Charlotte Neighbors Help Former Suburbanites Have a Cow
by Cara Taussig

On May 6 Dawn the Cow took up residence in the pasture south of our place. She is a friendly little Jersey who makes four gallons of sweet milk a day.
My husband, Marty, and I had been planning for her arrival at full speed for a month. We ordered electric fencing and learned how to install it, designed and got a shelter and milking stanchion built, acquired the water trough, feed, mineral salts, kelp and 30 bales of second-cut organic hay, a halter and lead, a brush, thermometer, milk pails, filter, milking stool, ten cases of half gallon mason jars and an extra refrigerator to store it all, and last, but not least, an ice cream maker.
During our preparations for our 800-pound bovine baby, it was great fun talking to Vermonters who grew up with cows. Most of them just smiled when I shared my excitement at the prospect of the cow’s arrival. I do believe we amused them.
The cow idea was mine, and I pursued it with diligence. Every aspect of cow-human interaction seemed to be something I craved now in the middle of my life. Some folks have a mid-life crisis and buy a red Miata. I wanted structure to my day. I wanted the meditative practice of milking by hand. I wanted to learn to steward a piece of land and to be connected to it at every level. I wanted to produce something of real value that I could both drink and trade with friends and neighbors. And I wanted to hug a warm cow – I wanted a “moo-ata.”
I read every book I could find about family cows. Beginning in 2005, Marty and I attended both the Northeast Organic Farmers Association Conference and the Vermont Grass Farmers Conference each winter. In the fall of 2006, we attended a Family Cow workshop in Connecticut run by Debra Tyler of Motherhouse, who raises miniature Jerseys and teaches “old style skills” (debra@motherhouse.us). I worked Sundays in the milking parlor pit at Shelburne Farms for a few weeks last year and got to experience a modern milking operation and to see about 120 cows’ udders up close and personal.
I didn’t grow up living with livestock of any kind, unless you consider a small brown poodle named Fudgey livestock. I was a suburban kid who took horseback riding lessons once a week for a few years. Perhaps if my parents had given in and gotten me a pony, I would have gotten the large animal thing out of my system by now . . . or perhaps I would now own a whole herd of something! Who knows? But now in my early 40s, I wondered if I would be able to handle the physical aspects of milking just one cow, not to mention lugging around heavy buckets of water, bags of feed and bales of hay.
Neighbor Tiny Sikkes became a mentor for me. For a couple of months each of the last two summers, I “helped” her milk her dairy goats in the mornings. At first I could barely get the milk out, but as the weeks went by, I could milk one goat in about 15 minutes. Tiny could have gotten them both done in that time. For those readers who don’t know, as I did not, one goat gives about ½ gallon of milk at each milking. That’s about one-quarter of what a Jersey cow makes. I was worried, both about my hand strength and about the amount of time it would take to milk a cow.
Nonetheless, the search for the right bovine to call our own began for real last summer. We visited several farms that advertised family cows in Agiview, a publication of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture (vermontagriculture.com), and we placed our own ad as well: “WANTED – Family cow, Jersey or Guernsey, 2nd calf heifer or older, 4 long teats for hand-milking . . . will co-pasture with sheep and chickens at cohousing community in Charlotte.”
The fact that I live in Charlotte’s newest cohousing community, Common Pastures (champlainvalleycohousing.org), made both having a cow feasible and added an extra layer of complexity to her arrival. Several of my neighbors here already consume raw milk regularly, are committed to supporting local food producers and understand the symbiotic relationship between people, pastures and livestock that can increase the health of all three when managed well. A couple of my neighbors expressed interest in milking the cow from time to time, and even have experience with hand-milking, making an occasional respite possible for us in the future.
For other neighbors, the required “Land Use Proposal” we submitted to the community for permission to acquire up to two cows and calves and to graze them on our commonly owned pastures was a learning experience. Would there be flies everywhere? Smells? Would the manure pollute the pasture or the nearby water? What products could I sell legally and what standards did I need to meet? The folks at Rural Vermont (ruralvermont.org) and at UVM’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture helped me to answer their questions and my own.
At the beginning of April we found Dawn. The farmer/veterinarian who owned her was moving to New Zealand with his family and dispersing his herd of Jerseys. Dawn was one of three cows he thought suitable for hand-milking. She was calm and connected to us from the first minute we saw her. She chose us.
Finally, the Big Day arrived: we would pick Dawn up in Whiting just after her evening milking and bring her to her new home. We borrowed a Jeep and stock trailer from a friend up at Ten Stones cohousing (Charlotte’s first cohousing neighborhood) and trundled down Route 7, stopping off at Agway in Middlebury for some straw bales. Dawn took a bit of persuading to get into the trailer, but with three of us pushing and pulling on her, she finally stepped up and in. She was now ours.
Like a new parent, I was anxious about every little thing: would she lead into the pasture, or would she bolt? Would the electric fence, just finally assembled that morning, really hold her?
When we pulled up, it was almost 8 p.m. and deep dusk. I ran into the house to get the halter and lead we’d forgotten and managed to get it on her inside the trailer. As the neighbors gathered, Marty shook a bucket of grain in front of Dawn, and I grasped the lead rope. She placidly stepped out of the trailer and followed, as the farmer told us she would, behind Marty and the bucket of grain. Into the enclosure she went. Neighbors snapped pictures, cursing the dark, and some gave us hugs and congratulations. “She’s a beautiful cow!” was the refrain.
We pulled the trailer into the pasture to more easily unload the straw bales and went inside to get dinner and an early bedtime. I slept fitfully, worrying that we would find Dawn had busted through her fence in search of companions or “greener pastures.” But the next morning at 6 a.m. there she was! We got all our buckets and rags and udder wash and teat dip into the garden cart and went out to the “milking spa,” our name for the two-sided shelter covering the milking stanchion in the pasture.
Dawn followed Marty with the grain around and around the stanchion until finally he got her to put her head through the middle of it and I secured her. We wiped her udder. We squirted a little milk from each teat into the “strip cup” – it looked perfect. Then Marty pulled his stool up to one side of her and I settled on the other. It took about 45 minutes working together to milk two gallons, but we did it!
As we left the pasture in triumph, Marty got into the Jeep to return it on his way to work. The wheels began to spin and before we knew what was happening, the trailer was jammed deep into tall grass and clay dirt. It was good and stuck. Humphh.
It wasn’t until late that afternoon, and many discouraging phone calls to towing companies, that I was reminded of another neighbor who might be able to help us. Not an hour later, Doug Cole came by, took one look and went to get his giant double-wheeled tractor and chains. In just a few minutes, the Jeep and trailer were extricated from the muddy clay field.
As we continue on our journey as new cow parents, we are so grateful to all our neighbors who supported us in ways large and small in the process of Dawn the Cow’s arrival. And they continue to support us, asking us the questions that help us to learn and cheering our first efforts at making butter, yogurt, cheese and especially ice cream! Thank you all for your support in helping us to have a cow.