Every farmer needs milk, right?
    That was our natural thought when we left the city.  How do you get it, though?  A milk cow of your own is a huge step.  Let's face it, there aren't many folks who want to get up when it's raining and cold outside, go fetch a cow out of a field, and then sit down in the damp cold and milk her. Isn't there some easier way?
   For most of folks the answer seems plainly obvious--pick up a gallon out of the cooler in the grocery store.  But, what if you want raw milk?  What if you want milk that hasn't been pasteurized and homogenized, and antibioticized, and hormoneized?  Those cold mornings start coming into the picture again.  And we avoided that at all costs, as long as we could.  We'll admit it freely--we'd rather do things the easy way.
   So, as beginning farmers, we bought the feed and a friend kept and milked the cows, whose milk we shared.  We got all of the benefits of fresh, real milk with the cream intact and all we had to do was deliver bags of feed periodically.
   We dreamily sauntered along down this path for several years.  Then, one day, the call came--our friends were moving and the cow was now ours.   That meant, of course, milking her would soon be our responsibility, too.  So down to his barn we traipsed one winter evening to receive a crash course in milking. 
   "There's nothing to it, really," he said.  "You just squeeze here, like this over and over and you're done in about ten or fifteen minutes."
    It was only later that we collectively reeled back the film in our minds and saw that he could do it so easily and quickly because our friend was, in fact, Popeye's brother.  It was a wonder he even bothered grabbing the teats at all.  It probably would have been just as easy for him to take the whole bag between his enormous hands and squeeze. I'm sure convention alone kept him from it.  I know it wasn't muscular inability.
    As you've probably guessed, our foray into the realm of real farmers--those crazy people you read about on farm websites--was rough.  The sweet cow our friend easily milked in ten or fifteen minutes arrived here an attack cow.  And she did not limit herself to one or two weapons.  At every milking she lashed out from every orifice and with every appendage.  Post milking we resembled the cow in colour and smell, and the milking stall became a dark smelly, spongy space that we all dreaded.
    But it got better.  We learned her tricks and she found a routine.  She would kick, we would hobble.  She would defecate, we would grab the bucket and hunch away, our backs taking the brunt of what splashed our way.  Cows love habits and the more we could give her one to stick with, the better off we were--at least three days out of seven.
    We were all learning and, looking back now, it was well worth it.  That wild cow, Molly, is now our oldest and, maybe, our best milker.  Recently, as I was walking over to the barn, I saw her standing where she wasn't supposed to be, right in the middle of the barn, munching on hay reserved for the cow that's now fresh.  As I started toward, I asked her what she was doing there.  She looked up, startled, and without any hesitation, shot out of the barn and back through the gate to her pasture.  She knew exactly what she was doing. She just hadn't been stealthy enough.

    If you'd like to try your hand at milking, come by anytime, it's not really as bad as I've made it out to be.
    We also sell gentled heifers, both bred and open, if you're looking for a Molly of your own.