My First Weeks on a Mongolian Farm
- stemeillon
- Sep 2, 2024
- 11 min read
Updated: Mar 14
Sain Noo! (Hello)
I'm now on day 17 in Mongolia! What! In this post I'll cover how I got to Mongolia, what my daily life is like, as well as my experience with pickling and branding. In the last section I talk about a visit we made to a different farm which opened my eyes and provided insightful reflections. Wooho! Also there are pictures.
Getting There
To get here, I took a 12-hour flight from Denver to Istanbul, followed by an 8-hour flight from Istanbul to Ulaanbaatar (UB, the capital of Mongolia). After an hour's drive through chaotic traffic, I arrived at the train station and boarded an 8-hour train ride north to Orkhon.
Upon landing in Ulaanbaatar, I was greeted by a woman named Moogii, who asked if I needed a ride to the city center. After agreeing on a price, we embarked on a long drive through rush-hour traffic. My first observations were about the cars and roads; almost all the cars were covered in dust, even in the city. Massive potholes forced drivers to slow to a pace suitable for off-roading in a Prius, which is the most popular car here due to its high gas mileage.
After navigating the dusty roads, we arrived at the train station. I bought my train ticket for about $16 USD and sat by the tracks to wait for the train. Ten minutes later, I realized I was staring right at the train I was supposed to be on. I ran to the end of the platform with my big bags, crossed the tracks, and clambered aboard.
Confusion arose when I tried to enter my cabin. The hostess stopped me, so I held up nine fingers and said "nine," pointing at the number on the door. She ushered me into room number 8, which was already occupied by a chatty Mongolian couple. I hesitantly settled in, only to be scolded by the ticket woman for not being in my assigned bed. I was then guided to my correct room, where I was alone and on a lower bunk—much better. It turns out "8" in Mongolian is pronounced "naim" and sounds just like "nine." Who knew? Not me.
After an 8-hour train ride, I met Minjee, who greeted me with a serious expression before breaking into a smile and shaking my hand, officially welcoming me to Orkhon (pronounced OrHHon). We got into her van and drove to her sister’s farm to get cucumbers from a musky cellar. The drive from town was bumpy and seatbelt-free—Minjee insists they aren’t necessary in Mongolia, and who am I to argue?
Daily Life in My First Week
The farm is both serene and busy. My first week felt incredibly long as I joined my fellow work-awayers in building a fence, painting yurt poles, picking cucumbers, sorting wood, cooking meals, doing dishes, attempting to milk cows, pumping water, riding a horse, and eating lots of farm-fresh food. The other workers come from the US, Spain, and France, and we all get along swimmingly. Initially, there were seven of us, but people come and go. At first, I felt I wasn’t getting the cultural immersion I had hoped for, but I’m coming to a different realization… more on that later.
Hygiene and daily essentials are comparable to camping. We have a fenced-off area to ladle water from a bucket onto our bodies to “shower,” and two options for toilets: a throne-like structure or a squatting pit toilet (a hole in the ground with four walls). We wash our hands using a bucket of water with a spigot and a little bar of soap. Cooking is done on a wood stove with large pots that resemble woks.
Minjee, our host, is a gem. She is friendly, straightforward, and enjoys laughing (sometimes at our expense). She often jokes that she keeps a dungeon full of past workers who left bad reviews. At least, we hope it’s a joke… Besides this, Minjee is a good cook and a sensitive soul who takes pride in her work and her country. She is absolutely badass. For instance, yesterday, while it took two of us to lift large posts, Minjee casually tucked one under her arm and dragged it around like a kid with a blankie.
On my first day, we built a fence around the pit toilet using lumber scraps from her yard. After a big stew for lunch, we drove to a horse race. In this sport, men compete to catch wild horses released from a pen using lassos or long poles with loops. They often get dragged up to 200 feet by the horse while holding onto their end of the rope. It was fascinating to watch, and I was grateful for the opportunity to experience this part of their culture. We drove back to the farm and, surprisingly, got KFC burgers on the way… who would have thought my first KFC would be in Mongolia?
The next day, I learned how to milk a cow! It’s much harder than I expected, and by the time I got the technique right, my hands would start to cramp. By the end, I had a miserable little puddle of milk compared to the several buckets Minjee filled. We picked cucumbers for hours at Minjee’s sister’s farm, ate stew, and returned to work on various tasks. I helped paint yurt poles while others fixed another fence.
On my third day, I attempted milking cows again. It was better than the first time but still slow. I spent the rest of the day painting poles and cooking lunch with Blanca. Minjee left to get something from the city, so we made do with minimal ingredients and cooked pasta with zucchini, garlic, and cabbage. It turned out pretty well!
Later, we tried some boiled stomach, heart, liver, intestines, and fat of an unknown animal… we ended up feeding it to the dogs as we were all unable to stomach it (pun intended).
On the fourth day, I picked nails from a massive pile of semi-rotted wood, sorted them, and sawed off the rotten pieces. This day reminded me that not everything would be new and exciting.
Day five involved more nails and wood. We also visited Minjee’s old ranch, which had burned down two years ago, to cut weeds. We ate lunch in town, trying khushuur (thin fried bread filled with meat) while Jesse interacted with the locals. Later, I rode horses for the first time since arriving. I had always wondered why riding horses was challenging; now I understand. It’s difficult and freaky, but also beautiful and freeing when you can go fast without feeling like you’re about to fall off. The horses are wild and don’t like being tamed; mine kept wanting to run, and I had to constantly fight to keep it slow. It was a positive new experience overall.
On day seven, we had a day off. We went to see the river, where Jesse and Damien tried fishing. Manon and I hiked up a mountain by Minjee’s farm. We initially tried to go through the trees but the thigh-high grass was thick with giant spiders, so we pivoted and climbed straight up the mountain. At the top, we found a flag shrine. Women are traditionally advised not to visit it because it’s believed that the wind and mountain gods could harm their feminine health. I visited anyway, walking clockwise around the shrine and tossing pinecone offerings. We then scrambled along the granite crest until we found a beautiful spot to sit and paint. Later, we played some fun games with foolish French rules and went to bed.
Pickle Day!
Mongolian winters are harsh and long, so farmers pickle vegetables to preserve them. Last week, we drove to the fields and picked cucumbers, carrots, cabbage, onions, hot peppers, dill, and garlic. We were instructed to discard the large cucumbers and keep only the small ones. Ignoring this, we picked all the cucumbers anyway because it felt wrong to throw away the large cucumbers. At Minjee’s old house in town, which she calls her down ranch, we worked with her sister to clean hundreds of cucumbers, peel and shred carrots, chop beets, onions, and cabbage, and prepare everything for pickling. It took the entire day with all seven of us helping.
The next day, as we packed cucumbers into jars, we realized the large cucumbers we had picked did not fit. Our stubborn ignorance from before thus led to more work sorting through bags of cucumbers. We ate stew with rice and beef and the vegetables we were sorting through, which was delightful. Minjee's sister's kids were there too, amusing us as they clambered over lattice structures and begged us to swing them around.
Overall, pickling vegetables taught me about the hard work involved and the nuances of the flavor and jarring process.
Branding Day
Branding horses was something I was excited yet nervous to witness. The process is intense, physical, and frightening. We first rounded up the horses and chased them back and forth through the yard to lasso the young ones that needed branding. The men then caught the horses, restrained them, and tied up three of their legs. Kaylee and I came in with syringes of medicine to vaccinate the horses before someone removed the hot iron from a fire-filled wheelbarrow and pressed it onto the horses' shoulders and flanks.
The smell of burnt hair and flesh, combined with the horses' screams, was stomach-churning yet enlightening about the challenges of horse ownership.
Alta's Farm and Resulting Reflections
One night, Minjee asked me and Kaylee to drive with her to her boyfriend Alta’s farm to help with painting cow horns the next day. We were both eager to see this and agreed, so we packed into the van and started driving around 9:30 PM. Minjee prefers to drive at night because there is less traffic. We made several stops in town and in a nearby city to collect cardboard boxes because Alta was slaughtering 30 sheep and needed boxes to transport the carcasses to the market in the capitol. We arrived at his farm at 1 AM, and I thought we would go to sleep, especially since I had a meeting the next morning at 6 AM for work. Instead, we quickly got to work helping Alta and his friends sort through all the sheep intestines from the freshly killed animals. We made piles of organs: one liver, one heart, one set of lungs, one stomach, a sheet of fat, and some mystery piece with a phallic resemblance. The organs are considered the best part of the animal because the nutrients go directly to those parts of the body.
We then stuffed the organ piles into what I thought was a fabric sack but was actually their entire internal lining pouch. I had guts and sheep blood deep under my nails and quickly regretted not removing my bracelets when I had the chance. After a while, Alta motioned for me to help him clean the intestines. I wrapped the middle of the intestine around my forearm and then worked my fingers between both sides of the intestine to squeeze out all the unshat shit.
Around 3:30 AM, I told Minjee I had to go to bed because of my meeting, and she assured me that one of Alta's sons would drive me to the nearby road to get phone signal for my meeting. In turn, she would help Alta drive to the capital and sell the sheep at the market. A couple of hours later, I stopped trying to sleep through my nerves and went outside in the cold, still in my gutting clothes, to find no one there. After some deliberation, I took the car myself and drove to the road, which was generously decorated with potholes, only to discover my meeting was postponed to the next day.
For the rest of that day, Kaylee and I wondered why we were there; there were no cows, no paint for their horns, and Alta’s kids were having a field day chasing us around with stinging nettles or getting us to shovel sheep poo. At some point, we resigned ourselves to the unknown, and I went for a ride with the youngest, Toto, who helped me onto an unsaddled and crotchety-looking horse. By the time I got back, my coccyx felt like it would never recover, but it was cool to try it out. We played some volleyball with the kids and wondered if there would be anything to eat all day, as we could only find some slices of bread, yogurt, and butter in the entire yurt.
The rain forced us inside, and Kaylee and I graciously accepted the invitation for a nap. Afterward, we did some Sudoku with the boys and sat wondering if Minjee would even come back. The middle child, who was 14 and, as we later learned, has extensive burn marks all over his body from spilling a giant thermos of tea on himself when he was younger, made us an early dinner by chopping and boiling cabbage, carrots, and onions. I was blown away by how independent and competent the boys were.
Kaylee and I ate, then took the car again to get service and call Minjee to see if she was coming back. Despite avoiding the potholes, we ended up with a flat tire (who knows if it was from a nail or a rock). I felt awful, and when we called Minjee, she said she would be back soon. We drove back the rest of the way at a crawling pace, and upon pulling into the farm, the boys sprinted over with angry and worried looks. We didn’t know what to say or do, and when Minjee arrived, she looked disappointed but not angry. We learned that earlier that day, her daughter had fallen off her horse, broken her foot, and was in the hospital. I felt terrible for making an already stressful day worse. Minjee and the sons milked the cows, then went to town again to find an emergency replacement tire. She called one of the sons around 10 PM to tell us that she would pick us up at 4:30 the next morning so that we could make it to the city before my meeting and so she could see her daughter.
The next morning, there was no Minjee and no drivable car, so I frantically jogged to the road and started speed-walking, hoping to reach the road for service by the time of my meeting. After about 20 minutes, a man picked me up to hitchhike and drove me to the road. I had my meeting sitting on the cold ground for an hour, then started hitchhiking back to the farm. One minute later, I saw Minjee and Kaylee drive past me, and I frantically stopped the driver, hopped out, and joined Minjee and Kaylee for the ride to Darkhan.
At first, Kaylee and I felt disrespected and taken advantage of throughout the ordeal. However, a few days later, we talked and realized that maybe this day was our favorite of the whole trip so far. Alta’s farm was eye-opening in terms of the privileges and comforts we had become accustomed to at Minjee’s farm. The boys eat yogurt for breakfast, lunch, and dessert, with fermented milk bread complementing the soup for dinner. Every day. Their simple lifestyle is peaceful and fulfilling, and while they may be considered poor, these children certainly do not seem unhappy.
I think that in Mongolia, communication differs due to the rhythm of farm life: wake up, take care of the cows, eat breakfast, work, eat lunch, work, take care of the cows, eat dinner, then sleep. Minjee didn’t feel a need to communicate what time she would be back because it really didn’t matter! Instead of being frustrated by the unknown of the day, I should have embraced the fact that we were just living a day in the life that those kids know every day of the summer. The unknown, in terms of time, does not stress people out here as it does everyone I know back home. Minjee doesn’t plan far ahead, as evidenced by the fact that her plans change daily. Yesterday she talked about moving to Alta’s farm permanently, but today she is having us build a big floating deck for future guests in the mountains. When Kaylee and I took Alta’s car to get service, we made a long day even longer simply because we were uncomfortable with the unknown. If we had just accepted and appreciated the situation for what it was, everyone would have been better off.
It made me realize that world travelers are often spoiled, wanting a tough adventure where we can exit the locals’ reality whenever it starts to feel unpleasant. I am finding this life to be whole and gratifying despite its challenges; the work you do directly benefits your lifestyle, as opposed to making money in a job where your services benefit others. Complaints from those around me only highlight how privileged and spoiled we are even though we knowingly signed up for the gritty farm life.
More later, as I continue to familiarize myself with this lifestyle and culture.
Ta,
Stella
I’m so interested to read about your experiences Stella - and admire your ability to thoughtfully consider each and every day with an open mind and willingness to learn. Do take care of yourself though please!
Giant spiders! Slippery stacks of animal organs! Wild horses! And, more soberly, the screams of horses being branded. It is an adventure just to read about and imagine your days, activities, and interactions with Minjee, Alta, and children who are more resilient and capable than any American kid I can imagine. Cultivating your increasing patience for the unknown and letting go of an attachment to the strictures of time may lead to a powerful enhancement of one of your superpowers: an unprecedented ability to truly "be present". Can I get lessons from you when you come back to visit? But maybe without the giant spiders and animal entrails. Love you! ❤️, E🐝
Super interesting, Stella! Thank you for sharing your adventures and insights. What a different life you have discovered! Those boys could not in their wildest dreams imagine your life in Colorado! 
Quick question: how widely is English spoken? Could you get around the country easily enough just with English? How hard is it to learn the Mongolian language?