Wednesday, June 24, 2015

We won’t forget what you failed to see

On June 6th I visited Sipoonkorpi National Park. There were some cows grazing by the roadside.

(Posting title is from the poem The Elements of San Joaquin by Gary Soto.)

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8 comments:

Markus said...

A fitting title for a photographer's blog post ;)

And seeing the cows, I was reminded of Ursula Boehmer's "All Ladies" collection. Have a look at it here: http://ursulaboehmer.de/ladies.html

She's teaching a workshop in my hometown, and I am earnestly considering to participate.

Thursday, June 25, 2015
Juha Haataja said...

Thanks for the hint, great photographs of fine ladies.

I grew up on a farm with ten milk cows and some younger animals. They are rather shy and timid creatures, despite their size.

Thursday, June 25, 2015
Markus said...

Juha,
despite of growing up in the city, I've studied agriculture, and part of it were internships on farms, where I learned to milk cows by hand - and in which direction to look during this time ;)

And I'll never forget that the very first day they handed me the bull to lead him into a different stable - thanks God the bull was really big but peaceful, so I had no trouble.

Thursday, June 25, 2015
Juha Haataja said...

I did a google image search with keywords "milk cows by hand", and there were plenty of different styles of milking to be seen. Some people seemed to be afraid of the cow tail (and not without reason...), or tried otherwise to keep distance to the cow. Some had the right approach to milking: get close to the cow and lean with your forehead on the side of the cow to diminish the load on the back muscles.

Friday, June 26, 2015
Markus said...

Yes, getting close to the cow was the important point, I remember. A tedious job, this milking by hand, especially for a university student's fingers, adapted to ball pens then (this was well before computers, even desktops, became available).

Saturday, June 27, 2015
Juha Haataja said...

It is good that there are cow milking machines, milking 30 liters per day per cow would be quite a chore...

Saturday, June 27, 2015
Markus said...

... even more so in stables with 100+ cows!

Sunday, June 28, 2015
Juha Haataja said...

Indeed. When I was growing up it was thought that ten cows would be sufficient to sustain living on a small farm. These days 100 cows is about breaking even... farming has become industrial scale.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

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