Assignment 7: Write about a hobby

JERSEY COWS, AN UNLIKELY PASSION

When my husband and I bought a little cottage on twenty acres and moved in with our baby son, my parents thought we needed a milk cow and offered us one of theirs; my husband thought it was a great idea.  I told him, "I don't know how to milk a cow.  I tried a few times at Grandma’s when I was a kid, but I can't make the milk come out.”

"I'll milk her," he replied.  So we brought Suzy home.  As it turns out, my husband couldn't milk very well either:  It took him 45 minutes every time he went out to milk:  morning and evening, before and after work, it had to be done.  He hated the chore.  I didn’t have a job outside the home, so I reluctantly volunteered to try and learn to milk that cow.  After a week or two of practice, I was getting the bucket filled within ten minutes; once the muscles in my hands and arms stopped aching, I realized I relished the task, and I loved that cow.

Suzy was some sort of cross-bred animal, perhaps a mix of Guernsey and Jersey.  She was large, but very tame, and stood quietly while I squeezed milk from her swollen udder.  She had horns; I could loop a rope around her horns and lead her anywhere.  She gave what seemed to me an incredible amount of milk, about two gallons morning and evening at the start. Our family consisted of two adults and a baby; what would we do with all that milk?

It turns out pigs like milk, so we would buy baby pigs and raise them with the excess milk.  Later we bought three-day-old Holstein calves to bottle-feed.  Each calf got a half-gallon of milk, twice a day.  I loved everything about cows!  After I found ways to use the milk, we bought another cow, although Suzy was always my favorite back then.  Whenever I found an attentive ear, I talked about my cows.

Perhaps two years after we bought our first milk cow, we were walking through the dairy barns at the Missouri State Fair and I saw my first Jersey cows:  They were fine-boned and, compared to other cattle, very small.  They had big eyes and long eyelashes and huge, perfect udders, and I loved them at first sight.  I had to have one, even though there was no practical reason for us to buy another cow.  And I wanted a registered one, just so I'd know for sure it was 100% Jersey.  Through the years, we have had several Jersey cows in our pastures.

From that long-ago day at the fair until now, I have never lost my love for cows in general, and Jersey cows in particular.  I’ve had as many as five at a time, sometimes bottle-feeding ten baby calves daily, just so I could follow my passion.  There's something magical that happens when a human and an animal get together and work as a team to accomplish a task, and though I always had too much milk around, I felt great pride when a tiny Jersey cow gave me enough milk to fill a bucket.

Oh, and the excitement of watching a cow give birth to a calf weighing only 45 pounds!  Such a thrill to check out the sex of a wet, newborn calf and realize it's a heifer!  Next to the birth of my own children, I know of no greater feeling.

About the time I reached seventy years of age, it became clear I wasn't up to the task of squatting next to a cow for ten minutes at a time, or chasing through the woods looking for a cow in heat who had gotten out of the ancient fencing around our pasture in search of romance. I figured out that the latter part of life consists of giving up things, one item at a time, and I accepted that fact.  But I still smile when, as we are driving down a country road, I look out my window on the passenger side and see a herd of classy little Jerseys, some grazing, others lying in the shade chewing their cuds with brown eyes half-closed.  And I realize that although my own cows are gone, the passion is still with me.