Pulque Extractor for drawing Agave water from Agave plant for fermentation.  More Traditional Technology.
	Above:  Pulque patch!  Agave "leaves" are cut out from center of plant then "water" from the plant weeps into the hole.  Farmer, using hollow calabash with a cow horn snout fused to one end, sucks sap into gourd.  Sap is fermented in bucket for six or seven days and served.  Agave water harvested in this way is used as potable drinking water.  Want to try pulque?  Join CICE!   Estela Roman, host in our Native American Medicine video, runs a language, culture and anthropology school in Cuernavaca, Mexico.  For a nominal fee you are boarded in the home of a wonderful Mexican family.  Then immersed in the Spanish language every morning, followed by trips to museums, ruins, agave plantations, Native American settlements, wild foods restaurants and much more.
Medicine:  Agave water (juice, sap) is considered anti-inflammatory, diuretic. The root extraction is an insecticide.  Also the fresh juice may raise metabolism and increase perspiration.   Every Hispanic worth his salt (and a squirt of lime) grows an Agave on the grounds.  Demand for Tequila has greatly inflated its cost.  Disease is also threatening the crop and urban sprawl in Mexico leaves less land available for cultivation.

Here an impatient goat eating his Agave before it can be made into pulque, vino mescal and tequila (please save some for the worm).  The core of the tender inner leaves  of the plant may be cooked and eaten.  Leaf waste is gathered concentrated and used as starter material for steroid drugs (hecogenin).  Roots are used to manufacture soap products (plant roots contain saponins).  The coarse fiber from leaves is used to make rope and fiber (sisal is manufactured  from Agave sisalana) (More)

Goat was filmed in Spain.