LIFE ON A MONGOLIAN RANCH
I am sitting here in front of the oven. It is two in the morning and my task for about an hour from now is to have an eye on the fire and its temperature of 85°C, which heats the water for the radiators in the house. If it is lower I have to put more coals into the oven, if it is too hot I let it cool down. Every two hours someone else is on fireguard shift to make sure that the house stays warm.
The life on a Mongolian ranch is hard, very hard. A lot of work has to be done, and the fact that the farmers do not have any machines and the outside temperature vary in between -25°C and -40°C every day and make it even harder.
But no need to complain, we chose to be here. We chose to experience the real Mongolian ranch life far off the capital Ulaanbaatar, close to the border to Siberia.
We wanted to see how the people live and work, how they manage to stay alive without any comfort in the cold wintertime, what meals they are cooking, what traditions they have and how it feels like for a western person to live this life.We helped as much as we could to get a glimpse of the ranch life. Another volunteer from Sweden stayed here with us at the same time.
The property is part of a small village in the middle of a vast steppe surrounded by snow covered mountain ranges.
The house with yurts in the garden, the barn for the animals, different yards and a huge dry grass storage, no shower, just an outside toilet, no running water, no internet, no landline, extremely limited cooking ingredients. That was our world for two weeks.Our workday started at 8 in the morning. It is still dark, but the animals already needed to get fed. We prepared different kinds of grass for the 80 cows, same as many baby cows, sheep and goats, to eat.
After this, the main job shit shovelling started. That means the whole property, including the barn for the animals, had to get cleaned. We had to scrape all the shit together and load it on the pickup-truck. People from the village can buy the shit for their garden as fertiliser or exchange it for vegetables. More or less, shit as a currency.
In the afternoon it was time to pump water (first) for the animals and then for ourselves. About half an hour of strong pumping is enough for our daily usage (no showers or toilet flush).
Also, someone needed to (basically) have a day off, escape the hard work and go to herd the sheep and goats for a couple of hours. They follow really good, so it is a quite relaxing job. Equipped with warm clothes and a long stick to guide the sheep and goats through the steppe. The job is to get them to gras, stay away from the railway, to not mix with other sheep and protect them from the wild dogs. CHUCK is the sound we had to shout to make them move.[Organic Milk Production:]
In the evenings it was time to milk the cows. One baby cow at a time went to its mother. When the milk started to flow, we pulled it away until the milking woman was finished to milk the mother. Then, the baby cow was released to go back to its mother to finish drinking.All this work made really hungry, and luckily we got delicious meals.
Fresh fried thin flatbread with homemade cheese (from the summertime) and zucchini jam were our daily breakfast. As a drink to warm up we had Mongolian milk tea (warm fresh milk, black tea and salt). Sounds in need of getting used to, but tasted delicious after a lot of work in the coldness and gave energy.
All the ingredients we had for lunch (except the ones that the farm produces itself) are potatoes, carrots, onions, rice, pasta, flour and some spices. What a surprise how many different meals can get cooked with such few ingredients.
And dinner was a light meal, often we had quark soup. A sweet sour milk tasting soup.In this basic life, everything that the people do is to sustain. What means, no time for any leisure, hobbies or relaxing. The day is full with work, from the morning till the late evening and even at nighttime, someone needs to be up, to heat the house.
Now the fire is at constant 85°C, my last fireguard shift is over and I can go back to sleep.
