IN EARLY July, professional forest rangers competed in two disciplines not normally associated with this profession: scything a meadow and cooking venison goulash.
This year, forest rangers from Slovakia and Poland scythed a meadow one hectare in size on July 4. The 9th year of the Tatra Scything / Tatranská kosba competition proved that foresters can still personally manage not only the form of the landscape, but also the biodiversity of eco-systems across the whole territory of the Tatras National park (TANAP), the chief juror of the competition, Peter Spitzkopf, told the TASR newswire.
The forest rangers competed in 22 pairs, each responsible for a section of meadow 50 metres long and four metres wide, and were judged on the speed and quality of their work. Ivan Pjatek and Martin Špiak from Vyšné Hágy (High Tatras) won, followed by Juraj Majerčák and Michal Gazda from Zverovka (Orava) and Ján Slivinský and Michal Vrlík from Tatranská Javorina.
In the individual competition, Juraj Majerčák from Orava came in first, and Jozef Pawlikowski from Tatranski park narodowi, Poland, placed second. Spitzkopf stressed that the results reflect the regions where hay is still scythed by hand.
In addition to the scything competition, the 5th year of the annual goulash cook-off took place, in which cooks from 25 teams competed, making goulash from venison. The expert jury liked the goulash prepared by the rangers of the Military Forests in Malacky the most, with the Pleso foresters’ goulash winning second place and Habovka foresters’ goulash placing third.
