorgio towards the valley floor. As the anthropologist Emanuele Di Paolo points out, Luigi produces almost everything he needs within a regime tending towards self-sufficiency: mixed sheep’s and goat’s milk cheese made from raw milk, produced throughout the year in rotation using rennet and hand-carved utensils in very small quantities; ricotta; and cured meats obtained from pigs that he raises and slaughters himself. The very house in which Luigi lives has become a museum of pastoral craftsmanship created by his own hands: carved sticks made of elm and blackthorn, niches for statues of saints, small sculptures, crocheted lace pieces, knitted wool garments, hats woven from recycled paper and crosses made to ward off hail, together with other objects of a ritual character, produced mainly during autumn and winter while accompanying the work with singing, keeping time with the rhythm of carving.

Around the everyday life of livestock raising — as Di Paolo points out — Luigi sustains an exceptionally dense network of knowledge and boundary practices: from the music played on the radio inside the stable to promote the well-being of the sheep, to the making of protective crosses on the coats of cattle, sheep and mules during the feast of Saint Anthony the Abbot on 17 January, which are then taken to be blessed; and further to the networks of relationships woven through participation in local shepherding fairs and through the annual participation, at Pentecost, in the procession of Our Lady of the Sgrima in nearby Schiaviano, to which he contributes by donating some of his cheeses for the auction held before the celebration. This Marian sanctuary, of particular importance, lies along the Rocca Roseto–Frisa drove road, where transhumant shepherds coming from the direction of San Giorgio traditionally stopped during their journeys.