The Cult of Cow
Everyone told us that a dairy cow was a commitment. They shook their finger at me and said, “Jen, no one wants to milk a dairy cow twice a day. It ties you to your farm. It tethers you. Suffocates you. Strangles you. Don’t get a dairy cow.” ALL THOSE PEOPLE were wrong. A dairy cow is not only a commitment — she is a devotion, a daily sacrifice and a religious allegiance to the Great Bovine Gods. You cannot stray from your allegiance even for one moment, lest the cow’s udders burst from the gallons of milk inside that you failed to release for her.
Cows can live up to twenty years. Rose is three years old and Ruth is 3 months old. This means that we have many more years of cows if we choose to accept this cow commitment. Cows live alongside you as long as children do except that at 18 they do not go off to college, they go off to a bigger and greener pasture, into The Great Unknown. Instead of living in the bedroom down the hall from you, they live in your barn and your fields, you can smell them when you open your windows, you can hear them when it is their milking time, they are around you and with you always. They enjoy being read to and sung to, being coddled and they like boundaries even though they might protest them. They enjoy being fed at the same time every day and they will lick you regardless of whatever they have just stuck their tongue into. Just like kids right?
Why is it, that as adults, many of us seem drawn toward taking on responsibility? Our lives could be free and untethered. We could wander, live nomadically and never acquire roots or any belongings. What urges us to seek out children, animals and land that needs tending? Why choose to be responsible for something?
For me, leaning into responsibility connects me to purpose. To feel needed, to feel useful, to feel focused on a task — I get to feel part of something larger than myself. I get to feel like I belong, that I have a place and that I am an essential part of my family eco-system. It is the same reason why I was part of a shamanic cult for seven years — I was searching to be an irreplaceable part of a group of people. Now, I belong to The Cult of Cow.
Our commitment to Rose is so much more than milking her twice a day. Yes, it is the washing of the milking equipment and making sure we have clean washcloths for her udders that is annoying and time-consuming but more than that, it is her deep sensitivity to the environment around her that keeps us committed to staying present with her and attuning ourselves to her. Rose is one of the most sensitive beings I have ever encountered — human or otherwise. If we are milking her and our neighbor is walking down the road (ONE MILE AWAY), she will stop eating her grain and look toward the road, ears perked up and neck strained so that she can hear the impending danger. Rose will become anxious and dysregulated and will not enjoy being milked until she has made sure that the danger is not headed in our direction. If Rose hears a car revving its motor off in the distance, she will stand at attention until the car gets silent again or passes us by. Airplanes and helicopters throw her off, large crows can do it and if Heathar and I laugh in a boisterous way, that can really get her going. If another person watches from the fence while we milk or if Rose’s calf is out of her sight, she will become fussy and bossy with us while we milk her. Rose likes her barn ambiance the way she likes it and there is little arguing with our 800-pound cow.
I am often not sure how I feel about responsibility. Freedom is my most favorite feeling on the planet and I need a lot of it. That’s why I don’t work for other people, I don’t have a landlord and we are quickly becoming capable of supplying all our own food. I like to be independent. But perhaps freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin — perhaps they go together like love and grief. You cannot have one without the other. We cannot feel true freedom without feeling the contrast of the grip of our responsibilities. We cannot take that breath into freedom without letting go of what restricts us. We cannot feel the ecstasy of freedom without knowing what it means to be committed, tethered and essential. We cannot appreciate the way our responsibility grounds us and roots us unless we know what it means to be wild.
Farming is an interesting combination of freedom and commitment. We are free to grow our own food, drink raw (illegal in many states) milk, tend the land in the ways that regenerate it and live away from cell phone towers and the noise of many complicated lives all slammed into a small radius. And yet, we are also committed and tethered to that freedom to make it possible. The paradox is the reality — freedom and responsibility growing all together on one farm, in one raised bed and on one piece of land.
