40—Cows. Wow!

One sunny afternoon, I was driving into Tillamook for my workout at the Y when a no-nonsense woman in a hard hat and orange safety vest turned her SLOW sign to STOP. Ahead, a big yellow road machine was flattening a strip of fresh blacktop. As Tillamook County is dairy country, I wasn’t surprised to find myself alongside a pasture where herd of a Holsteins was hanging out. Never having been up close and personal to cows, I was stunned to see how big they are.    

They were so big, in fact, that with only a three-foot ditch between us, I was pleased to have a half-ton pickup on my side. Although a comparative study revealed that the truck’s burgandy color was more of a distinction than size. But then I saw these cows were not the least bit interested in trampling me or my pickup. It was the big yellow machine rolling back and forth over the blacktop that had their attention. As they stood rapt and chewing their cud, it looked like a free popcorn matinee at the CinePlex. 

I gazed out over the field at the rest of the herd, some grazing, others lying down in quiet rumination. I liked their broad gentle faces, their big dark-eyed nuzzling muzzling ways, and ears like huge furry mittens sticking straight out from the sides of their heads. One wandered over to check me out. She mooed. I mooed back. And several others wandered over to join the conversation. 

As I sat, I began to wonder: Where would we be without cows?

There would be no cheese for macaroni or wine.  

And way before Prozac, there was creamy milk chocolate. 

I remembered being four-years-old and terrified at seeing Disney's Pinocchio swallowed by the whale.  

After the movie, my dad carried me down the street from the Capitol Theater to Isaly’s where a strawberry ice cream cone restored me to the safety of childhood. 

I was jolted from my reverie when the cow closest to me started to pee—a golden rush of pee so gigantic that the same force from a garden hose would sting. The peeing also went on and on—a peeing so grand that it seemed to relieve something in me. And when the peeing finally stopped, the cessation created a pocket of stillness in the drone of roller and idling motors.

The flagperson twirled her STOP sign around to SLOW and motioned us on. I drove away, but instead of turning right to go to the Y, I turned left toward the Tillamook Cheese Factory where within minutes of entering the gift ship, I owned John Pukite's A Field Guide to Cows: How to Identify and Appreciate America's 52 Breeds.

Before leaving the parking lot, I’d learned that a cow can detect odors up to five miles away, that there are an estimated 920 breeds of cows in the world, and that a cow sits down and stands up about 14 times a day. I also discovered that Boston, the cradle of our liberty, was formed around cow paths. Cambridge, home of Harvard and the American intellectual tradition, began as a cow pasture—a detail leaping to resonate with the fact that a 1000 pound cow produces 10 tons of manure a year.

On my way home, I stopped at Rainy Day Books where I bought About Cows  and  ordered The Complete Cow, both by Sara Rath.  

At home, I was introduced by Ms. Rath to William Dempster Hoard, the Father of Modern Dairying.

Mr. Hoard ran for governor of Wisconsin back in 1888 as the cow candidate and won. But instead of a crafty politician, he was a well-informed man who led the effort that wiped out tuberculosis in American herds. He also said that everyone should, as the sign in his own barn admonished, “Treat each cow as a Mother should be treated.” 

When I read that Mr. Hoard called the cow “the foster mother of the human race,” I thought it just a charming sentiment until I went on to learn that the ancestor of the modern cow made its way around the globe from India, adapting everywhere to environmental demands and the needs of the nomadic tribes that depended on it.

And wherever the cow went, from the southern parts of Africa to the northern most tip of Scandinavia, she became, as in India, not only a source of physical sustenance but an integral part of spiritual life. 

Clearly, the notions of the sacred cow had changed over the centuries. Yet, the dairy cow managed to remain a creature of mythological proportions—consuming on average 30 gallons of water and 95 pounds of feed per day. And while one cow gives roughly 6.5 gallons of milk a day, it takes 1.8 gallons to produce just 1 pound of butter and 3 gallons to make 1 gallon of ice cream. 

Head over sneakers in fascination with cows, I ran back into the cheese factory and signed up for a farm tour the following day. 

Milk—I thought as I drove home, eager to continue my education—it accompanies all mammals into the world to insure our survival and health. 

Milk—it has informed the evolutionary spirit of humanity from the milk of the simplest human kindness to the great Milky Way churning our souls from the dust of old stars.