On the road to Pinal Villa # 2

The most unruly crowd of cattle we've run into and the herder had a heck of a time trying to keep them off to one side. This bull was about half the size of the car and it was a bit spooky passing. Just glad we didn't run into the crazy moto drivers coming at us.

On the road to Pinal Villa

Bigger turkeys than are usually seen. Often quite skinny. Never seen a male showing off like that. Foto by Lorena.

When the Milo is cut and sent off to where ever just turn cattle loose in the stubble. Lots more there today but drive carefully on the road when they are herded back home. 

My day in Fotos

I saw a bit of this looking out my kitchen window about 7:30 in the morning so I went outside to look down the street. Somewhere a few blocks away someone was burning so the effect was sunrise and smoke. Never know what you'll get shooting into the sun.

A little later I went out to shovel gravel into potholes in the entrance road but before I could get started along came the cattle herd. Don't remember if the owner was with them but they do get around by themselves from time to time. They never hurry and even the big water truck behind has to wait it's turn.

Not the best foto but come to think of it there may never be a better one. This is a Higuera Fig that has strangled another tree of some kind and is the only tree I know of that drops all it's leaves like it's fall. Looks like the sunny side is loosing them first.  The strangest thing about it is after it is totally bare it will be fully green again in about 2 weeks. It's a once a year thing.

Surrounded by Milo

It's that time of year for Milo or Sorghum growing. We always have some in our area around this time but almost every field is full of it this year.   The exception is our Gringo watermelon grower and the mango orchards. We were also surrounded by it in the Jocotepec area and I learned up there it's part of their usual crop rotation program.  I was surprised at the number of uses listed below but I like the popcorn idea.   Most used for cattle feed around here.

Sorghum is a coarse, upright growing grass that is used for both grain and forage production. Grain sorghum is shorter and has been bred for higher grain yields.

Grain sorghum is also called "milo" and is a major feed grain for cattle.

Sorghum has a very hard kernel, which makes it resistant to disease and damage but harder to digest for animals.

Sorghum is ground, cracked, steam flaked, and/or roasted. It can be cooked like rice, made into porridge, malted for beer, baked into flatbreads and popped like popcorn.

Sorghum originated in Egypt 4,000 years ago and today is Africa's second most important cereal. Africa now produces 20 million tons of sorghum per year, a third of the world total.

Sorghum has now become an important crop in Latin America as well. The crop has gained prominence in Mexico over the past half-century, and the number of hectares of sorghum planted in the country grew over 1,000 percent from 1958 to 1980. Mexico has large areas of dry farmland, and sorghum requires less water than maize and wheat.

Cattle in passing

Just a passing shot as we headed for Melaque today. All you have to do is slow down for these big guys as someone is moving them to a new pasture. Sometimes they are really loose but most of the time they have a chaperone on horseback.

Slow down

The brahma bull of the herd ??