Milking the controversy

My dairy farmer friend pointed me to an article today. 

Mark Bittman, who doesn't like milk and doesn't want anyone else to either, wrote, "But what about the bucolic cow on the family farm? [They] barely exist: “Given the Kafkaesque federal milk marketing order system, it’s impossible for anyone to make a living producing and selling milk,” says Anne Mendelson, author of “Milk.” “The exceptions are the very largest dairy farms, factory operations with anything from 10,000 to 30,000 cows, which can exploit the system, and the few small farmers who can opt out of it and sell directly to an assured market, and who can afford the luxury of treating the animals decently.”

Isn't that amazing?  We - and our neighbors - don't exist.  Also, treating animals well isn't a luxury, it's a necessity.  All dairy farmers depend on their animals, which is why they treat them extremely well and do all they can to keep them healthy and fit. 

This week is so hot - we do all we can to help keep the cattle cool.  We run fans in the barns.  We move them to pastures with the best shade.  We provide them with ample water and feed.  Kris manipulates the irrigation so that it'll spray right over top of them.  A farmer who neglects his cattle gets a crummy return!

To the New York Times, we're an impossibility.  Sometimes it does seem like a fairy tale, but not for the reasons they think. 



Cow and her newborn calf today

Dry

This morning it turned dark - like it really wanted to storm. I did with my kids what I always did with my mom ... sat on the front porch and hoped for rain.

While we were doing this, my mom called from a nearby town to ask, "Is it raining? It's POURING here!" No, I told her. No rain here. It looked like it was going to pass us by - but wait! A few drops!

It did rain. A tenth of an inch.

No doubt sitting on the front porch does no good. But when those few drops start, and you can see the rain moving toward you, and you can smell it wetting the dirt - it's a wonderful feeling of both relief and joy.

I'm reading the boys Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy. We just read the chapter where it froze on July 3 and they had to go out in the middle of the night and pour water on all the corn plants before the sun rose, since the sun on the frozen corn plants would kill them. They poured water on three acres of corn, and lost a quarter of an acre.

I liked this book when I was little, but I find it far more interesting now. We buy crop insurance every year, so if we have a bad corn crop, we're not going to be completely devastated.

The days before crop insurance must have been especially terrifying. I'm sure you'd do anything to keep them alive - maybe we'd be out there manually giving each plant a drink. Definitely, I'd be far too anxious to sit still on a porch swing.