GEORGE, THE HEAD of his family’s three-hundred-acre organic dairy farm, and his wife, Solene, converted their computer room into my bedroom for the week. I was fast asleep when George provided my wake-up call with a knock on the door. I crawled out of bed and slowly made my way into the living room. It was still pitch-black outside, and for a second I questioned if George was just messing with me. There were no lights turned on in the house, but with the help of the moonlight that crept in through the kitchen window I managed to discern George’s outline across the room.
“Morning, Sean,” he whispered. “Big day ahead of us.”
We quietly made our way to the back door while his wife and newborn slept peacefully in the other room. George handed me a blue full jumpsuit that reminded me of something a mechanic might wear and a large pair of thick rubber boots. I slowly stepped into the jumpsuit and pulled it up over my legs. I was half-asleep though alert enough not to allow its well-worn brown-crusted exterior to touch my comparably clean shorts and T-shirt. With my boots on and jumpsuit zipped up, I followed George out into the moonlight and we headed toward the barn.
An intelligent twenty-seven-year-old with blond hair, blue eyes, and wire-rimmed glasses, George grew up working on the family farm until he went away to college. After he finished his degree, he’d returned to the farm to settle with his new young family.
George opened up the barn door and the cows stirred accordingly—they knew the routine. We walked through the barn to wake up the approximately eighty cows and direct them toward the milking area. We clapped our hands, made grunting sounds, and smacked the few cows who decided they wanted to sleep in.
The milking area was the size of an auto mechanic’s garage. It was connected to the barn and had white walls, fluorescent lighting, a distinct odor, and the hum of machines at work. The cows entered the milking area through two sliding wood doors, which funneled them into a single lane on either side of the farmer. As we herded the cows, George explained the milking process.
“In the past, they’d milk each cow by hand—a long and labor-intensive process. Now there are milking machines that do the work. It’s faster, more sterile, and easier on the cow.”
We stepped down to a lower-level dugout, which put the cows on either side of us around waist height. George said that this gives the farmer easier access to the cow’s udder. I’ve since determined that these are the most precarious moments. While my hands flirted in dangerous territory and the cow shot me an unwavering docile stare, I could never be certain when one was going to force me to embrace yet another “walk in the rain” experience.
George continued: “Each milking machine has four suction tubes that attach to each individual teat. Once all four suctions are attached, press the Start button, and move on to the next cow.” George pointed to a tube that pumped the milk.
“The milk is then sent through this tube into a filtering process, and then into one large storage vat in the next room, where the milk truck will come and pick it up.”
“How often does the milk truck come?” I asked.
“Every other day, rain, shine, even Christmas—nothing stops the milk truck. Well, once rain and flooding did postpone it for a day, but one day in twenty years is not bad.”
“Do you ever drink the raw milk?” I asked.
“Raw unpasteurized milk is illegal to sell. But I can drink the milk from my own cows,” he said. “The health authorities think it’s foolish, but I swear by raw milk, since its enzymes are not destroyed, making it more digestible. This means that your body gets more nutrients out of the milk and the milk sits well in your stomach. But I cannot stress how illegal raw milk is—we don’t sell it.”
After all the cows on one side had been milked, George opened the metal gate in front of the first cow and they walked forward back into the barn. “Once the lane is clear, we close this metal gate at the front,” he explained. “Then we open the sliding wood door at the back, and the next six are allowed to enter.”
With six milking machines per side, twelve cows could be milked at one time. The whole process took around two hours. Then it was time to sweep and hose down the milking area, feed the calves, and work around the barn until it was milking time again in the afternoon. On average, each cow produced about eight gallons of milk per day.
George told me that dairy farming works on a quota system. “All farmers buy the right to produce x gallons of milk per year. This is their quota. Once they buy it, they own it until they sell it. There’s no yearly renegotiation or fee—it’s a commodity. A farmer must ship within one percent of x gallons or else be penalized. If he ships too much, he’ll be fined—he’s better off dumping it down the drain—and if he doesn’t ship enough, quota will be taken away. On our farm we produce around 132,000 gallons per year, and we have quota to match that.”
The life of a dairy farmer is forever tied to the cows. The workday doesn’t end with the late-afternoon milking session. There’s always barn work to complete, and George will often check on the cows again before he goes to bed. If George ever wants to take a day off, the cows still need to be milked because full udders can be painful.
Although I’d never say that I enjoy having cow excrement all over me, once I managed to convince myself that it was somehow comparable to walking in the rain, it didn’t bother me as much. It was just part of the job. Then I could focus on more important things—like learning to swiftly sidestep an onslaught of cow piss (surprisingly warm) or avoid getting kicked in the face by the rear hoof of a cow not in the mood to be milked. Both, I’d learn, are important skills for a dairy farmer to master.