Farm to Family Connection - Commentary

FARM TO FAMILY COMMENTARY
---Select commentary from a weekly column by Curt Arens published in the Cedar County News, Hartington, NE

Feb. 2009

The Old Milk Cow

Dear Friends,
As much milk as our family drinks each and every day, I keep telling my children that we should get a milk cow. When I was growing up, we milked about 40 cows, even through the severe drought of 1968, when there was very little silage and forage available around this part of the country, when corn was high priced and when hay was worth about $100 per ton, hauled into the farm.

Some of my fondest childhood memories took place in the milk barn, bottle feeding baby calves. There was nothing like farm fresh milk in a cold glass for breakfast, dinner and supper, with homemade bread hot from the oven or accompanying one of Grandma’s cookies.

Of course, my Dad remembers trying to "train" heifers to milk in the barn, and getting kicked while trying to get the milkers in place. But everyone in those days had milk cows, and the milk checks helped things cash flow, even through hard times.

In the early 1970s, Dad’s hired help and young nephews had all moved on to college and my brother and I were still too young to be of much help, so we sold our milk cows, and began raising more pigs.

But we always had a single milk cow. When I was old enough, milking was my job before school in the morning and as soon as I got home after school in the afternoon. We didn’t have an automatic milker at first, so my hands got a work out and I’m sure I gained plenty of strength in my fingers.

Barn cats snuggled up to my leg, begging to be sprayed in the mouth with warm milk. Our old Holstein cow, Sunshine, was so thin that Dad joked, we could see sun shine right through her as she walked home from the pasture to the barn each morning. She might have been thin, but she gave enough milk to keep our family in milk, sour cream, cottage cheese, whipped cream and homemade butter. Homemade ice cream from that milk was the best.

After Sunshine passed on, our next Holstein was an old cow with only three good udders. I think she probably milked better than Sunshine, but she had this annoying habit of flopping the big switch of her tail in my face every time I leaned down to milk. Her tail was completely silent, until I crouched down on my milking stool and placed the bucket beneath her udder. She immediately engaged her tail weapon, and the game of "dodge the tail" was on.

After a while, I learned to bob and weave my way through milking time pretty well. Later on, we got a single automatic milker, to make the job much easier and less hazardous, although the barn cats were disappointed. As I left for college, I guess my parents and brother decided that it was time for the cow to go. It was a shock to me to come home from college to "store-bought" milk, after all of those years of being spoiled with our own stuff.

These days, the nutrition and taste of fresh milk seems to be making a comeback. With Burbach milk packaged in those ice cold glass containers on store shelves everywhere, and with several small grass-based dairies around the region selling milk directly to local customers, those of us who grew up on the "udder cola" have ample opportunities to savor the great taste of farm fresh milk, without being beat in the head with a cow’s tail.

Hope you have a good week.