The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz Page B
Authors: Gail Anderson-Dargatz
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lashes, they’re the beauty cows. The irony is that the Jersey bull is the meanest bull you’ll ever find.
Whatever you take into milking is amplified by the act of milking. If you begin milking angry, the cow will feel it, stiffen, and kick; or she might not let her milk down for you, and your anger will only get bigger. If you go into milking with sleep still on you, then milking is a meditation; the cow feels your sleepiness and is calmed by it; you feel the muscles in her big side relax, and she lets her milk down. Then the rhythm of the milking takes over: the steady shush-shush of the milk into the bucket, the rocking of your body as you squeeze one teat, then the other, one teat, then the other.
Everyone who milks has her own way and her own rhythm. At home I could tell who was milking just by listening to the rhythm of the squirt into the galvanized steel pails. My father’s rhythm was too fast, without a steadiness to it; he rarely milked the cows because when he did, they kicked him. I’d seen him go sprawling across the barn floor and the box on which he sat go flying. It’s no small wonder he got kicked because he yanked on the cow’s teats as if they were ropes on a church bellpull. There were unbelievably long spaces between the squirts in my brother’s milking; he milked one cow in the time it took my mother to milk three, so he didn’t milk much. Mostly it was my mother and I, milking to the rhythms of our own heartbeats, so close sometimes that the milk squirted into the pails in unison, like an iambic drumbeat. My mother sang quietly, and we milked with our heads against the warm flanks of our cows. They knew us enough to trust us. When we opened the doors to them, the cows came in by themselves, always in the same order, the lead cow with the bell first, and found their own stalls, always the same. Cows are creatures of habit and get agitated by anything new — a new box in the barn, a different smell on our clothes, even milking at a different time — so we tried to wear the same clothes each day, and milk at the same time, quietly and evenly.
We set each full bucket of milk aside with a cover because even the smallest fleck of manure tainted the milk. When we were done milking,I lowered one pail into the well so that the base was just touching water, to keep the milk cool for our own use. My mother and I then carried the remaining buckets into the house. My job was to work the cream separator in the pantry while my mother washed up and made breakfast. I pinned cheesecloth to the separator bowl with wooden clothespins and strained the milk through it, adding more as the level went down. Then I turned the separator handle, and turned it and turned it. The handle had a bell on it that dinged as it went around, then changed to a different tone, and finally stopped when it was time to let the milk and cream out. I’ll always remember the sound of the separator — whir, ding, click, whir, ding, click — faster and faster as I turned until the bell stopped ringing and I opened the tap on the bottom of the bowl and let the skim milk run into a bucket below, and let the cream flow into a second smaller pot. I did this over and over again, until all the milk was separated.
I carried the skim milk and cream outside, poured the cream into the shipping can we stored in the well, and fed the buckets of skim milk to the few calves we kept in the heifer pasture. The calves lifted their noses and bunted the buckets, as they would their mothers, to let their mother’s milk down, and then stepped awkwardly away with foam all over their faces. The calves were heifers, our next generation of milk cows. They learned to drink from a bucket quickly, but their instinct to suckle was so strong they sucked one another’s faces, joining in odd slobbering kisses. They came up to me from behind and bunted me, thinking I was their mother, and even then tried to suck my clothing. I slapped them away, but a week-old
Whatever you take into milking is amplified by the act of milking. If you begin milking angry, the cow will feel it, stiffen, and kick; or she might not let her milk down for you, and your anger will only get bigger. If you go into milking with sleep still on you, then milking is a meditation; the cow feels your sleepiness and is calmed by it; you feel the muscles in her big side relax, and she lets her milk down. Then the rhythm of the milking takes over: the steady shush-shush of the milk into the bucket, the rocking of your body as you squeeze one teat, then the other, one teat, then the other.
Everyone who milks has her own way and her own rhythm. At home I could tell who was milking just by listening to the rhythm of the squirt into the galvanized steel pails. My father’s rhythm was too fast, without a steadiness to it; he rarely milked the cows because when he did, they kicked him. I’d seen him go sprawling across the barn floor and the box on which he sat go flying. It’s no small wonder he got kicked because he yanked on the cow’s teats as if they were ropes on a church bellpull. There were unbelievably long spaces between the squirts in my brother’s milking; he milked one cow in the time it took my mother to milk three, so he didn’t milk much. Mostly it was my mother and I, milking to the rhythms of our own heartbeats, so close sometimes that the milk squirted into the pails in unison, like an iambic drumbeat. My mother sang quietly, and we milked with our heads against the warm flanks of our cows. They knew us enough to trust us. When we opened the doors to them, the cows came in by themselves, always in the same order, the lead cow with the bell first, and found their own stalls, always the same. Cows are creatures of habit and get agitated by anything new — a new box in the barn, a different smell on our clothes, even milking at a different time — so we tried to wear the same clothes each day, and milk at the same time, quietly and evenly.
We set each full bucket of milk aside with a cover because even the smallest fleck of manure tainted the milk. When we were done milking,I lowered one pail into the well so that the base was just touching water, to keep the milk cool for our own use. My mother and I then carried the remaining buckets into the house. My job was to work the cream separator in the pantry while my mother washed up and made breakfast. I pinned cheesecloth to the separator bowl with wooden clothespins and strained the milk through it, adding more as the level went down. Then I turned the separator handle, and turned it and turned it. The handle had a bell on it that dinged as it went around, then changed to a different tone, and finally stopped when it was time to let the milk and cream out. I’ll always remember the sound of the separator — whir, ding, click, whir, ding, click — faster and faster as I turned until the bell stopped ringing and I opened the tap on the bottom of the bowl and let the skim milk run into a bucket below, and let the cream flow into a second smaller pot. I did this over and over again, until all the milk was separated.
I carried the skim milk and cream outside, poured the cream into the shipping can we stored in the well, and fed the buckets of skim milk to the few calves we kept in the heifer pasture. The calves lifted their noses and bunted the buckets, as they would their mothers, to let their mother’s milk down, and then stepped awkwardly away with foam all over their faces. The calves were heifers, our next generation of milk cows. They learned to drink from a bucket quickly, but their instinct to suckle was so strong they sucked one another’s faces, joining in odd slobbering kisses. They came up to me from behind and bunted me, thinking I was their mother, and even then tried to suck my clothing. I slapped them away, but a week-old
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