Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on July 24, 2024

The joke really was on me. I have dreamed of having a dairy animal for years, and to my credit I was up front with my now husband about this well before we got married. I knew he hated goats, for the two reasons (as near as I can tell) that his grandfather hated goats, and that they climb on cars. “I promise,” I said solemnly, multiple times, actually, “I promise you will never – never ­– come home and find a goat. I make no such promise about a milk cow.” And I very faithfully kept my word, even though on multiple occasions I regretted ever making that promise.

Well, one day, a year and a half into our marriage, I got home from to find Brad gone, his horse trailer gone, and all of the horses standing innocently in the corral. I knew where Brad was—He was preg testing a neighbor’s cows, the same neighbor that had offered to let me buy his nurse cow, Posey, who had never been hand milked. My suspicions were confirmed about two nerve-wracking hours later when Brad rattled up in his pickup and unloaded a peeved and horned Brown Swiss cow from the trailer. There she was, larger than life.

Like it or not, I was now the owner of a milk cow.

The learning curve was steep, and a comedy of errors. Have you ever wondered how they milk almonds to get almond milk? That’s what it felt like. Two fingers were all that could fit on her dainty little appendages, and do you want to know how much milks out in one squirt that way? Not very much. Like a half a teaspoon. If I did my math right (not necessarily something writers are inherently great at), there are 1,536 half-teaspoons in a gallon, which was about what she was giving at weaning time, when I acquired her. That’s a lot of squirts.

And to make matters worse, she wasn’t overly thrilled at the new arrangement. One morning, just when I thought things were settling into something of a routine and milking had definitely become easier, that darn cow lifted her tied-back leg in a mostly-failed kick, jarring me so half of the milk in my pail went all over me. This was early in my milking career and I had worked hard for that milk, let me tell you. I probably yelled at her, re-situated myself on the overturned bucket that serves as a milking stool, and started milking again. Then there was the telltale twitch and up came that hoof again. I was too slow for a good reaction, so instead I just tumbled right off the bucket into the dirty hay and jumped to my feet.

If I was a cussing person, I would have cussed, but I’m not, so I didn’t. With more irritation than authority, I yelled, “No!” And kicked her. Hard. Right on the back leg, the one she had kicked with. She looked mildly surprised, mostly just bored, and went back to munching her grain. I kicked her one more time for good measure, probably threatening to send her to the sale barn on the next shipment of culls, and sat back down.

Long story short, I learned she can mule-kick even with a leg tied back, and I learned how irritating it is when you kick a cow’s rear and she just looks at you in complete boredom, and she didn’t go to the sale barn. A reformed cow came to the milking barn the next morning and meekly submitted to our routine.

After this, though it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing (what is, with livestock?), milking became one of my favorite parts of the day. It was quiet. Peaceful. Productive. The little milking machine that was so helpful at first eventually got sidelined in favor of the tactile task of hand-milking. The sound of the milk hissing and foaming into the bucket, the comfortable bovine smell, the cats expectantly waiting. I enjoyed watching her calf, who arrived in April, wander around the barn licking the walls and head butting the scoop shovel, stealing my gloves and tormenting the cats. It was just pleasant.

And besides, the payoff was singularly enjoyable: fresh milk and rich cream for my coffee, and the yellowest butter you ever did see. A lot of work, yes; a time commitment, yes, but so worth it. Posey is currently employed solely as a nurse cow, since we found a bum calf to put on her, but I look forward to fresh milk again in the fall when we wean. We all benefitted – Brad and I, the cats, the chickens, friends and neighbors and family. All from one cow.

I think about the cultural shift we have seen over the last 100 years, the industrialization, the urbanization, a shift away from the land, a shift away from family, a shift from self-sufficiency and community-sufficiency, towards a national and global model of economics. As individuals in a culture, we no longer raise our own meat, or grow our own vegetables, or sew our own clothes, or build our own homes. We are divorced from those processes. We have mechanized ourselves out of jobs, and mechanized ourselves out of a true appreciation for the food that we eat or the clothes that we wear.

Author Wendell Berry, in his book The Unsettling of America, talks about the societal effects of automating and mechanizing, specifically as it relates to agriculture, but with broader implications as well. When efficiency is the god of our society and a machine can accomplish a task with greater efficiency than a man, we then place more value on the machine than the man, and more value on efficiency than on the good of family and community. Automating doesn’t elevate the worker or the work, but ultimately degrades it. In our technology-driven, technology-ridden culture, it isn’t feasible or reasonable to want to de-automate everything, and convenience and efficiency do have their places. But what have we lost in the process?

I wonder.