I follow Gonzalez into the field, where we left the sheep yesterday, past a big wooden frame with a couple of old sheep skins hanging over it, then up to a small concrete shed with a corrugated tin roof. In the doorway of the shed, I find the two gauchos, in wellington boots and leather aprons. They´re standing infront a of a skinned sheep carcass, hanging by it's legs over a hook. It's cut wide-open down through the length of the belly. One of the gauchos proceeds to casually place his knife and left hand into the carcass and pulls out an organ that I can't identify. He cuts an entrail off of the orgran and sets the best part of it down on a small table. The entrail piece flys over a fence where the working dogs are waiting to pounce. There's not much more room in the shed, but enough for a wheel barrow, in which another, very much alive sheep, is curled up, waiting for his or her turn. The terror in the waiting sheep is clear as it's short, sharp breaths push in and out.
Mikey Dundee says, "My dad says, never kill anything unless you're gonna eat it". This is a good rule of thumb. I'd like to add that you shouldn't eat anything, unless you've killed it, but more practically, unless you're at least prepared to kill it. I'd come to this estancia hoping to kill a cow. I really like eating cows, so it follows naturally and logically, albeit in reverse order. I'm not certain if I could go through with it, but I´m pretty confident.
Gonzalez talks to the Gauchos, then leads me away. I haven't asked to kill anything yet. I'd only specified interest in butchery. I still have absolutely no idea where I´m going, why, or for how long. Unfortunately, I can't quickly nor easily turn a phrase in Spanish. I looked up the verb for "kill" last night and as we're walking, I calculate and process a sentence. I ask how they kill the sheep, adding the action of dragging my index finger across my neck to illustrate the verb. His response is to raise his right hand, with index finger extended, press the tip of the finger on his neck, just under the back of his jawbone on the far right-hand side, then adds a twisting motion. I'm not a hundred percent sure what that means, but I want to find out.
As the task of our day unravels, I find myself on another farm, loading logs onto the back of a truck. By all accounts, Montevideo used to be Cuba-like, in that it was full of various handsome Chevy´s and Fords that would have been discontinued from production in the late fifties. Nowadays, Montevideo's cars are broadly modern, with a fair few that go back as far as the nineties. Across the farther reaches of Uruguay, there's a thin, but noticeable spread of fifties pickup trucks. This truck is a big strong Dodge Kew - sky blue, triple headlamps, chrome finishing and the big-block. Urghf, urghf, urghf. The morning´s work is a mixture of watching the tractor scrape up neatly cross-stacked piles of logs, and some hands-dirty caber tossing. I find dirty-hands work to be an excellent novelty.
In the afternoon, I'm sitting on a bench in a small outhouse building. The room has a sink and fireplace, and a wooden table in the centre. Sitting next to me, on the bench, is about 40 kilograms of raw lamb, all in one piece, neatly folded and rolled, ready for barbeque. The gaucho and I return to the killing shed, to fetch the second lamb. I watch carefully as he shows me how to entirely de-bone the animal with a saw, a small knife, and a that´s-not-a knife-that´s-a-knife-knife. I'd describe the action as shaving the bones away from the flesh. The final move removes the spine with the legs still attached. I'm thinking that one could make a truly morbid puppet with that, and the remaining pile of bones. The gaucho is already a step ahead of me. He pulls out this last piece and proceeds, with a grin, to dance a jig with it.
 |
| http://blog.natoora.co.uk/?p=908 |
No comments:
Post a Comment