Three Cows Good, Five Cows Better

While the boys and I went to church yesterday, then headed to the laundrymat and the park (where we had an unconventional lunch: we ate a whole package of Newman-Os, the wheat-free, organic variety of Oreo-Os!). After we got home at 3pm, we all puttered until bed.

Phil, on the other hand, woke up in south Tennessee. He had kept heading south after his composting workshop, going to pick up two more cows outside of Chattanooga. Google promised about a six-hour trip Saturday evening; it took him eight. So he was up, driving, learning, and driving more from 4:30am to 2am the next day. What a guy.

After sleeping through him alarm clock, he made it to another biodynamic, grass-fed farm with Milking Devons for sale. He had more time to talk to the farmers, and had an enjoyable conversation. Doug Flack in Vermont has been farming 30 years; these men have been at it for about five. I think it's good to get perspective on what a person can accomplish in half a decade, and half a lifetime.

He left the Chattanooga area around 1pm, and reached home around 1am, completely exhausted. But we have two more cows!



What prompted this greed for bovines? Well, these two ladies are both lactating: real cow milk. And they are both bred, set to give birth in September or October. Unlike Fern, who probably won't be bred for a few more months, and then we'll have nine more months of milk-free living before she calves, we have the promise of milk coming soon.

The new cows are not top-of-the-line producers. But their offspring should be. They have been milked mechanically, and are used to people. They did not exit the cattle trailer like the bulls of Pamplona; they walked out and bellowed a greeting to their new paddock-mates.

This morning we woke and went to milk. Abigail has a favorite joke right now: "Do cows give milk? No—you have to take it from them!"

This went through my head repeatedly during the next two hours. First we had to cut the two cows away from the rest of their paddock-mates, and get them into the chute. Then we had to move them, one-by-one, into our rough head-gate. One was too cagey and tricky to trap; one broke through the head-gate and we had to begin again. The cows were used to coming to the promise of a little grain snack, but having heard in the last few weeks that even one feeding of grain destroys the cow's ability to make the good conjugated linoleic acids (CLAs) for a month or more, I'm not willing to feed any grain. So we had to tough out the animal management with our wits and our patience.

Incredibly, these girls, despite the stress of a 12-hour move to a strange place, came into the head gate and let me milk them. We weren't even sure we'd get any milk; the stress of the trip could have dried them up completely. Not only that, but I'd read recently that the placement of cows' eyes gives them lines of sight almost all the way around. And they have excellent foot control. So cows do not "accidentally" step into a milk pail. It's purposeful.

I hoped that our cows would be kind. And even though I remembered incorrectly which side of the cow I was supposed to milk on (for the record, milk on the RIGHT side of the cow), the cows patiently let me milk them out. Squeeze the top of the teat between thumb and first finger to keep the milk in the teat; then use the other fingers to squeeze the milk out. A few times I didn't grip the teat top tightly enough, and I could feel the milk flowing back up into the udder. Surely not a pleasant sensation for the cow.

And milking a cow is not like milking a goat. For one thing, a cow teat is actually large enough to fit in the hand, maybe like half a hot dog. Our goat teat fits only two of my fingers, with a much smaller circumference, too. For another, there's a much larger gap between the teat the bucket. And the cow's tail is actually a manure-laden whip, as I had read but only half-believed. Thankfully, these cows were kind, and I had only the threat and not the experience.

We didn't get much milk for our two hours of effort. Fifteen ounces of either straight cream or strange yellow milk from one (I tried to make butter in the blender, but it didn't work; either it wasn't actually cream, or the blender over-heated the cream; Chloe enjoyed it); 43 ounces of good white milk from the other.



I made chocolate chip cookies to celebrate (cookies with goat milk just isn't quite right; we need cow milk for the true culinary treat).



We named one cow Bianca, after the opera singer in the Tintin books. She lows loud and long (see photo below)!



The other is Bethany. Isaiah has been waiting for a Bethany. "After all, Mom, that name's in the Bible."



The chickens are really coming into their own. We had enough excess eggs to give away three dozen at church yesterday; our first real excess of production! Great!



Abigail was thrilled when she looked in the hen house. Today we found 32 eggs! I guess the pullets continue to come into production. It's hard to believe that the small and the great are from chickens the same age.



And I don't think the egg-shaped ones are from the guineas, either. I think they are the tear-drop shaped ones. So even the guineas are (a little) productive.