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The manure tour (page 2)
Now here I was, suiting up for the milking parlour. Until a few weeks ago, I’d only
ever seen a cow from my car window. But I’d made a special trip to the farm pavilion
at the Canadian National Exhibition, just so I could tell the Blacks that, yes, of course
I’d seen one up close. The truth is, I’d been terrified by the sheer bulk of
the docile Holsteins at the Ex — and I was about to get personal with a whole herd
of them.
I tucked in as best I could, shoved a red ball cap on my head, and followed Sue to the barn.
Inside the brightly lit milking parlour, Brüeggen and Dave, the Blacks’ 28-year-old
son and business partner, had already rounded up the first batch of cows, their rear ends
butting up against metal stoppers, their tails stiff with mud. The floors were already slick
with manure and three mangy ginger cats prowled between the hooves, licking up spilled milk
from the concrete.
I’d never really thought much about where my milk comes from. It was always just there,
waiting for me at the grocery store. Had I ever imagined the 16-hour days, the pure sweat
that goes into milking even a moderate-sized herd? Never.
I spent the first 15 minutes watching Dave, a milking master who was perfectly able to chat
about the demise of his beloved Winnipeg Jets as he worked. First, he pulled a sopping paper
towel from a jug of warm water and iodine soap, then confidently thrust his arm between a
cow’s back legs to wipe the mud from each of the bulging udder’s four quarters
(or “teaties,” as he called them). Then he got old-school, pulling firmly on each quarter
to get the milk flowing.
Soon came the milking machine, a vacuum-powered contraption that looked like a four-legged
spider dangling in front of each stall. Dave turned it on, then shoved it between the cow’s
stomping hooves. With quick flicks of his wrist, he fastened each vacuum hose onto her teats.
Milk began to flow into a pipe that ran across the ceiling and into a refrigerated tank that
would be emptied the next day.
He made it look so easy; Brüeggen even managed to make it look glamorous. It was neither.
Between dodging the occasional full-blast spray of manure (these cows eat more than 20 kilograms
of organic dry feed a day and eject roughly the same amount) and yelping every time my target
shuffled her hooves, I managed to milk maybe three animals.
By the time Brüeggen and I peeled off our poop-stained coveralls and showered, it was
9 p.m. Dave had headed home to his wife Ashley and their 10-month-old daughter, Briar. And
Larry, the lone organic producer on the Dairy Board of Manitoba, was attending a marathon
meeting in Winnipeg, so it was just the three of us for dinner. Sue grilled up organic turkey
steaks pulled from one of the family’s four jam-packed freezers and served them with
potatoes, corn and carrots straight from the garden. And for dessert, a tart made with fresh
apples plucked from Larry’s mom’s orchard.
I have never slept as soundly as I did that night.
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