Love of Cows

26

I’ve always loved cows, I can’t explain why. Perhaps I love their quiet and contemplative personalities. They just always seem like they are observing the world and thinking about placid things.

When I spent the summers in the Shuswap, my grandfathers both connected me to cows.

Grandpa would take me to a local dairy and collect a milk can full of fresh warm milk. It would sit in a cool spot overnight and in the morning I loved scooping the heavy cream off the top for my porridge….that and some brown sugar made it edible to me.

Grandad, down the hill, had a few cows (and a bull that I had to bolt like a cat from on more than one occasion when I was taking a shortcut through the back field) and I loved the smell of the barn…there was a warmth in that barn. The piles of hay, the cows rustling about in their stalls…pulling on the hay and munching away contentedly.

I so clearly remember Grandad pulling up a stool and putting the milk bucket under an udder, and guiding my hands to show me how to pull at the teats to cause a stream of milk to fall into the metal bucket below. It was like magic to me.

I remember walking across the field and having a cow or three just placidly follow me until I ducked through the fence.

Many years later, long after the farm had passed out of family hands and Grandad had passed away, Granny’s house was being sold and I was sifting through memories as I helped box things up and sort according to whether or not it was going to charity, to storage until one of my cousin’s was older and would appreciate it, or into my own home.

One of those items that I ended up packing into my own vehicle and taking home was an old milk can. It has the letters R.E. Ackerman painted on it. It belonged to my Grandad, but reminds me of both he and Grandpa and those lazy and magical days in the Shuswap.

It doesn’t hold milk anymore, but it still serves a function. Today it holds bird seed to replenish the feeder; it’s useful because it excludes mice, rats, squirrels, raccoons, and…perhaps most voracious of all…the Stellar’s Jays.

About ten years or so ago, Kirk and I spent a few days driving around Southern England to meet up with some friends I’d met on the internet, through Flickr, and never laid eyes on. It was at the tail end of a long trip that had centred on just the two of us and a bareboat sail charter. We’d spent four weeks sailing the Greek Islands on our own, for a second time.

When we were driving across the lower part of England, I looked out a window and saw cows in a field. I made some wistful remark about how I loved cows…and how they are so curious.

Kirk snorted.

I said that if I went into the middle of the field and sat down, within a short period every cow within a fairly significant distance would be standing around me in a circle.

Kirk called bullshit.

So I said “Pull over“

He did and, since I couldn’t get over the wire fence without causing some probable wounds to myself…I sat down at the edge of the field near the fence.

Within a short period…every cow in the area was standing by the fence, in a semicircle around me.

Hah!

There is an addenda to that story though….

As the cows stood there looking at me calmly and curiously, I started to pull at the long grass on my side of the fence and feed the ones closest to me. After a few moments I was looking at my hand with a bit of astonishment and Kirk asked what was wrong.

“It’s amazing” I said. “It feels like there should be oozing blisters on my hand, the pain is incredible!!”

I think Kirk hates having a biologist for a wife sometimes….particularly one with a pair of graduate degrees that focussed on physiology and immunology.

He was alarmed, but I just kept expressing astonishment at the burning on the skin of my right hand. After a bit it began to subside and I said that I figured I’d grabbed something like stinging nettle…not knowing what it looks like.

Later, when we met up with some Flickr friends, I asked about that particular plant and the response was a resounding affirmative….it grows all over the place.

Amazing that cattle can eat it and not suffer…that one can make tea out of it and not suffer….but let me tell you…you really don’t want to grab handfulls of the stuff and hold it out for cows.

Regardless…I did prove my point, even though I paid for it 🙂

Would I recognize it and refrain from accidentally doing it again?….probably not……..as much as I love to garden…I’m no botanist and I have a short attention span for plants that don’t already grow in my garden or that I wish did. Stinging nettle doesn’t really fit into either category.