Some people just aren’t made for the farm life, and I might be one of them. I know I certainly don’t have the past for it, growing up in the suburbs, where my fun was going to the cities that are just a few miles away. But I thought I might try some part of the life, and let me tell you through my own pain and discovery: it’s not an easy life.
In mid-August when I traveled to middle Wisconsin, I wanted to try something that I had never thought to do before, also known as milk a cow. While this might be just a normal day for some, and it certainly was for the two pre-teens girls who glanced up and snickered any time I failed, this wasn’t a normal day for me.
For one, I did not bring the correct shoes. I planned on going to a wedding, and my sandals and platforms were apparently not going to cut it. Even wearing my usual tennis shoes, I knew I had made a mistake. I sunk into the mud and crap, and immediately the brown smush came into my shoes. Thankfully I don’t have too bad of a gag-reflex but that doesn’t mean I could spend much time staring.
My clothes, as well, were a nice pair of jean shorts and one of my favorite t-shirts. It was yet another poor choice. If cow-ness wasn’t on physically, the stench surely came with me wherever I went.
When it came time to the actual milking of the cow, I thought stupidly that small farms still did it by hand. It was offered to me, but looking at the cow’s udders, it was a no-go. Even this small(ish) farm, the cows were milked with efficiency by a machine. My job was to sanitize the cow’s udders before and after. I did try to put the big sucking machines on the cows, but never did it work well.
I don’t exactly go around and feel udders, but I certainly did that in Stratford, Wisconsin. I tried to keep my head back and push my arm forward, but my arm didn’t reach. The tail of the cow came down and whacked me in the face. Standing behind a cow isn’t somewhere you want to be either. For one, you’re right behind the butt. For two, they have massive hooves and will bring them down on your arm.
At the slightest movement of the cow, I jumped back. “No, no. I put on a lot of makeup today. No, no.”
“The cow isn’t going to hurt you.”
Bullshit, I thought. This thing-- all of these things were massive.
When it decided that my entertainment was no more, and I understand my entertainment level of not knowing how or not wanting to touch the cow or just being incredibly scared, I was off to fetch a baby calf born that day.
Most mother cows are apparently very protective of their young, and I was just so lucky not to have that much of an issue. More like the calf kept trying to get away, and finally it was picked up by my friend, Rachel.
“Sophie, Chloe, get the mom in,” she said.
“Um, what?”
The mother cow wasn’t helpful as we slowly tried to get her back. We tried to get her to go right, and she went left. We tried to get her go forward, and she didn’t move an inch. Neither Chloe or I wanted to stand behind her, and she wasn’t helpful. Rachel came over and moved her with ease (or she at least had more luck than we did).
“Okay, I have to get out of the pasture,” I said. Not sure what was cow poop and what was mud, I felt it better not to move. My shoes and socks were ruined. My clothes smelt. But I still felt I could get worse, and I refused.
“Go around the edge.”
With only a bit of green, I did my best to hover on that bit. Coming along with the green were deep puddles of water, and my ankles became soaked. As I moved along the edge again, I slipped and grabbed onto the first thing I could so I didn’t land in the shit: the electric wire fence.
Jumping back in shock, I did not get electrocuted, but it did give my friends quite the fear. Thankfully electric wire fences, and they may have told me this to be reassuring, don’t hurt humans as much as give cows a shock. (I don’t know if it’s true, but I certainly not going to touch them again.)
As we came back to the barn, I did my best to keep the calf from running. (To be honest, I wasn’t much help with my concern I might hurt the poor thing.) When it came time to do the feeding of the calf, I groaned as I pushed the bottle inside, only for the calf not to care. He stared at me.
“Let me do it.” Taken off my hands, the calf fed easily.
Happily, I obliged.
I write this not to say that city people are useless and I want to point out there is hard work to be done. We, city folk, have our own kind of lives, and neither life is wrong. We have different experiences as well, which share our surroundings. I write this, too, to say that trying new things is a breath of fresh air, even if it smells like cow poop. We all need to try new things and learn from different people around us.
We need to understand the people around us even more nowadays. There are a lot of things going on the world, and there are a lot of fears. There are misunderstandings, and there is intolerance. So I suggest you go walk a mile, or try something not in your usual life, in someone else’s shoes. You may not be good at it and you may be laughed at, but it is worth it to learn and experience.
