City Girls-Farm Girls

I have had some time to think about doing whatever I want in the last year and I have neglected to do that...just anything I want. I have done some sleeping in, but not much...and I have sat on the couch, but not much. So what does it mean to do anything you want? In a first reaction I think it means be completely and 'utterly' selfish and self seeking and playing games like Selfish Skipbo...(which doesn't work at all ask Bobby or Tracy or Adam or Aaron---its a quick round of anyone playing by any rules to do whatever they want to get rid of thier cards first.) So what would you do if you could do anything? Well I have discovered what that looks like. Little bits here and there. So as I pondered the jobs and the livelyhoods of those arounds me---I considered trying to understand what they did all day long...what they were busy with...and why they do it. Couple that overwhelming thought with having most Tuesdays and Wednesdays off and I have some time to discover these things. I would call it the Shadow Project 2007. In trying to fill that time...and not sensing a need to get paid for it I want to do all I can to just 'know' my friends and my aquaintences a bit more by knowing what they spend all day doing. Maybe it's an escape from my 'non-linear' job life....if so who cares. So this project was off with a bang. January 9 brought my first Shadow Project. Most of the appointments are things I have never done before and in a moments time...just feel like doing. And I think that is the definition of doing whatever I want---its not whatever you think I should do, but actually doing what I want.

Shadow Project #1-----The Dairy Farmers

Glen and Yvonne De Vries

Tracy and I awoke at 4:15am to drive to Newkirk, IA to spend a normal morning on the De Vries Dairy Farm. It was cold, it was stinky, it was eye opening. How did I come to get to this specific farm...well I am a waitress with Yvonne at the Nederlander's Grille (She is the small red coated princess with her hand on an udder) She never gets up this early but kept saying, "For you Erika....just for you I will get up to show you around....just for you." Tracy looks a bit nervous. Standing in the milking parlor (a pretty fancy name for a little alley way with machines and 10 cows backed up to the poles) was a dangerous thing. No, you won't get kicked, but you might be sprayed by a vaccum pressured machine that upon its completion of the milking---releases pressure and flies off the udder spraying milk at anyone standing close. The udder anxiety was soaring.

Glen was a great teacher and showed us how to squeeze the teat (can I say that in a blog entry...it sounds vulgar...I suppose it is not) I was too gentle with it....but finally I sqeezed hard enough to get some milk action. Yvonne told me that she would mind a bath in fresh cow milk--its about 80 degrees F.(or more!)

We listened to classical Mannheim Steamroller---some old Christmas CD's in the mix while we learned the cleaning and preparing of the udder. I tell you some of those bags were droopy. Glen knows the cows by the udders. That's like saying you only know the girls by thier chests...except I have never heard of cow rights activits...that were cows to defend thier rights to udder abuse. The day cows realize that they are being milked is a scary day.

Then before we left we got to bottle feed some calves. Yvonne usually does this job...getting those small ones all weened off the udder. This cow I have is a crazy one...not as much as Tracy's---she wrestled the thing (arm around the neck in a head lock and a slam to the hay floor). My cow has a bad disease and is loosing hair...similar to kemotherapy. He was cute when he kept ramming his head into Tracy's butt to see if there was more milk for him. Meanwhile I was in the stall next door with some calves born yesterday....feeding them. And in that stall was the mother, still dripping with birthing juices and kindly giving off a delicious placenta smell. Mmmm, my stomach is churning.

Shadow Project #1 was a success on the farm. We will go in the spring to see the rest of it. I imagine that they wont do anything until we come next time. But that is false. They will milk cows and feed them twice a day until we join them again. wow. That really blows my mind.