The Polish Society for Bird Protection has begun a series of meetings with residents living in areas of the ongoing LIFE project entitled “ Protection of the white stork in river valleys of eastern Poland”. Many years ago, in early spring, in every village home in Podlasie and Kurpie, on 25 March, “busłowe łapy” (“stork's paws”) were baked. They were yeast rolls similar in the shape to the four-claw stork’s paw. It had to do with the belief that the last storks should return by this day.
In folk dialect "busioł" means stork. People believed that by inserting “busłowe łapy” into the stork’s nest, they will lure the bird into the nest located on their property, and thus happiness and prosperity will not abandon them throughout the year. This tradition, like many others, have almost completely disappeared in the project implementation areas and to cultivate it, we scheduled 20 meetings with residents in order to bake “busłowe łapy” together.
We have already organized the first “busłowe łapy”. On 25 March we met with residents of Mielnik commune, who came in great numbers to the Commune Culture, Sport and Recreation Centre. The workshop was divided into two parts. In the first part we learned the recipe and made yeast dough. In the second one we baked the elaborately prepared the stork's paws. There were also discs, sickles, brioches and even ducks on the baking trays. Of course, children had most fun with the baking, but adults matched their enthusiasm. During a break we invited the participants to watch the film entitled “The land of 1000 storks” realized under the previous project of protection of the white stork. The project gadgets, T-shirts and mugs were very popular. We would like to thank the ladies from the Commune Culture, Sport and Recreation Centre for their help, Ms. Halina, who lovingly talked about the tradition of baking “busłowe łapy”, and all the participants for a few hours of joyfully working together.
