A Place I Live: Milking It Good

When Jeremy and I were first dating cows somehow came up. I made the comment that I really liked brown and white cows because they give you chocolate milk. If I am the city mouse, my husband is most definitely the country mouse. Apparently my delivery was completely straight-faced because he thought I was being serious and corrected me, telling me that milk cows give regular milk no matter what the color. My response: belly aching laughter.

Here’s the thing, I think cows are really cute. When we visited the OC fair I shared that I had never milked a cow and would love to. Jeremy has milked a cow before, and in fact he came home just last week with a bottle filled with fresh cow’s milk. He was trying to find a place to buy rabbit manure for our garden and found Rancho Del Rio, also the Anaheim Equestrian Center. He shared with Cheryl, one of the instructors there, that I would love to visit the Ranch and especially milk their cow.

Cheryl teaching us how to milk Buttercup

I never knew that there was a ranch in Anaheim and I think it is safe to say that most don’t. Rancho Del Rio sits next to the Santa Ana River and is hidden by car dealerships, the Phoenix Club and a freeway. They have stables for boarding horses, offer horseback riding lessons and have several arenas for training. They also have a turkey, a llama named Angel, chickens, roosters, a couple rabbits and a pig. Best of all they offer fieldtrips for school kids and have an education program called Fun withHorses.

As we arrived Cheryl was leading the Buckaroo program where kids get to milk cows, brush horses and learn to saddle them. I have to admit that I was a bit jealous that they were going to be eating ice cream made from milk they had collected the day before. We were up for quite a challenge since the group of kids had milked a gallon.

After washing our hands we were introduced to Buttercup, a beautiful tan and white cow with big brown eyes. Cheryl explained how to milk her by massaging her utter, pushing the milk down to her teat and then squeezing. Instead of milking into a bucket like I’ve always known milking to be done, we milked straight into a bottle. Cheryl explained that this is the old world way of milking to eliminate spilling the bucket or having flies get into the milk. It looked easy enough, but I have to admit I wasn’t the best at milking. I think I was a bit afraid to squeeze hard – I didn’t want to hurt Buttercup! Jeremy was the best at the milking, followed by my mom and then my sister Stacie who also joined us.

After this great experience we were even rewarded with getting to drink the fresh whole milk Buttercup gave us. In case you’re wondering, it was nowhere near a gallon of milk.

Linked at Hideous!Dreadful!Stinky!