Personally Thanking the Cows for their Efforts

—12.15.1999---

I went down to see John and Linda at Tarrytown Farm the other day. Their cows provide us with our milk supply. Every morning a liter-sized bag appears on the stone gatepost. I’d wanted to say hello to the cows for a while, so one dark, rainy afternoon I put on my waterproofs and walked the dirt road to the farm. I say “road” but it was more a collection of puddles than anything else.

I ran into John outside taking a bucket of cow-chow to the milking shed. “Hiya! Didn’t think you’d make it down in this weather.”

“Just a little rain,” I replied, feeling like I had earned a little island cred for having braved the elements.

We walked up into the field to get the cows, passing through ankle deep mud at the gates, where they always funnel through, their hooves churning manure into the soil. We found them all crowded into a corner against a hedge, sheltering from the wind and rain. As soon as we showed up and started driving them out, they made for the feeding trough. They all ran past me at once—ran!— some to my left, some to my right.

Feeding doesn’t come until after milking though, so we herded them back down to the milking shed. Well, John did most of the herding. I slapped a few flanks in an imitation of his technique and did manage to motivate a couple of them.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me but cows come in all kinds of shapes and sizes: tall ones, short ones, wide ones. Wide often means pregnant, some already at three years old. They do get down to business earlier in the country don’t they?

So it was down, and into, the milking shed two at a time. John slid the door open and the first pair came in. Then they each stepped up onto an elevated platform and began munching in the little pots of feed at the ends of the stalls. On went the milking machine: milk, milk, milk, then the stalls were opened and the cows exited back into the field through a door at the rear of the shed. I started to get a sense of their personalities by the way they made their entrances. The shortest one in the herd came in. She looked like a real sweetie. She was pregnant and seemed impossibly wide for her height, carrying her calf like a bundle suspended under her waist. It pulled her skin taught across her hips and full and round through her midsection. She walked into the shed and averted her eyes, shy perhaps of a new stranger. Her short frame and amazing girth made it a little tricky for her to climb onto the milking platform but she managed after only a couple of missteps.

The cow that followed her into the shed was a grand dame, very tall and not the least bit bothered by my presence. Nor was she pregnant like the others. John tries to have them all “in calf” in the winter so that they give birth in the spring when it’s easiest to deal with newborns. They’ll also produce more milk then, coinciding nicely with the increased demand as the tourist season begins. The bull on the farm had not yet been able to sire any offspring with this particular cow, though John reports it hasn’t been for lack trying. He’d given it several efforts both in this season and ones past.

The two bulls that live in the field across from our house are eunuchs as it turns out, which may explain why they’re so mellow all the time. They always seem to wear a look that says, “Well, you know, I can take it or leave it, really.” I sense no unstoppable primal instincts in that pasture.

Soon the next pair came in for milking. John hooked them up, explained more about how the dairy runs, and then motioned to me to step towards him a couple of feet. Not two seconds later the cow I’d been standing behind began to pee, splattering the floor around us. You’d think it was a joke, just garden hose-volumes of pee. I gave myself a mental thumbs-up for wearing waterproof pants. Just then another cow stuck her head in through the exit door, curious, with big eyes, to see what was going on. Good fun, those cows.

As I walked back up the road, not really minding that I was covered in more urine and shit than I’ve been in all but the earliest years of my life, it occurred to me that a lot of people here have a great deal of responsibility. John has animals to look after and guests in the summer. He and his wife run the campground. They deliver milk, are responsible to flower distributors for their crop, and that’s not all I’m sure.

Then I thought about my own life. What responsibility do I have? None really. Here I am on a little island and under no great pressure to produce anything, self-employed, 30-years-old, and no one I am responsible for, or to. I have arranged it this way. There are those that might say, “Lucky devil.” But I think that responsibility can be the load that drives us. Too much and it crushes—not enough and we spin freely, our virtues going untapped and unused. It’s good, I think, to feel the weight against one’s shoulder and pull it well. It’s good to be able to support the ones you love, to provide for your children, to do good work, to have your efforts appreciated, and to find joy there. Is that dewy-eyed, old-school sentimentality? If so, forgive me, but that’s what was tugging on me as I walked up the road that night.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, I suppose. It’s been a vague, cloudy, unaddressed yearning lately. How do I take on responsibility? How do I love? How do I work at something that fills me with joy? These are the big questions aren’t they? I don’t think the answer can be ferreted out through endless rumination (as I feel I’m prone to do). The answer, I believe, lies in the doing.