A forgotten dairyman

I'll be removing the nut poll from the sidebar tomorrow. Obviously, pecans won by a landslide. I like them best for cooking, but for eating during the holidays, my favorite is the Brazil nut; that isn't what we called them when I was growing up, though.

Now, getting down to brass tacks: I was briefly interviewed by Jonathan Bender of The Pitch a couple of days ago. He had read a New York Times article that suggests cows that are named produce more milk than those that are nameless. I seriously doubt that, but that isn't what I'm going to address here.

I got my first Jersey cow, a grade (not registered) animal, from a local trader; I loved her so much that I simply had to have more Jerseys, and I really wanted a registered animal. When we went to the State Fair, it was all Cliff could do to get me out of the dairy cattle barn.

I took names and phone numbers and began calling breeders of registered Jerseys across the state; nobody was interested in selling me a cow.

Finally someone referred me to Ross Helms, a dairyman at Creighton, Missouri; this person was pretty sure I'd be able to get a cow from him.

Ross had from eighty to one hundred cows in milk, if I remember right. You could tell he loved those cows; they were all he could talk about. Jersey cows look pretty similar, but he could look across that herd and name any individual animal... not just the barn name, like Bonnie or Betsy, but the whole registered name, usually consisting of at least three words. Then he'd go on to tell the dam's and grand-dam's milk production figures. When I'd buy a cow from him, we'd go in the house so he could fill out papers for the transfer. This took quite a bit of time because he had to talk about the history of the cow, who its mother was, how well her sisters performed, and so forth.

The other day I got thinking about old Ross, who passed away years ago, and wondered if I could find him on a Google search. Alas, there was nothing. Cliff and I discussed it, and agreed that of course the man wouldn't show up on a search engine: he never got off the farm! The only other thing I ever heard him talk about besides cows was his garden, and that was just once, when he sent some huge turnips home with us.

I said something about him in a blog entry the other day; then Mr. Bender contacted me, and I mentioned Ross to him. He, in turn, included Ross's name in the article in The Pitch.

Today when I typed "Ross Helms Jerseys" into a search engine, he was right up at the top of the page of results. There were two links: One to my blog entry mentioning him, and one to the article in The Pitch.

His name hasn't totally disappeared off the face of the earth. For some reason, that makes me very happy.

Big brother is watching

Meesha brought this to my attention: An article in The Pitch that tells about the Missouri Attorney General's office seeking an injunction against some people near Springfield who were selling a dangerous substance: raw milk. You can read what Mike Adams, the editor of NaturalNews.com, has to say about it HERE. Here's an excerpt quoted in The Pitch:

"In case you're not yet sure what you're reading here, note carefully that these daughters were not caught selling crack, meth or crank. They weren't dealing second-hand pharmaceuticals to yuppie school kids. They weren't selling e.coli-contaminated hamburger meat, cancer-causing diet sodas (made with aspartame) or canned soups laced with MSG. They weren't even selling broiler chickens contaminated with salmonella -- just as you can find in every grocery store in America. Nope, they were selling raw milk. You know, the bovine mother's milk, unpasteurized, unprocessed, non-homogenized and wholly pure, natural and innocent. The stuff America was raised on. The stuff your parents fed you when you were a kid, if your family was lucky enough to have a cow."

As many of you know, Cliff and I drink raw milk from our Jersey cow; for most of my married life, in fact, we drank raw milk with no ill effects. Years ago I even sold raw milk to individuals who sought me out and asked if they could buy some. I knew it was against the law even then, but I trusted the people not to get me in trouble. There's a local man Cliff works with who really wants to buy milk from me right now, but it would force me to milk my cow more often than I want to: in winter, especially, the less I milk the cow, the happier I am.

So, what is so dangerous about drinking raw milk?

E coli is probably the main one, if the udder isn't washed off thoroughly; cows lie on the ground to chew their cud, and sometimes they lie where manure has been. I take a kitchen towel out with me when I go to milk, one end of which has soapy water on it; the other end is dry. So I wash and dry Bonnie's udder thoroughly before I milk.

Another thing cows can pass to humans is brucellosis, known in the old days as "bangs" in cattle, and undulant fever in humans. My cow was vaccinated against this as a heifer, and there's a metal tag in her ear to prove it. A long-since departed Creighton, Missouri, dairyman named Ross Helms, who used to have a big Jersey dairy, told me stories of how he lost his whole herd to Bangs back in the thirties.

And then there's TB. In years past I'd have a yearly TB test done on all my milk cows. None of them ever tested positive. I don't worry about it with Bonnie because, after all, she doesn't have that many chances to be exposed to TB, and she'd have to catch it somewhere.

I suppose I can understand Big Brother trying to keep the public safe. But what if these people know the dangers and still choose to drink raw milk? Should they be able to make that choice?

I'm wondering if a time will come when the government will put me in jail for drinking milk from my own cow.

Meesha brought this whole thing to my attention because he was raised drinking raw milk in Russia. His daughter even had a glass of Bonnie-milk when they were here at my house. She also helped churn some butter, and put some of it on a piece of toast and ate it.

This whole thing could affect the people from whom I bought Bonnie. Maybe I should give them a heads-up.