Milking Cows

In the 1930s every farm in our area had at least a couple of milk cows. We usually had about six cows to supply milk for the family and for cream to sell. A dominant factor about having cows is their urgent demand on your time; cows MUST be milked every morning and every evening! You can come home from the State Fair at ten or later at night and decide that the rest of the evening chores can “get by ‘til morning,” but the cows have to be milked no matter how tired you are. You just have to go out and milk by lantern light.

I rather liked milking, but Paul never liked it at all. In the summertime it could be a challenge to keep control as the cow tried to fight off biting flies. You often got hit by a swatting tail and once in awhile the milk bucket got kicked over. Even worse, sometimes the cow would kick and get her foot into the bucket, so you had to clean up the bucket and start all over. I once estimated that I had milked well over 10,000 times.

(An average of 3 cows twice a day x 365 x 6 years = 13,140 milkings.)

Some of our cows were named for the man that Dad had bought them from. “Ridgley” and “Wilbur” come to mind. Wilbur was a cow whose milk had an unusually high ratio of cream. Dad would have the butterfat content for each cow tested at the creamery every couple of years and once when Wilbur’s sample tested 10% (4 to 5 % was usual) they thought at first he was trying to fool them by adding some extra cream to the sample.

When you put a group of cows together they quickly work out a very precise “pecking order” and each cow knows her place. When they come in from the pasture and head for the water tank the top cow will drink at her leisure while the others wait in line. Same order going into the cow barn. We once had a white cow we named Boss because she immediately took over the top position.

In the late 1970s I participated in a week-long Sears management seminar at a Chicago hotel. As a get-acquainted exercise early in the program they asked each participant to make a short speech telling about the proudest moment in his or her life. As expected, most everyone told about a career highlight. My turn came toward the last and got quite a response when I started with, “I guess you could call me an ‘early peaker’ since the proudest moment in my life came when I was six years old and found the courage to milk Kitty, a Jersey cow with horns that terrified me. I’ve had other proud moments since, but none tops the thrill of that early accomplishment.” I then told how I was raised on a farm and on that particular day Dad and my older brothers were busy cutting wheat, so I started the milking by myself. I finished with the other cows—which I had milked many times before—but I was afraid of Kitty. She was much more nervous than the others, and was the only one with horns. Wicked looking horns. And if I got into trouble there was no one nearby to help. Finally, I took a deep breath and walked into Kitty’s stall—and milked her with no problems. Mother mentioned this experience in her diary and noted that “Roger felt very ‘big’ about doing all the milking by himself.”

There was always a big pitcher of milk on the table at mealtime, and we drank lots of it. I loved to drink warm milk right from the milk/cream separator. I would hold my big blue porcelain cup under the cream spout twice as long as under the milk spout and drink a pint of that extra rich warm milk. I just wish I could afford the extra calories to do that again today!