As I wait for the kettle to boil so as to make my first cup of tea of the morning, I sit here in my chair and reflect on the life I have in this great country on this Memorial Day weekend. The sun has not yet peaked over the horizon but streams of pink and orange briefly tint the sky, I think it will be a grand day today. After coming back home from my trip to England Darrell asked me the question he always does after I have made a jaunt across to the land where I was born; “Do you want to move back?” No, I am where I want to be, doing what I want to do with the only person I want to be with.
I really cannot imagine a life away from our farm. It has been an incredible journey and one that still enthralls me. Right now for instance, I am waiting for the kettle, which is singing merrily on the stove, that signal just before it boils as one cannot make tea with tepid water! I can hear, faintly, Heidi’s calf starting to bellow telling mum she is hungry… I have her separated overnight from Heidi so as to get a full udder’s worth of milk each morning… I am getting calf and cow into my once a day milking routine. Milking normally around 6am is my goal but now I worry about the folks staying in our bunkhouse, will they sleep through those moos? There is only a half hour to go so as long as Heidi does not start joining in the morning chorus I will stick to my routine.
When you live on a farm it seems as if there is always something new that pops up to make even the most seasoned of farmers realize nature can throw a curve at you and give you something new to learn. There has been a milk cow in our lives for the past 23 or 24 years and in all that time, although I may have taught a young milk heifer to stand while I pull on her teats, early training for milking, I had never actually broke a young cow to being milked with a machine milker.
I actually prefer to hand milk a cow. Yes, for those of you who may have had this chore as a youngster you are probably thinking I am daft, but there really is something very satisfying and almost meditative about heading to the milk house in the early mornings when all is peaceful, birds singing their morning songs and that “morning smell”, you know, a touch of dew on the grass, damp earth after a rain and yes, just a touch of barnyard cow manure smell. However, since I am a very fussy milk person and use so much of my milk for cheese making, I resorted to milking with a machine milker in order to keep said milk as clean as possible as no matter how careful one is when hand milking the inevitable hair, dust and dirt always seem to find its way into the milk pail.
Now from when Heidi was a calf I had been fiddling about with her udder so she was well used to me giving her a scratch under there or pulling on her little teats. In fact she was so cooperative that she would start lifting a hind leg up so I could scratch farther under her belly, a trait I had to stop as that was not what I would be wanting in the milking house! So when she calved for the first time I had absolutely no problem hand milking out the extra colostrum and as that cleared up went right into taking a small amount of milk from her every couple of days or so. I did not get her into full milking mode as Lass was still giving me over five gallons a day even though she had been in milk for well over a year! Plus I had a trip to England coming up and so did not want Heidi to be in full milk production as Darrell, bless his heart, would have relief milked for me if I had asked him to, but he is one of those who had that chore as a lad and really does not want to get back in the habit of milking cows!
Before I went to England I started bringing her into the milk house and I must admit, with some trepidation I put the milking machine on her. She stood 
like an old pro… until one of the teat cups jiggled against her hind leg. I expected a true blow up as she swiped the offending “thing” off but what a good girl she was! She then stood quite still as I re-attached it and we went on with the chore. I just let her stand for a minute or two more than quickly took the cups off, gave her a tad more grain and made a big fuss of her. Why was I nervous you may ask? Well a milk cow, even with her head in a stanchion, can still manage to place a well aimed kick right up near her shoulder and those hooves hurt! The last thing I wanted before a trip to England was a bruised thigh or worse, a broken arm or leg! But Heidi was a charm! For a few days I would bring her in and go through the motions and she would stand like an old pro. So now that I am home again it has been a breeze to get her into the daily morning milking schedule. Why on earth I had been so worried about breaking a cow to milk with a machine I will never know although I must admit I had often been more worried about my milker getting bashed up than anything else! So just when I was thinking I knew a good bit about milk cows and their habits, here comes Heidi to surprise me. But not all of our bovine milkers have been this nice!
We have had one or two cows in the past that have made me wonder what on earth I am doing with a milk cow! One such cow was Lizzy. Quite a few years ago we had a small group of mares and raised some foals each year. I was in search of a new milk cow and wanted a nicely bred Jersey girl as I had decided to start making cheese. We put an advertisement out for a black filly we had for sale and received a reply from a fellow on the coast who actually had a dairy! A Jersey dairy! So a trade was made over the ‘phone and plans for him to bring me a cow in part trade for the filly were made. Well, he made the long trek over and brought the cow with him of course and when he backed up to our cow corrals and opened the back door, a brown streak flew out! I asked what her name was and he just looked at me in wonder… stating she was “number 636”! Oh… right… I guess once you have a few hundred cows they just all become numbers… no names! He loaded up the filly and left, leaving us with a wild eyed, definitely not your average family milk cow Jersey girl standing in the cow corrals! I had to run her down the squeeze alley just be able to take some milk off her and since she had never been hand milked before this was not a pleasant experience for either of us!
Well, all was not lost. I worked with her and finally we came to terms. I never was able to tie her up or even put her in a stanchion or milk house. I would just walk out into the field, put down a pan of grain and as she contentedly munched away I would squat beside her, bury my head in her flank and milk away as fast as I could for as soon as the grain was gone she would wander off. We had a good understanding of each other and she actually turned out to be a pretty good cow but it taught me a lesson, never buy a cow sight unseen again! See, there is always something new to learn in this farming life… a what a rewarding life it is…
