When the Cream got the Rat

Leanne at a kiddy farm 1980. So sanitised.

The cow yard, as we called it, was located on the eastern side of the creek that ran through my Grandfather’s farm. It was a short walk from his house, past the barn to the dairy. In a good flood the comparatively narrow ridge running along the creek bank was all that remained above flood-level between it and the road that ran between Dad’s farm and my grandfather’s. In reality, Dad and Pa worked together and while I don’t know how the arrangement worked financially it was basically a shared concern.

The dairy was an important part of the farm economy. Here the cows were milked, the cream was separated from the milk for sale, and the skim milk was piped across the creek into a 44 gallon (200 litre) drum with the top cut out. From here it was scooped out in a bucket and poured into the different troughs in the pig sty. Each year one of these animals would make a contribution to the Christmas festivities.

A bridge of sorts had been constructed so that we could cross the creek to the pig sty. Basically, this was a row of planks resting on the top of poles that had been placed in the swamp. I can’t recall anyone ever falling off this, but it was not all that stable.

Twice each day, every day of the year, the cows were herded into the cow yard for milking – we probably had somewhere between 30 and 40 animals. The yard itself, apart from a narrow strip of grass along the side nearest the creek, was totally devoid of grass. In dry periods it was a dust bowl and in the rain boggy and slippery. The dust, of course, was a mixture of soil and cow manure. No bull dust however. He was kept on the other side of the fence.

We had, from memory, six bales into which the cows were herded for milking. This part of the facility was covered, had a concrete floor, and was closed in on three sides. Once the cow was herded into a bale she was chained in to stop her wandering and the milking machine fitted to her teats. Sometimes it was necessary to rope one of her back legs to stop her kicking. The milking machine was operated by vacuum and it allowed a gentle massage of the teat. Sometimes I would place my fingers into one of the cups of the machine and let it massage them. Once most of the milk had been sucked out by the machine we would finish the process by hand, making sure that we had fully milked each cow. This was the fun bit.

Flies were attracted to the milking area by the bucket load, especially in summer. At times the air was thick with them. As we tried to milk the cow the flies would crawl in our eyes, ears, and if we breathed in through our mouth we could inhale them. Just because the cow was being milked didn't mean she would not urinate, defecate, or both. So as we milked away we could be splattered by cow wee or poo as it landed on the concrete floor. To add insult to injury, the cow might attempt to swat away flies with her urine drenched tail and it was not uncommon to have this strike across the face.

Once a calf reached a certain age it would be taken from its mother and placed in a paddock alongside the cow yard. For a while after this we would feed them milk from a bucket. This was a fun job. The calves would jostle with each other to get their heads through the fence into the bucket and we had to make sure that each one had a good feed. One way of keeping some control over this chaos was to drench the hand that was not holding the bucket in milk and stick it in the mouth of one of the calves. They would suck away on this and I loved the feel on my hand.

The rest of the facility was fully enclosed and was divided into two rooms. One housed the electric pump that drove the milking machine and an older, large, single cylinder four stroke engine from the pre-electric days that was used as a backup when the power failed. In the other room was a large tank into which the milk was pumped before being fed through the machine that separated the cream from the milk. It was also in this room that all the equipment was cleaned after each milking session.

One thing I still miss is milk fresh from the cow – warm and creamy. And we had an endless supply of it. Pasteurised milk took a bit of getting used to after growing up on the real stuff.

The cream was stored in a purposely built shed a short distance from the dairy. It had flow through ventilation at the top and bottom. Cream was stored in a cream can and the local carrier picked it up two or three times a week to transport it to the butter factory at Ulmarra. Another childhood delight was scooping the cream out of the can with my fingers and sucking them clean. After day or two the cream would begin to taste like yoghurt.

Cream was graded by the butter factory as either A, B, or C class, with A being the best. The cheque reflected the grading.

Well I remember the day my grandfather found a drowned rat in the almost full cream can when he came to put the lid on to send it to market. This didn’t deter Grandfather. He simply lifted the rat dripping cream out by the tail and threw it into the creek, placed the lid on the can, and sent it to the factory. It became a bit of a family joke for some time after that the cream tested A grade.

One drawback of dairying is the need to milk twice a day every day. This was not a real issue while Dad and Pa worked the farm together because there was always one to cover for the other. Mum or Nana would always help out if needed and Mum would often help while Dad was helping our neighbours during the cane harvesting season. Sometimes Dad would also pay Colin Green, who was 6 or 7 years older than me, to help if we were going away.

After Pa died and as sugar prices increased Dad let the dairy go and along with this the piggery.  However he kept the cattle, sending a load to the abattoir from time to time. Sometime later, probably to do with a downturn in the sugar price, he played with the idea of returning to dairying. However, by this time the regulation of the industry had changed and the costs associated with establishing the dairy made this an unattractive option.

The farm is no longer in family hands. So it seems most unlikely that my grandchildren will ever know what it is like to be splattered with cow poo, slapped across the face by a cow’s tail drenched with urine, or drag a dead rat out of a cream can.