The Cheese Harvest of Tarvesh [Eoas, 609 Words]

Cur Tyrvel, the Tarveshti “cheese harvest”, is a major festival in the Tarveshti culture. The festival has only a minor place in the Harvest of Ash religious calendar. Yet it has become beloved of the orcish peoples of Tarvesh. It is a time of rejoicing and coming together to celebrate new life. The harvest coincides with the whelping season of the curdogs. Curdogs are creatures similar in shape to a sea urchin that provide the bulk of Tarvesh’s cheese.

The harvest begins midway through the Tarveshti spring season. When the first litters of curdogs are born. Each settlement declares the beginning of its festival with the birth of its first litter. The settlement then sends a curherd to its neighbours.

Curherds travel between the settlements with adolescent curdogs. The purpose of this is to intermingle the bloodlines of the herds. They also bring samples of their own local cheeses with them. Town emissaries greet each curherd as they arrive. The curherds bring the glad tidings of Cur Tyrvel. These curherds are honoured guests, and become centerpieces of the festival.

The festivities begin with the arrival of a curherd and their curdogs. They’re housed in a special hut built for them in the town’s center. Stalls are built around the curherd’s hut and anyone who’s able lives in them for at least part of the festival. Those who live in the stalls help the curherd tend to the curdogs. Cheese and wine and food are offered to anyone who visits the stalls during the festivals. Games are hosted around the stalls. Tarveshti children are encouraged to play, with prizes handed out to the winners.

Common foods during festivals include: curnaki, a flakey pastry shell baked with cheese and water rabbit egg within. Reshnaki is a similar pastry filled with cheese and chunks of grilled ash runner meat. Maktem is a stew made from the meat of curdog, the meat of an ash runner, ash rice, onions, carrots, leeks, and spices served in an ash runner’s shell alongside a wedge of bread with cheese melted on top. Silvoulak is the leg of an ash runner with the shell stripped from most of the meat, and a mixture of melted cheese and garlic poured into hollows created in the meat; silvoulak is eaten by hand and is a portable food. Aren is a type of cheese enriched with spices and seasonings, and is a common topping used on foods. It is especially popular during the festivals. Where it is often melted and drizzled onto breads, meats, and vegetables.

A particularly popular festival dessert is betlesh, made from an early blooming ash-apple. Betlesh is both a drink and a food. The drink is made by pressing the apples to make cider, and slow cooking the cider with more apples and spices for several hours. The food is made by fishing the apples from the drink after it’s done cooking, when they have become soft. The soft apples have their cores and seeds scooped out and replaced with cream, cheese, or other treats.

Each settlement’s festival lasts for two weeks from the arrival of the first curherd. Though the townspeople work during the day, they set aside their worldly concerns starting an hour before sunset. Festivities go long into the night, and it is a time of significant rejoicing. Grudges and woes are forgotten, and amends are made. By the festival’s end, people have come together in a renewed spirit of friendship and cooperation. The curherd’s leave some of their flock with the settlement, and take some of the settlement’s own curdogs with them.

The orcs start counting down to the next Cur Tyrvel.