The ladies of the Qualicum Cheeseworks on Vancouver Island are gushers.

As the momma cows trudged out of the field into the barn, each udder, roughly the size of the plastic bladder inside a Costco box o’ wine, swung to and fro.  I’d been petting the new calves just a minute before, and they were charming, all nuzzle’y with dewy black eyes.  Their mommas were not.  They were massive and slobbery and their black eyes were more dull than dewy.

The crammed against each other at the base of a ramp, knew their routine, were probably eager for the relief of the milking room beyond the door at the top of the slope.  When the young man opened the door to that room—a 25’ X 25’ collection of gates and  hoses and foot-tall glass containers shaped like medicine capsules—ten mommas at a time eagerly waddled in, took their standard places at their individual feed troughs, and proceeded to thoroughly destroy the mix of oats, molasses, barley, and wheat that poured out of from chutes above.

Thus happily distracted, they ignored the man as he wiped down each of the fifty teats in the room with antiseptic.  The forthcoming milk would be body temperature, just the right level of heat to appeal to any bacteria looking for a reason to jump from a leg or trace of grime and cause an infection.  A teat infection.  An infected teat.  Sounds like a Reagan-era straightedge band.

Post infection-prevention, the man tugged each teat to confirm full functioning, then attached five hoses ending in five small vacuum cups to each.  The ladies were oblivious.  And they remained oblivious as their milk exploded into the glass canisters, rolled down the sides, frothed.  I thought about Little House on the Prairie and A Day No Pigs Would Die and any other book that featured or, from this distant vantage seem likely to have featured, the drinking fresh milk from a warm pail.  This might have seemed appealing when I was reading about it 25 years ago.  It is not particularly appealing now.

Each momma cow is in and out of the room in about five minutes.  After milking,  the teats stay open for another half hour, so the guy wiped them down with iodine, and the ladies lumbered into the next room to eat more, giving time for the teats to close.

And then Shannon and I went to town in the cheese tasting room next door, tasted everything, a few of them twice, and settled on a buttery Caerphilly and a ripe, biting Raclette.  But when we found out fresh cheese curds could be had if we returned in three-day’s-time, well, we planned a second trip.