Gimme the Dirt…On Cows

Road trip!

The scenery was scrolling past my car windows, rural life spread out before me like a Robert Louis Stevenson poem…

I saw the next door garden lie,
Adorned with flowers, before my eye,
And many pleasant places more
That I had never seen before.
I saw the dimpling river pass
And be the sky’s blue looking-glass;
The dusty roads go up and down
With people tramping in to town.

A Child’s Garden of Verses; Foreign Lands

I actually wasn’t anyplace foreign: it was just central New York and a familiar road that I’d driven many times before. But as I rounded a bend and passed between an old white farmhouse and its accompanying red barn, something odd caught my eye. There, on the hillside pasture in the distance, was a herd of cows, their black and white markings sharp against the backdrop of dark green grass and brilliant blue sky. A herd of cows is nothing unusual in Madison County, but this particular sight was enough to make me pull over and gawk. My mouth might even have gaped open in a silent “whoaaaa.” The odd thing was how the cows were arranged: they were all lying down, nose-to-tail, in a perfect circle there on that hillside. At the top of the hill was a gigantic oak tree, shading most of them from the warm spring sunshine. How I wish I’d had a phone with a camera, or simply a camera, to capture it for posterity. But I can still see it in my mind’s eye, and to this day, whenever I pass that farm, I imagine those cows lazing there in their pasture, arranged just so.

I’ve learned a thing or two about cows since then because I’m in their company every single day, for every one of my days. Cows aren’t just our business partners on this farm; they’re our daily companions. Their big ears are always open – they hear our confessions of frustration, longing, heartache and love, and they respond with solid consistency, which usually involves heavy sighs, large, gentle eyes, and requests for chin scratches. I know, from the years I’ve lived on the farm and worked alongside my farmer husband, that cows are sentient beings capable of frolicking play and grudging acquiescence. They are unique individuals, each with character traits we understand, with a few exceptions. One of these exceptions was Belle.

Our cows are all born and raised right here on Hilltop Farm, so we start getting to know them from the moment they are born. They have a herd hierarchy, and they are a matriarchy, led by a lead cow who makes everyone, including the steers, fall in line. Herd dynamics are fascinating to watch, and we spend many hours doing just that. We know who our herd leader is (Lil’) and understand the pecking order underneath her. Her huge identical twin daughters, Yoshiko and Aiko are next in boss-cow order, and they wield their horns without mercy, except at us.

Anyway, back to Belle. Born here and handled with the same gentleness and care all our calves receive, Belle was different from the get-go. From a young age, she was a bully, shoving cows much larger than she was with her tiny, nubby horns, which we quickly removed to minimize injury to others (and ourselves). We learned when she was small to never turn our backs on Belle. Because calves have typical behaviors we can count on, it was strange for us to worry so much about one of them turning on us. We hoped she’d grow out of it, and we handled her as much as we dared in an attempt to tame her. We watched as she turned from small calf to sturdy yearling, mingling with the herd and hoping they’d put her in her place. But Belle wouldn’t allow it. Once she was fully grown, it became dangerous for either of us to be in close proximity to her. We would enter the pasture or freestall armed with a cane, but even that wasn’t protection enough from a 1,200-pound charging cow.

My husband Barton banned me from the pasture and freestall, and it became difficult for us to perform our regular farm chores. When she reached her full size, she chased Bart out of the pasture too many times to count, and it was soon apparent that Belle wasn’t going to grow out of it. We wondered if mental illness was a “thing” in cows because Belle was definitely different from any of the cows who grew up here, which happens to be our entire herd. So we divested ourselves of her as soon as we could, cutting our losses for the sake of our own – and our herd’s – physical well-being.

Weird cases like Belle aside, it’s the predictability of cows we enjoy most. But we never – and I mean NEVER – let our guard down. Cows are large animals, and even the most well-intentioned cow can inflict bodily harm without meaning to. Our girl Brindi isn’t big by cow standards. Her breeding is Wagyu crossed with Hereford, and as a result, she doesn’t possess enormous stature. Brindi loves to be scratched the entire length of her back, and she will seek us out when we are among the cows so we can be her personal scratching post. Unfortunately, if we don’t see her coming, she will mosey up to one of us from behind and bump into us. Her bumps might be gentle by cow standards, but by human ones – yikes! She’s knocked me off my feet more than once and then stood looking down at me as if to say, “What are you doing down there?” Fern is an extrovert who looks for any form of human attention. She’s a bigger cow, extremely self-confident, and also adores being rubbed around her neck and head. I’ve learned to oblige her by standing above her in the barn door, the gate between us, so she won’t push me over.

Cows are contrary beasts. Understanding how they think and move has been a steep learning curve for me. I come from a horsey background, and initially, when beginning my bovine farm life on Hilltop Farm, I believed I understood cows because they’re herd animals like horses.

Herbivores? Check.
Matriarchy? Check.
Herd dynamics? Check.

Boy, was I wrong. If you push a cow from behind with your hands, it leans into you and walks backward. If you try to pull a cow by a lead line or halter, it pulls against the line with all its strength. They are contrary unless understood. After 18 years of working with cows, I’m still working on understanding them.

Like horses, cows sense the energy around them, so if one of us is in a bad mood, they don’t seem to want to cooperate with anything we need them to do. But interestingly, much like toddlers, if the cows are upset or having a temper tantrum (yes, it happens), matching that negative energy with the negative energy of our own only compounds the problem. I’ve learned the best of handling cattle from watching my husband. He is stolid in the face of intensity, working cows with an impressive calm. Not long ago, we were moving a large steer from the open freestall into a smaller pen, and even though the steer had been docile and friendly in all our previous interactions, this particular day he started to kick. And he was kicking for keeps. Instead of yelling, getting upset, or showing any sort of emotion, Bart spoke to him calmly, using his tone of voice to drop a blanket of calm over the entire situation. I was less helpful. I was scared, and I freely admit it. I was working the gate, the person behind those kicking rear legs adorned with sharp, pointed hooves. I’m short, and this steer was big. At one point, I realized Bart wasn’t just soothing the steer; he was also soothing me. “It’s okay, you’re a good boy; come on, good boy.” His tone was quiet and firm, taking on the tone of a leader, broaching no argument in a kind and gentle way. With a few extra kicks tossed, as if the steer was saying to us, “I’ll go, but I don’t like it,” he was in the pen where we needed him to be. And Bart never raised his voice or fists to that animal. Cows need patience, respect, and calm.

Many years ago, I had the honor of meeting Dr. Temple Grandin, the distinguished cattle scholar, at an education conference where we were both speaking. I heard her lecture again years later at a college symposium. She is well-known for designing modern, large-scale slaughterhouses where cattle are sent for that “one bad day.” The design is a circle, cows moving in a spiral toward the ultimate point of no return. It’s difficult to talk about this in a careful way because we are meat eaters, and yet we love our cows. It’s the reality – the cold, hard reality – of what we do. Dr. Grandin’s design is so important because, despite its purpose, it honors the behavior and thinking pattern of the cow. Cows herd in circles. When threatened by predators in our pasture, the biggest, oldest cows, and the ones with horns, make a circle facing outward, the youngest of the herd inside it where they are most safe. They literally circle their wagons. As they move through Dr. Grandin’s pattern, the cows remain calm because this is their natural way. In her college talk, Dr. Grandin said cows don’t have feelings. She’s considered one of the foremost experts on cattle, so I won’t contradict her. But I will ask this: we aren’t cows, so how do we know? I will leave this can of worms closed for now, but it’s one we are willing to open and discuss with respect going both ways. We won’t be vegetarians, eat bugs, or fall prey to the fallacy of our small herd of cows being the root of all environmental evils. We eat meat. And we want to know the meat we consume was raised by loving hands that cared for the animals, the land, and the community surrounding them.

And so, I’m back to where I started: a circle of cows. I often wonder what made those cows in that field in central New York lie down like they did in that perfect circle. Perhaps the farmer set out hay in the shape of a circle, and the cows decided to lie down where they ate. But that didn’t make sense when they had a field of beautiful green grass available to them. What I come to, anytime I think of this picture in my head, is that circles make cows comfortable and happy, so they made one. And then I think of another piece of children’s literature, and it seems to suit the vision of those cows under their oak tree as much as it suits our own herd, chewing their cuds in their pasture:

“Ferdinand was a bull…he liked to sit just quietly under the cork tree…and for all I know, he is still there, under his favorite cork tree smelling the flowers just quietly. He is very happy.” – The Story of Ferdinand by Munroe Leaf

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Rebecca Collins Brooks is a writer and farmstead cheesemaker on Hilltop Farm in Accord, NY. She is the creator and founder of The Meeting of the Milkmaids, a gathering of women working in the cheese and dairy industry. In addition to a small herd of dairy cows, she and her husband Barton raise Wagyu beef, selling meat to customers directly off the farm. Her best friends are two terriers, Winston and Molly; and Sylvie, a truly brilliant barn cat. You can visit the farm by appointment to see where truly good food is grown.

Connect with Rebecca via Instagram @catskillwagyu, on Facebook CatskillWagyu

And check out > INSIDE+OUT Spotlight on Catskill Wagyu at Hilltop Farm