The closest I ever got to a real farm when I was a kid (other than seeing “farm” in a dictionary) was just down the road—an honest-to-goodness dairy farm in rural Vancouver. I heard that the local Holt brothers were looking for a real dairy man, and I showed up one day, presenting myself as wannabe milker.
I think I blew the interview when I said I would be the guy putting the white milk in the white bottles, the chocolate milk in the brown bottles. (Yes, Maurice, all milk was sold in bottles back then, and much of it was even delivered door-to-door back in the '60s.)
I didn't get the job, of course.
The next closest thing to farm life was when I went south to Arlington, Washington, during my summers, and hung out at Hoys or Kazens. I was truly a city slicker back then, but pride and self-respect forbid me from telling you all my bumbling experiences—including the one that had my hosts wondering if I knew anything about a cow's anatomy.
I just knew that if you pulled hard enough on those finger-like things hanging down from the bag-like thing between the back legs, you could get nice, sudsy white liquid. But if you pulled too hard, you could get a nice, sudsy red stuff from a kick in the face, administered by blessed Bessie.
Because I believed that a farming environment would be good and healthy for the family, I vowed that if I ever grew up and had kids (I think we all agree on the latter experience, at least), I would expose them to farm life. My shift to Alberta just over ten years ago provided that opportunity. Two separate acreages have allowed me and mine to raise chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows, from birthing to butchering, and all that happens in between.
I have learned many things over these past ten years, and mostly through repeat mistakes. One thing I learned has been the joy of eating one's own fresh meat: We know exactly what we're eating and where it came from. Too often, however, I have ruined an otherwise perfectly happy meal by asking: “Is this wonderful roast Poopsie or Blanche?”
Another thing is the need to keep one's fencing tight. A loose strand is to a cow what a red flag is to a bull. Cows, like love-struck teenaged boys, have ways of getting out. (Uhmm, cows and teenaged boys: I can think of a few more comparisons, and not all of them complimentary...at least to the cows.)
But one of the key lessons I have learned in this business is the matter of, ahem, reproduction. No matter how upside-down the human world is on the matter of males and females, every cow needs a bull to, ahem again, service it, so as to produce a young one. Mother Nature can play tricks with the inner mechanisms, of course, and sometimes a cow “misses.” And Mother Nature can be so cruel that if the cow comes up empty two years in a row, then it's Freezercity for the bovine.
(Maurice, let me translate for you: The cow gets butchered and put in the freezer—okay?)
The bull-cow thing is a real dilemma for yours truly every year. Seems like I'm always having a cow, and that's no bull (uhmm, one could take that about three different ways.) It takes a lots of creativity on my part to arrange for a bull, which I don't have, to be transported in a stock trailer, which I likewise don't have, to service a cow (or two or three), which I do have—all to get a calf or two or three...maybe.
Take Millie, for instance: She has been our faithful milk cow for the past nine years. She had had her first calf when we bought her, so that makes her at least eleven years old. To blend a couple of old adages: It's not what you know, it's what have you done for me lately? She has “missed” again, so I think she's moving over to Freezercity very soon.
We'll “miss” her ourselves, but not in the above sense.
If I ever saw those Holt brothers again, I would have one simple question for them: How does a brown cow eat green grass and produce white milk?
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