I had a couple of hours to spare recently and I took a quick walk down memory lane.
My father was a farmer - we had dairy cattle for a long time and it's a hard, demanding lifestyle. As kids, we weren't exactly encouraged to help out - but we did manage to sneak in and bring a gallon of milk to Mom for dinner or breakfast. I can remember clearly the hard work washing out all the dairy dishes and implements, the
milking machines, the milk cans which were uplifted daily by the milk lorry. Even more spectacular was the day when dad got his first bulk
milk cooler - second-hand from a cousin. He was as newfangled with it as it was possible to be.
I can remember the smell of the cleaning chemicals in the dairy as if it was yesterday. I can smell the cattle feed we gave in the winter, see the cattle licking the
salt lick, drinking water, eating the sweet smelling hay and silage. Once you've heard the sound of the milking machines, you would recognise it anywhere.
I can remember Dad crouching alongside the cows, testing each quarter to make sure the cow didn't have mastitis - because that's one of the potential side-effects of using mechanical milking machines. If there was any trace of infection, the infected quarter wasn't milked - and I don't think the rest of the milk from that animal was included in the milk collection. The vet was called out and antibiotics administered to treat the cow - I vaguely remember a small tube of ointment which was applied locally to the infected teat.
Among the other sounds - the barking of the collie dogs as they helped bring in the herd at milking time; the sound of the chains rattling as Dad tied up each cow in her stall before milking started. I remember being quite frightened when the bull was among the cattle - I never felt quite so easy about tying him up - although generally there were no problems. I can still "hear" the milk lorry arriving to pick up the day's milk. Our milking machines were driven by a vacuum arrangement attached to a tractor drive - and the sound of Dad starting that up is still with me.
The cow shed is a noisy place. The cattle low, they seem to gossip to one another. Their feet made a distinctive noise on the concrete floor; you could hear them eating the hay and the cattle nuts; if they were wintered inside, you could hear the sound of them breathing. Cleaning out the byre was also a noisy affair with the dung being scraped into a collecting trough and then barrowed out to the dung heap. The hay was brought from the hayshed - and that had its own noise, too - rustling of the wind through the shed made its own light, whispering sound.
I didn't realise how very much I miss all of this - farming is a labour of love and I cherish the memory of those far off days.
