Got Milk???

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Well as you know I got Alyson all weekend so I had to figure out what we were going to do on Day Two. Well I figured since Alyson drinks so much milk, she minds well see where it comes from. I mean no child of mine is going to say "a store" when some teacher asks her where milk comes from. (She get an extra hug if she says Holsteins but that might be expecting to much).

So we loaded up this morning and headed over to Uncle Jeff and Aunt Amy's farm. They have a small herd, probably 40 or so milking cows and had a pretty good time. They got a goat for a farm mascot I guess, and a mix of Holsteins and Jerseys. The mixture is a sticking point as Jeff calls them "Grass rats" as he grew up on a Holstein Farm and Amy grew up milking Jersey's. Either way she adds a brown cow into the herd now and then just to prove she can get her way still.

Alyson did okay, was not scared of the big cows one bit which kind of surprised me. The closest Holstein in the picture was named Pumpkin and was very docile and allowed Alyson to pet her. Some of the heifers were not so docile, but they will after they get older and start to be milked. There was a couple of pregnant cows in the herd but unfortunately no new-born calfs for Alyson to see. Still you can see by the cows breath that it was cold, even in the barn. It was -5 (F) when we left the house.

This is one of two farms we have. This small 40 cow farm and then the big one which has over 100 milking cows. For the area, even that's small as some farms around here have 1100 cows or more. No doubt, this is cow country...

Pumpkin_Looking-small.JPG


Alyson_Looking-small.JPG


Cows_and_Goat-small.JPG
 
Travis....that experience and future experiences around farms will live in her mind.

I can remember waking up at my maternal grandparents farm. Grandma was sitting in the kitchen giving herself her insulin shot. Grandpa was going out the door to milk. I got up.....cryed...whined...begged and pleaded. Grandma finally walked me through the dark.....out through the barnyard and into the barn where Grandpa was milking by the light of a gas lantern. Grandma said "Robert......Kenny wants to watch you milk .....do you mind?"...."No" said this little bitty German descendant man..and with that he twisted the teat in his hand and sprayed me in the face. I can still smell and taste that warm fresh milk.....I can see Grandpa's crinckled face as he laughted at me......

Take her back again Travis.......she'll remember those times......beats tv all to pieces!
 
Travis....that experience and future experiences around farms will live in her mind.

I can remember waking up at my maternal grandparents farm. Grandma was sitting in the kitchen giving herself her insulin shot. Grandpa was going out the door to milk. I got up.....cryed...whined...begged and pleaded. Grandma finally walked me through the dark.....out through the barnyard and into the barn where Grandpa was milking by the light of a gas lantern. Grandma said "Robert......Kenny wants to watch you milk .....do you mind?"...."No" said this little bitty German descendant man..and with that he twisted the teat in his hand and sprayed me in the face. I can still smell and taste that warm fresh milk.....I can see Grandpa's crinckled face as he laughted at me......

Take her back again Travis.......she'll remember those times......beats tv all to pieces!

I think I was like 4 years old when my Grandfather did something similar to my brother and I. He told us that if we gave the cow chocolate, she would give us chocolate milk.

Well let me tell you, getting a jersey Cow to eat an entire chocolate bar is not easy! We tried everything...putting it in hay, in haylage and even smothered in molasses...nope she did not want any part of eating that. So we did what most 4 and 8 year olds would do...we proceeded to shove it down her throat with her cooperation not withstanding!!

Then we figured if she had it in one of her 4 bellys, we had better mix it up. So we grabbed the halter and tried to run her around the pasture. Now she weighed 5 times more then we did, and cows are very accustomed to a fairly leisurely life of getting grain, chewing cud and whatnot. Running flat out in a pasture was nothing she really wanted apart of. Again being 4 and 8 year olds, our enthusiasm outweighed her cooperation notwithstanding.

Man were we ever disappointed when it came time to milk the cow that night. We waited and waited but only white milk came out. I never saw my Grandfather laugh, but him and my Grandmother must have been rolling on the floor laughing as we tried to get that cow to jog.

jersey_cow.jpg
 
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Awwww come on Travis you can't fool us. We all Know milk comes from the store. :rofl::rofl:

Good on you for being a good Dad. A friend of mine made me up a needle point some years ago and it is still hanging on the wall of our house.

Any man can be a father,
But it takes someone special to be a daddy.
 
I think I was like 4 years old when my Grandfather did something similar to my brother and I. He told us that if we gave the cow chocolate, she would give us chocolate milk.

Well let me tell you, getting a jersey Cow to eat an entire chocolate bar is not easy! We tried everything...putting it in hay, in haylage and even smothered in molasses...nope she did not want any part of eating that. So we did what most 4 and 8 year olds would do...we proceeded to shove it down her throat with her cooperation not withstanding!!

Then we figured if she had it in one of her 4 bellys, we had better mix it up. So we grabbed the halter and tried to run her around the pasture. Now she weighed 5 times more then we did, and cows are very accustomed to a fairly leisurely life of getting grain, chewing cud and whatnot. Running flat out in a pasture was nothing she really wanted apart of. Again being 4 and 8 year olds, our enthusiasm outweighed her cooperation notwithstanding.

Man were we ever disappointed when it came time to milk the cow that night. We waited and waited but only white milk came out. I never saw my Grandfather laugh, but him and my Grandmother must have been rolling on the floor laughing as we tried to get that cow to jog.

jersey_cow.jpg

A friend of mine use to calf out beef cows for ranchers. He would fine his own pasture, usually field corn stubble. One year a farmer had carrot field that got by passed. He rented it and the farmer would dig some carrots every few days. Well them cows had orange milk, don't know if it tasted like carrots. But every thing was orange.
Stacey
 
I had a friend many years ago who swore that he was raised believing that the four teats on a cow gave white milk, chocolate milk, buttermilk, and cream!! He was in his teens before he finally figured out that they were yanking his chain.

N.
 
Nancy,

I've got an even better one about someone naive about farming and animals but I can't tell it on a family oriented site. It is a true story, however. Some folks really are naive!
 
What I want to know is, what possesses a city person to drive out in the country, stop the car, and then mimic mooing from the side of the road? I have seen this way to many times to count.

The foolish thing is, if they just said "here bossie", the whole herd would come sauntering over (you can't expect a cow to really run much can you?")

(In case anyone is wondering, cows are called "Bossie" on farms. Yelling "here Bossie" typically means its time to get milk (and grain) and thus they start moving.)
 
Travis,
Neat story... My father was a share cropper in Texas and we always had a milk cow or two around.. I got the milk squirted in the face just about any time I showed up in the barn when dad was milking.. I knew where milk came from, but my city cousins thought it always came in a box.. on a visit to Grandma's house, the box was empty one day and Grandma offered the girls milk from her gallon jug of fresh milk... one of the girls said.. no thanks we don't like cow's milk, we only drink homoginized. So Grandma filled the box from the jug, then filled their glasses from the box... they never new the difference.

It's been 30 years since I had any, but one of my favorite drinks was clabber.. the milk that had turned and solidfied... we would chill it then spoon it out of the glass.. still drink buttermilk pretty often.
 
Just the other day on Modern Marvels they had a show called "Milk". I knew a lot about milk, but I never knew they added sugar to store-bought milk. I knew they took the good stuff out and cut the milk with water, but I never knew they added sugar.

Still I know store bought milk tastes a lot different then real milk (Yeah Alyson tastes the real thing, but don't tell her mother because she would flip. Alyson is supposed on only get Homogenized/pasturized milk)

By the way, the creamery we go to uses the milk to make powdered milk. Most of it goes to fast food chains like McDonalds and Burger King, so if you are ever in there and have a milk shake, you can thank Pumpkin and the the rest of the herd for their contribution.:thumb:
 
Field trips with daddy are the best.:thumb:

It has been a while since I have seen milk in bottles with the little cardboard lid. When I was a child we received milk in heavy glass bottles like that and it still had its cream on the top. This little dairy did not have a homogenizer.

Drew's comment that milk comes from a store reminds me of an old joke that was in Boy's Life what seems like forever ago.

Two scouts are hiking through the woods and come upon a dump where there a hundreds of old milk bottles. One scout remarks to the other, I think we just found a cow's nest.....:p
 
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