Estancia Salvacion: Harvest Time!

Fall has arrived. The air is significantly crisp and fresh, and we have gone from sleeping with fans and airconditioners going non-stop to adding heavy blankets to our bedding. Apparently the unusually warm weather Montreal was experiencing last week is being off-set by the unusually cold weather we are experiencing here in Formosa, Argentina. Thanks for the equilibrium Mother Nature.

Either way, I am happy that it is fall because fall means harvesting! Though I am not working with fruits and vegetables, there is still plenty to forage and collect at Salvacion to satisfy my eager taste buds.

Pomelos

Pomelo fruit trees can be found in a number of locations around the estancia. One of these locations is at the corral at El Chinchorro. Yesterday we spent the morning working there branding and marking calves, and enjoying some pomelos. The fruit when ripe has a pale green to yellow colour, and has a yellow-white flesh. It is apparently the largest citrus fruit in existence, and tastes similar to a sweet grapefruit. I love the tangy taste of citrus fruit, and so I spent much of the morning carving pomelos with Diego's knife. (I tried not to think of what the knife was last used for as I cut the fruit open.)

Once the work was done, the gauchos enjoyed some pomelos as well. However, then consumer theirs very differently that I. I ate the flesh of the fruit, carefully peeling away the white portions. The gauchos cut away the rind leaving part of the very thick rind pith to use as a cup. They cut a hole in the top of the now maleable fruit, then squeezed the contents juicing the insides to then drink without getting their hands all sticky. Though a much quicker and cleaner approach than mine, I still prefer the sensation of having the little juice membranes of the citrus fruit explode in my mouth.


Wild Honey

When Diego and I arrived at one of the water retention stations to pick up a worker that needed a lift to Isla Negra, we were surprised to see that while the water was being pumped from the reservoir pond to the holding tank, the men were sifting honey!

The two men had found a big hive in one of the nearby trees and smoked out the bees. By the time we arrived, they had the liquid honey and some of the hive matter in a large tarp which they were pouring through an old nylon sack. The sack was then squeezed tightly to separate as much of the liquid honey from the solid matter as possible, before discarding the solid hive remnants on the side. The honey was dark and cloudy but so so sweet. I was very impressed with the find as well as the lack of bee stings on the men who had successfully nabbed the bees hard work. That's called experience.

Armadillo - or Tatu - Hunting

Here's the story. I was accompanying Marcelo, Capitas of Isla Negra, and Diego, vet, observe some of the herds out in the field by horseback two days ago. When we were already on our way back, the dog that followed us for the entire journey got a scent of an animal. Marcelo and the dog started to work together to catch the critter trying to evade their grasp. Diego says to me, "Want to see a Tatu?" Not knowing what a tatu was, I said sure.

Before I knew what was happening, super sexy gaucho man, Marcelo, jumps from his horse, catches the Tatu with his bare hands, and the help of his dog, raises it for our observation, then stabs it in the throaght with his machete. The animal takes a few minutes to die, before Marcelo guts it and cleans it in a puddle in the field, leaving the innards and head of the animal in the puddle for the vultures to find.

After telling this story to my boyfriend back in Canada, who has had his colleagues back home only warn him that many a woman has strayed from her man after finding themselves a ruggedly handsome gaucho in Argentina, says to me that he has started to develop a little crush on the ability of the men I am hanging out with everyday; his honesty makes me laugh.

Apparently armadillos taste like piglet meat, but Marcelo gifted the animal to Diego, who is taking the kill back to his family this weekend to enjoy. When I told Diego that food is meant to be shared amongst friends, he said that was true. All meat EXCEPT tatu meat. Which apparently is his favourite meat. When I said I have never tried armadillo meat, he says that that was too bad and that I really should, one day. My efforts were proving fruitless to get a bit of that armadillo. Still, the catch was exciting.

Estancian Salvacion, Formosa: Herd Management, and Cow Reproduction Part II

Today two more herds of cows had to be examined for pregnancy which meant we were in the truck at six in the morning heading to a corral to start our work.

To be able to manage such a vast territory and large number of animals, Estancia Salvacion is divided into three divisions - Salvacion, Corai-Cué and Ihla Negra. Each of these divisions has a gaucho staff of five people including one captain. Diego, the vet, works directly with the captain to administer the operations of the different divisions, and then the captain sees that the work is done with his staff. The men live in a shared house in their respective divisions, which are miles apart, with stables for their horses, a well, a shed and other farms animals they have for their own consumption - pigs, chickens, and ducks. The men work on their divisions Monday - Friday and go home on the weekends to their families, wives or girlfriends. Each week at least one person needs to stay behind as a guard for their division. The following week, this person gets to leave on Friday to return home instead of Saturday morning like the rest of the crew. Diego prefers that the captains are not the ones to stay on the weekend, because since he works with them most directly, it is a challenge to administer work if they are absent on a subsequent Friday.

Each division is further devided into smaller paddocks. Each month, the gauchos are responsible for doing an inventory of the animals that are contained in each paddock, so that the administration knows at at one time how many animals are on the property. The inventory includes number of male calves, female calves, mothers, bulls, castrated bulls, deaths, exports and even cows consumed.

Every month, each division team is entitled to slaughter one cow for their consumption. They need to ration this meat for the month for themselves and for sharing with their families. When I arrived at Ihla Negra, the men were mid-massacre of their monthly cow. They had the animal open ontop of sheet metal outside their house. Pigs and the street dogs, both of whom eat anything, were circling the animal as it was being butchered with greedy eyes.

The men were cutting off all the useful meet that they could, being careful not to cut or break the digestive tract of the animal to dirty their meat by tying the stomach and intestines shut with hair from the cows tail. To dissect the animal, they used a saw and big knife. The sections of the cow were then hung in their open air shed attached to the house, where the chickens were able to peck off sections of the raw meat. Once the carcass was thrown to the pigs and dogs, the men would then further divide the hung sections of the cow into smaller cuts to be frozen for the month.

It was really fascinating for me to see this cow completely open in a yard being sliced apart. The guys were laughing at me for taking so many pictures while they did their work.

The two herds that had to be examined were at the Corai-Cué division - in the morning about 250 animals were examined and another 250 approximately in the late afternoon. To improve my examination skills, today I only felt empty cows in the morning and pregnant cows in the afternoon. The focus for the empty cows in the morning was to be able to feel the two uterus horns. Normally these are faced downwards, but Diego was able to shift them upwards so that on a few animals I was able to actually fell the division between the two horns between my fingers. When the cows are in heat, their reproductive anatomy is larger, so all the animals I was feeling were in heat.

In the afternoon, I again got to feel big pregnancies. Apparently one was really big and you could feel a leg, but that was the one cow where I couldn't locate anything - dissapointing. The others were similar to the first cow from yesterday where the feeling was like a balloon filled with water with a fetus inside.

I don't think I was clear yesterday with my diagrams, so let me explain the examination in more detail. With gloves, we put our arm about shoulder deep into the cows anus (which is sometimes full of crap). From here, you cup your hand downwards and feel backwards. What you are trying to do is feel if the uterus is empty or pregnangt through the anus, intestinal and uteran walls. The uterus feels different depending on what is going on in the cow.

I also learned about herd management today. With so many animals it is necessary to be able to eep track of each cow. One method is tagging, which there were some tagged animals today, including a number that had been artificially inseminated to bring genetic diversity into the herd, but cutting the ears of the animals is a cheaper and more common tracking system. All cows are cut the same way on their left ear to indicate they belong to Estancia Salvacion. On the right ear, you indicate the year of birth by cutting nothes out of the bottom, top and point of the ear. A bottom notch is for four years, a top notch is for two year, and a notch in the point is for one year. For example the cow below was born in 2008 - two bottom notches indicating eight.

When the cow is 10 years old, if it is pregnant, the whole top of the right ear is cut off indicating it is this cows last pregnancy. If the cow is not pregnant, and old or sick, the whole top of the left ear is cut off indicating it is to be sent to the slaughter house. At the end of the day the men had to cut of the left ear on about ten animals, and this is the only part of my experience here that has made me very squeamish. One of the captains basically sliced off the whole ear of two animals, instead of just the top, which Diego agreed was too much, which caused the cow's ear to literally squirt blood for 30 seconds like it was from a squirt gun (or like in a scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life). Not easy to watch and I think it will take me a long time to be able to do that to the cow.

Estancia Chinchorro, Formosa: Cow Reproduction

This is a cow's reproductive system. Today I had my arm elbow deep into three cows to feel if the were pregnant or not. The vet performed this examination on all 205 cows of a small herd.

The reproductive system of a cow works as follows. The cow ovulates every 21 days approximately. At the ranch, the bulls are put with the cows for springtime mating season in October, November and December - all conception happens naturally on the ranches which I didn't expect since artificial insemination is very popular in Canada. The sperm enters both uterus horns to fertilize an egg that will have been dropped into the top of the oviduct, the trumpet, of one of the uteri. Typically pregnancy happens in the right uterus since the cow's rumen is near the left uterus and its activity increases the temperature of this uterus which makes it less likely for conception to happen there.

When I reached into the three cows it was to feel three different situations. In the first, the cow was already about 120 days pregnant which for this time of year is very developed, which meant that the fetus was quite large. I put my hand in (wearing a shoulder high plastic glove) and with my fingers felt a small round hardness in a soft liquid filled sac. Basically if I tapped the small hardness, it would bounce down and then back up. This was the fetus in the amiotic fluid in the uterus. In the second cow, which was not pregnant, I felt the uterus wall. The cow was very skinny so it was apparently easier to feel that there wasn't any pregnancy present. The uteran wall felt spongy like a muscle. In the third cow, also not pregnant, I felt the cervix which is very hard and the length of maybe three fingers.

It was very interesting for me to feel inside a cow. Shit is everywhere, in my case blood to because I had my arm under the vet's arm so he could guide my fingers and try to explain what I was feeling, and the inside of a living creature is so mysterious to me. The vet, Diego, was very quick with each animal, and he says the hardest part of the job is to distinguish between non-pregnant and a small (early) pregnancy.

So what are the logistics required to make this examination all possible? First we gathered five gauchos from the two estancias. Three we brought in the pick-up in the morning and two were already onsite with the animals carralled into different pens and a fire with branding irons being heated.

The cows are guided from a paddock into a narrow channel which forces them into a single line between two sliding gates. When the gates are closed, the cows are unable to move forward or backwards, and they are given two vaccinations and branded with a number 1 from above. The vaccinations are to prevent miscarriages and provide nutrients, one pink and one white, shot into the neck of the cows with a vaccination gun (I also got to do this), and the number 1 branding iron hot from the fire indicates that this cow has birthed one calf.

Once the cows are vaccinated and branded, the front door opens and one cow is let forward, then trapped by wood restraints that close around the cows neck and hips. At this point the vet, Diego, goes behind the cow and reaches in to examine for a pregnancy. If the cow is pregnant it is released and directed to a paddock with other pregnant cows. If the cow is not pregnant, it is branded again with a big X beside the number one to show that it was not successful at getting pregnant and separated into a paddock with other non-pregnant cows. I also got to brand a cow today!















The process was quite smooth. Four cows escaped into the non-pregnant paddock between getting vaccinated and being examined, which meant that we had to filter through the non-pregnant herd a second time to isolate the unexamined cows. During this process one of the four escaped again, which meant it had to be chased down and lassooed by the gauchos to be examined.

I think it is funny to be working with gauchos, sort of like a South American cowboy. These men live in outdoors and work with cattle on horseback. They even have a type of style with broad-rimmed hats, stripped canvas chaps, canvas shoes, dress shirt and neck scarf. Many work barefoot too including one of the guys today which I couldn't believe.

Apparently, Johnny says that the invention of the cellphone and the motorcycle changes the gaucho lifestyle completely. Alcoholism has always been a problem among the gaucho population, but now access via communication and rapid transportation makes the alcoholism more damaging.