Growing a Farmer

by Kurt Timmermeister

I am too soft to corral my animals in a sacrifice area. I have taken a different approach: a lazy man’s rotational grazing. The pastures here are not valley, nor river bottom, nor sandy loam. They are the result of years of misuse and bad bulldozing. Although they improve every year, they cannot support the use that I demand of them.

  My compromise is to feed the cows and the sheep on the pasture, regardless of its condition. Twice daily I carry flakes of hay out to the upper pasture to the waiting cows. I choose a destination for the hay based on the neediest ground, and there the hay is dropped and the cows are fed. As they chomp their way through the bundle of hay, they leave the woody stems and parts that they find unpalatable. As they feed, they also leave behind their manure.

  Day by day the animals are moved around the pasture, their manure and hay fertilizing it. The areas with the direst need get the most attention; the more vibrant sections, less.

  In this way the pastures have a chance to become pastures and not remain weedy dirt lots. The grass remains overgrazed in this system. After the animals have consumed the hay, they begin to nibble down on the surrounding grasses. But little by little the fertility increases. As the cows lay down the manure as they graze, the crows, wild geese and chickens follow, pecking out the grain that the cows have not digested, spreading the cow pies over the pasture so that they can be easily broken down by the soil.

  A system of rotational grazing has gradually been implemented here at this farm. Large sections of pasture are roped off to prevent the cows from grazing, allowing the grass to recover. With time and luck, a classic system of rotational grazing will be fully operational.

  Time, as it relates to soil fertility, works in years and decades, not days and months. Taking on the task of improving my soil, I began to see myself less as an owner and more as a steward of the land. During my initial period working the pasture, I was still a part-time farmer and I couldn’t afford to pour huge amounts of cash into improving my land. Thus, I had to make decisions that benefited my soil and my pocketbook. I’ve never used fertilizer on my farm—partially because I don’t believe in it, and partially because I don’t want to pay for it. Rotational grazing appealed to me immediately because it’s a method—in fact, the only method I know of—to increase the tilth of the soil without chemical fertilizer. By allowing my farm’s avian residents to eat the grains that the cows fail to digest, I get the most value for the feed I buy. The manure that gets spread on the pasture is highly valuable, and even more so because I don’t have to labor to move it around. It’s easy to discuss the “best” environmental practices in farming without a budget, but implementing good systems with limited funds is a challenge, and rotational grazing is one of the best solutions.

  Like the rest of the farm, my system of rotational grazing is a work in progress. I would love to achieve a fully operational classic system of rotational grazing, but getting there has meant a healthy dose of experimentation. Thankfully, I’m not in it alone, as the animals play an important role in the cycle and, like me, put up with a setup that isn’t quite perfect. Except for the occasional escapee goat, everyone seems content with the way things are working out.

  Six

  Cows

  In my attempt to find a viable niche for this farm, I have tried many different animals, a variety of crops and on dreary winter days even contemplated going back to work in the city. Eventually, the beast of choice for this farm became the cow. It all started with a cow I named Dinah. I wanted a cow for a variety of reasons. One was that I wanted this small, until this point unprofitable business to be thought of as a real farm. Sheep and goats always had an air of hobby farm to them. Cows were farm. If I had a cow, then I would be a farmer.

  When Dinah first arrived one fall day five years ago, I was excited. I had looked for a cow for months, made many calls and had finally found one for sale. I borrowed a truck and trailer to transport her to the farm. I had driven off the island to a small farm that raised replacement Jersey cows for small dairies. As I loaded Dinah into the back of my friend’s horse trailer, Jackie, the woman who sold her to me, began to cry. Driving down her long driveway headed to the ferry back to Vashon, I could see her in the rearview mirror, watching sadly from the middle of her driveway. I was convinced I had found the perfect cow.

  With the addition of a cow to the farm, things changed quickly. Growing vegetables is a time-intensive business for a few months of the year with virtually no work needing doing in the off-season. Sheep, goats and pigs take some daily attention, but really very little work for most of the year once the fences, sheds and watering system are installed. With vegetables or small animals, it is still fairly easy to leave the farm for a few days here and there; easy enough to get a neighbor or friend to stop by and feed the pigs, check in on the sheep. Dairy cows are different. They need daily attention. Raising them requires a commitment.

  Suddenly, with Dinah backing out of that horse trailer that day and walking into her new paddock at this farm, I had a revelation. I no longer had a hobby, I had a job. I couldn’t back out—you can’t just return a cow for a refund, and I couldn’t afford to just write off the $1,500 I had paid for Dinah. Even if I decided I didn’t want Dinah, what was I going to do with her? You can’t drop a cow at the pound like an unloved mutt, or let it die during the winter like my bees. She was stuck here, and so was I. I was a full-time farmer.

  Discovering what I had become was one of the most terrifying and gratifying moments of my life. I could no longer retreat to a city job if I stumbled, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to be that ninety-five-year-old waking up every morning to milk his cows. After years and years of yearning for a farmer’s life, it was mine. I would have to make my twelve acres work. There was no turning back. My vegetable business had failed. Matt was gone. My payouts from the sale of the restaurant were keeping the electricity on for the time being, but they were dwindling. I was dirty and tired and I loved it. I was happy.

  Dairy cows in this country are generally of two breeds: Holsteins and Jerseys. Holsteins are the most familiar-looking dairy cows: black, with large white spots. Holsteins comprise approximately ninety percent of America’s herds and Jerseys the remainder. A few other breeds—Guernseys, Milking Shorthorns and Brown Swiss—round out the list of dairy cows. I wanted a Jersey cow because they are beautiful: small, light brown and with a streak of curiosity running through them.

  Holsteins are known for large quantities of milk and low butterfat, Jerseys for low volume and high butterfat. Jerseys are ideal for my small homestead dairy: smaller in size, more gentle and producing high-quality rich, creamy milk.

  Dinah was a gorgeous cow, with a distinct, inquisitive personality. She was larger than most Jerseys, and I was immediately smitten with her. This was going to be wonderful.

  I milked my first cow by hand for the first three months after I got her. I thought doing so would be a lovely old-fashioned experience. Buy a cow and a pail, and in a few minutes you’ll have the best milk you have ever tasted. So I bought the cow, got her back to the farm and then realized I actually had to milk her. Myself. Twice a day, every day, and starting immediately. When you buy a cow and drive her home, you have to milk her within a few hours, at the most, of her arrival. Once she arrives, she is ready to be milked, and milked completely, immediately. I was not ready.

  I brought her back to the farm and all was set. I would begin milking her that afternoon and the milk would begin to flow. As I look back now, I am grateful that I didn’t know what was to come, for fear of never starting out.

  Dinah had a large frame to her and was strong of spirit, yet had unusually small teats. Never having seen a cow before, I did not notice her teat deficiency while checking her out prior to purchasing her. The process of hand milking her should have taken a few minutes, twenty minutes at most. In Dinah’s case it was closer to an hour, forty-five minutes with a bit of luck. Each squeeze of her substandard teats yielded a tablespoon of milk, with the eventual goal of nearly five gallons a d
ay. Do the math: five gallons is equal to 1,280 tablespoons. That is a considerable amount of hand milking.

  For the first few days I stuck with it, spending a considerable part of every day sitting on a small child’s stool I’d bought at the local thrift store, attempting to squeeze out the full volume of milk that Dinah kept in those pendulous udders. The basic premise of milking is that the cow believes her phantom calf is drinking the milk she is producing. As long as there is a demand for that milk, whether for an actual calf or by draining the udders manually, then the cow will continue producing milk. If the milk is not fully captured daily, then the cow begins to slow down her production of milk. As the gestation period of cows is nine months and there is considerable difficulty in breeding cows, there is a great deal of pressure in keeping the cow in question thinking that all of her milk is needed. I feared that she would dry up, a process in which she would begin to limit the amount of milk produced. That fear kept me sitting on that miniature stool day after day attempting to drain her udders completely.

  Physically this was difficult. My hands ached, my wrists hurt, my pride was wounded. I couldn’t quit. Fall moved to winter, and there I was sitting on the stool, as it poured down rain outside, surrounded by mud and manure, milking this cow. I had to do something to fix this. I called around to people who might have milking equipment, hoping to find an affordable used vacuum pump and milk can that I could use. I had the option of ordering a new piece of equipment from a supplier, but the price was exorbitant, and the shipping fees compounded the problem. After three months I finally found a small used vacuum pump and a milking can on the island and got everything set up for daily milkings. My daily task went from a two-hour ordeal to a pleasant ten-minute chore.

  As miserable as this initial period was, it did yield one big positive. I spent two hours a day with a cow. Previously I had never even spent five minutes with a cow. I had seen the odd cow in a field while driving through the countryside as a child, but never such an intimate experience with a cow as I did in those first few weeks. That experience has done me well. I bonded with Dinah, for lack of a better term. I know her, know how she moves, how much room she needs, how to converse with her, and by extension cows in general. I sang to her every day as well. A bizarre variation of “Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah.” My voice would trail off after I sang out, “Someone’s in the kitchen I know-o-o-o….” Unable to remember any other words to the song, I filled in any spaces with whatever came to me. After an hour of my singing a nonsensical ditty, both Dinah and I were exhausted. I want to believe that the singing calmed her down, made her more open to some kind of relationship with me; that we were friends. Truly amazing, where the mind goes when you’re locked in a small, damp, cold shed with a cow for two hours a day.

  Now each morning of the year, after the alarm goes off, I slip on some muddy jeans, an old fleece jacket, a pair of muck boots, and head off from the house to bring the cows down to the milking parlor for the morning milking. The ritual begins with the assembly of the milking equipment that has air-dried overnight, the making of a bucket of warm soapy water to clean the teats of the cows and the leading of the cows into the milking parlor. It is a ritual that is practiced every day, even if it is Christmas, or pouring down rain, or even if I am terribly hung over, with no interest in ever seeing a cow again in my life.

  These rituals have become my practice—in the Buddhist sense of the word. Every day of my life, I do the same thing, in exactly the same way. I do not need to think of what I am doing. It has become a part of my body: placing the milk can on the right side of the cow, reaching over with my left hand to grab the vacuum line, reaching back with my right hand to grab the inflation plugs from the shelf where they always sit and so on. I don’t expect to achieve enlightenment through cow milking, but the daily practice is important to me. That time of the morning and the late afternoon is the short piece of the day when my mind can wander without care. No part of my brain is needed to operate the equipment. Occasionally Jorge will have mistakenly moved a simple object, a pail, a towel, a soap dispenser, and I am completely helpless; suddenly I need to think of what I am doing instead of simply acting out the daily ritual.

  Part of milking is waiting for the machine to pump out all the milk from the cow. It takes just a few minutes, maybe five. The ancient 1940s vacuum pump is whizzing away in the attic, the pulsator pumping on and off, and I can stand at the door and look out onto the farm, or sit and watch the cows chomp the buckets of grain before them. This is my time to plan for the coming day, reflect on yesterday’s experiences and watch the sun break through the trees to the east of the farm. No one is ever with me in the milking parlor in the morning, it’s just me and the cows. The dairy building with the radio playing is too far away for me to hear what is being said, although I can usually make out the theme music played by NPR, which lets me know that I am running late, or that I managed to get started on time that morning. This is my favorite time of the day.

  I have milked the cows here with a machine since that first brief hand-milking period, with the exception of the odd power outage. While I do have friends who milk by hand and wouldn’t do it any other way, I am partial to machine milking and think it is a superior method because hand milking is physically very difficult. Cows have four teats. Seems basic, but if you have never reached down there, there are four. You have two hands. So, you have to move from front teats to back teats or near teats and then far teats. The process is repetitive and uses only a few muscles in the hand. By the time you finish milking out a cow, you will feel it. I have a friend who grew up on a farm in Mexico and as a young child milked a small herd of cows every morning and night. To this day the muscles in his hands are damaged. I have no interest in permanent hand damage.

  I also worry about the cleanliness of milking into a pail. The bucket is partially open on top to allow the milk to enter the pail. Above the pail are the teats, the udder and the belly of the cow. She has been potentially sitting in dirt or manure prior to coming into the milking parlor and although the teats and udder are first cleaned, dirt can fall into the pail from the belly or sides of the cow.

  Here is how a basic small milking machine operates: The parts are a vacuum pump, a bucket and lid, a pulsator, inflations and the milk lines and vacuum lines that link the vacuum, the cow and the bucket. The inflations are rubber sleeves that slip over the cow's teats. The milk flows down the inflations and into the milk lines to the bucket. The milk is sucked out of the teats of the cow by the vacuum pump. Although the original inventors thought that they could just run a constant suction to extract the milk, the incessant vacuum quickly damaged the teats. The vacuum has to be interrupted, mirroring the action of the calf’s mouth on the teat. The result is a pulsator, a mechanical contraption that breaks the constant vacuum pressure into a series of vacuum cycles. This gives the teat a chance to rest in between moments of pressure. The level of vacuum determines the number of cycles per minute.

  Essential to the good hygiene of the milk is the proper cleaning of the cow’s teats and udder. In the hours preceding milking she may have slept in manure, which is loaded with coliforms. The teats, and especially the tip of the teats where the milk will be drawn, are generally cleaned with a towel soaked with an iodine-based cleanser. The use of iodine has the ability to disinfect the teat better than other methods. A clean dry towel finishes the procedure by assuring that no moisture runs down the udder and into the inflation, potentially contaminating the milk.

  The bucket milker is assembled, linking the can with the vacuum line, then the inflations with the cow’s teats. Small plugs temporarily fill the ends of the inflations to create a complete vacuum. Without a completely tight system, a vacuum will not be achieved and the inflations will fall off the teats of the cow. If there is a leak somewhere in the system, either from a loose hose or a misaligned lid gasket, the vacuum can never be achieved. It is a frustrating moment, as you rush about trying to find the leak before the cow runs o
ut of the grain that occupies her attention. With an unruly cow, quickly concern can turn to panic as the cow begins rustling about looking for more grain.

  Acquiring my first cow—Dinah—gave me insight into the dairy business, something I knew nothing about beforehand.

  The dairy business is by nature reluctant to change. Many young interns join small vegetable farms, bringing new blood into market farms every year. The cost of starting up a small intensive farm to sell vegetables at a farmers’ market is relatively small in comparison to that of a dairy business. The need for large tracts of land for pasture, cows, barns, milking equipment, along with a steep learning curve, make the entrants to dairy farms traditionally the offspring of established dairymen and not new young farmers with fresh ideas. Tradition has a real value in preserving the old ways, but it robs the industry of a chance for much-needed innovation.

  The dairy business is also a rather closed community. The investment needed to start a dairy is huge, even for a small one-hundred-head dairy. Finding a quantity of land needed to pasture a large herd is even harder today near a metropolitan area. Often the dairies have been passed down from father to son for generations, frequently in families of Dutch origin. As a result, an outsider showing up to buy a cow is immediately suspect and not necessarily given access.

  There is always a steady stream of young female calves, and the dairies are constantly retiring their older or less-productive cows. The new heifers (female calves) will replace the retired cows. If the dairy is trying to expand, they will retire fewer cows and keep all of their young heifers; if they are trying to decrease their herd, then they will retire more of their older cows.

  The smart dairyman therefore has cows to shed constantly: the older and less-productive cows and often the sick and diseased cows. He has to swap them to maintain or increase his productivity and quality standard of milk. If he sends the cow to auction, he will get a low price from someone looking to slaughter the cow to produce ground beef.