Last week, we had our first real rain for months. Snow levels came down to near the valley floor. Our cows and calves were as surprised as we were by just how cold 38º is in September. By next spring, 38º will be cause for great celebration. But not now, not yet. We were hit with another blast of cold wet weather most of this week. I know that the moisture is almost always needed. And the first day or two of cold rain is a welcomed change from the heat of summer. But then reality sets in. Pastures are too soft to put the cows out on. The twice-daily cleaning of the corral and stalls starts again. And when it is pouring down rain, yet another pleasantry comes into play…wet cows. Don’t get me wrong. I’m outside most of the time. I don’t have a tractor with a cab. I don’t have rain gutters over any of the doors into my barns. The roof of our house even leaks during heavy rains. So I don’t mind getting a little wet. But there is just something different about kneeling under a cow and having water drip off her back and down my collar. There is only one better way to smell like a cow the rest of the day, and that is something that usually is cause to go in and take a shower. I could put an umbrella on my tractor. I could put rain gutters over each door on the place. I could even fix our leaking roof. But I have yet to figure out a way to keep a wet cow from dripping all over me. I’ve tried wearing a rain jacket with a hood, but I get tangled up in in the dang thing and can’t see the teat I’m aiming for. I’ve considered duct tape around my collar, but I’d like to keep the little bit of hair I have growing on my neck. I’ve thought about mounting squeegees or brushes in the doorway into the milk parlor, but I have to walk in and out of it too. Not to mention how many days it would take to get the cows to walk through something as intimidating as that would be. So, I’m resigned to the fact that with rain comes wet cows. And unless I’m willing to shower several times a day, I guess I’ll just smell like a cow.—-PS
Archive for September, 2006
…and Wet Cows
Friday, September 22nd, 2006Rainy Days
Friday, September 15th, 2006This has been a wonderfully busy month. We have had several old friends swing through for visits recently. Wednesday evening, our old friend Bryan stopped by for the night. Bryan is the publisher of a magazine company back in Lawrence, Kansas. He was out west for a motorcycle show near Salt Lake. One of the magazines his company publishes is “Motorcycle Classics” and he was here to drum up subscriptions, sell some advertising and generally get people interested in his product. It was heartening to hear that even for him, the publisher and general manager of a multi-million-dollar business, one of his most important duties was to keep peddling his wares.
Last weekend a couple of old friends stopped by on their way to Portland. They are both National Geographic photographers that spend most of their time apart and away from home. Their lives are as exciting and as interesting as one would expect. But listening to them discuss working with editors, agencies and the like, I realized that much of their time is spent doing what the rest of us do … peddling their wares. I had always thought that since they are two of the best photographers in the world, their photographs sold themselves. Wrong, they have to work as hard at getting their photographs published as making them in the first place.
My wife and I are in our second season selling our cheese through farmers’ markets around the state. And each Saturday, we head off to the markets to drum up some business, to peddle our wares. The farmers’ markets are wonderful places. They’re as close as anyone milking cows twice a day is going to get to visiting the hustling, bustling, open-air street markets of Palermo, Cairo or Mexico City. And to sell at a farmers’ market is to sell at its most basic level. Each sale is a one-on-one, face-to-face transaction. If the weather is too hot or too cold, or god-forbid, it’s raining, then our income for the week crashes. If either of us is in a bit of a bad mood, our bottom line bottoms out. But when the weather is just right, and we are right with the world, it is a grand experience.
Our customers’ act of buying is a wonderful affirmation of what we do. And it’s not just because we get to keep feeding the cows the next week. Ours is a very structured existence. We milk cows twice a day, seven days a week. We make cheese every Tuesday and Friday. We package cheese on Wednesdays. We ship cheese on Mondays. We clean cheese on Mondays and Thursdays. Saturdays we sell cheese and on Sundays we count our receipts from the week and reflect on how fortunate we are (regardless of the week’s proceeds).>/li>Not as interesting or exciting as running a multi-million-dollar publishing company, or traveling the world for National Geographic, but it’s a comforting cycle. And it begins anew each Monday morning. —PS