Growing up in a world totally unknown by today’s youth, I was raised in the company of coon dogs and Jersey cows.
I don’t know what the earliest memories of today’s youngsters include, but mine include snapshots of Dad’s hunting dogs and dairy cattle, more than of any childhood friends. Excepting Mom and his boys, those were the greatest loves of Dad’s life.
I include coon dogs because they were always present. Mom loved to tell stories of a beloved bluetick, “Frosty,” who was my earliest caretaker, grabbing me by the seat of my pants to keep me from running out in the road. Before I was even in the picture, Dad’s overriding concerns when writing home from US Navy boot camp during World War II were his sisters, his brother and his coon dogs – not necessarily mentioned in that order.
In dim memories of my toddler years it’s dogs I recall, but in my early school years I was always around cows and calves. My most vivid memories are from when I was about 8 years old and Dad kept a Jersey show string for a local doctor. I never actually helped him milk, but I still recall the first time he let me wrap my little fingers around a teat and try.
Though I had no part in regular chores, I was often amongst the herd and had a particularly favorite heifer that let me cozy up to her as she was lying down. I know it sounds corny, but I distinctly recall lying there, looking up to the stars and serenading her just like the cowboys on television.
After my folks bought their farm near Elkland, my association with Jersey cows and calves was a mite less romantic.
Even before the move, one night Dad drove me to a farm where he was running a small herd of purebred Jersey milk cows and pointed them out one-by-one with the spotlight on our 1953 Mercury. I had no idea he had been building a herd of his own.
Nine years old at the time, I had already spent a lot of time around cows in the company of Dad, an artificial inseminator. I had been in more barn lots and travelled more country road than any of my school friends – many of which liked to tease me about Dad being a “cow breeder.”
I don’t recall exactly when I began milking cows. Dad had a milking machine when we first moved to the farm, but it quit working within the first year. So I reckon I was 10 going on 11 when I got my first milk bucket and was assigned the daily chore of milking Ol’ Susan, a docile registered Jersey that became mine to milk for several more years – but not the only one.
Before and after I had milking chores, I also had bucket calves to feed and older ones to grain. Of course, my brothers had their chores, too.
Early in my milking days, Dad pulled a certificate from his farm records showing I was a member of the Junior Jersey Cattle Club – news to me, but I was proud to be included in what Dad loved almost much as his boys.
Milking cows by hand both night and morning, every day of the year from in the fifth grade until after high school, I considered myself a dairy farmer, just the same as my dad. When I started in FFA, a Jersey heifer became my project, and I kept the records on her for the next four years.
Though I didn’t share directly in the cash proceeds from my milking, haying and all the rest, I never expected to. I learned as a got older than some of my friends got a bit of their milk checks.
What I got was a place to live, food, clothing and all of my needs met – just the same as Dad – with a good bit of help from Mom’s income as a medical technologist.
I don’t reckon I need to ramble on about how I was raised by milk cows. It should be obvious to any of us from that era of farming: As long as we could just get by, have time for coon dogs and fishing, life was good.
We were dairy farmers.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
