Our World in Food

Saying goodbye to Rafael, the calf born through c-section a few weeks ago...

I left Granja Las Ondinas more reluctant than I thought I would. I didn’t want to come back to the city yet! I feel like being outdoors, in fresh air, with dirt on my hands and the sun on my back. I made good friends with the workers and the animals and I already miss them, especially a certain calf named Rafael. There is so much I still want to learn about raising dairy cows, rabbits, chickens, making cheese, gardening and life on a farm throughout the seasons.

In the end I didn’t say goodbye to everyone on the farm, I simply said “hasta la próxima,” until nextime! I plan on going back soon!

This Friday I leave to another WWOOF farm. This one is in Salta, a Northwestern province of Argentina. It is called Bodega Utama. It’s a vineyard! The vendimia is upon them, the grape harvest, so I will be going to help them harvest grapes for three weeks. Looking at the forecast, I hope I don’t get rained on the entire time I’m there, for the past three weeks it has been pouring! Oh well, I am moving on to learn about organic wine-making! That should warm me up a bit…

We got to work bright and early in the morning

In many countries now-a-days it is illegal to slaughter animals on your own farm, they must be sent to a slaughterhouse to be processed. Thankfully, this is not yet the case in Argentina. I say thankfully because slaughterhouses are some of the most repugnant, abusive, and dangerous environments for both the animals and workers. Animals are slaughtered at an ever quickening pace, making it nearly impossible for workers on the assembly line to keep up without hurting themselves. Slaughterhouses have a complete monopoly on the role they play in the meat industry, and that power has corrupted them.

Argentina is known for its beef production, the gauchos who raise the cattle and our famous Argentine asados. Now, you are hard pressed to find a gaucho raising cattle on fresh pasture in the Argentine countryside. Soy has replaced pasture and feedlots have replaced farms. Like I said in previous posts, Las Ondinas is surrounded by soy monocultures and chicken CAFOs, operated by one person at most. We are losing the art of beef production in this beautiful country to corporations who consolidate and monetize our traditions.

While in Argentina, I wanted to WWOOF on a farm with cattle in order to learn, from the last few gauchos left in this country, how cows can be raised and consumed respectfully. While milking the cows at Las Ondinas, I ask Juan tons of questions about raising cows. Every time a little bull is born I know that it must eventually be sold or consumed because they do not provide milk. I bugged Juan for weeks, asking him if he might be slaughtering a steer during my stay. A steer is a castrated, adolescent calf, not yet a bull and not still a baby. They are large, at least 200 kilos, and have horns, but because they are castrated their meat is more tender and they aren’t as aggressive with the other calves and cows. Almost every time we have been served meat on the farm it has been from steers.

A few days before I was due to leave Las Ondinas Juan let me know that we would be slaughtering a steer. In Spanish the word is carnear; literally it translates to beefing, which I think is more appropriate than slaughtering because it explains what the purpose of killing the animal is for.

The night before the carneo, I was so nervous and excited that I couldn’t sleep. I kept dreaming that the steer would look me in the eyes and realize his fate. I couldn’t get his innocent, brown eyes out of my mind. I woke up at 2:30am and waited until 4 to milk the cows with Juan. When we finished, we started to clear the area and prepare our instruments.

Our instruments.

The image from my dream...

I am going to explain the process of slaughtering and quartering a steer here because it was a valuable experience for me. I think it is important for people, especially meat eaters, to understand the effort required to raise and process meat. Every part of the animal is used, nothing is wasted. The way in which animals are raised and slaughtered on this farm is admirable. It is soon to become a lost art if it is not shared. I hope my documentation does it some justice.

Slaughtering a Steer

1. It is important that the animal does not eat during its last 12 hours of life, to empty the intestines, as they will be consumed. Every knife that will be used must be sharpened and instruments to hoist the meat up must be acquired (un balancín y un aparejo).
2. We brought the steer in to the milking area, tied a rope around its horns and gave it a little bit of grain to eat. The moment it stood still, Juan took a deep breath and with the blunt end of an axe, hit it right in the middle of the head (in between the horns and the eyes). This immobilized the animal and allowed Juan to safely stick a long knife deep in to the steer’s throat, towards the heart. The animal instantly started bleeding, but did not fight very much since it was practically knocked out. The worst part about slaughtering an animal is waiting for it to die. It is important to let it bleed to remove as much blood as possible from the meat.
3. Once the animal ceased to move, we immediately started skinning it. This is best done carefully and while the animal is warm, so as not to puncture the valuable leather. Four of us worked on the animal at once and got the job done quickly.
4. Then we tied the hind legs to an instrument used to hoist the animal up and began to open it up. We had to cut the pelvis and chest with a saw and remove the head. Then Juan carefully cut open the animal, and while we raised it up a little, he gutted it.
5. All the viscera was collected and separated. The small intestines, kidneys, liver, heart, thyroid gland, some parts of the stomach and tongue were all saved for our consumption on the farm. What remained was kept but fed to the dogs and cats.
6. Then we cut the meat into 8 pieces and placed them in a large freezer: 2 hind quarters, 2 front quarters, 2 rib cuts, the spine and the neck. The cold from the freezer made it easier to work the meat the next day.
7. We cleaned the area extremely well with scalding hot water and sat down to drink some mates.
8. The next day we cut those large chunks of meat into smaller cuts of beef to cook individually, and placed them in the freezer again. The bones were all kept to make broth and the fat kept to fry and some to make soap (a new experiment for them).

Juan shows us how to carefully remove the skin for leather

With the animals hoisted up it is easier to make large, clean cuts

The innards we kept to eat, soaking in water. What looks like coral reef if the stomach used to make mondongo, a traditional stew.

Juan taught me all the Argentine beef cuts. Here he is cutting bife de lomo.

Cut, labeled and ready to be cooked

The next day we were hungry for meat. Yes, it was very difficult to watch the steer die before my eyes, but I have never, ever, respected an animal more than at that moment. I know that steer lived a calm, happy life on the farm. From the moment it was born it got to drink milk from its mother and run around and graze on fresh pasture. What more could a calf hope for? I know that the manner in which it was slaughtered is also the quickest and the most respectful. I don’t regret having participated in the slaughter for one moment. In fact, I’m thrilled that during my time here at Las Ondinas I watched a cow give birth, I milked the cows, I played with the calves, I helped slaughter a steer and I cooked the meat. How many people get to know their food that well?

After all our work was done, we prepared an asado with the ribs. Comimos ese costillar con ganas, as we say in Spanish, we ate those ribs with desire. While we were picking up the bones and biting off pieces of meat, two new WWOOF volunteers arrived. A French couple. We introduced ourselves, with greasy cheeks and hands, and finished off our bones. Juan explained, to the wide-eyed Frenchies, that we had just slaughtered a steer and prepared this asado. After lunch we drank some mates and chatted. We all laughed at how stereotypically Argentine we must seem to the French couple. I have never felt more like a gauchita!

If you are interested in seeing more, I made a video of this whole process. 

Click here to check it out: Carneo de un Novillo

El tambo y el amanecer despues del ordeñe. Sunrise after milking the cows.

In Spanish, el tambo is the place where cows are milked. At Las Ondinas we have a little tambo where we can milk two cows at a time with a milking machine. We milk 8 of our beautiful Jersey cows twice a day, first at 4:30 in the morning and then at 4:30 in the afternoon. This may be common knowledge to you but cows give milk when they have a calf, and they will continue to provide milk for seven to nine months or longer. In order for a cow to give milk continuously it must have another calf.  Most dairies now-a-days artificially inseminate their cows and keep them in milking rooms 24 hours a day. At Las Ondinas we have two bulls, and the cows are left to rest (not milked) for two months before they are due.

What surprised me most about the cows at Las Ondinas, is that unlike every commercial dairy, the cows here get to feed their calves. In commercial dairies, the moment a cow gives birth she is separated from her calf, the colostrum is collected and it is bottle-fed to the calf; there is never any connection between the mother and her baby. That way the cow will give milk to the machine that is automatically connected to her. Otherwise, cows will save their milk for their babies and they will not give milk to a machine unless their calf is nearby and gets to drink too. Some dairies are milking hundreds of cows, they just can’t deal with their hundreds of calves, so they don’t. This means that the majority of the world’s dairy cows are being tricked into thinking that a machine is their offspring, that their environment is a cage and that their only purpose is to feed humans. On top of that, hardly any cow has horns anymore, and many have broken tails or none at all. When calves are a few weeks old their horns are cut off and treated with acid so that they never grow, they are seen as a hazard. Cows are large and hard to get to move, so dairymen sometimes grab their tails and bend them, break them, in order to get them to move. Now their tails are being cut off entirely and the dairy fumigated for flies. How shameful.

Here at Las Ondinas, our Jersey cows get to go out to fresh pasture, they get to raise their calves, they all have their horns and tails, and they are milked respectfully. The cows are producing more milk than ever, I wonder why…

On my last week here at Las Ondinas I was invited to see how the cows were milked in the morning. The first morning I went I was actually allowed to milk a couple cows!! Juan usually doesn’t let the volunteers milk the cows because there would be too many strangers working with them, making them very uneasy. Just in case, I have been getting up at 4:30 every morning, and thankfully Juan has been letting me milk a few of the tamest cows. I love it!

Un ternero espera su turno para mamar. A calf waits his turn to drink.

Ordeñamos, dejamos que mamen los terneros, ordeñamos otra vez y luego soltamos a los terneros y las vacas. Podes ver que lamentablemente otro tambero le quebro la cola a esta vaca que compramos. Es una costumbre abusiva para hacerlas mover a las vacas.

El Tambo, Milking Cows at Las Ondinas

1. First, we call the cows in to a fenced off area just next to the tambo. Then we bring all the calves in to the tambo, feed them fresh grass and tie them to a post.
2. Then the moment we turn the milking machine on we also turn on classical music.  When the cows hear that music they know that they are just going to be milked and be with their calves, so they come willingly.
3. The cows are called in to the tambo, two at a time, in the same order every day. We call out their name, they walk right in to one of the two pens and we place a chain behind their legs so that they can’t step on us while we milk them.
4. We feed each cow a couple cups of balanced feed: ground corn, wheat, oats, flax etc… to keep them busy and relaxed as we work.
5. We wash their teats with warm water and squirt out a little milk by hand to check for quality, then we dry them off. We attach the milking machine by turning on the suction and quickly cupping each teat into a nozzle. Milk will start streaming through a tube into a tall, stainless steel milk jug. A few minutes later the cow will quit giving milk, so we detach the machine.
6. We untie the calf that corresponds to each cow and let them drink from their mothers. You see, the cow saves milk for her calf; she will not give the machine everything she’s got!
7. A few minutes later we tie the calf back up, reattach the machine and give the cow more grain to eat, while milking her a little more.
8. Once she stops giving milk we detach the machine and let the cow loose with her calf. They will feed and rest for the next few hours, then the cows will go out to pasture and the calves will eat elsewhere. They will be reunited for the evening milking.
9. The milk is poured in to a tank that keeps it cool, between 2.5 and 5 degrees Celsius, until Romina is ready to make cheese.
10. Lastly, we meticulously wash down all areas and work items with a hose, brush and an extra large squeegee.

La maquina de ordeñe. The milking machine.

El tanque de frio. The cold storage tank.

The first morning I went to simply watch the process. I had seen afternoon milkings before, but in the afternoon they milk fewer cows and there are less calves. Juan can milk the cows on his own; in fact, he can milk a cow, drink mate, smoke a cigarette and answer my constant stream of questions simultaneously!

I learned that every Jersey cow has her own personality, like people, some are crankier, some calmer, some are very protective of their calves, others give them more freedom etc… While he was telling me all this I was petting the calves (mostly scratching their long necks). They like to lick you! Their tongues feel like a gigantic cat tongue, but slimier.

At one point Juan called me over. He showed me how he washed a cow’s teats and placed the milking machine on them, then he asked me to try on Ofelia (a cow who happens to share my grandma’s name!). I was so nervous! I thought that if I messed up he would never let me near the cows again. Thankfully, I had milked a cow before and found it easy to squirt a little milk out by hand. However, the milking machine is very heavy, and with its four nozzles hanging loose it is awkward to handle. Somehow, I managed to attach the machine without any problems and the moment milk started streaming into the milk jug Juan exclaimed “¡Muy bien! ¡Que tambera!” Very good! What a dairy woman!

I was so relieved! After than Juan let me milk a couple more cows, letting their calves drink inbetween milkings and feeding them grain to keep them calm. I am very thankful for Juan to have let me participate in the morning milking; he has been so patient and kind. Actually, he has been very generous! The other day when we went in to town he came to pick me up early at the internet café. He said he had something to show me. We stopped the car in front of a clothes shop and walked in. “Te quiero comprar una bombacha,” he said. I want to buy you a pair of underwear. Only joking! Underwear is the literal translation of bombacha, but bombacha is also the word for gaucho work pants. He gifted me a pair of tough, green work pants, like him and all of his kids have. I couldn’t be happier!

Juan, el tambero, y yo despues del ordeñe de la mañana.