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“In Gândara … neither Woman nor cow!”

The phrase heard her every time that my internship advisor, (Lady with knowledge of the hardness of the field work’s, even born and leave all life at Lisbon), moved from INIA (National Institute of Agricultural Research – Oeiras), to Vagos, where we had the rehearsal’s fields in 1991.

She said that regardless of the day and time, there were always cows taken by a woman, often with children, for any activity … And so, with grace, she called my attention to what was familiar to me, from a young age.

The Gandaresa Woman always worked alongside her husband in the fields and later, when the husbands got work in the trades or to win the “day off”, it was the Woman who did all the agricultural work in the fields, aided by the force of animal traction – The dairy cow, who pulled and plowed the land, carried manure into the fields and what came from the fields and from the pine forest home: corn to peel / defoliate, potatoes, herbs / pastures to feed cows and calves, “needles” / caruma from pine trees to animal beds / manure and wood to cook and heat the house.

Alongside all this, at night and at dawn, the Gandaresa Woman had to cook, fix the house and clothes and take care of the children and the elderly of the family and…

Early in the morning and at night, milk the cow … in the early days, manually at home, then take the milk to the collection point … later take the cow to the collective milking …

It was at this stage that Dr. ML, told me that in Gândara, you could not be a woman or a cow, as they never had any rest, spending most of the day working side by side, day and night, to support the family.