11/04/1848 - Where Does Milk Come From?

11/04/1848

Dear Readers,

     Thought you city folk needed to see what kept us in the milk barn twice a day sitting on a low three-legged stool with our forehead buried in the cows side pulling teats for the milk to make our butter, cheese and hard cash. 

     Around 4 PM  go find your Holsteins in the day pasture.  "Come bossy.  Come bossy". Usually they'll be as far away as they can get down in the woods, but with a good dog and a willing lead cow, you can get them all in a row to meander back to the barn.  

     After milking, pour the milk into standard milk cans and lower those into cold water in the spring house for overnight storage.  Then turn the herd out into the night enclosure of about a quarter acre so you won't  have go to lookin' for them in the dark  next morning around 4 o'clock. Finally, shovel the manure from behind the cows' stanchions into a stinking wheelbarrow, go out the barn, push the load up a steep ramp and dump it on your ever-growing hill of cow shit. 

    After the morning milking,  turn the herd out into the day pasture and shovel shit again.  Then gather last night's milk cans and this morning's cans together, put them on a flatbed wagon and drive the team into town to the milk processing plant.  You should be there by 7 so you'll have the rest of the day to do all the other chores that go into scratching a living from a small (32 cow) dairy farm. 

     Now here's farmer Jack to give you a little demonstration.  He should be on that three-legged stool--but then he'd be talking into the the cows udder instead to you. What Farmer Jack doesn't show you in this movie is the way this nice bossy can fill those long hairs at the end of her tail with manure and wrap it around your face.  Also there's the trick where that back leg comes up and gives you a nice hoof kick in the gut.  Nice bossy .   And the 32 hours bit he's pushing--what's he think we have all those kids for??  We start milking when about the age of five.....