On Saturday night, I will drink beer as a cow poops in front of me....

....is a sentence I never thought I'd use to describe my weekend. But here I am.

Let's start with the beginning of my Saturday. I came in to help with the cheese store in the morning. Every Saturday and Sunday the front room in the cheese house is turned into a cheese counter. Cato Corner fans, novices, and neighbors can come buy cheese directly from the source. I was a little nervous at first because I'm not well-versed in all the cheeses, and all I really know how to do is wrap cheese (poorly at that). But it ended up being a lot of fun. Leslie, who works the cheese store every week, was very patient in helping me learn about the cheeses. She graciously introduced me to the customers so that I wasn't just the smiling fool who folded wrapping paper like a five-year-old.

Around noon they needed my help in the cheese room. It was a fairly laid-back Saturday. Until about 4pm, I helped stir, hoop, and clean up, all while Frank Zappa played in the background.

Saturdays are my Fridays. So afterward, I hung out with the rest of the Saturday crew and toured all the pastures and barns. First stop, seeing the twin calves that were born the night before. On the way we noticed one of the young heifers, who made a reputation for herself as a troublemaker, had gotten outside the wire fence. For a solid ten minutes, I watched as Chris, one of the cheesemakers, tried to corner the heifer back under the wiring. The display caused all the other heifers to congregate on the edges and vocally cheer on their colleague in the epic battle of man vs. cow. This time cow won. We decided to inform Heather, one of the milkers, who was more adept at handling the personalities of the animals. We came back later to find that the troublemaker had taught two other heifers the same trick, and now three had escaped. After some strategic cornering and luring them with food, we managed to get them all back in the fence. Of course, there was nothing stopping them from getting back out when they wanted to play the game again.

We wandered into the pens with all the young cows, which were, as you would expect, ridiculously cute. Then we stopped in to see the newborn twins. One of the baby twins stood up on its shaky new legs and wobbled her way over to us so we could pet her. I just pet a baby cow! Awesome.

Afterward, we walked around the pastures with a couple of late afternoon beers. We walked back down for a stop in the milking room to visit the milkers with an invite for a post-work drink. To get to the milking room you have to go through the barn where all the adult cows mill around and "hang out." So depending on the number of cows that are there at any given time, it can feel like you're pushing your way to the front of a crowd at a cow concert.

I watched as they brought in the cows four or five at a time and attached the milking pump. The cleanup involved a high pressured water gun that would put the hose gun in the cheese room to shame. I was jealous.
Then one of the milkers began putting milk into half gallon size bottles for the calves. She turned to me and said something, which I thought I misheard at first.  "Do you want to feed one of the babies?" ...excuse me what?...ahem...Hell YES!

We went into the area with the babies, she pointed one out and handed me a bottle. I held it up as the baby cow came over and attacked the bottle with ferocity. Her gluttony was adorable. It was gone in maybe 30 seconds. I went over to get the next bottle and one of the older babies started following me. I was told that at a certain age while they are still very young, the cows are taken off milk and put on feed. So the milk is like candy to the young cows who don't get it anymore. This cow must have had a sweet tooth. It followed me over to the next pen and started licking at my arm and trying to get to any drips off the bottle. I had to adopt a technique of  hip checking the older baby out of the way while holding the bottle up for the younger one. I imagine pizza parties for little children are quite similar.

As I waited for everyone to finish up work, I stood outside by the entrance to the barn with my beer and noticed one of the cows staring at me very intently. I thought we were forming some cosmic cross-species connection. Then, I started to hear something that sounded like collected rain-water rapidly pouring out of a gutter. I looked down and realized, the cow wasn't trying to bond with me, but was in fact just concentrating on making a bowel movement happen. As she casually crapped her figurative pants, I just happened to be in the way of her focused gaze. It was an oddly dramatic end to an awesome Saturday.