With nothing like this year’s deluge in the heavens, the late rains of early September 20 years ago were a surprise to local farmers, generally a welcome one.
Though some, busy moving cattle to higher pastures, were swearing a lot at the low clouds, thick as baled cotton, tumbling down mountain ridges at them as they and their livestock slipped perilously in knee-deep greasy mud.
During the height of the rainy season, most campesinos here like to keep cattle penned close at hand if possible — precisely to avoid handling livestock in wet weather, and to keep them out of flourishing milpas (cornfields) usually planted on more distant mountainsides. But by August that year close by pastures were exhausted.
So cattle owners pushed their stock up into “open range” fields that weren’t fenced and some that were, if they hadn’t been planted. Sometimes they rent land that has been left fallow. But these high pastures pose the problem of getting livestock water, supplemental feed, and of course, complicates the task of milking.
A couple of young acquaintances, Moises (“Moy”) Chavez and Luis (“Guicho”) Larios, who sold their milk and cheese in pueblos near the western swing of Lake Chapala, rented several parcels of fallow land in the first days of September, and were moving 23 head of milk cows one afternoon.
They planned to bring water up to the cattle in large milk cans twice a day when they milked. That meant toting four cans each on the horses they rode and leading a plow horse loaded with six more. They brought four tambos (100-liter barrels) up to the low edge of their new pasture to hold the water. The cattle were good stock and there wasn’t a crazy cow in the bunch, Guicho said, so the barrels wouldn’t get knocked over.
“Pues, there’s nothing to worry about,” Moy told me, looking at the sunny 1 p.m. sky, “unless a cicloncito comes along, but most of those are off by Cuba someplace, the television says.”
Also on each trip the two boys would bring up costales (gunny sacks) of fortified feed bought at a feed store and rastrojo (ground-up corn stralks with a little corn thrown in). They took good care of their plump milking stock.
In contrast, I was pushing a herd of six scrawny, bad-tempered cows and a lumbering obstinate bull up the slippery mountainside to a pasture far above. My friend and socio, Beto Hernandez — or one of his sons — twice a day watered our cattle farther up at a rainy-season waterfall. The land up here is a combination of volcanic debris and clay with nopal cactus and clumps of spiny huisache growing wild, along with a chest-high jungle of weeds this time of year. It’s rich feeding, but tricky footing with a lot of rocks the size of tea kettles hidden beneath the pasturage.
Guicho and Moy had already repaired the tangled barbed wire around their new pasture, replaced several posts and were getting ready for their afternoon milking. They’d found a fairly flat spot and cleared out some of the rock so they could set up two beat-up tinas (wash tubs) for feed and put down an overturned pail to sit on while milking.
Working a milk herd in a remote milpa can leave a lot to be desired. The ground is not only rocky, but eroded, tangled with vines and hard-to-chop-out thorny undergrowth. This time of year it’s a hot and sweaty task. Mosquitoes, flies and other bloodthirsty insects feast on you as you try to deal quickly with cattle that have to be hobbled and are often tied to a post as they nose the concentrated food you set in front of them.
The stuff I was supposed to be pushing uphill were the culls of the Hernandez bunch, either nasty-tempered or just plain stubborn. All were “kickers” who had a knack of easily loosening the rope hobble used to keep them from kicking over the milk pail with their back feet. All, of course, had the pleasant habit of slapping you rhythmically with a manure-decorated tail. And most liked to back away from their feed after a couple of minutes of gourmandizing, so you had to snub them not to fence post, but to a tree to keep them relatively still. Because of all that, I was gossiping with Moy and Guicho, postponing my own dairy chores.
Then without even the warning of a stiff breeze, the sky abruptly clouded over and it began to rain. I kicked my horse under a mesquite tree a couple yards uphill. But Moy and Guicho, who keep a sharp schedule of milk delivery and cheese-making, just set to getting their milking done as fast as possible. Moy chucked his sombrero under an empty tina, draped a plastic gunny sack over his head, shoulders and back, and set to milking at a flashing rate. He was the fastest milker I’d ever seen, with a smooth, flowing grip that never paused, never seemed to make a cow nervous, no matter how hurried he is. Guicho, a large young man, usually described as fornido was less easy and swift at milking.
On the other hand, I was a poor milker, impatient and jerky, often not getting all the milk there is. A bulky crowd of low, lightening-filled clouds were ganging up to squeeze through the slim, arroyo-cut valley were all this alfresco dairying was taking place. Lightning snapped, a wind sprang up and the rain slanted, but the two young men never interrupted their work. By the time the purple clouds pushed beyond us, they were already wading through the mud in their huaraches loading heavy milk cans on their horses.