Milking Time at Uncle Jack's

 

I rise at 5:30, light just burnishing the horizon

Uncle Jack is calling

Time to get up!

Its milking time on a 100-acre farm

And already warming in Central California

In the big valley

Yawning, stretching

I pull on jeans, a tee, rubber boots

In the damp pasture the cows are lying in the grass

And I prod a few with a hand to the haunch

Some rise on their own

seeing the others already headed

To the corral by the milking barn

They know the way and all that’s left for me

Is to bring up a freshened heifer who balks at the gate, wide eyed

Inside, the stalls are filling

As one after another finds her place

Head into the stanchion

Uncle Jack has the milking machines ready

And one at a time he hooks them up

As I wash udders clean

And the first milk

Warm still

Flows into the milker, up to the pipes

Over to the big stainless-steel tank

I get the cow chow

And one at a time each gets a ration

At Jack’s direction, some more, some less

One string at a time, in a particular order that

Jack keeps straight in his head

Elsie, Mergatroid, Brownie, Valentine

No numbers on the girls, just names

Until we’ve completed four, maybe five strings

The heifer is last

Into a stanchion alone

Where she is locked in

Waiting for the breeder

Week after week we do this

But somehow this 14-year-old isn’t bored

Doesn’t tire of it

And the cows head back to the pasture

Ambling slowly, udders now flaccid

Tails chasing flies