Hi Everyone! Not too much to report of late from life down south here. I just got back to the house after being spontaneously roped into another episode of the annual señalando de corderos (marking of the lambs), out on one of the estancias run by my friend Morales. Some of you may remember this from last year when I had the same sort of experience with Pube out at Tres Leones, but for those who missed that post, what it basically involves is physically wrestling with sheep for seven or eight hours, lifting individual animals out of the corral and manually immobilizing them on a bench for a few minutes while the gauchos to go to work on them with very sharp knives and rubber bands. It sounds worse than it is really, but still it pains me to look in their little eyes as they have their tails cut off, identifying notches cut into each ear, and (for the males) a rubber band installed on their scrotum which will cut off all circulation and result in a sort of slow (painless?) castration. The good news though is that at the end of the day each helper (that would be me) is awarded a lamb of his own, and while it was certainly tempting to take the little bugger home and name him, maybe build a sort of dog house structure in the backyard and keep him around a while, roasted lamb asados are just too good for me to turn down most days, and so right now he’s in the freezer waiting to become our Christmas dinner in a couple of weeks. I hope everyone is doing well up there getting ready for the holidays! Send me an email when you get a chance; I look forward to hearing from you all soon.