Milk Run

Theresa Hardy cleans the udders of one of her cows before attaching the milk suction system to the udders.

Ivan Hardy loves his cows. He and his wife, Theresa, welcomed us to their farm in Montrose, Prince Edward Island. They grow all manner of veggies and Theresa uses Facebook to alert the locals of her specials. But for Ivan, I sensed, it was all about the cows.

He has Holsteins and Guernseys and a French breed. Each cow has a personality that's much larger than the number that is stapled to their ear. We stood in the cowshed as the light began to fade on Saturday. A Guernsey-Holstein mix with a lovely chocolate-brown coat chewed her cud right beside us while Ivan explained how she reaches down to one of her four stomachs and brings back up some food which she then chews again before swallowing one more time. He held her head and she swallowed again and again. “That's the sign of a contented cow,” Ivan said as she worked happily on her cud.

Theresa had brought 10 of their 48 cows into the milking shed earlier while we spent time out in the field with Ivan and his daughter. They were wrapping the green hay in a tight plastic wrap in a long sausage – I call it a termite. This allows the storage of silage for the cattle without the risk of spontaneous combustion. That occurs when the moist hay is stored in a barn, without eliminating the air from the mix. His daughter recalled pulling hot hay from a barn in the earlier years and, as they hauled it out, the hay burst into flames.

Ivan and Theresa explained how they track the cycle of each of their cows with a huge clock-like device that is on the back wall of the shed. She showed us how No. 89 had been impregnated the day before because her number had come up on the “clock”. They have a man who comes around the farms with his assortment of semen. This allows them to choose the characteristics of the bull and the cow for the best chance of fertility, milk production and quality of milk.

The cows are allowed to go dry for two months before producing a calf. Then the first milk from mom is fed to the calf for four days after birth. This allows the calf to receive the mother's vital colostrum. After these days, Ivan said, it is okay to put the cow back into milk production and the calf can receive colostrum that has been frozen and stored from other cows.

The calves, which were in a different part of the cowshed were in stepping-stone ages. It will be more than a year before they are ready for impregnation which begins the milk production cycle.

Ivan and Theresa feed the animals a rich mix of grains, silage and even dulce, a seaweed collected by horses on the shores of the North Cape of Prince Edward Island. They have just started with the dulce and already are finding the benefits as the cows get minerals in a more digestible form.

After dipping each udder of a cow in an iodine solution, Theresa cleaned off the udders and attached the suction system which immediately begins to pull the milk from the cows. It is pumped into a stainless pipe and fed into a huge steel container where its temperature is brought down from 102 degrees to 50 degrees. A tanker arrives every other day and the milk is tested and analyzed before being trucked off to the south for separation and processing.

Ivan took over the farm from his father. He has doubled the acreage to about 200 acres now. He remembers, when growing up in the 50s, that it was the end of the horse era on the farm. His father bought a 40 horsepower tractor and that mechanization changed everything, he said. I asked if they use their own milk and Ivan said they buy their milk from the store. We laughed as he explained Theresa likes to drink skim milk and it's easier to just buy the milk in a carton.

This was our second farm visit through Harvest Hosts, the new group that makes these visits by RV owners possible. Our respect for the hard, hard work of this family is without bounds. This is a tough way to make a living. It's a 24-7 operation, with no days off. But if you love your cows there are rewards.

Earlier in the day, we had driven to the North Cape, another end of the road, where we stood among some of the largest windmills in the world. These behemoths were rotating steadily in the brisk south wind. There is a low-range but very definite thrumming vibration as these windmill blades whipped around. I'd heard about this noise level but its the first time we've gotten close enough to experience the noise. It would take some getting used to if you had to live with it 24 hours a day.