Remate en Cacharí

Yanqui Mikey is so very proud to have "YouTube'd" himself well into the 21st Century with a ¡VIDEO POST! on your faithful blog of things BsAs.

We decided to unecessarily burn some more of the planet's GNC and slide down to Cacharí to view a dozen of our tasty terneros that we sent to a local auction in a small town near our spread. We usually sell directly to invernadores through our consignatarios where they are, as the word suggests, wintered. The unusual method of sale was because of the unusually small lot (12) and an interest on our part in doing something different and maybe learning something new.

The following is not exactly vegetarian-safe but you may rest assured that, due to legislation signed by K recently, relatively none of our animals go directly to the frigorificos...because they are too young to have achieved the legal weight for slaughter.

So this was kind of cool. I don't think 6000 people live in Cacharí but there were that many cows there yesterday...the most they've ever had there on one day. Not ever having been to anything like this, we don't know how typical it is but it was big fat slice of La Argentina that even few Argentines get to see.

The visit started about 1:30 pm with a lunch for the buyers and sellers. There were about 50 of us that commandeered a local restaurant to dig into some fine asado. This was accompanied by lots of the usual suspects: red wine, salads, fiambres, and a local speciality: a multi-layered torta that is dusted with powdered sugar into which a hot branding iron with the name of the town is plunged into the dusting...carmelizing the town's name into the top of the cake. I've never seen this done anywhere in the world. It is a way-cool technique that could be emulated to great effect by almost anybody. (full disclosure: The Yanq was a baker as a very young man.)

We then drove to the end of Main Street where the pavement ended in front of the not- so- mini stockyards. Shaded under scads of big old trees, behind a big colonial-looking building, were maybe 100 small pens and yards with great wide "streets" between them through which the auctioneer rode on a tall horse-drawn coach which he stopped at each pen. He described each lot over a portable loudspeaker and took the bids and brought the hammer down...and moved onto the next lot. The crowds of buyer followed along on foot. Very efficient and fun.

On the grounds, on a tremendous autumn day, there were big out-buildings where gaucho- types sat around under the porches and passed the mate and even cooked some bife. The Mrs. and I spied another that had a table set with refreshments and contracted ourselves a couple of gin and tonics (with big cubes of ice!) for a total of 3 pesos. Needless to say, we ordered another round on the way out.

Ultimately, the hammer came down on us and our dozen at a little less than our going rate. But we attibute most of that to a slightly depressed market, the fact that there was a record amount of animals on offer, and that our incredibly beautiful terneritos had to be mixed in with some "lesser" calfs because they were too few to take up a pen by themselves. But all in all, very enjoyable.