ore than 400 years ago, a custom emerged in the region beyond the Carpathians that has survived to this day in the mountain villages where sheep farmers are engaged in sheep breeding. This is the Day of Measure (Mira). It is also celebrated in the territorial community of Yasinya in Transcarpathia.The date of this holiday, which is usually celebrated in May, is determined by the chief shepherd (vatag) together with the deputy of the valley. In the morning, each owner decorates the sheep with periwinkles and flowers and drives them to the meadow where Measure (Mira) will take place.

The main thing on the day of the Measure is to determine how much cheese the shepherd will have to give to the owner of each sheep for the period that the animal will spend on the meadow. Of course, the more milk a sheep produces, the more cheese it will produce.

As a rule, owners milk their sheep themselves. There is a certain ritual. They put stalks of garlic and nettle at the bottom of the bucket. After milking, all the sheep owners come with the milk to a special outhouse in the meadow called a staiia. There, the milk is filtered through a cloth sieve called a lapshan. Spruce branches are placed on the cloth.

The volume of milk milk is measured using special utensils: a konovchyna (1.5 litres) and a kupchyna (1.87 ml). One kupchyna is 1/8 of a konovchyna. If a sheep yields one full konovchyna of milk, it means that the owner will receive five 15-litre buckets of milk during the season, which will be used to make cheese and vurda in the meadow. The measured milk is poured into puters, of which there are three in the meadow: spring, summer and autumn.