Still Life With Cow

I have this thing about cows. I don’t know why. It’s not as if I hold them to the highest esteem, as I am still happy to have a steak on my plate. But for some reason, I have always looked at a field of cows from a car window and smiled. Cows make me smile.

You could not imagine my thrill to find that we would be living cow adjacent in our new home. When we first moved in, the cows were across the road in a field; now they are in a field that abuts the west side of our property, often feeding directly against our fence – oh joy!

I used to have proof regarding my early connection to a cow: a photograph of my sister and I shows us standing near a cow, she six years old and me five years of age. The photo is long lost, but my mom always used to say “that was the first cow you ever milked”, as if my association with cows continued and I have a long list of cows that I have milked. Not so. As a matter of fact, that may have been the first and last cow that I ever milked.

Early on, I believe that I was able to connect cows with cheese very quickly and therefore could fully understand their value. I mean, you don’t watch Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers for nothin’. Surely I must have been shown during my young PBS viewing years that milk comes from cows and that milk always has the potential to become cheese. Cheese has figured prominently in my life. Therefore, cows should be regaled and thanked for this gift to my palate.

Once, when I was about nineteen or something, someone told me that only black and white cows give milk. I bought this statement hook line and sinker, feeling that it had to be true due to the fact that one really only sees Holsteins on large dairy farms, not your brown Jersey or other breed. Yes, you may mock my naiveté. I do. I think I finally figured out the error in this belief in my mid-twenties. Boy, did I feel duped.

So it goes to follow that just because I like cows – I definitely like their meat and the cheese that they bless this world with – doesn’t mean that I really know that much about cows. And even though that picture of me and my sister standing next to a cow is proof that I was at one point very close to a cow, I do not have a distinct memory of the event. I don’t really know what it feels like to touch a cow, but I kinda want to.

Lately, I’ve been taking pictures of the cows. They are not so cooperative, especially when Lucy is with me and starts barking at them the closer I get. Lately I have been trying to approach the fence alone and without Lucy’s “help”. Um, the cows still think that I should find other subjects… unless they actually like me taking pictures of their rear ends as they walk away. I’m not so fond of this angle, but I am getting used to it.

I was hoping to capture a cow unawares and therefore unable to run away from me, mooing in disgust. I tried this on the road when I came across some wayward cows that had escaped their fence. Again with the running. Whatever.

So, me and cows: I adore them, and they don’t care. That is okay, though, I can still worship their primary mission in life, which is to give me cheese and meat. Maybe someday these cows will eventually allow me to simply walk up to them and take pictures of their gorgeous faces without the skittishness that has so far characterized our relationship.

I feel like I should be studying the moves of Jane Goodall or Diane Fossey, tempting the cows to make friends with me through my constant presence in their midst. Tim will awake one morning to find me in our backyard at 5AM, poised with a tripod and ready to snap the cows just being themselves. I don’t know what I expect to find… perhaps they really let their hair down and just moo with reckless abandon.

I will definitely keep you up to date.