Milking a Cow

By Julia
Oamaru, New Zealand

  Growing up, both my parents had busy, full-time careers.  This proved problematic during the summer months when I was off from school.  The solution one summer: Girl Scout Day Camp.

  Girl Scout Day Camp was a low-cost option for busy families.  I'm sure they thought they were doing the right thing by sending me there, but they weren't.  I hated that place.  First of all, I am not Girl Scout material.  I didn't appreciate the "incentive" badge system they had going or the sexist activities they ran.  I heard from my guy friends all the cool stuff like "tracking animals" and orienteering they were getting to do at Boy Scout Camp.  We were relegated to cookie baking and SPUD.

  Then one day, my counselor informed me that at the end of the week my group would get to milk a cow.  I was elated.  Finally an activity with real-world applicability!  Spending my childhood in suburban New Jersey didn't offer many opportunities for interacting with real life farm animals, so you can imagine my excitement.

  Every day that week I confirmed with my counselor that we were, in fact, still milking a cow on Friday.  "Yes, of course," she would say.  I bragged to my guy friends about the awesome, hard core farm work I was doing at Girl Scout Camp.

  Finally, Friday came.  My counselor led the group through an area of camp I had never been before.  In one of the most vivid memories of my young life, we rounded a bend and came upon the cow.  Fury rose up inside my little body at discovering that the "cow" looked something like this:

via theekinsfamily.blogspot.com

  Enraged, I demanded to know how I was supposed to milk a cardboard cow.  My counselor, seemingly undisturbed by my condescending tone, explained, "Those are the udders.  You can milk them if you'd like."
Hanging from the bottom of the cardboard cow was a plastic glove with tiny holes in it filled with water.  That was the sort of non-attention to detail I was dealing with.  They couldn't even humor us by filling the plastic doctor's glove with milk.

via fiascofarm.com

  I didn't throw a fit, but I demonstrated my displeasure by refusing to participate.  This was one of the many instances in my childhood that I felt adults had needlessly lied to me.   This incident, combined with another scaring episode where I was stung in the ass by a bee, ensured I would never return to Girl Scout Day Camp.

  Never milking a real cow left an indelible desire imprinted on my soul to accomplish the task.  After spending a few days on our first WWOOFing farm in New Zealand, my goal to milk a real life, non-cardboard cow finally came to fruition.

A life-long dream come true

Milk machine on Wendy the cow

   The farm we are staying on is run by Zim and Gail, who along with their son Levi, uprooted their life in the Denver to move to New Zealand.  We will talk more about our time with them soon, but it's suffice to say that we are learning a lot from the family and having a great time with them.  Zim showed Tom and I the proper way to hand milk a cow, followed by the much more efficient method of using an automatic milker to finish the job.  

Zim and I stroking Wendy while milking

  Wendy the Cow produces enough milk to feed the Shermans and twelve other families on a weekly basis.  She gets milked twice a day (they normally just use the milk machine, hand-milking was a special treat for us) and produces about 20 liters of milk a day.  This means lots of milk, cream, cheese, ice cream and other treats for the household.  Yum!