Fifth in the Helping Dad series

I wish I could go back to help with milking one more spring afternoon. I would like to take the trip with my adult awareness so I would appreciate and enjoy every minute.

The walk from the house to the barn takes only a few minutes. This time I am going slowly so all my senses have time to take in the moment. It is early evening, late for milking after a day in tobacco. The farm is as green as Ireland and the air is soft on my skin. The frogs in the pond are starting to sing. I smell dirt, newly turned in the garden. It smells like hope to me with my grown up perception, hope for the future in a new farming season.

I walk into the milk room and through the door and into the milk shed. All the lights are on inside, it will be dark soon The milking shed is warm with the heat of 40 cows, but the day is starting to cool outside. It is brighter in the shed than I remember. The concrete block walls and the wood ceiling must have been whitewashed recently. The setting sun makes the doorway to the barn lot a brilliant yellow-white rectangle.

A little radio plays country music with the volume low. The cows in their stanchions clink the metal chains that hold the stanchions down. They are content after scooping up feed with their long, long tongues. They stamp their feet and switch their tails to move a few ever-present flies. There is a swoosh, click, swoosh sound that I can here any time I think of the milk shed. It comes from the suction pump that powers the milkers.

The smells of cow, manure, feed, milk, and hay combine into a smell that is not like any other place. It has all the elements of life- sweet, savory, acrid, musky and foul. I disliked it once upon a time, but it has a place in my heart with the memories of my dad.

My dad is between two cows, stooped and putting a milker on the one to his left, always the left one. He stands up, he looks so young. His hair is black again and his skin is brown from the sun. He is a good looking man in his old clothes and baseball cap. He sees me and grins, white teeth contrasting with his skin. “Where have you been?”, he asks.