Losing a milk cow

I recently told a friend about losing our cow Honey, and she responded with, "Well, most farmers I know are very in touch with life and death and know when to let things go and when things are supposed to die. I suppose you learned a lesson from it."

This comment made me realize that before we had a family cow I would not have understood the incredible impact of such an event and what it would mean for a family to loose their milk cow. Cows are such a distant and abstract animal for most modern urban people, who will always express sorrow if someone looses their cat or dog (who don't even support the family with food--in fact require feeding and vet bills). To say that we lost a cow, to them, must be like loosing a piece of machinery.

To us, loosing Honey was a staggering set-back, because we are so small and just beginning our herd. To us she was family, food, fertility and the hopes of our own herd one day. I begin to contemplate the value of the cow--which was the original stock of the stock market--and I believe the old words for cow express this so well--"Chattle"--meaning wealth--and even before that "Kind" from which the words "Kindred" and "Kindness" come from.

Not only was she our source for richness--milk, cream, butter, and cheese for our children to grow on, but also she produced food for the pigs, the chickens and the turkeys, and her manure fed the garden and we were hoping for a calf next year. And suddenly it was gone, and everyone is deprived. The farm seems a much poorer place without our cow, and our herd is much diminished.

Thankfully, we have goats milk still, and we could obtain milk for ourselves from other places--although at great cost or diminished quality, but I can still sense the tragedy of what it means to lose your cow--a long time ago or in other places it might mean not surviving the winter, or being very hungry at least. I think the most valuable lesson we have learned from this is what an incredible gift of richness the cow is.