Un Dia en el Campo

We went out to the field on Friday, armed with our equipment and a cooler full of lunch, courtesy of Sonia. Our plan was to check out some of the permanent field sites to see how the exclosures recovered after six months of no cattle grazing, and then begin data collection. At the first site, I heard hooves coming in our direction, and turned to see a gaucho herding cattle along the fence line next to our site. We all said “buen dias” and then laughed when we noticed he was working while holding his mate cup firmly in one hand.

After exploring one site, and seeing the huge difference between the grazed and ungrazed (for six months) grassland vegetation, we decided to explore the other two sites in the area. It seems that the forest sites are similar to last time, regardless of whether they have been grazed or not, but having grasslands recover for six months from steady grazing results in extremely tall and dense vegetation. I’m not sure exactly how we’ll sample all of this, since there’s multiple layers of plants that we don’t know.

In the afternoon we saw another gaucho on horseback, along with others along the road throughout the day. He was very friendly and said hello (well, he said “hola”), as he steered his horse into the stand next to us.

We’re getting used to gates again…well at least Scott is since I drove today. Some gates are new, and some are in even crappier condition than before, but it makes things interesting. We were ecstatic to find out on the route to one of the sites that a new road had been built, not only creating a shortcut, but also eliminating two gates we had to open before. Some of the cattle have been surprisingly brave about standing next to the gates, like they want us to let them through. So far it hasn't worked.