featured in this issue - NZIFST - The New Zealand Institute of Food ...

their favourite sites on the way, selected for proximity to firewood
and water.
‘Home’ is their coarsely woven yak hair tent, which “lasts
25 years”. Smoke readily diffuses out through the weave, which
is also fine enough to keep out light rain. They use the plastic
sheeting as a windproof wall: cold winds blow on the high
plateau. Summer camps are 4,000 to 5,000 metres altitude and
close to the border in Tibet. There, they have to walk quite far
for firewood. Unlike yak herders in central Asia, they do not use
yak dung for fuel.
In autumn they will retrace their route, arriving at their winter
site again in November.
All their milk is processed apart from that needed to make
tea. Interestingly, the brew I had was not the salty traditional
butter tea but an unsweetened milk tea.
The ‘dairy’ herd
They had a herd of some 100 yaks, each animal familiar
but not all were named. Some of their names, like ‘Black and
White Face’, will be not unknown at school Calf Days in rural
New Zealand.
In November, the northern winter when I visited, they were
milking just 14 yaks but in the peak milk flow months of March
and April they will milk 40 to 50 yaks. There is no off-season as
such. They milk the full twelve months.
A yak has her first year of milking at 3-4 years and will continue
milking until 14-15.
Economics
Perhaps naively, I asked Rinpoche about the economics of
keeping animals that did not produce milk. “Here, it is not like
your country” was the reply. “We think about ‘Gross National
Happiness’ as well as ‘Gross National Product’. For example,
your baby needs milk and his mother cannot give. So you take
milk from this yak; now your baby is sharing milk with her calf.
Now, the calf is like a brother to your baby. The yak is like a
mother to your baby. You can sell these animals for money; but
you will never smile.”
The concept of Gross National Happiness was conceived in
Bhutan and has gained some international credibility in recent
years.
The process
Milking
For milking, the yaks are individually roped down in lines
pegged to the ground. After being allowed to suckle for a while,
the calves are chased away. The yaks are then hand milked
into a six litre wooden bucket. Batch pasteurising is done by
heating the milk in a big aluminium pot to boiling point on a
campfire then allowing it to cool. The nomads explained that if
the milk is not pasteurised (they said boil) the yield of butter is
lower and in the worst case they will get no butter at all. NB at
4,000m, water boils at 87.3 degrees centigrade.
Butter
Churning technology used there is as old as butter itself. The
churn is the untanned complete hide of a cow. The ventral cut
is closed with stitching and each of the four leg holes is sealed
by stitching and a hand-carved wooden bung.
To operate, the churn
bag is laid on the ground,
belly side up to prevent
leakage. All the milk, not
just the top milk, is poured
in through the neck hole,
which is then tied off with
string made from yak-hair.
Salt is not added. Next,
the operator sits on the
ground next to the churn
and grips a rope handle
fastened to the hide
by stitched-in wooden
cleats. He rocks the churn
backwards and forwards,
slowly agitating the milk
(a bit like a grandmother
rocking a baby to sleep).
Butter forms after one and
a half to two hours. The
neck hole is untied and
the buttermilk poured into
a pot. The butter is tipped
out then formed into approximately
1kg pats.
These are kept inside the
tent in another wooden
bucket filled with cold
water to keep the butter
hard. Detergents and sanitisers
are not available in
the high country.
Packaging is simple;
the butter is either tied in
One of the nomads
demonstrates the buttermaking
equipment. He is sitting behind
an empty cow-hide churn and
holding its rope handle. The
bucket in the foreground is
used for collecting the fresh
yak milk
a plain white cloth or wrapped in large leaves then tied with
a vine.
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February/March 2009
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