I'll have the fermented mare's milk, please

Morning light filled the farmhouse at 6am, bringing with it the feeling that there was work to do. First, water.

I set my feet on the cheap linoleum floor. It had become crinkled and warped a few days ago when the roof failed under heavy rain. Dirt stuck to the soles of my feet and I reminded myself to sweep later, though I knew that it wouldn’t last more than an hour. I walked past the other farm volunteers, some still asleep on wooden pallets. I quietly pushed a knee into the door, giving the extra oomph needed to free it from the uneven door frame.

Outside, the air was still cool, and the grass sparkled with dew. The sun was moments away from peaking over the eastern mountain and I was thankful that it was still hidden. With the sun, millions of bugs would begin their day, filling the fields with a cacophony of chirps and carrying out their primal calling to irritate me to no end. But until then, the valley hummed with the sound of a faraway train, cows mooing, and the thud of hooves on earth. The farm dog, Bobi, was sprawled out by the door, gnawing at a cow leg with hoof and fur still intact.

I lifted the metal water jug into a rusty old wheelbarrow that leaned against the house and began to wheel it down the road. A quarter mile away, there was a well that drew water, clean and cold, from deep within the earth. Horses and cows immediately began to assemble at the trough fed by the well when I arrived. The horses in Mongolia are small but stout, a necessary trait to survive the tough winters. One pinned its ears and snorted, kicking out so that others had to rear up to avoid getting caught by a flying hoof. Ill-tempered as they are, they certainly are hardy.

My forearms strained on the way back, the quarter mile feeling much longer than it did before. It did not help that the wheelbarrow thrashed over the unpaved road, spilling freezing water onto my hands. Back at the house, Bobi had apparently grown bored of the cow leg. Much to the cat’s chagrin, Bobi had resumed his favorite pastime: a game of cat catch-and-release.

I recruited another volunteer to help me lift the massive metal jug of water into the house. Next, we needed water for cooking, water for showering, water for so many things. So back to the well we went.

The other volunteers were busy with chores. One chopped wood for the wood-burning stove and another chopped potatoes, onions, and cabbage that were harvested a few days before.

Minjee, the farm owner, was here. She told me to bring a few cups of flour, a pinch of salt, and baking powder to the table outside and begin forming gambir dough, a fried flatbread. She poured an alarming amount of oil into a massive black pot, charred from years of direct contact with fire, and dropped my rolled gambir dough into the crackling oil. She spun it around the pot playfully and I watched it turn to gold.

With food almost ready, we set the wooden table on the west side of the house, sheltered from the sun that had now risen over the mountain. The dry heat turned to sweat on my back. In the mornings here, it felt as though an invisible hand was slowly turning a temperature dial to its upper limit. The sun also awakened the bugs, and my hands began their unending chore of fly swatting. I particularly loathed the bugs ever since an incident in which a grasshopper landed itself between my heel and rubber Birkenstock as I was mid-stride. That experience ranked almost as low as the time I stepped barefoot into dog poo. These things you just can’t forget.

We all took a seat at the table. Minjee brought a pail of fresh cow milk to the table. She skimmed the thick top layer of cream into a separate bowl and spread it on the gambir. She also brought a 5-liter bottle of fermented mare’s milk. I asked her to pour me a cup, curious about this fabled Mongolian delicacy. I couldn’t help but pucker my lips at the taste: sour yogurt with an aftertaste that I can only describe as similar to bile. But Minjee swore by it. She said that if you drink fermented mare’s milk all day, you don’t need to eat anything else.

We chatted about this and that over breakfast, about life in Mongolia, about the different types of travelers that we have met, about silly stereotypes. It was a long breakfast but as I would learn, necessary to survive the day ahead. We cleaned the dishes as best we could, but they have a permanent oil residue. The US Food Safety and Inspection Service would certainly give this farm a thumbs down; invariably, a grasshopper lands in the water, the cat licks the butter, dust settles on the rice. But at the same time, the food was so organic and fresh that my stomach was happier than it had ever been.

As we prepared for the day, Minjee looked at the calendar hanging from a ceiling beam. This calendar was different than the ones that we use back home; each day was paired with a cartoon animal. She explained that on horse days, we do not slaughter horses. On cow days, we do not slaughter cows. On snake days, the work never ends. This was a rooster day though, so she said work will be easy. And with that, we headed to Minjee’s onion field to pick weeds.

The work was decidedly not easy.

On the way, Minjee dropped the two other volunteers at the road. They were to hitchhike to her fiancée’s farm near Darkhan to shear sheep for a few days. We bounced along a dirt road until it intersected with paved highway where the pair hopped out of the van. She told them frankly, “left is Russia, right is Darkhan”. But then she smiled a cheeky grin, wished them luck, then turned the van around to the onion field.

The onion field sprawled out from the mountains, surrounded by fields of other crops. Minjee instructed me, now the only volunteer, to begin pulling up weeds. I took my place next to a Mongolian boy named Telmuun and his two friends. I followed, leaned over, and began to pull.

Ten minutes passed and the work had already become tedious. An hour passed and my lower back became tender from bending down, straightening up, bending down and always pulling, pulling, pulling. Two hours passed and the heat had become unbearable. Every time I straightened, I heard blood pulsing in my ears. The faint blue sky became blinding white, speckled with unnatural stars. I was getting heat exhaustion.

Another hour passed and my thoughts were scrambling. Again, I found myself wondering 'what have I gotten myself into?' I was also baffled that this was not a new situation for me. Courto, you have got to stop voluntarily signing up for unpaid manual labor. But from a few countries away, the exchange sounded reasonable: for 25 hours of work each week, Minjee would provide volunteers with food and housing. And truthfully, this experience was exactly what I wanted. I could not have gotten more integrated into Mongolian farm life unless I had become a yak.

Interrupting this internal dialogue, Minjee called us over to the shade of the tree for lunch. She told us that we need to finish the row that we started and then we can go home. Telmuun and I were nearing the end of our row, so I breathed a deep relief in knowing that it would be over soon.

But it was not over soon.

After lunch, Telmuun and I returned to our row under a vengeful sun. My legs quivered from the repetitive, unfamiliar movements, and I resorted to crawling to spare my back. The dirt, hot under my knees, covered me, becoming caked deep in my hair and fingernails. We neared the end of the row after two more hours. At last, I straightened up at the edge of the field, looking at the clean line of blue onion sprouts shooting out of dirt.

The onion field was the size of a football field, and we had just weeded one whole row. The boys and I walked to the refuge of the tree and I collapsed under it in pure relief. To my confusion, the boys kept walking. They kept walking all the way to the other edge of the field, and then they started to pull weeds.

We were starting again.

My body felt about as battered as it did when I finished the 20-mile Enchantments thru-hike without a single day of training. I would not surrender though, not with the Mongolians toiling away, laughing and chatting as they pulled. I made my way to the new row and began to pull, ignoring the ache in my back. I brushed a thumb over my watch to clear the dirt, hopelessly checking the time over and over again. We had been at the field 6 hours when Minjee hollered at me, saying it was time to go pick up two new volunteers from the train station.

The van jolted my body as we drove the dirt road back to the farmhouse but my mind was elsewhere. Was this something I could do for three weeks? Was this something I even wanted to do for three weeks? I was too exhausted to examine my options.  

We bounced up to the farmhouse and Minjee drove to the station, leaving me alone at the ranch for the first time. I walked to the shower, which was not much of a shower. It was a wooden structure just up the hill with a barrel of water and a ladle. I had to come to terms with the idea that like the dishes, I would never be completely clean while I was here. My towel took flight on a burst of wind and blew over the wall. I scampered around back, finding that it had landed on a lone sticky burr bush. My quick-dry towel was now covered with tiny, impossibly sticky burrs. It seemed to fit the day.

An hour later, Minjee returned with the new volunteers and called to me, ‘there is a baby cow in the pen, tie him up’. I had gathered from our conversations that there would not be much handholding here. So rather than badger her with *what I thought were reasonable* questions, like where is the pen? Is there a rope? How do you want me to tie this cow up? I instead said ‘ok’ and marched to the pen to figure it out. Eventually, I did.

That was the theme for the next week: DIY ranch life. And bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.