Raw Milk

I didn't think I'd love it as much as I did. I would always hold my nose dramatically whenever we drove by a dairy farm. I would wail "Oh my God!" and hold my breath for as long as I could. Then, one day it all changed. I was in my twenties and just back home from an Au Pare stint in Europe and working at a local vineyard. I didn't need a second job. I was too busy as it was. But there she was: a lovely woman getting a hot cocoa while waiting for her daughter to finish up her violin lesson at the conservatory. I was in line at the coffee shop behind her listening while she told the barista this information. She turned to me and was wearing a sweatshirt with the family's dairy name embroidered on the chest. I didn't even think about it before asking "is that your dairy?" while pointing at her shirt, it was all so automatic. She said that yes it was and it was over right then and there. I was hired as the weekend milker and I just fell in love with the farm and the family. Suddenly, the odor that had offended me so as a youth was as complex and multi-layered as any great wine I had ever had. A heady mix of manure, sweet hay, warm milk and iodine. The pervasive aroma along with the hum of the milkers and the steamy breath of my "girls" on a winter morning was the most comforting feeling I'd ever known. Burned coffee and cigarette paper on my lips, country music scratchily emitting from the radio precariously tied to one of the parlor gates, shit on my boots, humidity in my lungs: my heaven. If I could, I would do it everyday for the rest of my days. Sometimes you lose sight and let other things get in the way. Regrettably, I left my position at the farm. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to catch the eye of a dairy farmer and one day be the mum of a Dairy Princess.