Greenhorns by Zoe Ida Bradbury

Author:Zoe Ida Bradbury
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
Published: 2012-08-05T21:00:00+00:00

* * *

I felt gratitude to the small animal that required me to spend those quiet hours in the barn and now enabled me to grieve.

* * *

Thus began my morning and evening rituals with Gwen. There was a certain serendipity to the sadness. Had her calf died earlier in the year, I couldn’t possibly have spared those hours to spend with Gwen. Each and every week prior had been a flurry of phone calls and orders, meetings, and hours of driving. They’d consisted of late nights in my tiny office where I e-mailed beef customers, chefs, and distributors; paid bills; and applied for a larger operating loan. Suddenly, it was November and as the last few checks came in, I realized that for the first time since I began raising cattle, their sum total would be enough to pay off the operating loan. That meant I didn’t have to take a part-time winter job to pay the bills. And that meant I could afford the time in the barn with Gwen.

The responsibility of a newly fresh (lactating) Jersey wasn’t exactly on a par with what I faced when I’d had my first child, but the sense of duty and pressure was strikingly similar. When I brought home our first baby, I read every baby book I could lay my hands on, trying to prepare for all the problems I was certain I’d encounter. Now I was reading about milk fever and mastitis and ketosis and trying to decide how much and what type of grain to feed. I knew that dairy cows were part of my family history, but my grandma and her vast experience were gone, leaving me in the shed with a bucket and a stool, relics hanging on the side of the barn, wondering what to do. How much milk can I leave? How much grain should I give? How many days of colostrum will there be? And when will my hands stop aching?

Balanced on the stool, I rested my head against Gwen’s flank and placed my hands around her long, full teats. The motion felt awkward at first — I pinched with my thumb and forefinger and squeezed with the other fingers, one after the other, until I heard the stream of liquid splashing into the bucket. I repeated the routine morning and evening, each time slightly faster and with more confidence.

The milkings were a welcome reprieve. No phone calls, no e-mails, no lists of demands — just the straw, the warm brown cow with her big black eyes, and the steam that rose from the silver bucket. Some nights I thought about our business and its challenges, but more often I thought of my grandma. Summer had been so busy — with new sales and deliveries and our three young children — that when we heard Grandma’s final diagnosis in July, I could only sit by her side, hold her hand, and invoke the longstanding family tradition of setting aside difficult emotions for later.

And that meant not thinking about losing her and what it would mean to us.

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