Happy Cow!!

Last week Max and I went to the Happy Cow Creamery with a group of Moms and kiddos from Julie's church. We had been to Happy Cow before, and Max had loved looking at the cows so I was really excited that this time we were going to get an actual tour of the facility. Being a farm girl at heart, this kind of stuff really appeals to me as much as it does to Max, let's be honest. And I'm so thrilled that he seems to (so far) share my love of animals.

Max and a bunch of pregnant cows. Including the one holding him.

 

Max was really excited to go (anywhere really) with Nathanael and Julie. So we got to the farm and spent a few minutes checking out the cows by the parking lot before our tour.

Then we all "herded" onto the tractor-pulled wagon. (ha, get it?)

 

Max loved the tractor, of course, but as I suspected, he was ready to disembark from our ride within moments of pulling away from the parking lot. Standing still ain't exactly his fortay.

Regardless, I enjoyed the tour provided by our tour guide, who lives on the farm. She explained to us that those cows that we so enjoy looking at each time we visit are actually the "dry cows" or, in other words, the cows that aren't currently being milked because they are pregnant. In fact, one of them had had a baby overnight before we got there. Supposedly the calf was out in the field when we got there, but I somehow missed it.

I was hoping that we would be riding in the fields amongst the "Happy Cows" but for some (ahem, sexist) reason, the farmer didn't think that our tour guide would be able to drive the tractor through the fields the cows were in without getting stuck. So we ambled along through an empty field and were just able to glimpse the herd of cows from a couple of fields away through some trees. They did look happy, though.

See the cows through those trees?

 She explained to us that in the beginnings of this farm, Farmer Tom (the owner) had kept all of his cows on concrete but that he had learned over time that the cows would produce much more milk if kept in fields, out in the sunshine (duh).

 An interesting fact that I learned was that the cows end up carrying about 70 lbs of milk in their udders before they amble on up to the milking shed (of their own volition, and no wonder!!).  This tour was taking me back to my pre-vet studies at Clemson and I have to say that I was enjoying the smell of cow manure in the morning. Someone (Nathanael) was not enjoying it as much:

So we soon were back at the parking area where we were escorted into the milking barn and Ashley, the tour guide, explained a bit about the milking procedures. She explained that hand milking takes 45 minutes per cow while the machinery they have can get the job done in about 4 minutes per cow. That's about all I heard because by that point Max had reached the end of his attention span, which is also, coincidentally, about 4 minutes.

After a quick little talk by Farmer Tom (again, most of which I did not hear because I was trying to keep Max from running out to pasture), we got to eat some Happy Cow ice cream. Ok, this was up for debate because the ice cream containers had labels from some other farm (in WISCONSIN) on them; but one of the girls apparently asked Ashely about it and she claimed that it was, in fact, Happy Cow ice cream. I'll choose to believe her.

After Max had inhaled his ice cream, he was back over at the cows again. Man he loves those Happy Cows. He refuses to get close to them or to touch them, but he would gladly just stand in front of them for the entire day, pointing at them and telling me that they are "Happy Cows" in the darn cutest little voice.

Somehow by the end of our visit, my kid was the only one covered head to toe in both ice cream AND cow poop,

 but he sure did have a great time. So great, in fact, that he spent the entire ride home wailing pitifully "Happy Cows" over and over and over....

and he continued talking incessantly about the Happy Cows until Chris and I relented and took him back again on Saturday. And he cried AGAIN when we left.

Coach and the girls.

Giving the girls some pointers