Goodnight, Ladies

The old girl was gimpy, you could see it in her walk. When the farmer let her out of the barn, she deferred to the grassy places along the outbuildings, avoiding the gravel drive and maybe stopping for a mouthful of grass along the way. Her two little ones were springy like puppies, black and white they were, curious, but not exactly friendly. The old girl, though, once, when I sat on the bench near her private paddock and played the ukulele, she walked right up to the electric fence wired and mooed at me, full on.

About three weeks into our stay on this little dairy farm, the old girl was trucked off to the slaughter house and the little black and white calves sold. The cow was ten, the calves were about eight weeks old. I was surprised how saddened I was by this moment of real farm life; I felt better when I learned that Uschi, the farm wife, gets sad too whenever they have to dispatch a cow.

There are 16, or is it 18, dairy cows on the farm where we rented our room for the month of July. They are “fleckvieh” — big cream and tan spotted ladies with white eyelashes and sturdy hips. They go out in the morning to the meadow behind the house, or to the meadow behind the barn, and then, in the late afternoon, they wander back to the barn almost independently, for milking. If the weather permitted and the timing was serendipitous, I would sit on the bench with my back to the big farmhouse and watch the girls head home in disorderly single file. The milking machinery would whine in the barn for an hour or so, I would pretend to read the Austrian newspaper, and then, when the weather chilled, I would go inside.

The farm next door has about the same number of cows, maybe a few more. They’re a different breed — “murbodner” —  and while I wouldn’t say this in the barn here, I’ll tell you that they’re prettier than the fleckvieh on our farm. The murbodners are a creamy brown all over, almost taupe, with big brown eyes and soft lashes, and they’re, well, attractive. This doesn’t mean I’ve lost my affection for our girls, just that the neighbor girls are more likely to be prom queens.

We walked through the grazing meadows almost daily. Sometimes, I would take pictures of the cows, sometimes I would sing to them, sometimes I would just talk to them. Our girls are always quite interested in company, they always turned to look at me and once, they followed me along the fence line, all of them, as though I was going to take them somewhere, to sweeter grass, or a creek that was easy to drink from, or a place where their calves are not sold off to be fattened for grass fed burgers.

A new calf named Goldi arrived at the farm shortly before I arrived. She was hand fed and she was like a dog, you could scratch behind the ears and she would wag her tail at you, and bat her luscious white eyelashes and nudge you with her soft funny nose. I visited her in the barn almost every day when I first arrived, but then, after the other calves were sold, I stopped because I did not want to become too attached and to feel sad again. Goldi will stay on the farm, though, she could very well be here the next time we visit Austria, as long as she does what she’s supposed to do.

I stopped to talk to different herds of cows nearly every day. Grass fed beef cows, dairy cows in meadows, cows clustered in muddy stalls, cows lying on the knee deep pastures chewing and studying the horizon.

I started to really like the cows, a lot. I liked their lethargic pace, their passive curiosity, the way they’d look up when I stood at the fence. I imagine them saying to each other, in somewhat British tones, “What’s all this now?” and “Darling, don’t give up your dandelion salad, but get a load of the two-legs at the fence. Does she not know that thing is electrified?”

I have zero ambition for farming, it’s awfully hard work, and dirty, and the cows don’t take a day off, so you can’t, not unless you have trustworthy help. And there is a little bit of heartbreak, you can’t help but become attached, or rather, I’m sure I would become quite affectionate toward the old girls. Ten years, some dogs don’t live that long, and I have had no business partnerships that have lasted that long. I would be sad, I think, at every loss, every parting. I would ascribe personality traits to the ladies that transited my yard every day, twice a day, and I would think them my friends, I think, after a time.  I would suck as a farmer.

But cows. After hanging out with them this summer, I know this: I like cows. And I’ll miss these girls, their mud splattered sides, their lazy walk, the way they always took time to look up and study whatever oddity happened to stop at the fence posts. “What’s all this, then?” We could all stop a look a little more, don’t you think?