Zaharie Hurducaci

“After eight years of primary school I became an apprentice, like everybody my age at that time. In order to become a licensed saddler, one needed to be an apprentice in a shop and to graduate some specialised training programme in the town of Craiova, in the south of Romania – the single place in the entire country where such training was undertaken.

“There is no harnessing school or training programme nowadays. I would be very happy to see my son going to a harnessing training programme that could award him a diploma but I don’t think he will get the same kind of diploma I got.

“I am part of the last generation of real saddlers – that have a diploma. If you go to the local market, you’ll see several saddlers selling their stuff, but they only have the license from the city hall, they have no specialised training. When I got my harnessing license, they asked me to provide a diploma.

“It would be good to have a new harnessing training programme. Any new saddler that has just begun his business would find it difficult to compete with me on the regional market – I am too well known around here, but I cannot work forever.

“The harnessing you can find at the local market is not done by professionals – they don’t use proper harnessing models, dimensions or schemas. They improvise, that is bad for the horse. I’ve learnt my craft but I do keep learning more all the time. I keep track of the harnesses I sell, trying to see what is good as time wears them. The farmer is the one to please, sadly the horse does not always come first when harnessing.

The harnessing we are doing in Romania is a little too heavy. Those for the local market are over twenty kilos each, while the harnessing for export are more simple, therefore half of that weight. The Romanian farmer prefers a heavier harnessing, thinking it would last for twenty years. I can’t say it isn’t a reason; but the horse is carrying the burden.

“I tried to convince people in my village to use lighter harnessing, this isn’t harnessing you can use in the hills or in the mountains though. Wealthier farmers, however, do have two kinds of harnessing: one for easy work with the cart around the village and a heavier one for the hard work.

“Some farmers decided to give up doing agriculture with tractors and go back to working with horses, now that the gas is getting more and more expensive. I get more and more orders for harnesses. I am booked for the next five, six months. Not to mention the harness repairing that needs to be done from time to time.

< Back to Profiles