One of the most important field festivities of the Oas people is The Sheep Association, connected with the traditional activity of grazing, festivity which is celebrated in May and symbolizes the beginning of the spring and of the sheep’s grazing. The festivity takes place on the territory of the Certeze Village, but all the Oas people from the area come to join the others, thousand of people of the county, also guests from the country and from abroad. At the end of the week, the sheepfold and the shepherds are chosen, the sterile sheep are separated from the ones with milk, the sheep are milked and the milked is measured. The measuring is an exclusive masculine activity, the women participating only at lunch and dancing. After “the milk’s measuring”, the feast begins with dainties, withes and plum brandy, and continued with singing and dancing.

After numerous practical activities (tsarinas’ shutting, sheepfolds’ building or repairing, lambs’ weaning, sheep’s and rams’ shearing) and judicial (the sheep owners’ association for the sheep’s completing, the sheep’s marking, the shepherds’ employment, the pasturing payment, etc), at The Sheep Association, they were measuring and notching on a deal board the milk from the sheep of every shepherd, and they were calculating the plenty cheese proper to the broke of the sheepfold.To obtain a higher quantity of milk at the ‘masuris’-measuring of the sheeps -, the owners used to go to the pasture and guard the sheeps themselves during the night of 22 to 23 of april and on the 23 of april they milked them.

From the first milk of the sheepfold, they would prepare green ewe cheese, which would be shared between the owners of sheeps. The practical and juridical activities were accompanied by numerous ritual atcs destined to defend the sheepfold and the shepherds from the evil forces during summer: lightning the Living Fire, smoking the shepherds and the sheeps, driving away the witches who steal the growth of the milk – by yelling and making loud sounds, canceling the cuckoo’s power of stealing or spoiling the milk using magic « Cucu ! – Rasucu ! », purifying the sheeps and the sheep owners by sprinklilng them with holy water, the ritual bathing in the clean water of river or washing with the dew from the plants, preparing ritual foods, sacrificing the lamb, speaking magic formulas, etc. The Sheep Association ends with a beautiful peasants’ party where they eat typical foods (balmos, boiled in milk and with butter added, outlaw-style fried lamb, knot-shaped bread from Sangiorz, green ewe cheese from the firs milking), they sing and dance on shepherd songs. The custom is known, with it’s local variants and in different stages of evolution, by all sheep breeders.