When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cow

“When I grow up I want to be a cow.”  Fifteen years ago a school boy wrote this sentence on his paper when a teacher asked her students to share what they wanted to be when they grew up.  Today he is not a cow, but a stockman or “ganadero.”  I love this story, one of many that Dr. F. has shared about his acquaintances in the mountain towns.  It speaks to themes that resonate through my interviews—the identity and future of the “ganadero” or “pastor” (shepherd), and the herder’s love of his animals.  I think one reason I like it so much is that it reminds me of an offhand comment I made once to my future mother-in-law, as we walked in Tilden Park with my sheep herding dog, Maite, (and which my mother-in-law has never let me forget): “I wish I had a tail like Maite’s.” Maite, a border collie-Australian shepherd mix, had a gorgeous plume of a tail that expressed her joy and excitement so effortlessly, and lent such natural elegance to her compact little body, that I longed for a similar appendage. Both the schoolboy and I felt deep admiration and love for our animal companions, which we both confused, at least momentarily, with a desire to become those animals (or at least acquire some of their attributes).

The herders speak about their profession in many different ways.  Most of those I have interviewed came to it through inheritance of a family tradition.  In my study sites, most families had some livestock, even if only a few cattle or goats for milk, and for many herding or keeping livestock was their primary livelihood.  Until the 1990s, many village men also worked in the woods or in the saw mills, but the local mills closed down in both my study areas in the decade of the 1990s, and some families that once had diverse livelihood sources, began to specialize more in livestock, while others left the livestock sector for other pursuits.  All the herders, young and old, acknowledge that the structure of the livestock economy has changed dramatically in the past 20-30 years, and with it the grazing and management practices.  This has changed, in turn, the amount of time people spend with their animals, and the nature of the stockman’s occupation. There are few hired shepherds left (no one can afford to pay extra labor) and most stockmen work full time tending their own herds.  But most are too busy to spend all day watching over their animals, and instead use more recent innovations like electric fences and barns to keep the animals where then need to be, while the men tend to other business.  (And they are virtually all men, in my study sites.  The only woman herder I have met moved to the valley from another country.  Other women are the officially registered owners of some operations but the men do the daily work of running them.)  As stockmen increasingly rely on government subsidies for their agricultural income, and the market rewards them little for the quality of their products, many feel progressively conflicted about their roles.  Are they food providers, agricultural entrepreneurs, or mountain-keepers, whose main role is to manage the grazing and browsing animals that keep the encroaching shrubs and forests at bay and maintain the biodiversity and picturesque rural character of the mountain landscape? I have heard all of these, as well as passionate opposition to some of these roles.  Here are a few samples of the ways stockmen have talked about their profession and their animals, and the emergent themes related to the herding identity.

Love of the Work

“I have one thing clear, that what I do I do with pleasure, me and my brother alike.  I always say that a cow gave birth to me.  Well, my mother gave birth to me, ok.  I know there are terrible days, terrible times when the calves die or what have you.  There are very bad days with the stock sometimes, you do have that.  The only thing that is necessary in this for me is that a person likes what he does.  If you don’t like it, go, because it will embitter you.  What I understand is that one must like what one does, and I like [being a stockman].

“Would that when I was 18 or 19 someone had told me, come on, let’s do this and I will support you.  Those were other times, and there was a lot of industrial growth and other jobs, and I always had heard at home that we must abandon [livestock husbandry].  My blood and my heart told me to continue with it.  It has been a fight against the current to be a stockman, my own stubbornness.  And yet I see that it is in my son’s blood.  Maybe in five years he will quit, but he has a lot of willingness, and it comes from inside.  You can see that he understands it and can manage it because he lives it.  So, I consider it a mistake to try to take away this dream.”

Love of the Animals

“I’ll tell you, the livestock, apart from being a means of livelihood, one loves them.  My sheep, I wouldn’t exchange them for any others in the world.  I know that others may be better, of course.  But I won’t change mine.  It is something that—like a pet dog that we give so much importance to—I give more importance to my sheep.  The way that you know a ewe and can tell, she is this one, this is not something you can change.  This isn’t about the economy.  It is something else.  I think it is much more: the pleasure of being a shepherd and of having one’s sheep, my sheep.”

“We started with 10 old sheep to have meat for the household, you know? It was kind of a whim, with 10 pregnant sheep…. And with that whim, well, the livestock get to you, the truth is they grab you and hold onto you.”

Herders as Agricultural Entrepreneur vs. Herder as “Man Adapted to the Mountains”

“Now, everything is about nothing but money. They told me that we had to become agricultural entrepreneurs.  And I cannot tolerate that.  I cannot tolerate it.  Because the day that I am in the high mountains and I think my sheep are going one way and instead they go the other and on top of that they are headed for a cliff.  What kind of business man do I need to be?  I need to be a man adapted to the mountains, a little more than the sheep, but nothing more.  Simply that.  And an agricultural entrepreneur is something else.”

Stockman as Mountain-Keeper (Limpiador del Monte)

“What service do we provide? Well, two years ago we were at a meeting in Avila.  There was a conference and there were important people from Madrid, and one gentleman said to me, “You raise calves?”  And I told him, “I don’t consider myself a calf breeder.”  “You are a stockman,” he said.  [I answered] “Yes, but I consider myself more a cleaner (keeper) (“limpiador”) of the mountain. I do more as a cleaner of the mountain than by raising calves.” Because to me, I don’t care if I have 50 or 60 calves to sell.  For Spain, that means nothing.  But with 95 mother cows that graze throughout the year, because when we aren’t in one place, we are in another, we are doing a good cleaning of the mountain.  I consider myself more a mountain cleaner than a calf breeder.”