Beautiful Bossy, the dairy cow

Our matron cow, Sue, grazes peacefully in the meadow.

What would our farm be without cows? They add so much to our lives, these great teachers, so enhance us with their quiet wisdom. The cow placidly grazing, or lying in the sun, chewing her cud is the perfect example of simple contentment. We love our cows, they give us milk, cream, butter and cheese for our home use. Excess milk feeds calves, our pigs, chickens, to produce eggs, baby goats, which we latter market or process for our own use. All in all they help our farm stay solvent.

Did you know a cow chews her cud about 30,000 times a day? She woofs down her grass, tanking up her preliminary stomach, by yanking off fist full amounts of the course stuff and swallowing it down, more or less, unchewed. After, she lies down, quietly, in a comfy spot, and chews it all, contentedly crunching away the time, until it is all done, then she goes for more, and does it all over again. This is the way she takes grass, yep, plain ol' grass of the meadow and transforms it into milk and cream. By this laborious & monotonous grinding up of this substance, weedy stems of the field, which we can not even begin to digest, into a pulverized pulp, she is able to release nutrients locked in the stuff and make it into milk, it is all that work she does chewing that makes it possible for us to have yogurt, cheese, kefir, butter, cream in our coffee and let's not forget... mozzarella for pizza. It is really miraculous if you think about it.

Some days I get up early before the sun rises, and sit outside with my coffee. I look across the dew soaked meadow, and there are the cows, munching away at the wispy green, in the cool of the morn. As I watch them, I wonder, "will that mouthful be cream for my coffee tomorrow?"

Waiting to be milked

Later they mosey down to the gate, waiting to come across the road, to be milked. Bugling a mooie hurry-up to us if we are late opening the way before their "Majesties". Swinging pendulous bags of milk, they sway across the road to the barn, stopping traffic, heedlessly indifferent, to the rush most people are in. 

Their calves, the night's warm-barn dwellers, greet their stately moms with enthusiasm. "Mooeeee, mooeee, meeee, meee, me..." they say, anticipating throat fulls of warm, creamy milk sliding down their gullets. Yes, with them it is all about "me". The mamma cows, though, know the routine. They slide gracefully into the milking parlor one by one, after waiting their turn. Happily eating a bit of grain for breakfast while they deliver their precious load of milk to us.

We always leave enough for the calves. After breakfast, mamma and babies spend time together, sequestered together in their own little safe haven, till satiation occurs.

Then mamma troops back out to the gate, wanting to re-cross the road, ready to amble among the thick, green Forbes and grasses waiting for her in the meadow, luscious and succulent. Milk in the making.

"Buttercup" peacefully grazing