Growing up, I
spent almost every summer on my grandparent’s farm in North Carolina. They had
hundreds of acres in tobacco, peanuts and corn as well as farm animals raised
for steak, ham and bacon.
My favorite part
was the barn yard and area around the house where much of the work was done by
my grandmother. They had three Guernsey cows: Daisy, who was Queen, and two
others...Star and Molly, who would always follow Daisy from the pasture to
their places in the barn every morning.
I literally jumped
out of bed at dawn to the tune of our rooster alarm...’cause if not, the best
part of the day would be gone...crossed through the garden behind the washhouse
and climbed over the fence into the back pasture. I called the cows with all
the authority a ten year old could muster. Opening the swing gate for Daisy who
came first, I led her out of the pasture and waited for Star and Molly to catch
up and then walked with them up the path back to the barn...all the while their
heavy bags swinging from side to side and Daisy’s bell keeping time with each
step.
In the stall I put
out their hay while Cousin Wilbur placed an enamel pail underneath the rear
part of Daisy and sat down on the stool beside her. He bent forward, his head
resting against Daisy’s flank, and took a teat in each hand. Soon the jets of
warm milk spurted out between his fingers and into the shiny white pail. Even
as he occasionally aimed a stream of milk at me or the open mouth of the barn
cat he quickly had two big pails filled with warm milk. We carried them to the
wash house where I helped Grandmother strain the contents through cheesecloth
into round enamel pans. The milk flowed thick, clean and fresh. While the cream
was left to rise to the top of the pans, we quickly, hungrily went inside for
breakfast.
Grandmother had
been up since before dawn cooking as she did every morning. All I could smell
was her warm buttermilk biscuits just out of the massive old iron wood stove
when I walked into the kitchen. Sitting down on the bench at the oil-cloth covered
farm table, I reached for a biscuit, slathered it with fresh butter and
homemade strawberry preserves and greedily grabbed another. By then she had
placed a huge platter of country ham and red-eye gravy, pieces of thick bacon
and fried eggs on the table...and my favorite...coffee milk! Oh my, I can still
smell it all now!
After breakfast
there were many other chores to be done until it was finally time to check on
the cream in the wash house. Grandmother skimmed and poured the heavy cream
part into the glass churn. It was my job to turn the handle until the cream
inside began to solidify...it seemed like forever, but really was only a short
while, if I didn’t dawdle! We scooped out the pale white or slightly yellowish
butter that had ‘made’ and packed it into molds to set ‘til hard. The
atmosphere in the wash house was calm and still, the smell...fresh and sweet.
Today, I still
make butter using heavy cream from organic milk and the same old churn and
molds from my grandmother’s farm...milk that is fresh and sweet from cows not
given growth hormones or injected with antibiotics. Milk from cows raised in
pasture getting fresh air and exercise, grazing on clean fields untreated with
synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides...cows raised on an organic farm!
An environmentally friendly farm! Milk and dairy products produced by families
[or at one time] such as Organic Valley and many other local farms available
nationally. Imagine that fresh cream poured from a glass bottle [recycled] into
your coffee or over just picked berries...superb!
KNOW IT...little
known facts from those Europeans again...the Swiss do not consider pastures fit
for bovine consumption unless it contains at least a dozen herbs and
grasses...and the Danes, they are banning intensive farming and claim the whole
country will be farming organically by the year 2020!
