What Milking the Family Cow Taught Me About Parenting

The morning sun is just peeping over the horizon as I walk to the pasture, stainless steel milk pail in one hand and a cup of cooling coffee in the other. The family milk cow, Brenda, waits patiently for me at the gate, lazily chewing her cud and keeping rhythm to some unknown cow tune with her swishing tail. I relish this time alone in the morning, just me and the cow and the early sounds of the pasture and the woods around us. The routine is so familiar to both of us that as the music of the milk entering the bucket fills the morning air, Brenda’s long lashed eyes begin to close in contentment, and my mind starts wandering as the foam in the bucket begins to rise.

This is a familiar scene in my life, and it brings me comfort. I’m grateful to have been raised in the old-fashioned tradition of the Old Order Mennonites and taught by my parents how to milk the family cow at ten years old. As an adult and as a parent, I understand how the responsibility to bring milk to the house every morning before breakfast is a gift that keeps on giving for generations. Such chores formed my character. Today, I have the self-discipline to get up early to milk two cows by myself on a Sunday morning and still, with the help of my husband, get the family to church on time. The responsibility instilled in me a knowledge that true contentment is not found in the serving of self but rather in the serving of others. And my parents showed faith in me by entrusting chores of increasing importance to my care.

Thankfully, I have continued to find peace in the routines the necessary tasks bring to my life. When I head out in the dark of early morning and experience the solitude and serenity of our homestead, gratitude swells up in my heart. My spirit is soothed by the required actions that became second nature long ago. I know I am a part of what matters—my family’s health, our homestead’s survival, our animals’ wellness, and the care of God’s creation.

In the beginning, my husband and I weren’t sure we would have all the animals that we now do. At the age of twenty-seven, after six years of marriage and two babies, we both became stronger in our faith and leaned into Jesus for everything. We became less consumed with filling our lives with things, experiences, and wealth and far more focused on bringing value to the lives of those around us. As our family grew, so did our focus and clarity. The desire to instill a work ethic and strong values in the next generation became the foundation we built our homestead on. We didn’t set out with the mindset of “let’s raise all our own food.” Honestly, we were too poor to even think of taking on more mouths to feed . . . including animal mouths! But our slow process of adding each animal was motivated by our desire to instill some amazing character qualities into our then small family.

To this day, milking the family cow and making the most of what she provides us is an area of family management I take particular pride in. I hope to pass along these skills and the potential peace of homestead routines to my children even if they are convinced, just as I was at their age, that having to milk a cow before breakfast is the absolute worst chore a parent could ask of a child.

It’s About More Than Milk

The possession of a family milk cow or two has become about so much more than fresh raw milk for our own family. In the beginning, with our first family milk cow, it was about the milk alone. But I quickly came to realize that if we had children to raise, we would need to have a family milk cow. The family milk cow, God bless her soul, demands consistency from the entire family. This star of the farm requires a routine to our life that my impulsive and scatterbrained soul craves. She brings a consistency to my parenting that the family needs. They, of course, don’t know it, but it’s the truth.

When life gets busy and our routines are messed up, there is at least one point, sometimes two, when everyone knows exactly what to expect. Milking time! The chores surrounding the family milk cow are shouldered like a familiar yoke that fits just right. A yoke that has been worn so often that all the pressure points have been worn off and it feels more like a welcome and comfortable routine than a burden. The fact that the cow must be milked no matter how miserable we feel, how unfriendly the weather, or how much whining is happening has not only taught our children to have great endurance but has even taught me to have greater self-discipline.