Estancia Los Potreros
By JIM HOY
© Plains Folk
As I mentioned in my last column, ever since visiting Argentina in 2003, and getting a small glimpse of gaucho culture, I have wanted to return and spend some time on an Argentine ranch to get a closer look at that culture.
Last month I had that opportunity when we spent nearly a week on Estancia Los Potreros, an 8,000 acre working cattle ranch that also takes in guests in Cordoba Province, a couple of hundred miles or so northwest of Buenos Aires.
The ranch is located in the Sierras Chicas, the oldest (and thus the lowest) mountain range in South America. The land between Buenos Aires and southern Cordoba, and from the Sierras Chicas (the little mountains) east to the ocean, is every bit as flat as anywhere on the Great Plains, but the mountains themselves rise to a couple thousand meters.
Visible on to the west are the Sierras Grandes (the large mountains), and far on beyond eyesight are the Andes, which contain the highest peaks in the western hemisphere.
In appearance the Sierras Chicas are not unlike the Flint Hills, except for being more rugged, steeper, and rockier. Also, the rocks are granite, not lime and flint, so the ground there constantly is glittering in the sunlight from the specks and flakes of granite that form the soil.
Like bluestem on the Flint Hills, these mountains are covered with tall grass, although it is the shorter species filling the spaces between the large clumps of pampas grass that are most palatable. The stocking rate, however, is the same as ours — six to eight acres for each cow/calf pair.
Los Potreros, as I said, is a working ranch with some 500 pairs of mostly Angus cows. Calves are sold at weaning age and are shipped by truck right off the cows down to lower elevations where there are fattened and then slaughtered.
Argentina is rightly famous for its grass-fed beef, so I was somewhat disappointed to learn that feedlots for finishing grain-fed beef are becoming more and more prevalent in that country. Having been raised on grass-fed beef, I've always found it tastier, if a bit chewier, than corn-fed.
As in our own country Argentine agriculturists are turning to alternative sources of income, such as agri-tourism, to supplement declining farm revenues.
Thus when Robin Beggs was told a few years ago by his employer, a large Buenos Aires-based insurance company, that he was going to be transferred overseas, he decided to quit, take over the farm that had been in his family four generations, and add a guest component to make it pay. A year or so later he was joined in the enterprise by his brother Kevin, whose banking-company employer also was wanting to station him abroad.
The Beggs, by the way, are an Argentine-English (actually Scottish) family, which made communication on the ranch a lot easier for me and my very limited Spanish.
Some of the estancia buildings were remodeled and redesigned for guests (our cottage was originally a tennis changing room, then a stable), some new guest accommodations were built, the ranch began to build up a stable of horses suitable for riders of varying abilities, a staff was assembled, and the enterprise was launched.
It is now in its third or fourth year and already half of the annual income comes from guests, half from cattle. A dozen people or so are employed full time at the ranch, four gauchos for the cattle operation, three for handling the horses and serving as guides on trail rides, and the rest for the kitchen and housekeeping.
Special projects, such as building fence or restoring the oldest building on the property, a Jesuit-era ranch house that dates back to 1649, are contracted out.
Although I was not, unfortunately, able to take part in any of the actual ranching activities (not counting the polo game described in my last column), I did get a full account of those activities, as well as a chance to observe some horseshoeing and a horse branding, of which you'll learn more next time.
