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“C’mon girls. C’mon,” Mike Vieira calls out his evening invitation to the ladies in black and white at Spokane’s Family Farm. “C’mon,” he repeats, walking into the pasture, “C’mon. Let’s go.” Visitors make the “girls” hesitate slightly, but they eventually oblige and line up behind the barn door for the evening milking. It’s a ritual repeated twice daily at the farm 13 miles west of Spokane where Mike and Trish Vieira bottle up to 2,000 gallons of milk each week. “This is what everyone thinks of when they think of a dairy,” Mike Vieira says. The couple began milking cows a little over a month ago, after spending the winter retrofitting the 100-year-old barn with modern milking and pasteurizing equipment and preparing for the arrival of the Holstein cows/Lorie Hutson, SR. More here.
Question: Have you ever milked a cow by hand?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
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Stickman on May 20 at 9:34 p.m.
Never, and I don’t regret that fact.
lew2nl on May 21 at 1:07 a.m.
The only trophy I ever received in my entire life was for winning the Co-ed Cow Milking Contest during Ag Days at the Univ. of Idaho over 55 years ago. I grew up on a farm and had to choose between doing the dishes or milking the cows during harvest season. My sister had to do the dishes.
spokelooneh on May 21 at 12:37 p.m.
Now that’s what a dairy farm should be. Great story.
Yes, I had a try at milking a cow when I was in elementary school.