THE DRAMA OF THE MILK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 259, 9 June 1944, Page 20

THE DRAMA OF THE MILK

N the suburb where I live there is a farm, and here there is enacted daily a drama that I look on as the Miracle of the Milk -the busy activity that leads to the presence of a sealed bottle of milk on your doorstep before 7.30 a.m. in summer and 8.30 a.m. in winter. The characters in this milk drama are: 55 to 60 cows; 1 bull; 2 farm mares-of-all-work; 2 milk-cart horses; the farmer with his 2 dogs; 1 land-girl; a milkroundsman and his son; and, off-stage, various other milk-roundsmen, lorry drivers, factory workers, and office workers; and, back-stage, wives who rise while it is yet night to make 4 o’clock, 5 o'clock, any o’clock breakfasts .. . Stage-properties: A four-cow milking plant, cooling apparatus and refrigerator; washing buckets and _ stripping fous dozens of cans and hundreds of bottles; 2 delivery carts; 2 delivery vans; lorries attached to the pasteurising and bottling plant (known as the treating house); gum-boots (with luck, a pair each for the on-stage workers); hose pipe, yard brooms, and water, water, water, always water running on the concrete floors; farm implements of various kinds; harness and stable gear. Time: 20 to 22 hours round the clock. Place: The action moves from the farm to the treating house (in the city) and back to the farm; and from the farm to all the houses on the round. ; /

The farm is of 100 acres, 10 in hay, 3 in sweet corn, the rest in pasture. About 15 subdivisions allow for rotation of hay and corn crops as well as for rotational grazing; thus the herd is always on comparatively fresh pasture. The farmer’s day is filled with 2 milk-ings-and 202 activities for the maintenance and renewal of the herd, the pastures, the crops, the buildings, the implements, the fences, the water troughs and the gates. The first milking is at 6 a.m., the second late in the afternoon; and in between there are no idle moments for the farmer or his assistants -or for the cows. You will see them standing idle just before milking-time; but watch them as they come from the bails: heads down,

intent, they make for the gate; then all in the same direction they move slowly over the paddock and mow, mow, mow the grass down. Listen, and you will hear the steady, regular sound of tearing

grass: the cows are at work, filling-up for the next milking. This is their job, twice a day, every day of the week, every week of nine or ten months of the year, every year of four or five or perhaps even nine or ten years of their lives.

And this they do, for the most part, in silence: perhaps we hear them bellow for a couple of days each year when a one-day-old complaining calf has been taken away to end its brief acquaintance with this green world. The rest is silence-unless you count the swish of the torn grass, the gulp of that visible two-way swallow, the belly rumble as the cud goes home. Perhaps it’s the regularity that keeps them contented. ue * * Let us say the milk-roundsman’s day begins at 5.30 p.m. This is when he goes to the farm-by bicycle-to whistle in the milk-cart horses, Charlie and Joe, off the hill where they have been grazing since 8.30 or 9 a.m. Down the steep and muddy hillside they come, Joe first, Charlie second, world without end; into the yard they go, Joe first, Charlie second. The first bucket of chaff goes in the square box; Joe begins; the second bucket in the round drum; Charlie begins-the same every day, world without end. Joe’s face is very long from the eyes down (even for a horse) and he looks as if he knows all the answers (but to somewhat old-fashioned questions); Charlie is, self-effacing unless there are apples about. The milk roundsman goes home to a 6.30 meal and to an evening with his account books; on a good night for arithmetic he gets to bed by 8.30, on a bad night perhaps not till 11. At 1 a.m. he has to yawn himself awake; by 2 a.m. he is in the city collecting a van load of bottles and cans of pasteurised (continued on next page)

. (continued from previous page) milk. Back at the farm he loads the bottles on to the two horse carts. Joe and Charlie, a lantern swinging between them, get a quick bite of midnight supper as they are harnessed. Then Charlie with a second roundsman turns downharbour, Joe turns up-harbour — and your milk is on its way. Outside the milk roundsman’s house there are two trees. Joe stops under one and the roundsman runs home for a quick hot cup of tea-while Joe, presumably, enjoys forty winks on his feet. By 3.45 a.m. Joe is digging his toes in pulling the full cart to the top of the hills. By 4 o’clock the first’ bottle clinks in exchange with last night’s empty. Then Joe begins moving steadily downwards, stopping at a call, starting at a whistle as the roundsman runs into this, into that, into the next house with his canvas container full of bottles-sometimes not going back to the cart for half a mile or so. Slow work for Joe, four hours of it; but he keeps level, doesn’t lag behind too long, doesn’t go too far ahead, even when he is nearing home. The roundsman runs to the last block of buildings, Joe edgés past this driveway, past the next driveway, further, a little further, and there he is, on the very corner of the block, half of him on to the crossroad, ready for a flying

start. Heavy flying, it may be; but watch Joe, head down, shoulders plugging away, and listen to the clatter of his hooves as he tears off round the corner towards home and 9 or 10

hours out to grass. (But he has to pause, even then, on the way; it is 7.30, perhaps 8 o’clock, and the roundsman ties Joe to the second tree outside his house while he goes inside for his breakfast.) aK % 1 At the farm again, the roundsman takes the pasteurised milk in the cans and drives in the motor van round the dairies in the district; then back for the morning’s wash-down- little cans, big cans, dippers all to be thoroughly washed, scalded and drained; the treating house lorries call for the raw milk and take the empties back for filling with pasteurised milk. And at the treating house there is more washing, more sterilising, of every utensil, every bottle. bd 3 a An hour here and there for oiling harness, washing down the carts, cleaning the vans; another hour here and there for shoeing Charlie and Joe; and the morning has gone. Two afternoons and one evening a week go in collecting from customers who do not leave daily or weekly money out with their bottles; one afternoon goes in the weekly visit to the city office to present accounts; one afternoon, with luck, is empty for gardening, odd-jobs about the house, odd-. jobs about the farm; and in between, the roundsman takes his sleep when he can get it-and few noises will stop him, .

Nice work if you can get it?

J.