 |
PatchWork
by
Joyce Whitis |
Last Updated 09/06/05
Email: joy@our-town.com
It was a clear night. The distant sounds of
iron gates closing behind the milking herd reached my ears as I sat on the porch, white
paint pealing from the arms and rungs of my wooden rocker.
I rocked slowly, listening and remembering. It’s been many a year since I,
still with both my original knees and before arthritis twisted my fingers, used to leave
our house, race with one of the dogs across the calving lot and be at the dairy barn in
time to help pen the cows. They would be calling,
the cows would, and I could pat each broad back and call out their names. With just a little study I would come up with the
production record, sire, and the bull each cow was bred to.
We were doing it artificially even back then with ideas of building an ever better,
more productive, higher producing herd of registered Holsteins. Milking the second shift became my job description
after a night of surprising a milk hand mistreating a prize cow. “You don’t beat one of our cows,” I
shouted at him and he was packed up and gone in the morning. I had to take up the slack.
Until then I had not milked many cows. What I
liked to do was ride a horse bareback through the stand of liveoaks and drive the herd
home to the milking barn. Now I had to learn
how to attach milkers, know when to take them off, recognize and report cows in heat, wash
the equipment, be able to detect mastitis, or other sick cows, and on a moments notice
conduct dairy tours from visiting tourists.The concept was awesome, but not being one to
slack off, I pulled on shorts and a tank top and jogged across the pasture with my Great
Dane, Atilla. For the following two years,
Atilla waited outside the barn for a couple of hours nightly while I extracted milk from
our best cows and then ran back home across the pasture, in the dark. It was a fine time. Both dog and I were in great shape and we enjoyed
our time with the cows. I generally gave
Atilla a gallon of milk which kept his bones full of calcium and as for myself, I have
never been in better shape in my life. All
that exercise and the running was great for my constitution.
Time moved on across
the acres of Coastal Bermuda greening up in the warm spring days, binding into short
rectangular bales in the early summer and withering away in the blast of August if rain
didn’t come. Still if rain came on even
an irregular schedule, the meadow could be filled with pretty bales ready to be hauled
into the barn.Ah yes….hay hauling. It
was often my job to find hay haulers. “Now,
Joyce it’s supposed to rain in a couple of days.
We’ve got hay on the ground. Get
me some haulers!”Those orders came from a stressed husband who had milked too many
cows and fixed too many fences in a day. I got on the phone and began calling. At times I got desperate because of the need to
get that hay out of the field and into the barn before those dark clouds over in the west
built up into a flood. That’s why one
time I hired four long haired beer drinking bubbas to haul in our hay. They were brothers but each had his own pickup and they
came roaring into the back yard just before lunchtime on a hot July day back in “71. Everybody around the place was off somewhere
except me so I wiped my hands on a dishtowel and went out to meet our “hay
haulers”. They went right to work on a
field loaded with new cut hay and from my kitchen window, I watched the storm clouds built
up across the back pasture. The pickups came and went to the field on a regular basis as
each of the brothers loaded hay in the field and unloaded in the big hay barn we had just
finished. During my regular work around the
house, I noticed that they gathered beneath a giant pecan tree in the middle of the field
and spent some time there every now and then. And then they were down in the barn, all
four of them and they were shouting at each other. About
that time I loaded up my son’s 4.10, called Atilla in the house and locked the
outside doors. Still I kept a little crack in
a window nearest the hay barn open and put my ear to that crack. I recognized the voice of
the oldest boy. “Now I don’t care
if it is hot and you are drunk as a skunk, we said we’d haul this lady’s hay
into the barn and we damn sure will. So just
get your butts in your trucks and go get that hay or else I’ll whip you all over this
barn!”I took the safety off my shotgun and Atilla, whose massive body was plastered
against my left leg, growled softly from deep in his throat. There was a short scuffle
down in the barn. I watched as dust flew out
the open door, but within minutes each brother got in his truck and headed back to the hay
field. They finished with the hay just as the first
drops of rain began to fall. Tom was back
home by then so he thanked them and paid them off. Three
of the trucks peeled rubber when they left the yard but the biggest brother took time to
lean out and wave his hand. I just restrained
myself from throwing a kiss.