RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,347
('smelling like a cow too')
John Maynard Keynes, an
influential economist, while
plotting for the future, made
mention of how Economists
always looked for 'In the long
run' ideas. His riposte was, 'In
the long run, we're all dead.'
I always kept that in my head
as I progressed through my
early/mid 20's, which mostly
included Columbia Crossroads
and Elmira, and engaged me in
an entirely new array of ideas
and exposures. It was interesting.
-
Cows and animals, for one thing.
One day, waiting around in Warren's
barn, I happened upon a cow calving.
I'd never experienced that before.
Warren, the farmer whose barn it
was, was up at the house, with
some relatives visiting. They
were having dinner, mid-day, so
I was hanging around the barn,
preparing some chores for later.
I heard the cow making noise,
and I stepped over to her (there
were some 30 cows, each in a
stanchion. The birthing pens were
the last 3 at the end). The cow
was in obvious labor, or whatever
it is that cows giving birth experience.
Her moans and groans resembled
nothing so much as exaggerated
mooing, but with a much more
stressed and nervous expression.
I was hoping it wasn't 'pain' in the
dangerous sense. The calf was about
a quarter-way out. It seemed stuck,
and the noises were getting worse.
I somehow felt heroic, less than
panicked. Working at this point
almost by a weird intuitive instinct,
I went to the wall and took down a
coil of rope. I tied it carefully yet
securely around the portion of the
calf coming out. I slowly leaned
backwards, assisting the direction
of exit. The noises were still loud,
and, at first, nothing happened. Then,
slowly and with a gradual feeling
of wet lubrication, it all began sliding
out. To my relief, and amazement!
The cow's noises lessened and all
the slow-time things that had been
stalled just seemed to click into
real-time instead. It a few seconds,
or what seemed like it, the head of
the calf extended well out, and was
followed by the rest of its body.
Everything ended up on the hay
and the ground/floor of the barn.
I was astounded how the calf had
just plopped out, apparently guided
by my silly rope. There was blood
and a mucus, everywhere, and the
new calf was sort of plopped right
in the middle of it all. For a while
everything held in place; the mother
cow seemed stilled and tired, the
calf seemed dazed and without any
orientation. They only slowly began
to move, and the mother began
licking everything as a clean-up.
I undid the rope and just left
them be there. I went up to the
house and, knocking at the door,
asked for Warren and explained
what had happened. He came down
to the barn with me. All was well
and he was pleased. I had put the
rope, after some cleaning and a
re-coiling, back on the barn-wall
hook. I never quite got whether
what I did was helpful, or just
ordinary, nor if it was done that
way often. Warren just said, 'Oh,
it's different every time. Yes,
sometimes they get stuck. Mostly
they birth in the field, which is
easier all around.' It was weird.
-
When I first arrived to the house
we'd bought, Warren's original barn
had recently burned down. What
got me interested in the whole scene
(he was maybe a half mile off, down
the road and a bit of a hill), was the
'barn-bee' that was going on - people
from many of the local places would
volunteer time and tools and the
whole bunch went to work building
Warren and his family a new barn.
It was pretty cool, and I kept going
back when I had the time; moving
buckets of nails, supplying guys with
the tools and boards they needed, all
just general on-site help. I was not
an expert in any part of this work,
but I fit in and no one grumbled.
It was a way of meeting people.
My wife, as well, fir right in with
the other ladies, busy supplying
sandwiches and sodas and lemonade
(no alcohol), as they were, and then
at the mid-day of Saturday they'd
put out a more substantial 'thank
you' meal. Everyone else, by like
4pm, had mostly to report back to
their own farms for evening chores
and milking and such. Somehow they
fit all this in and the job got done in
maybe a month or so. To my eyes,
the only problem was the ugliness
of the new barn. It wasn't in any
sense an old-style barn. Combined
of a cinder-block foundation and a
sort of Quonset hut look, it was
pretty crummy and seemed way
too new and out of place in the
rolling farmlands around it,
where most things were still
old and from the 1880's. In any
case, it became where we worked
and it became the new and most
'modern' barn around, housing
some 30 milkers, and an in-the-floor
chain drop system, fully mechanized,
which meant no more laborious
shoveling of cow-plops. It was
all quite simply carried out by the
chain teeth rotating in the floor-
foundation at the push of a button.
It was carried outside and up, to be
plopped off into the 'honey-wagon'.
Which was merely a large cart, also
mechanized, once connected to the
drive of a tractor, and - driven over
the field - it would cast and spray
manure as fertilizer as directed.
Pretty nifty. But you still needed
boots, and you could come out
smelling like a cow too.
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