Introduction

Voices from the Camps

Jimmy Ballesty, by Joe Murray (2004)


 

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00.00:00 My great-grandfather Pat Ballesty was a farmer when he came out from Westmeath in 1864. He... eh... came out to some cousins of his, the Ham family from Arrecifes.
00.14:74 And he went to an estancia there and he started just minding sheep under a big wagon in the middle of the pampas. 
00.24:93 As they used to do in those times, instead of paying them... paying them a salary, they used to work a year around for a percentage of the lambs. 
00.37:78 And then they allowed them, they generally allowed this people to eh... keep their own flocks. So he kept on minding eh... the Ham’s flock and at the same time he was minding his own flock. 
00.52:80 And soon he got to have an enormous flock and in 1883, just 19 years after he was here, he got to buy 600 hectares of his own land.

 

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