Texts between a Dairy Man and his wife:
MFW (6:42 am): I just passed five tractors in a row driving down Main Street. What’s going on?
DM (6:44 am): Oh yeah. It’s “drive your tractor to school day.” Totally normal.
*no response*
DM (6:55 am): Carhartt sponsors it at the local high school. They do it every year.
MFW (6:57 am): What kind of a crazy place do I live in?!?
This is an understatement every time I use the phrase, but I am not a “typical” farmer’s wife.
One of the ways that I’m atypical—at least if we’re talking about stereotypes—is that I have little to no cooking ability. Literally; it’s sad sometimes. The Dairy Man taught me how to make scrambled eggs. Before we were married I ate a steady diet of grilled cheese, macaroni, Hamburger Helper, bagels, and baby carrots (for health purposes, of course).
When we got married, it was a proverbial game of chicken to see which one of us would do the cooking. We have equal levels of cooking ability, but unfortunately I also have more time on my hands. I get home at 6:30/7 and he gets home at 8/9. Tragically, the task of preparing dinner falls to he/she who sets foot in the house first.
So that’s how I starting doing the cooking.
The Dairy Man and I have been married for seven months and have survived happily on tacos and Bertoli or P.F. Chang frozen dinners. As the one who lost our cooking game of chicken, I’m thankful for this. When I get home from my 80 minute commute, I’m tired, cranky, and agitated (from the road rage; but that’s another story). The last thing in the world I feel like doing is learning how to cook. I face three hurdles:
These reasons explain why I haven’t picked up a pork chop in seven months of adult living. But. Those Bertoli dinners are all starting to taste the same. Dinner is always something rushed, something edible but not delicious. Say what you will about feminism and resisting conformity, but I’m starting to feel like a bad wife. Not because the woman should do the cooking, but because this woman just happens to have more time than her Dairy Man. And shhh, don’t tell: I am sick of frozen dinners.
The best way to learn is to do. So I’m going to start doing. My attempts may be an affront to all things edible, but I have to start somewhere.
Last night I started with pineapple glazed pork chops with brown rice and asparagus. It was invigorating. The Dairy Man was thrilled and I was puffed up with pride. Though yes, I did have to Google “how do you know when a pork chop is done?”
An introduction to the life of a dairy farm wife wouldn’t be complete without getting to know the parlor.
No, I’m not talking about a sitting room with Victorian wingbacks and frilly curtains. I’m talking about a parlor with swinging gates, long rubber tubes, and occasional plops of warm manure on the concrete floor.
As you may have surmised, a large part of this whole dairy operation is milking the cows. This takes place in a milking parlor. A city slicker like me had little idea how dairy farming actually works. My image of a straw-hatted farmer on a three-legged stool milking each cow by hand is vastly outdated. Between two facilities, my Dairy Man and his father milk over 800 cows. The idea of milking by hand is laughable.
So, let’s step into the parlor.
Our bovine ladies are herded into the milking parlor twice a day. My Dairy Man and his employees coax the cows into their places and hook them up to robotic, spider-like machines that act as vacuums, pulling the milk into several large tanks in another room. After they have been milked, the large animals independently tramp back into the barn to spend the rest of their day eating and making more manure.
And there you have it. That’s where milk comes from. I have shared a little piece of my knowledge that didn’t exist in any form before I met the Dairy Man.
Sometimes it’s alarming how much space in my brain is occupied by all things cow. And how unfazed I now am by the smell of manure.
Ok. I admit it. I fell off the blogging wagon. Two posts deep and I wasn’t able to keep the habit going. I think one of my biggest problems is my need for perfection. Perfectionism and blogs don’t always mix well—perfectionism requires time, editing, and numerous rewrites; blogging requires quick turnaround and a constant flow of ideas. So, this is my pledge to you: I am going to try and become a proper blogger.
I feel like I spend half my life failing in the quest to be perfect—whether the perfect employee, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter, or the perfect blogger. These feelings of failure can spring up before I’ve gotten started and leave me paralyzed. Thus, a month can go by without a blog post because I can’t seem to find the perfect one. No more. Consider yourself warned; I might not always bring my A game.
So here I am, a fancy city-loving girl with the sweet scent of manure wafting through my house, trying to find the will to publish well and publish often. I might not always write a “good” post, but I want to commit to writing something. Otherwise I’ll never get this blog off the ground!
Hi. My name is Jessica, and I’m a dairy farmer’s wife.
I did not grow up in the country. Though in the name of full confession, I did not grow up in a city either. I was born and raised in Holland, a suburban home to roughly 35,000 Dutch reformers on the shores of Lake Michigan. But I always felt like a city girl trapped in a suburban girl’s body.
During my senior year of college, I spent three and a half months living and working in Chicago. This beautiful city had me at hello. I loved the taxis, the crush of bodies, the subways, the restaurants, the ethnic neighborhoods, the theaters, and the shopping. I worked four days a week at my internship at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I had my pick of five Starbucks within a mile radius of my apartment. That semester was bliss and I fully intended to move back the second my diploma was in my hand.
But it’s like Lennon said: “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” I made other plans. But life laughed at me. After my semester in the land of steel and glass, I returned to finish my final semester of college. It was there that Dairy Man finally weaseled his way into my heart. Two years later, he was down on his knee pulling a sparkly ring out of an ice skate. Little did I know what my “YES!” would entail.
Today the Dairy Man and I live on a 118+ acre dairy farm in the middle of Michigan. I can actually see cows from my kitchen window. I have to wear rubber boots to walk to the garage. The Dairy Man works between 80 and 100 hours per week. It’s very common for me to say “What’s on your shirt?” and have the Dairy Man respond, “Oh, just some manure.”
I don’t think any amount of research could have prepared me to be a dairy farmer’s wife. Farming is not just a job; it’s an all-encompassing lifestyle. The farm is my Dairy Man’s job, passion, hobby, and mistress. Dinnertime is a moving target; vacations and holidays are non-existent (the cows always need to be milked, even if it’s Christmas); artificial insemination is a mealtime conversation topic; and Dairy Man works more and sleeps less than I thought a person physically could.
But my Dairy Man loves it. He’s full of big dreams and won’t quit until he achieves them. Ironically, it’s this same dogged persistence that won me over and has me waking up in countryland every morning.
Life is funny on the farm. Now that we’ve been properly introduced, I hope you’ll think so too.
We are an unlikely couple. I am a stiletto-wearing, sushi-eating, skyscraper-loving girl. My Dairy Man is a boot-wearing, cow-wrangling, fresh air loving boy. It was a long road to get here, but this city girl and country boy couldn’t be happier to be starting a life together.
It’s been almost five months since I married the Dairy Man. Those months have been filled with adjustments, cows, and a whole lot of driving. Though I’m now a country-dweller, my job remains in the city – 70 miles away.
For this reason, I’ve talked myself out of staring this blog at least 45 times. When I get home, I’m tired, cranky, hungry, and have to be in bed by ten. It’s easy to talk myself out of things. Particularly when those things are writing. Or thinking. It’s much easier to snag a glass of wine and veg out before I have to wake up and do it all over again.
But, no more. I am out of excuses. I am a pencil skirt-wearing transplant to this barren frontier and I have a story. I often feel like I’m literally bursting at the seams. Yes, Dane Cook, literally. The Dairy Man asked me the other day, “how can you be a writer if you don’t WRITE?” Though I have ample opportunities to write for my job, that writing does not express me. A once avid blogger and journaler, somewhere along the way I lost my voice.
I hope to be faithful. I hope to find some sort of fulfillment from putting words to … screen. I hope to prove that I have something to say that is worth listening to.
This is my story. This is my journey. And I simply must get the Dairy Man off my back.
Modern Farm Wife 