THE PEOPLE WHO PUT THEIR HAND UP
The farmer who stayed to teach
By Sam Marwood
Post 11 of 19
Between the last cow and the hose, he told his relief milker that he was staying, and that he wanted to be the one who would teach him.
The yard was wet, the cups were off, and the hose was already running on the concrete. A lot of things on a dairy got said in that gap, before the hose was hung up and the shed was left for the night.
His children had made other lives, which sat fine with him, and he was still in the middle of his working life. He wanted to stay on his farm and teach the work while he still knew the herd cow by cow.
The milker already knew this shed, from the relief mornings he had done here, and he kept the hose moving while he listened. He said he would take the work on, and they finished washing the yard while the hose was still running.
They talked about share farming while the hose was still running on the concrete between them. The farm stayed in his name, the milker sharefarmed it, and before anyone signed both sides read the page aloud.
The page said the milker took the mornings, the farmer kept the teaching in the pit, and the farmer lived in the house.
He would be on the place while the milker took on more of the daily work. What he knew got said in the shed, at the time, with both of them standing where the cows had just been.
The next season the milker ran a morning, an ordinary milking, with the farmer in the pit beside him to teach. The cows came through in their usual order, and the milker had them moving without being told which one was next.
The milker had the cows in and the first cups on before the farmer spoke a word about how the row was going. The farmer watched the order, kept his hands off the cups until that one slow cow, and he did not reach for a cluster himself.
One cow was slow to let her milk down, and the farmer spoke about that cow and no other. He said what he noticed on that cow, and the milker adjusted while her feet shifted on the concrete.
The milker waited beside her the way he had just been told to wait, and the farmer did not take the cluster off him for the rest of the row.
The rest of the row went through in the milker's hands, and the farmer stayed beside him without taking a cluster. He stayed in the pit until the row was finished, so the milker had him there and still had the work.
When the last cow left, the morning was the milker's, and the herd had been milked by the man who was learning it. They washed the yard once that morning was done, and the milker hung the hose up himself.
The shed was left in the milker's order, and the farmer had corrected one cow and left every other one alone. The knowledge stayed on the farm because the man who had it stayed to teach it, and the milker had had that morning beside him.
This is an illustration of how it could unfold when it goes right. The district and the people in it aren't any one place or person.
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