Many Rural Ocarrans make a living by growing crops and or by raising livestock. Many of these farmers are sedentary farmers, with established homesteads and ranches. Most rural ocarran households will have gardens where vegetables and fruits are grown for household use.
These farmers use most of the food and products that they produce for household use, with the family selling any surplus goods to be able to save money for emergencies and upkeep.
Agricultural Farming
Ocarran agricultural farmers grow a variety of plants with things like
Iagus Grain and
Ardo Plants being grown in fields and other plants like
Preka Shrubs being grown in gardens and yards.
Fields and gardens are often plowed with modern technology, with most other tasks like sowing and irrigation being done by manual labor. The sowing and harvesting of fields and gardens are often a family event, with everyone in the household helping out; for the general day-to-day maintenance and care of the fields it usually requires fewer people.
Pastoral Animal Husbandry
When it comes to raising livestock, Ocarrans mostly raise
Crocela and other herdable livestock, which they keep in large free-range pastures. Many also raise Feathered Lizards, which are highly valued as load-bearing animals, and most farming families will have at least one Feathered Lizard that they can ride to keep up with the herds.
In the summer, traditional farmers will herd their animals up into the mountains. Families who practice this will often have secondary homes in the mountains where those who herd the animals in the summer will stay; these secondary homes are often smaller and less modern than those in the lower towns and villages, sometimes being simple round tents that can be put up and taken down as needed. Those sent to watch the herds during the summer are often the younger members of the family.
Rituals & Traditions
Herd Calls
Ocarrans have a strong tradition of using song calls to call their livestock herds to them. They may also be used to communicate with others long distances or to give commands to trained herding animals like domesticated
Shuda.
These herd calls often involve loud notes made using head voices so that they can be heard a long distance, and carry over the landscape; they may also include ululations, trills, and use falsetto voice and yodeling. These herd songs are often non-lexical meaning that they are nonsense words with no word or linguistic meaning behind them. The tunes and melodies used are often quite similar to the songs of traditional ocarran music.
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