Cork Mules
Uncorking or peel forestry is more characteristic of cork. Although the uses of cork mules back to the Dark Ages, the systematic cork mules corkage is no more than 150 years, when these mountains Catalan businessmen hired for this purpose, since the production of the northwest of the Iberian peninsula was and is quite low compared with that of the Andalusian forests. However, despite its age, has hardly changed since then in the embodiment, and therefore remains a social activity generating hundreds of thousands of laborers each year. It is done approximately every nine years between the dates of June 15 to August 15, depending on the weather of the year in question. This is done in the summer because that is when the tree is more growth. Thus, the cork mules can easily detach from the shell and cause little damage to living tissue by removing or cutting unwanted. At other times of the year, growth is not accelerated, and the cork mules "not given" in castiza expression of the locals. But the corkage as such requires a series of previous work to perform properly during the summer. Before, you must open the bag or arriería roads, or roads where the mules loaded with cork from all parts of the farm to the "yard" where cork weighs and stacks awaiting transport final until the factory. Parallel to this work, you need to clear an area of ??2 or 3 meters around the trunk of oak, are called floors or arenas, made with a dual purpose. On the one hand, facilitate the work of the cork, on the other, protecting the flame tree at the time that is most vulnerable, the year that is completely "naked". First to take action are the axes or cork. In their good future life depends of the cork, as the courts or the layer starts Madrid is the pathway to disease and pests that carry with them the loss of vegetative vigor and even death. Unfortunately, more and more scarce good professionals, but there are currently training and adopt mandatory public lands "novice" or apprentices to ensure the survival of cork mules in good time. After removing the bark, collectors or "arrecogeores" stacked cork plates on their backs, carrying up small piles along the sidewalks where they can easily get the mules. The herdsmen mule carrying the cork mules from the mountain batteries into the courtyard of cork, next to a road or forest track a good fit for truck traffic. Here the cork mules is heavy on the hoist, a device consisting of three long wooden or metal legs, united or tied at the top and where you place the Roman, an old but accurate weight still used in agroforestry tasks. The weight tends to be at least two people, it is the faithful, one of them by the producer and another by the buyer, the heavy scoring to no room for misunderstandings later. It quantified the cork mules is stacked carefully so as not to break or deform the plates and is a first rank among cork mules seconds, better quality trees from more than once uncorked, and cork mules Bornizo, from first-trees, lower quality and never blocks. Other professionals involved in gangs corkage: the foreman or Manijero, responsible for the entire operation, the waterboy, the cook, or the Slasher, whose mission is to chop the cork boards should not deteriorate during transfer mules and have an excellent commercial use. . . .
