The day I became a milkmaid.
This is a post from the archives of the “On Butter Hill” Substack newsletter. In an effort to streamline our online presence, I will be reposting our Substack posts here on our blog while gradually dissolving our posts there.
Not long past midnight on the first day of March, I stood on the wet pavement of our silent country road. The coyotes sang distantly, leaving our farm dog, Holly, in an uproar. I refreshed Life360 again and again. It had been hours now, nearly a full day of waiting.
What would I say now to the woman that stood there, waiting and expectant? It was me, but I am not her anymore. Everything was about to change. Like a first time mother, pregnant with excitement and blissfully unaware, something was about to be born in me I had never known.
The life of a milkmaid awaited me.
I could hear the old noisy diesel truck circling the country block nearly a mile away. I will never forget that sound. It was 3 AM. Finally, headlights. My husband, glassy eyed from a 17 hour road trip, backed the trailer to our gate. I felt weak and overwhelmed immediately. Inside the trailer, a blonde and white dairy cow and her tiny chestnut brown heifer calf bawled for each other, for an escape, for a drink of water, for a stretch.
It crushed me to see how skittish they both were. They scrambled off the trailer and into our dark, makeshift barnyard. “They’re tired”, I told myself.
She was so beautiful. She reminded me of Rapunzel, with her long blonde tail, almost ethereal. I had never seen a cow like her before. Did I ask the right questions? Wait, did I even ask any questions? The waves of doubt mangled my heart. Adrenaline and live animals and the wee morning hours don’t mix well. I would go to bed and wake up clear-headed, I thought. New morning mercies.
And so, my life as a milkmaid began. It has been a severe mercy. Sometimes I grieve who I was before I cared to know where my butter came from. What grieves me more is the idea of having not cared. It is a conundrum, a culmination. Things make sense now that didn’t before dairying. I would love to tell you about it.
