The Dairy

One of the families we visited in Mongolia ran a dairy. Not that they called themselves that, but that everything they did revolved around cow milk.

This family really impressed me. They had a professional attitude to both the process of running a dairy operation and to how they treated us. They never seemed uncomfortable with us, answered our questions simply, and kept us entertained through a fairly long demonstration. Our hostess also moved with confidence as she made cheese for us.

When one of our group made a comment about the vodka that was among the standard items they offered, our hostess stepped out of the ger for a minute. When she came back, she had a still in her hands. This is how the vodka was made – by distilling whey.

We had already seen adik being made by dumping mare’s milk into a leather pouch already containing some of the alcoholic beverage. The dairy family makes adik with the whey, then distills it into vodka.

Although she didn’t actually run the still for us, she put it on the stove and gave a quick description of how it worked.

Early on I noticed that they had both a small refrigerator and a chest freezer in the the ger. This is very unusual. I think the dairy family is probably the only family we visited that had either one.

Because appliances like that take a tremendous draw of energy, they couldn’t run them on solar powers the way most Mongolians run their cell phones. They had to have a power generator.

Not surprisingly, this had a domino effect on their lifestyle. They may have still had to pour water out of a kettle in the yard to wash their hands, but they had a clock, TV, satellite, and the usual assortment of cell phones.

They gave us a full demonstration of how they make cheese from milk, starting with pulling the milk from the refrigerator. You can read more about that here on Thursday.

The family was quite proud of their heritage. Below is a shrine to their ancestors, one of whom was in the picture of dignitaries on the right.

They were friendly, gracious, and contentious about germs. I liked them.