11.18.2010

Rural Argentina, Empanadas and Animals


I haven't really talked much about how everything works here in rural Argentina. The owners on any farm (huge plantations or small little fincas) are typically not the people who work the farm. It is all completely hired out.
Some of my closest friends that live in Córdoba come from a family of large soy farmers. I've asked them several questions about their farms (i.e. when they harvest their soy/wheat/barley), and they haven't got a clue. They may not even know what a combine looks like! The reason they don't know is because all of the work is hired out, and quite often, the farmers don't live on the farm land. It's more common that they live in town. As far as I know, Argentina doesn't have minimum wage laws, so you can easily get away with hiring the work to be done for a reasonable price. The poor people here need the work anyway, so both parties benefit by this system in some ways.
Here, on Finca Ogawa, there are two men in charge. One guy, Javier, runs the tractor on this Finca as well as other little Fincas nearby... while the other guy, Tito, is in charge of overseeing the Finca and being in charge of crews that come in to work.
Tito and his family live here. His family includes Roxanna (wife), Gabriel (son), Pepe (son), and Laura (daughter). They live in the cutest little brick house connected to the shop. The whole family is involved in the chores around the farm, as well as living here to make sure everything is safe.
I hadn't ever gone to visit them at their house (even though it's meters away) until Monday evening this week. We drank yerba mate and Roxana showed me how to make some amazingly tasty empanadas!! It was so educational and fun, I would just love to learn how to make them just right... but I think the secret is the use of a concrete oven to get them to taste just right. Maybe someday I'll talk Rodrigo into building me one! Empanadas are something like apple strudle, but are made of
meats or vegetables or cheeses (even dulce de leche!). What you do is cook what you're going to put inside the empanadas and put about a spoonful of the filling over a thin circle of dough. You fold the dough over and crease the ends, then bake it. It's a very common Argentinean delicacy.
On Tuesday, Roxanna, Tito, Laura and I all went to visit Roxanna's parents. Roxanna has 13 nieces and nephews. I only met about 6 of them, and they were so cute! There's nothing cuter for me than listening to little kids speak Spanish. Roxanna's mom has geese, horses, a wild bore, many pigs, and about a million chickens. It was almost like visiting the petting zoo... I loved it! After Roxanna's parent's house... we went to visit Tito's parents. They were so nice and it really gave me such a good feeling to visit there.
Living here has been so wonderful. It's so fun to see how other cultures farm... and other families live!


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