Memories From Life on a Dairy Farm

Legend has it that an urban congressman decided to visit a dairy farm.

“How often do you milk your cows?” asked the congressman.                   

“Twice a day,” replied the dairyman.

“So, 10 times a week,” said the congressman.

“No, twice a day.”

“That’s what I said. There are five days in a week, so that’s ten times a week.”

“No, twice a day,” insisted the dairyman.

The discussion continued in this vein for some minutes. Shaking his head, the dairyman finally turned to his wife and quipped, “Good news, Helen. It sounds like the congressman here is going to take over the weekend milkings for us!”

June is Dairy Month. As a former dairy farm kid and recovering dairy farmer, I very much appreciate the sentiment behind naming this month for the moo juice industry. But dairy farmers know that due to the unpredictability of cows, weather, and people, any day of the year can turn into a dairy month. 

Growing up on a dairy farm meant that my seven siblings and I never wanted for anything dairy. We drank the milk our herd of 30 Holsteins produced, scooping it out of our bulk milk tank with a five-quart plastic bucket. The cream would settle to the top during the milk’s overnight sojourn in the refrigerator. Mom often skimmed off the cream and used it to make desserts, scalloped potatoes, and creamed chicken. Just thinking about those things makes me salivate.

A midafternoon wintertime snack I enjoyed was cream and bread. A generous plank of homemade bread was placed on a plate, doused with cream, sprinkled with brown sugar, and served with a mug of boiling-hot coffee that was strong enough to stop a charging rhino. Yum!

We would occasionally divert a portion of our cream and milk for the purpose of making ice cream. Our ice cream maker was of the hand-cranked variety, so we burned up just as many calories making the ice cream as we gained when we ate it.

Ironically, we only made ice cream when it was cold outside and there was an ample supply of snow and/or ice. Thanks to the mysteries of chemistry, the salt that we added to the snow caused it to form a brine that somehow became colder than the original snow.

We always had an abundant supply of salt on hand. There were 50-pound bags of the stuff sitting in our granary, ready to be mixed in with the grain that we ground up for the cows. In the summertime, Dad might instruct us to chuck a handful of livestock salt onto the small heaps of silage we had served to our stanchioned milk cows.

I thought at the time that Dad was just following some oddball tradition that he had picked up somewhere along the way. I later learned that cow saliva contains sodium bicarbonate, and that they need the sodium part of sodium chloride to produce their bovine-based baking soda.

In retrospect, I guess that tossing a little extra salt to the cows was cheaper and easier than giving them gigantic antacid tablets.

I was digging through Mom’s old recipe box recently and found a small, folded flier titled, “A Taste of June Dairy Month 1977.” It’s the sort of thing that might have been handed out by a milk processor or a dairy association.

All the recipes — surprise! — involve the use of dairy products. I don’t recall if Mom made any of them, but they look delicious. One must bear in mind that this was before calories were invented so sour cream or butter had no dietary downsides. Plus, dairy was, and continues to be, an important source of such essentials as vitamins and minerals and flavor.

The recipe for barbecued pot roast seems familiar. One thing that catches my eye is that a 2-pound pot roast is listed as yielding four servings. Another curiosity is that the barbecue sauce recipe is based on catsup. But many of the things that we consumed back then featured catsup, from goulash to meatloaf to emergency spaghetti sauce.

If Mom was going to feed the 10 of us, she would have needed more than just 2 pounds of roast beef. Since she had the oven fired up anyway, she probably made some scalloped potatoes and a banana cream pie to round out the meal. All of which, of course, was washed down by plenteous servings of ice-cold milk. 

I wasn’t hungry, but I’m beginning to feel a bit peckish. I’d better go. For some reason, I’ve suddenly developed a hankering for a grilled cheese sandwich. Chased with a glass of cold milk, of course.

Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.