According to the folk calendar - Onisim Ovcharnik

Onisim Shepherd in the folk calendar is celebrated on February 28 (February 15, old style) The name of the day occurred according to the church date of honoring the memory of St Onesimus, attributed to the 70 apostles In the 1st century, Onesimus was a slave to the Christian Philemon Having committed a bad deed and fearing the punishment of his master, Onesimus fled to Rome, where he was imprisoned There the slave met the Apostle Paul, after which he was baptized and took the path of a Christian When Saint Paul returned Onesimado back to his home, the owner, who knew Paul, set him free The freed man devoted his life to preaching about Christianity and in his old age received the rank of bishop in Ephesus Among the people, Saint Onesimus was considered the patron saint of sheep husbandry, for which he was called the Sheepfold The owners of the sheep prayed to him for their good offspring and for their safety from disease In clear weather, in the evening they performed a ritual to increase the number of livestock To do this, the owners and the shepherd went out to the outskirts, bowed three times to the four cardinal directions, then clicked on the stars and read a special spell The day was also called Zimobor The reason for this was the ending days of winter; spring was practically felt in the air, but the weather was often cloudy and cold The people began to see off the retreating winter, and the youth organized merry festivities Housewives spent the morning preparing seeds for the upcoming season They were taken out into the cold for hardening It was believed that such a ritual would help young plants withstand sudden temperature changes in the spring Women who worked on yarn exposed their best threads to the cold on Onesimus' day, believing that this would give them strength and evenness, and the fabric made from them would become lighter and softer If a woman was offended by her husband and laid hands on her, she went to the healer for help On this day, it was possible to read out conspiracies from aggressive or rude husbands in order to pacify their temper Signs on Onesimus's day helped to find out the future A sunset in red light meant an approaching snowstorm, and a clear month marked the continuing cold Looking at the large icicles on the roofs, residents foreshadowed a long spring season Rising water in reservoirs promised a successful harvest of hay in the summer The abundance of stars in the sky predicted a good offspring for sheep