Dairy fest!

For a recovering dairy farmer such as myself, going to a dairy farm festival is like a cat attending a hairball convention. Ho-hum. Not much new to see here.

Or so I thought. Our neighbors Frido and Sonja Verpaalen opened their dairy farm to a throng of visitors for Dairy Fest, an event that was held on the first day of June Dairy Month.  

Among the first things that I noticed was a pair of bouncy houses, one of which looked like a humungous green tractor. I was sorely tempted to try the tractor but had bigger fish to fry.

Specifically, I was looking forward to sampling the grilled cheese sandwiches that Midwest Fresh Catering was whipping up. Rumor had it that the sandwiches would contain two kinds of cheese.

In the interest of quality control, I sampled one of the grilled cheese sandwiches. It was excellent. I washed down the tasty treat with a carton of chocolate milk, a combination that’s yummy and elicits childhood memories of Mom serving these items when I was growing up on our dairy farm.

I meandered around Frido and Sonja’s farm, blending in with the crowd as if I were just another visitor.

Baby calves are a common sight on dairy farms. I have personally raised hundreds of dairy calves, so seeing a few more was similar to a bus driver getting a glimpse of a well-worn stretch of highway.

This was totally opposite to the experiences of many of the young visitors who had probably never seen a calf that wasn’t a cartoon character. The smaller kids seemed particularly entranced by the calves, reaching through the fence to pet a baby bovine. I wonder how many moms later puzzled over a mysterious smudge that looked suspiciously similar to calf slobber on the front of her child’s shirt.

I watched as a Dairy Fest volunteer scooped up a handful of calf starter feed and explained its ingredients to a trio of little girls. They were intrigued by the stuff, which I used to have delivered to our farm by the ton.

I picked up a small sample of the feed and took a deep whiff. The blend of steam-flaked grains and molasses smelled good enough to eat. Experience has taught me that this is not the case.

A long line of visitors waited patiently to view the milking parlor. I’ve spent approximately a million hours in a milking parlor; it was hard to fathom what might be so interesting about this facility.

Many of the visitors likely had zero experience regarding dairy farming, so watching a group of cows being milked was a novel experience. Hopefully, it will help dispel the notion that milk comes from plastic jugs that magically appear in the supermarket dairy case.

When I was a little kid, our family milked a dozen or so cows in an ancient stanchion barn. An asthmatic vacuum pump provided suction for the Surge belly buckets that collected our cows’ milk. The white gold was poured into a strainer that was placed atop of a ten-gallon can. Filled cans were placed in a cabinet that sprayed them with ice-cold water.

The milk truck came to our farm every other day. The driver would grab one full milk can in each paw and heave them effortlessly into the back of his truck. I think milk truck drivers pioneered such gym jargon as “high-intensity interval training” and “reps” and “Holy cow, I can’t even lift one! How can you lift two?”       

Modern dairy parlors have computerized ID systems and automatic takeoffs that remove the milking unit when each cow is done, but the essentials of dairying remain the same. It all boils down to vacuum and pulsation and people working with cows to produce delicious and nutritious milk.

I strolled through the free stall barn and let the aromas wash over me: the tang of corn silage, the piquancy of fresh cow manure. These smells were familiar and comforting.

One of the dairy’s employees was using a skid steer loader to clean an alleyway. A young boy stood nearby and watched, totally absorbed. This will be an experience that he will describe to his pals, an activity he’ll mimic with a toy on his family’s living room floor.

I sat with Frido and Sonja on the deck by their house after Dairy Fest had concluded and the crowds had departed. The Verpaalens were very pleased with how well the day had gone.

“We are just trying to close the gap between dairy farmers and consumers,” Sonja said.

I’ll drink to that! Pour me a glass of that chocolate milk.

Jerry’s book, Dear County Agent Guy, is available at http://Workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.