In case you are wondering, I like milk. For as long as I can remember, milk has been one of the things I like to eat (drink).
I think that preference was shaped more by work than by taste.
My earliest memory of milk comes from before I was eight years old. I do not know the exact timing, but I remember that during the year I was eight, I began milking a cow we called Bolly by hand with Kelly. More about that later. Before that time, we had a herd of milk cows, probably twenty-five to thirty of them, that we milked twice per day in the milking barn using automatic milkers.
My earliest memories of milking date back to a time when we still had milk cows. I was young, but I remember one of my first jobs in the barn. When a cow finished milking, I would help move the surcingle from her back to the next cow in line, so Dad (or Kent or Kelly) could put the milker on the next cow after dumping the milk into the bucket.
I could not reach high enough to put the belt over the cow’s back myself. Instead, I worked on the off side of the cow, guiding the spring rod underneath so the belt could be fastened properly.
I remember helping Kelly carry the milk bucket when it was full. We would each grab one side of the handle, lean away from each other, and lift the bucket together so it would not bump our legs or spill. The bucket was heavy, and the milk was warm.
That kind of work teaches you quickly to pay attention.
After we finished milking all the cows, we washed the equipment. The water was always scalding hot. When we complained, Dad reminded us that we had to sterilize everything so we did not ruin the milk.
I did not think much about it then, but looking back, that was part of how responsibility was taught. Quietly. Repeatedly.
We sold the milk cows and the milking equipment when I was about seven years old. But we always kept one cow so we could have milk for our family.
The first cow I remember milking by hand was a black-and-white baldy-faced cow named Bolly. I was about eight years old when Dad asked Kelly to teach me how to milk her. Kelly showed me how to close my fingers from top to bottom around the teat, squeezing and pulling down at the same time. Then Kelly would sit on one side of Bolly, and I would sit on the other. Each of us milked two teats at once, and we raced to see who would finish first.
Kelly always won. He was older. Sometimes our fingers collided in the middle of the udder, and we would argue about it.
Not long after that, Kelly went to Hawaii for several months. The milking job became mine.
From then on, milking the cow was my responsibility.
From that point until I graduated from high school, I was the primary cow milker. Over the years, I milked Rose, Bolly, Red, Gurty, and one mean one-eyed cow who never had a name. She would chase me around the barn and yard if I was not paying attention. I milked in the horse barn, the cow barn, and eventually from a metal squeeze chute when we had that mean cow.
When I graduated from high school, my forearms were larger in circumference than my biceps.
Maybe because I was the primary milker, I came to love milk. Sometimes, I would squirt milk directly into my mouth from the teat. Warm milk, straight from the cow, is tasty.
One time, when Kelly and I were milking together, we snuck fresh homemade cookies to the barn and dunked them into the warm milk in the bucket to eat while we worked.
I still love milk. I drink it as often as I can. I soak cookies, doughnuts, cake, and graham crackers in it. I even like bread and milk.
Part of what milk tastes like to me is work.
SIDE NOTE: We used a Surge milking system, which was common at the time. The milker hung from a surcingle over the cow’s back and connected to a vacuum line. A pulsator created rhythmic suction that worked the four teat cups, each lined with rubber.
The surcingle was a belt that fit over the cow’s back, with a spring rod that passed under her belly and held the milking bucket suspended and level.
Milk from the milker was dumped into a bucket and then poured through a metal strainer fitted with a cloth filter into a milk can. The strainer caught dirt or other particles that occasionally found their way in, even with care.
After milking, all equipment was washed in scalding hot water and soap, then rinsed and dried in the milk room to prevent contamination and spoilage.
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| example of a Surge milking machine similar to the ones we used |
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| a typical milk can used for collecting and storing milk |
