Anonymous cows spend their days and nights and regular seen as countryside sights, of mixed colours roaming in roadside fields grazing tended pastures to raise their yields. An era of milk trade as high tech as it got with electric milk floats and bottles of gold top, and highlight dairy the rising star delivering goodness and raising the bar.
Historical hard winters and remembering those, cold mornings on tractor when diesel did froze. Commercial and red and cheap as chips, one of farming’s state run tricks. Straight from refinery and with colour modified, red or yellow – it all solidified.
Freezing winters showed no compassion for fuel tractors used in carefree fashion. All waxed up and jelly in fuel lines, farming was harder back in those times.
Technology was there waiting in line to showcase the milk trade ahead of its time. So getting milk from fields to door step, ingenious thinking and manicured pre-prep.
Fields grazed and cows milked and milk filtered and analysed, off to dairy factory and subsequently pasteurised.
During the process was at the point when, the suits and the rule makers realised,
worse for the public and better for them, so invent shit process and homogenise. Creamed off and sold off and plastic containerised, coloured bottle tops forgotten and tasteless milk standardised.
Forgotten is tough and hard farming ways, staying up and working for fifteen hour days, to bring that milk from cow to door drop, suppose most don’t consider how all that milk got.
Or where it came from even to say, as cows you don’t see much more these days. Remembering when cows was mostly outside and the natural course of the seasons decide. Only during winter did they stay in the stalls waiting for spring when the green grass calls. Wait until the nitro-grass grows for one of farmings greatest shows. Outside they goes in a stampede rush, commonly known as the great spring push.
But farming has changed sadly to say and now it’s run by the supermarket way. So public goes and buys their milk, from floor to ceiling stacked to the hilt.
Pictures of cows would educate some so as they had some idea where their milk came from. Hardly as much as that to show, just plastic bottles lined up in rows.
Invisible cow’s, if only they knew, after all the trouble that they went to, larking and grazing and playing around and chewing the cud when she’s lying down. All for the dairy the lifelong grind, but sadly she’s out of sight and out of mind.
Original posting – December 2016.
Of legends are us. 