Monday, December 22
It's been a busy weekend. Saturday we finally dried off the cows. It was hellish, of course; coldest day we'd had yet, and all the things that had been freezing separately - the washdown hose, the milkers, the vaccuum lines, the platform, the hoses - all froze at once, so we had to spend about an hour running around with heat guns and buckets of hot water to even be able to milk. The dry-off tubes had to be kept in buckets of hot water to keep them from freezing. Ditto the teat dip. And then there was the dry-off itself, which is immensely labor intensive. First we had to go down the line of cows with the CMT (California mastitis test) and look for subclinical bacteria infections. Then we milked them, and then we used the dry-off tubes. These are, for the uninitiated (aka everybody who reads this but me) hypodermics which have to actually be stuck up the cow's teat canal. Needless to say, they do not like this particularly, and tend to object, which makes getting the whole tube into the teat and not, say, all over yourself and the milking parlour very challenging. And you have to do this four times for each cow, once for each teat. Unless they tested positive on the CMT, of course. Then they get a dose of antibiotics up the teat and a tube of dry-off on top of it.
We've got seventy-eight cows. You do the math.
Anyway, it wasn't too bad, really - with my brother and my dad helping it only took two hours, although by the end of that none of us could feel our fingers, toes, noses, et cetera. It took me several hours to get full feeling back in my hands, and I was dead exhausted for the rest of the day. But you know what? That was it. No more milking until March. I'm free!
Then my brother's best friend came to visit and got his car completely stuck in our driveway. Not that he told me that, of course. He said he was just outside and had slid a bit sideways and needed a little push, which was why I just grabbed my jacket and walked out the door instead of ringing the calvary.
Reality occurred in stages. First I realized that the car was not just outside. "Oh, it's a bit past the schoolhouse," he said vaguely, naming a bit of our driveway a quarter-mile away. (Note for city people: we have a three-quarter mile dirt road as a driveway, with a lot of curves and hills and bumps. It ices in the winter and turns to mud in the summer and has ruts you could loose a medium-sized dinosaur in. So if you were wondering "How the hell does someone get stuck in a driveway?", that's how.)
Luckily my mother was just pulling up, so we hopped in her car and drove up to the last place she thought she could turn around, just before the schoolhouse. Then we walked. As it turned out, the car wasn't just past the schoolhouse either; it was another quarter-mile on from there. I was beginning to have feelings of foreboding about the stucked-ness of the car as well, and sure enough, when we finally got there (did I mention it was dark out?) the car hadn't slid a little; it had turned completely sideways and, this being our driveway, had its bumper up against a high bank and its front end hanging out over a cliff.
We explained to my brother's friend, as kindly as possible, that one did not fetch two spatially challenged women for tasks such as these, and walked back, and got my dad instead. He collected a few more males and they all went up there and, I don't know, did male things, but in the end the car got unstuck. I did my part: I stayed away.
Sunday I helped my mother do Christmas decorating, namely hanging pine roping around our window, since we're not going for a tree this year. My mother was supposed to buy ten feet of roping but came home with fifty, so we had to get a bit creative.
And Sunday night I finally, finally got to see The Return of the King. It was, of course, fabulous... and as any good movie should do, it's made me think. I'll post some of my thinkings a bit later, perhaps, when I've done mulling them over. But if you haven't seen this one yet, do so.
Now I must go help my mother. She's got ten or twelve last-minute packages to ship out from the cheese business and is in full-scale Christmas panic, and if we can't think up a present for my dad soon I don't know what we're going to do with her. Tranquilizers, maybe. (Addendum to self: Never become one of those people it's impossible to shop for; would be rude, and would give mother an aneurysm.)
We've got seventy-eight cows. You do the math.
Anyway, it wasn't too bad, really - with my brother and my dad helping it only took two hours, although by the end of that none of us could feel our fingers, toes, noses, et cetera. It took me several hours to get full feeling back in my hands, and I was dead exhausted for the rest of the day. But you know what? That was it. No more milking until March. I'm free!
Then my brother's best friend came to visit and got his car completely stuck in our driveway. Not that he told me that, of course. He said he was just outside and had slid a bit sideways and needed a little push, which was why I just grabbed my jacket and walked out the door instead of ringing the calvary.
Reality occurred in stages. First I realized that the car was not just outside. "Oh, it's a bit past the schoolhouse," he said vaguely, naming a bit of our driveway a quarter-mile away. (Note for city people: we have a three-quarter mile dirt road as a driveway, with a lot of curves and hills and bumps. It ices in the winter and turns to mud in the summer and has ruts you could loose a medium-sized dinosaur in. So if you were wondering "How the hell does someone get stuck in a driveway?", that's how.)
Luckily my mother was just pulling up, so we hopped in her car and drove up to the last place she thought she could turn around, just before the schoolhouse. Then we walked. As it turned out, the car wasn't just past the schoolhouse either; it was another quarter-mile on from there. I was beginning to have feelings of foreboding about the stucked-ness of the car as well, and sure enough, when we finally got there (did I mention it was dark out?) the car hadn't slid a little; it had turned completely sideways and, this being our driveway, had its bumper up against a high bank and its front end hanging out over a cliff.
We explained to my brother's friend, as kindly as possible, that one did not fetch two spatially challenged women for tasks such as these, and walked back, and got my dad instead. He collected a few more males and they all went up there and, I don't know, did male things, but in the end the car got unstuck. I did my part: I stayed away.
Sunday I helped my mother do Christmas decorating, namely hanging pine roping around our window, since we're not going for a tree this year. My mother was supposed to buy ten feet of roping but came home with fifty, so we had to get a bit creative.
And Sunday night I finally, finally got to see The Return of the King. It was, of course, fabulous... and as any good movie should do, it's made me think. I'll post some of my thinkings a bit later, perhaps, when I've done mulling them over. But if you haven't seen this one yet, do so.
Now I must go help my mother. She's got ten or twelve last-minute packages to ship out from the cheese business and is in full-scale Christmas panic, and if we can't think up a present for my dad soon I don't know what we're going to do with her. Tranquilizers, maybe. (Addendum to self: Never become one of those people it's impossible to shop for; would be rude, and would give mother an aneurysm.)
Monday, December 08
I was wandering around my room this morning, trying to find clean clothes, looking out the window, and performing various riffs on the theme of "fuck me, it looks cold out there", when my dad rang me on the phone.
"Yeah?" I said, in a guilty panic (I was actually supposed to have been at work ten minutes before).
"The parlour's frozen," my father announced. "It's incredibly cold out here. Fuck it, we're going to once a day."
And I got to go back to bed for another hour. Not the best phone call I'd ever received, perhaps, but definately in the top ten.
Milking is much more pleasant now. By 3 pm it had warmed up from 21ºF (the temperature it was when I woke) to a balmy 40º, water wasn't freezing when it hit the concrete, everything in the parlour had pretty well thawed out, and I finished before I ran out of daylight - and I couldn't see my breath. And in less than two weeks now, December 20th, we'll stop milking entirely.
Heaven.
Something I'd intended to post yesterday but didn't because Blogger was down: The Twelve Days of Kitschmas. I picked this up from Making Light, and it really must be read to be believed - the twelve, well, kitschiest religious Christmas gifts of the year. And boy, are they kitschy - with commentary on each that only adds to the fun. Personal faves are the Frisbees of Faith ("So next time you are relaxing on the beach – and an overly-cheerful tourist clutching a dozen, innocent-looking plastic discs approaches you – flee at once to the sand dunes"), the remember-Jesus-died Nail Ornament ("COMING SOON! A 7-inch screw in a cardboard box, to remind you of what George Bush and Tony Blair are doing to the Middle East!"), and, best of all, the Glow Grave ("Give your loved ones a space-age resting place, all stainless steel, microchips and light pollution, and prevent satanists scraping their shins as they cavort in midnight cemeteries.") Seriously. These are REAL PRODUCTS.
The world is either very frightening or very funny, or maybe it's the first and we try and convince ourselves it's the second to avoid mass suicides.
"Yeah?" I said, in a guilty panic (I was actually supposed to have been at work ten minutes before).
"The parlour's frozen," my father announced. "It's incredibly cold out here. Fuck it, we're going to once a day."
And I got to go back to bed for another hour. Not the best phone call I'd ever received, perhaps, but definately in the top ten.
Milking is much more pleasant now. By 3 pm it had warmed up from 21ºF (the temperature it was when I woke) to a balmy 40º, water wasn't freezing when it hit the concrete, everything in the parlour had pretty well thawed out, and I finished before I ran out of daylight - and I couldn't see my breath. And in less than two weeks now, December 20th, we'll stop milking entirely.
Heaven.
Something I'd intended to post yesterday but didn't because Blogger was down: The Twelve Days of Kitschmas. I picked this up from Making Light, and it really must be read to be believed - the twelve, well, kitschiest religious Christmas gifts of the year. And boy, are they kitschy - with commentary on each that only adds to the fun. Personal faves are the Frisbees of Faith ("So next time you are relaxing on the beach – and an overly-cheerful tourist clutching a dozen, innocent-looking plastic discs approaches you – flee at once to the sand dunes"), the remember-Jesus-died Nail Ornament ("COMING SOON! A 7-inch screw in a cardboard box, to remind you of what George Bush and Tony Blair are doing to the Middle East!"), and, best of all, the Glow Grave ("Give your loved ones a space-age resting place, all stainless steel, microchips and light pollution, and prevent satanists scraping their shins as they cavort in midnight cemeteries.") Seriously. These are REAL PRODUCTS.
The world is either very frightening or very funny, or maybe it's the first and we try and convince ourselves it's the second to avoid mass suicides.
Friday, December 05
Yesterday was my brother's twenty-first birthday, and we were supposed to take him in to the local bar for a drink and a bit of a party last night after milking. I was going to be the designated driver (since I never drink much) and get us all home safely. It was going to be a lot of fun.
Well, needless to say....
To make a long story short, I failed to realize that there was ice on one side of the milking parlour and ended up with a cow falling down and getting herself stuck under the kickbar. With, needless to say, ten other cows stacked up behind her and ready to trample her head into mush to get out. Or get to the feed. Whichever.
This is when it's good to have Jersey cattle. A Holstein would have battered herself to death on the concrete, panicking. Carly - the downed cow - struggled a bit, but when she realized she was truly stuck she went calm and quiet. I got up there and managed to get the the other cows out of the way. It was perfectly clear that Carly wasn't coming back up; the whole of her rear end was down in the pit by now (I should explain that the milking parlour is two raised platforms on either side of a four-foot deep pit, the pit being where I work.) The only thing to do was to push her backwards, down into the pit. Carly wasn't crazy about this idea but after only ten or fifteen minutes of coaxing I managed to get her unstuck.
Now there was just the problem of getting her out of the pit. My parents had shown up by this time, and we cleared the rest of the cows out of the parlour and started trying to coax Carly up the ramp in back. We weren't too desperately worried at this point. We'd had cows in the pit before - that was why the ramp was there in the first place - and as long as nothing went wrong, it was all going to be fine.
Right. Carly slipped and fell going up the ramp, fell badly, and that was enough for her. She was already unhappy about the whole thing, and feeling unsteady and insecure, and one fall was enough to convince her that Cows Do Not Climb Ramps. And this is when having Jersey cattle really sucks. Holstiens are pretty stupid; if at first they don't succeed, they try, try again, no matter what the odds. Jerseys are, unfortunately, smart. And what was wonderful before, when Carly realized that struggling was doing her no good and stopped, where a Holstein would have killed herself trying, was a real bitch now. We coaxed her with feed. We beat her. We haltered her and tried to pull her up the ramp. We strung rope behind her and tried to lever her up the ramp. We attached a come-along to her and tried to crank her up the ramp. None of it did a damn bit of good. Cows Do Not Climb Ramps. She wasn't fighting us, wasn't kicking us or trying to hurt us - all she did was roll her eyes back in her head and go limp, which when you weigh upwards of eight hundred pounds is a pretty effective strategy.
After two hours we gave up, and Dad and the bro brought out the power tools and started taking the ramp down. I asked Dad what I should do with the rest of the cows, who were still waiting to be milked.
"Fuck it," he said. "Let them go and wash down the system. We're not milking tonight."
Yay. It was already eight o'clock by then, with at least an hour to go, and if I'd had to milk I wouldn't have made it to the house before eleven o'clock - and I was tired and cold already. But this late in the season we can get away with skipping a milking. Thank God for small mercies.
So I washed down the system while the boys ripped out the old ramp and Carly stood calmly in the pit, pushing the milking machines with her nose, playing with the dogs, and watching us with extreme interest - now that we weren't trying to force her up a ramp she was quite happy there. She wasn't particularly pleased about the other cows being gone, and undoubtably eating the best of the feed - she kept going back to the spot where she'd fallen in and sniffing around, doing nervous little hops, apparently convinced that since this was how she'd gotten in it was the only way for her to get out, even if she couldn't quite see how just at the moment. But in general she was quite content to hang out in the pit. For those of us who'd just spent exhausting hours trying to get her out, this was quite infuriating.
After another hour or so the boys had built a step where the ramp used to be, and we got Carly turned around and started her up it. She took the first step and then stopped, looking at us suspiciously - apparently the conviction that this was really just The Ramp again in disguise was stealing over her. I grabbed for the feed bucket to try and coax her out, threw a plastic scoop out of it - and Carly, hearing the clatter of the scoop behind her, did an impulsive panicked lunge forward, up the steps. By the time she clued in it was too late - she'd climbed the steps and was out. And we could all go to bed, amen. It only took four hours all told.
Then I woke up this morning and it was snowing. The milkers were all frozen, the cows were all pissed, and at least one has aborted her calf, which Dad is pretty worried Carly will do too, considering the amount of stress we've put on her. The vaccuum was frozen again, too, and I nearly got the bike stuck trying to get it up the hill to feed my yearling heifers, and we've got at least three or four more inches of snow coming, not to mention a strong possibility of freezing rain.
I. hate. WINTER.
Well, needless to say....
To make a long story short, I failed to realize that there was ice on one side of the milking parlour and ended up with a cow falling down and getting herself stuck under the kickbar. With, needless to say, ten other cows stacked up behind her and ready to trample her head into mush to get out. Or get to the feed. Whichever.
This is when it's good to have Jersey cattle. A Holstein would have battered herself to death on the concrete, panicking. Carly - the downed cow - struggled a bit, but when she realized she was truly stuck she went calm and quiet. I got up there and managed to get the the other cows out of the way. It was perfectly clear that Carly wasn't coming back up; the whole of her rear end was down in the pit by now (I should explain that the milking parlour is two raised platforms on either side of a four-foot deep pit, the pit being where I work.) The only thing to do was to push her backwards, down into the pit. Carly wasn't crazy about this idea but after only ten or fifteen minutes of coaxing I managed to get her unstuck.
Now there was just the problem of getting her out of the pit. My parents had shown up by this time, and we cleared the rest of the cows out of the parlour and started trying to coax Carly up the ramp in back. We weren't too desperately worried at this point. We'd had cows in the pit before - that was why the ramp was there in the first place - and as long as nothing went wrong, it was all going to be fine.
Right. Carly slipped and fell going up the ramp, fell badly, and that was enough for her. She was already unhappy about the whole thing, and feeling unsteady and insecure, and one fall was enough to convince her that Cows Do Not Climb Ramps. And this is when having Jersey cattle really sucks. Holstiens are pretty stupid; if at first they don't succeed, they try, try again, no matter what the odds. Jerseys are, unfortunately, smart. And what was wonderful before, when Carly realized that struggling was doing her no good and stopped, where a Holstein would have killed herself trying, was a real bitch now. We coaxed her with feed. We beat her. We haltered her and tried to pull her up the ramp. We strung rope behind her and tried to lever her up the ramp. We attached a come-along to her and tried to crank her up the ramp. None of it did a damn bit of good. Cows Do Not Climb Ramps. She wasn't fighting us, wasn't kicking us or trying to hurt us - all she did was roll her eyes back in her head and go limp, which when you weigh upwards of eight hundred pounds is a pretty effective strategy.
After two hours we gave up, and Dad and the bro brought out the power tools and started taking the ramp down. I asked Dad what I should do with the rest of the cows, who were still waiting to be milked.
"Fuck it," he said. "Let them go and wash down the system. We're not milking tonight."
Yay. It was already eight o'clock by then, with at least an hour to go, and if I'd had to milk I wouldn't have made it to the house before eleven o'clock - and I was tired and cold already. But this late in the season we can get away with skipping a milking. Thank God for small mercies.
So I washed down the system while the boys ripped out the old ramp and Carly stood calmly in the pit, pushing the milking machines with her nose, playing with the dogs, and watching us with extreme interest - now that we weren't trying to force her up a ramp she was quite happy there. She wasn't particularly pleased about the other cows being gone, and undoubtably eating the best of the feed - she kept going back to the spot where she'd fallen in and sniffing around, doing nervous little hops, apparently convinced that since this was how she'd gotten in it was the only way for her to get out, even if she couldn't quite see how just at the moment. But in general she was quite content to hang out in the pit. For those of us who'd just spent exhausting hours trying to get her out, this was quite infuriating.
After another hour or so the boys had built a step where the ramp used to be, and we got Carly turned around and started her up it. She took the first step and then stopped, looking at us suspiciously - apparently the conviction that this was really just The Ramp again in disguise was stealing over her. I grabbed for the feed bucket to try and coax her out, threw a plastic scoop out of it - and Carly, hearing the clatter of the scoop behind her, did an impulsive panicked lunge forward, up the steps. By the time she clued in it was too late - she'd climbed the steps and was out. And we could all go to bed, amen. It only took four hours all told.
Then I woke up this morning and it was snowing. The milkers were all frozen, the cows were all pissed, and at least one has aborted her calf, which Dad is pretty worried Carly will do too, considering the amount of stress we've put on her. The vaccuum was frozen again, too, and I nearly got the bike stuck trying to get it up the hill to feed my yearling heifers, and we've got at least three or four more inches of snow coming, not to mention a strong possibility of freezing rain.
I. hate. WINTER.
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