I went to the farm yesterday to buy raw milk. To you, that'd be unworthy of comment; to an agoraphobe like me, it was a great victory. I've been averaging less than one trip outside the house per week this year; in fact, I think I only went outdoors twice in April. This was only two days after my last trip, though; I voted on Tuesday.

Marie was happy to go, too. They say that dogs can't see two-dimensional images, such as television, but I'm not convinced. I think the problem is that dogs can barely see at all. They respond really well to things they hear, and things they smell, but they don't see very well at all.

Marie sits up, "smiles", and looks outside the window when we're moving down the road. When we stop, she quickly gets bored, and lies down on the floor of the minivan.

Dogs Aren't Hermits

Dogs are social animals. Left to their own devices, they run in packs, not individually. Sometimes, when they see each other, they are aggressive to each other, but often, they're just excited to meet someone. One dog starts barking, and most dogs within earshot want to reply. And yet, to be socially acceptable, we're supposed to keep our dogs on our own property so they can't run in packs, and keep them from barking so they don't annoy neighbors.

It's cruel, if you think about it. It must be terribly boring. Marie's life has greatly improved since we got Dusty. He teases her. He'll try to sneak up when she isn't paying attention, then all of a sudden he races away noisily so that she will give chase, and of course, he's a lot more agile than she is.

He teases her mercilessly, and sometimes, he jumps over her, or even jumps on her. We've managed to teach Dusty some manners - he doesn't claw Blondie at all any more, and he only extends his claws slightly when I play with him. We have a game where I scratch his belly, and he rolls over onto his other side, clawing me, or he bends down to bite me, but he doesn't claw deeply, just barely enough to get "traction", and he doesn't bite down.

Dusty Is Intact

I think that's exceptional, because you see, Dusty hasn't had surgery to turn him into a eunuch. Everybody warned me that if I didn't do that, Dusty would mark everything in the house, and would constantly try to get outside to hunt down female cats. The former hasn't happened, and he only has wanted to go outside to get to the wild catnip growing in the back yard.

It's been a hard winter for me. Because my agoraphobia has been worse, I haven't made it to the farm very often. Most store milk will only last 4 days before it gets that "off" flavor, although Turkey Hill milk seems to last 5 days. The raw milk I get, though, will last 8 days. That means visiting the farm once a week makes sense.

When milk is homogenized, the fat globules are reduced in size so that they remain suspended in the milk. That greatly increases the surface area of the fat globules, though, and the fat oxidizes, which isn't good. The smaller physical size of the fat globules makes it much more likely to form plaque on your arteries. Diabetics have a greater problem with hardening of the arteries that other folks, so raw milk is a lot more healthful for them. Diabetics also have a weakened immune system, which makes pasteurization a bad idea. Killing off all the living things in milk gives free rein to any nasty microbes that get at the milk. (You're safer from attack if you're surrounded by a crowd than if you're "alone.")

Visiting The Farm

And visiting the farm is enjoyable. Farmers don't like it if you enter a barn full of livestock; you're teeming with diseases, and they'd like to keep their stock healthy. If you stand at the door, though, and look in, you can smell the dairy cattle. There's a big difference between the way a dairy herd smells and the way a beef herd smells. Part of it is that dairy cattle get bathed daily. Part of it is that beef cattle are aggressively fed, so as to fatten them up as quickly as possible, and that changes the odor of their manure.

Swine are the most intelligent of common livestock. They also have a body temperature very close to human body temperature, which means that they harbor the same intestinal flora as humans. Consequently, their manure smells really bad to us, because our noses warn us to stay away from other humans' manure; it's an evolutionary thing that helps us avoid spreading disease.

Chickenshit Is For The Birds

And poultry manure has a really offensive smell. There's a lot of ammonia in it, because poultry do such a poor job of processing feed. Free-range chicken eat a lot of bugs and worms. That not only makes their meat and their eggs taste better, but it makes their manure less offensive.

Grandpa always refused to buy chicken feed at the elevator. They docked farmers for tares - such as weed seed - in grain delivered to the them, and then the elevators cleaned the grain. The weed seed, they turned around and added to cracked corn and a vitamin/mineral mix, to sell as chicken feed.

The chickens, however, would eat that weed seed, and much of it would pass through their digestive tract unchanged. The chickens would get into the field and deposit that weed seed complete with manure to fertilize it so that the farmer would end up with more weed seed in the next load of grain he sold. The elevator, Grandpa pointed out, charged you for the weed seed once when you delivered the grain, and a second time when you bought the chicken feed - and then you ended up raising still more weeds.

Cows Bathe Twice Daily

But horses and cows have fairly inoffensive manure. What's more, the natural body odor of a clean horse or cow is fairly appealing. Walk into a dairy barn when the temperature is 20 below, and the body heat radiated by cows - and their warm farts - makes the barn all toasty inside, and the fragrance is fairly intoxicating.

City folk might not appreciate the smell, but to an old farm boy, it's an odor that brings back memories of affectionate cows. Milking a cow, after all, is fondling her teats. Cows appreciate a gentle hand, and they like being milked by a good milkman/milkmaid. If you don't have the patience for it, though, they let their disapproval be known. It hurts when you get repeatedly get smacked in the face with a cow's tail, and a cow's hooves are sharp.

Marie Knows

Marie recognizes the scenery when we get off 222 at the Ephrata exit of 222. How is a 3-D image on the other side of a window any different than the image on a TV screen? It's not. She dances around in the back of the van for the remaining miles until we get to Conestoga Valley dairy farm.

She would so like to get out of the minivan and go make friends with all those wonderful-smelling cows. And I don't blame her. The scent fills my nose, and makes me wish I had a bigger nose.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
agoraphobia - cats - chicken feed - dairy farm - disability - dogs - manure - vision