JOYFUL GRATITUDE #140

This week I spent a day with my colleagues on an organic dairy farm. It was a welcome break from the usual grind in the office.  Literally, a breath of fresh air… including the potent smell of dung of course (though I noticed you get used to it surprisingly fast:).

In the course of an afternoon we experienced rounding up the 46 cows from a field down the road and escorting them to the barn where we helped (a bit:) with the milking. The cows are beautiful, huge with shining fur and it’s funny to see they have different characters, they know what they like and don’t like, and are very human-like.

Even if this experience just scratched the surface, it was eye-opening for me as a city-girl to realise how relentless this lifestyle is (having to make sure the cows are milked twice a day no matter what, going through the motions with each individual cow, keeping the milking space as hygienic as possible, checking how each cow is doing…).

I suggested we should do team outings like this regularly, to be more in touch with where our food is coming from and what the life of a farmer is like, even if it is just a glimpse, to avoid romanticising it or ignoring the difficulties.

I’m grateful to have a chance to get out of my urban bubble and learn a lot in a day.  Even though I realise that dairy farming has a huge negative environmental impact and should be reduced, I appreciate that there are farmers trying to do so on a small scale, organically and with deep respect of the animals, and the hard work that goes into producing each glass of organic milk.  Next time I hope we go to an organic veggie farm:)